Together with cultists, who will get their own entry, this are the foot soldiers of the Old Ones in Mansions of Madness. The models are certainly not spectacular, the quality being below that of more recent board games by FFG, notably Descent and its Star Wars spin-off, and nowhere near as good as the miniatures by Kickstarter ventures such as CoolMiniOrNot or Studio McVey. This being said, they still look better painted than unpainted.
Maniacs. I like these models much better than the witches, first for their dynamic pose, and second for their richly-textured sculpt. The latter takes care of the shading while you just add some ink / wash. I added some highlights on the pants and did some drybrushing, too, but that was all. They took me probably an hour each.
Witch 1. I like the idea of giving them a Bob cut, a quintessential 1920s haircut, but somehow it doesn’t fit to the other design choices. It’s a matter of taste I guess. In order to make up for the lack of three-dimensionality I spent some efforts highlighting shirt and skirt. Took me twice as long as the maniac, but not looking twice as good, sadly.
Witch 2. I like this color scheme much better. Maybe it’s because a Bob cut only goes with black hair.
Zombies. Dubbed by our gaming group “the high five” zombies, these good-natured and none-threatening undead must have been to the gym recently… Considering the wealth of cool zombie miniatures out there, they are an embarrassment to their kind. Well, at least they were easy to paint. These are good miniatures to start with if you have no painting experience, since you can try applying inks and drybrushing techniques with very satisfying results, very similar to the maniacs.