Kings of War Hobby Spotlight: Daniel Read

Today we’re handing over the blog to our North American Distribution, Joe Neet. A long-time Kings of War fan, Joe has been using the isolation time to get in some extra hobby opportunities – including interviewing people for the blog. Over to you Joe…

Sharp highlights, smooth blends and vibrant
colors, Daniel Reed is a man who needs little introduction! During these dark
times of quarantine, Dan has been a light that we have all been able to stand
in awe of through the wonderful pictures of his growing Basilean army. Let us
talk to the man himself to see what drives him through his hobby journey!

Dan, tell us about yourself and how you
found this great hobby.

I’m a 43-year-old father of one and I live
in Derby, United Kingdom. I came to the hobby as many others did, via the
wonderful game Heroquest (the best thing about Heroquest is….) from MB games
and GW. I saw the TV advert and was desperate to use my Brawdsawd, so pester
power got me the game for Xmas and that was it. I was fortunate to be the right
age at the start of a lot of hobby stuff – Games Workshop was beginning to
create its own IP, Fighting Fantasy books were selling like hotcakes and we had
games like Space Crusade, Advanced Heroquest and TV shows like Knightmare
(Goblins in the levels!) to fuel our imaginations. I had a group of likeminded
friends and we were into EVERYTHING.

How long have you been involved in Kings
of War and Mantic miniatures?

I was a GW devotee obviously, and I had
looked at Mantics minis when I found myself priced out of GW’s stuff. But I had
no idea there was an alternative to Warhammer until ‘The Sundering’ occurred in
2015 and I, like many, made the transfer to Kings of War in order to be able to
use our fantasy armies. Mantic made a real push to entice us over, with Uncharted
Empires and Destiny of Kings etc. and there were exciting choices to be made. I
had considered Frostgrave as my transfer game but ultimately Mantic won me over
with affordable miniatures and a great set of rules.

What was the first Mantic miniature that
you painted and what drew you to that model?

It’s hard to recall but I think it was
either Sveri Egilax or the box of Brock Riders that were my first Mantic
purchase. I was excited to be able to use monsters and cavalry with my dwarf
army and it was the imagery of hairy dwarves riding hairy badgers that really
drew me in. I didn’t multibase to start with – my brocks are still individually
based but I might change that going forward. The ability to do more with basing
was another element that excited me about Kings of War.

Tell us about your process of beginning
to start a new project or model. Do you have a set plan, or do you develop it
on the fly?

I used to paint very much on the fly – as a
legacy of Warhammer I would hardly ever get projects finished and by the time I
got halfway through an army I’d get bored of my colour scheme and paint things
differently. As a result, my armies were somewhat patchwork and I never really
developed any sense of colour harmonies or painting coherence, I would usually
copy the colours that GW had used in their media.

Nowadays, however, and not needing to paint
as many models for a Kings of War army, I am able to plan my projects from
scratch. I don’t paint to an army list, I think of the models I want to paint
and over the course of a few sessions at the swimming pool, I plan and think
about what colour scheme I will use, how things will be based, and how to
achieve these things!

For your Basilean army, how did you
determine the army choices and paint scheme?

My brief to myself for the Basileans was to
try and make those Mantic models the best they could look. I had been critical
of the official colour schemes (which look way better in the flesh) and thought
I could do better. I was determined to get to grips with the less admired
models as well as the popular ones, and prove that detailed and careful
painting would bring out the fun and fantasy of the Mantic IP.

I didn’t want to paint blue and white, as
that was the studio army colour scheme and I’d already done my Elves like that.
So, I started thinking about the Byzantines and the Roman Empire that was
governed from Constantinople and connected that to Basilea’s Imperial
pretensions, as well as the religious aspect and. That led to the idea of doing
a sort of sandy coloured rock for the basing, and I had the idea that my
Basileans were retaking a city or town that had been recently overrun by
barbarians, a vain attempt to keep their failing empire going like the Romans
did before the Dark Ages overtook them.

This then gave me the idea of Imperial
purple, and the complimentary colour to purple is yellow. I didn’t want it to
look horribly garish so then hit upon the idea for gold and ivory for the
armour. Ivory and purple suggest the height of luxury and I could use yellow
for cloth here and there.

Do you have a schedule for how often you
paint?

Nope I just try and paint as much as I can,
when I can. I get withdrawal symptoms if I go more than one day without doing
it!

What has been your favorite Mantic model
to paint?

The Basilean models from the Vanguard sets
are great to paint, I think my favourite is probably the Dictator, followed by
the Palace Guard. Notable mentions would be the Dwarf Steel Behemoth and the
Steel Juggernaut (work in progress). All of the Mantic resin models are a joy
to paint, I can’t get enough of ‘em!

What are your top three hobby tools?

• One Great brush for everything (currently Raphael 8404s)
• A scrapy type tool (for scraping)
• Brush soap

If you could offer one piece of painting
advice to the readers what would it be?

Be as neat as you can. A neat basecoat on a
model is better than trying multiple techniques messily. And try and create
contrasts as much as possible (oops that’s two).