15 mm Cart of Death (Peter Pig)

To coin a phrase from the 1970s: "And now for something completely different". This is from Peter Pig's War of the Roses range. It's Pack 22: "Dead cart with a pile of dead bodies, horse, and a dead collector".

It came from a friend of mine who was sorting out things in his loft. He bought it on a whim many years ago. When he offered it to me late last year, I did likewise. I thought it would be fun to paint. I was right. It's an unusual and suitably morbid, piece of baggage for my WOTR army.

Figure review

The model is very well cast and went together without any major surgery.

My one gripe is that it's not obvious if there's a girth under the horse's belly. None of what could be "ribs" or tack line up with the tack on the horses's back. Neither do they have sharp edges like the rest of the tack. I painted the "ribs" as just that.

Once everything was painted and varnished, I spent a few nervous moments bending the traces to a position close to the horse's tack. I had to do this as, after assembly, I'd glued the cart to the base for painting and the traces ended up a bit too low. If I was doing another one, I'd align the traces more carefully before gluing the cart body to the axle.

Painting notes

The horse was a delight to paint; ribs aside. At first I over highlighted the detailed folds on the Collector's jerkin and had to reduce the contrast with a brown umber wash.

Not my style, but I suspect that Peter Pig figures would paint really quickly with contrast paints: all the folds are very deep.

The contents of the cart were a bit of a challenge as there's a lot going on. There're hands, feet and legs all over the place. It was fun trying to figure out which bits were in fact connected.

Instead of using my usual skin recipe of highlighted Miniature Paints Tanned Flesh (72) I used the much paler, and pink, tone of Crafter's Acrylic Natural Biege (DCA09), for the dead skin.

Rather than highlight this I used a batch of the wash I'd used on my bronze armour:

• 1 part Vallejo Game Color Flesh Wash (73.204).
• 1 part Vallejo Game Wash Sepia (73.200).
• 2 parts water.

It worked a treat; smoothing the edges and tying everything together without dulling the colour significantly. On reflection, I think the latter is another consequence of Peter Pig's sculpting style.