The Dogs - Spring Clean Challenge 2026

Despite this army having all of my favourite units in it, and collected over 20+ years, there was still a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that it was somehow incomplete.  But how could that be?  I ignored that thought and pressed on but then one day when I was flicking through the Dogs of War supplement again it hit me.

Of course! I’m missing a massive dragon to swoop across the battlefield and spoil the day of my opponent’s favourite character or most menacing looking war engine.  Asarnil the Dragon Prince and his Green Dragon Deathfang fulfilled this role in the original book.  Now a trawl online to see if you can still get this miniature.  Indeed you can.  The TrollTrader has one, NIB too, for £400!  To borrow a favourite phrase from one of our fellow OTTers, Ow Much!!!  Even by the standards of original Citadel miniature collecting that feels a bit strong, considering that’s what I paid for the 11 Regiments of Renown that got this project started.

As an aside Asarnil was a absolute badass in the game.  He had a magic item that reduced any enemy in base contact to WS1!  So basically if you didn’t shoot him or magic him off the table he was totally unbeatable in hand to hand.  Hero Hammer indeed 🙂

On to cheaper alternatives.  Did I remember seeing a dragon rider in the Reaper range?  Indeed I did, Kyra and Lavanath Reaper Bones 77557.  Reaper availability is a bit patchy in the UK but an extensive trawl online dredged up SnM Stuff (!) who had one with a 20% discount so I paid £11.32 about 3% of the original miniature.  Whatever this miniature looked like it wasn’t going to be 30 times worse than the original.

When she arrived they had chucked in a free armoured female foot figure too, Merowyn Lightstar 77675 who looked like a fairly close match to the rider to me so would get painted up as the foot version of this character.

Being a Reaper Bones miniature it is white PVC.  This often means slightly softer details and some nasty mould lines.  This one wasn’t too bad although got some attention from the scalpel.  Then a wash to remove the mould release agent and hot water to straighten out some bendy bits.  It assembled easily with superglue.  I’m not using the cast base which is just as well because there was absolutely no way to get the feet to fit onto both of the cast lugs which were too close together.

I’m going for the same sort of colour scheme in homage to the original.  A green dragon with blingy elf rider.  I’ve decided on a Forest Dragon scheme rather than the Green Dragon of the original but we are sticking with the gold armour and magenta cloth.

Here are the colours:

A zenithed undercoat in Halford’s white over grey was used.  It is recommended to use a specialist plastic undercoat but I didn’t have one to hand and this usually works fine for me.  The undercoat highlighted a few areas of mouldline and gaps in the assembly which were addressed with the scalpel/greenstuff and then a final squirt of white spray.

The dragon was painted first, Forest Sprite for the brighter skin and Gunner Camo for the darker scales and wing membranes.  The yellow and Blighted Green were blended to provide patches and highlights for the Forest Sprite and the Blighted Green was used neat to highlight the darker green.  The same colours were used in a wet blend to get the colour shift blend on the face of the shield from dark green bottom to light green at the top.

Magenta cloth was Carmine Dragon and the leather straps were Satchel Brown.

The rider is an elf so Peachy Flesh was used for her and her hair was a mix of 1 drop Sand Golem, 1 drop Fire Giant Orange and 2 drops of Pallid Bone.  Red hair stands out better than blonde against all the green.  Teeth, claws and the dragon bone lance were undercoated in Pallid Bone and then layers of Bonewhite, Ivory and White decreasingly toward a focus on the top/tip.

Finally metal was undercoated in the green tinted Aztec Gold.

At this point everything got a coat of matt varnish.  Once dry I started to restore the shine on the metal with Victorian Gold on the upper surfaces and edges and Renaissance Gold on the lower/under areas.  Final highlights on top edges and tips using Vallejo Metal Gold.

And they are done:

As you can see I got some nice blingy shine on the armour.  Elves – never knowingly under-blinged.  The scale shot shows that this is a big model.  It certainly has the desired table presence.

I even had a go at the sigil on the standard with a bit of freehand.  Not my favourite thing to do but sometimes its the right technique for the end result I’m after. Pencil first to sketch on the design and check positioning.  Black acrylic thinned with black ink over the pencil to block out the design.  White acrylic thinned with white ink to put the design on.  Make sure to leave a very thin black line around the edge so the image stands out properly against the green background.  Lots of patience, strong glasses and a 10/0 brush needed 😀

I’ve gone with the same sigil.  The fluff behind this is that this is the daughter of Asarnil so carries the same family emblem.  Now as a football fan I can spot a Gooner influence a mile off and “Asarnil” is a clear minor letter rejig and vowel transposition of someone’s favourite football team. Well two can play at that game so meet ‘Tesphar the Dragon Princess’, Tess to her friends.  Her dragon is a daughter of her father’s and goes by the typically dragony name of Fearfang. Every animal had a stable name and Fearfang is called Muffin by her rider, from her habit of sneaking off and eating a mule or two from the merchant convoys that they used to escort early in their mercenary career.  You’d have to have a death wish to call her Muffin to her face if you aren’t accepted as family though.  Dragon’s can be very touchy about that sort of thing and have infamously short tempers.

You can see from the comparison shot that the sculpt of the Reaper model is “significantly inspired” by the Citadel model 😀

Finally reviewing the pictures I noticed that I’d forgotten to do the dragon’s eyes.  A dot of white onto the eyeball.  Then Vivid Yellow ink over that and a thin back line.  Finally a dot of Fluro Yellow on the upper side of the eye above the pupil.

What’s that flying across from the mercenary horde Captain?
I’m not sure General.  Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  No!  It’s big, green and looks very angry!
 – The reported last words of High General Gemeraldo at the Battle of Neat’s Pass.