I did not expect to like them this much. Could be that I’m still high on nostalgia and David Bowie tossing the world’s worst prop dummy in the air, but is that really the crucial bit?
The tar mess had good variation but crap surface texture, unless you were looking to dispose of a woolly mammoth. The mix is about 1/2 Van Dyke brown, 1/4 gloss medium, and 1/4 fine grain sand. Definitely crunchy. Like Grape Nuts gone horribly wrong. Not that Grape Nuts was much to sing about in the first place; can you make pea gravel worse? Grape Nuts with Bolts?
The high points got a Minotaur Hide dry brush. I only had forest tufts, so I hit them with a swampy green mix before I chopped them up and trampled them.
Which brought up the sticky point – reflections. This unit already has a lot going on; any more and eyeballs may start to bleed. I aimed for a suggestion of reflection – a selective white dry brush, based with Tesseract Glow and glazed with Plasmatic Bolt. I think I managed to not go overboard. Yeah, I was surprised too. The man in the iron mask and sumo Johnny Storm got the most.
Which brings me to the Gordian Knot. How do I varnish? Even matte varnish is a little satin, which is going to mess with the tone and kill the contrast on the flat mud. Gloss would hold the color truer, but then it’s soup again. Maybe an offering to the tabletop gods? A 6-pack of anything to keep the cheetoh fingers off my minis. Not holding my breath.
Subtle R Us