Would you believe I’ve been planning this build for over a year? This is a project that got away from me for a long while, in no small part because of real-life commitments, one of the biggest of which was trying to finish a peer-reviewed article that I was trying to get published. This ties well into what I ended up building, both because it is an article focused on mining through accounts of sport-hunting for deer in the 19th century, but also because I spectacularly missed the point at the core of this build before I even had it started. When I let myself see with “eyes unclouded by hate,” to borrow a quote from one of my all-time favorite animated movies, I was able to reach the finish line for both.

But enough about the abstract and deep stuff – I set out to build a Princess Mononoke-styled Wraithlord and I’m very happy with the result. A local friend with a 3D printer was able to build me the clear resin head for this, and the rest of it was a combination of a 65mm resin base, a Wraithguard, several extra bits, and a caribou that I picked up at Michaels here in St. John’s. What I imagined was basically a mounted Wraithlord, and while I ended up scaling it down a bit to make it work I’m still very happy with how this turned out. It’s kitted out of course with a pair of Bright Lances, one of which is actually a spare Pulse Laser from an old Falcon kit. The ornamental bits and bobs are also things I picked up at Michaels.

As usual, the LEDs for this build came from Evan Designs because they’ve had the best LEDs for hobbying that I’ve used to date, and they certainly didn’t let me down on this one. (Author’s note: these LEDs purchased long before the current international fiasco referenced here.) I feel like those old waterslide Eldar decals also really put in some solid work on this one, especially the clear “head” segment, because when the light’s on I feel like that black symbol just works really effectively. Most of this came together without issue, though I did have to fight a little bit with the Wraithguard’s waist to get it to sit right, and I learned the hard way that trying to get chain to maintain shape on a miniature in any way, shape or form for painting is tricky business. In the end this project was a good mix of stuff I’ve done before, stuff I wanted to try for the first time, and stuff where I just wanted to get weird.

If I had any complaint about this build, other than scaling down on the size, it’s that despite scaling down the size this won’t fit into any of the Wraithlord-sized spaces in my KR Cases, because I done goofed that up. If I had my time back, I’d probably magnetize the waist of the Wraithguard to allow them to move a little but also to allow for storage. As a result this might not get a lot of use in my “away” games but it’ll sure make the home games feel special, and it felt like a great piece to cap off what’s been a long, strange trip both with regard to miniature painting and with regard to my life in a broader way outside of that.