Painting up Bloodborne the board game 2024-04-21

[Anatoli]

About a month ago I managed to buy a Kickstarter version of Bloodborne the Board game with some extras and have been painting things up from the base box at a leisurely pace. I went against my own rule, to try out the game before starting to paint with this one. Not really sure why that happened, and a bit of a gamble since I had read mixed reviews of this game.

Bloodborne the videogame for Playstation is one of my favorite games, and I think that helped a bit in preparing me mentally for a difficult gaming experience. I also got hold of some nice assets from BoardGameGeek such as difficulty modifier cards if things were too unreasonable. Now as I have tried the game a couple of times with my wife, we were both pleasantly surprised how fun and fresh it felt in terms of game mechanics. It is also pretty impressive how Bloodborne really translates to the board game with how the rules are written.

Anyway, I thought I would share some pictures from the first stretch of my painting journey with this one. All the core box elements are painted up as well as some Kickstarter extras (chests and lanterns).

As usual, I swapped all the bases for clear acrylic bases. This was actually a huge pain in the ass as this game come with a huge variety of irregular sized and shaped bases compared to other CMON games such as Blood Rage and Cthulhu Death May Die. Getting bases for the whole collection was both expensive and a hassle, but the end result as always is worth it. The tiles in this game are not that big, and the footprint of the monster miniatures often cover large areas, which is a shame if you can't see the artwork and spawn icons underneath.

The only miniature that I was unable to transfer to a clear acrylic base were the Church Giants as they are cast in one piece and it would be very difficult to cut them off the plastic base. I deemed it not worth the effort, and tried to paint the bases to somewhat match the cobblestone printed on the tiles.

I will work on the stretch goal monsters and hunters before moving on to paint the expansion boxes "Chalice Dungeon", "Forbidden Woods", "Hunters dream".

Below are the painted 4 "core game" Hunters (player characters), Male and Female Beast patients, Scourge beats, Lanterns and chests

[Anatoli]

Boss monster "Father Gascoigne" as human and transformed, Huntsman Minion, Huntsman mob.

[Anatoli]

Boss monsters "Blood starved beast", "Vicar Amelia" and "Cleric beast" as well as Church giants.

[Anatoli]

Church Servants and two pictures with scale comparison between the hunters and the monsters.

[Anatoli]

The scale of miniatures in this game is a bit odd, but it is the same in Bloodborne the video game (and the games such as Elden Ring and Dark Souls) where the monsters are almost always larger than the human player.

With that said, the hunters are probably 28mm true scale, with tiny details, arms and faces, which makes them fiddly to paint. The upscaled monsters were surprisingly enjoyable to paint without a lot of clutter or tedious details that tend to make painting a drag.

As with my painting of Conan and Cthulhu Death May Die I made an attempt to try a slightly different painting technique hoping to catch the look of the video game which is grainy, dirty and dark - but without losing colors. Many miniatures are done half way with airbrush and either oil or enamel washes - then varnished and finished by hand. The pure creature/monsters in particular lend themselves well to this method of painting and it has been a huge time saver.

As a final note, I got a new phone (Samsung S23+) earlier this year and have been pretty miserable as it proved very difficult to use for close up pictures of miniatures. I have been tweaking back and forth with some apps to help with manual focus and such. The pictures end up decent, but it is a pain in the ass compared to what I was used to with my previous phone which had a pretty decent autofocus and macro mode (something which seems completely removed from new models!!??).
So, if the pictures are slightly out of focus, that is the reason.

I will post more frequent updates in the near future whenever I finish a group of miniatures.

[Bloggard]

great stuff.

not noticing anything obvs. OOF at the size I'm seeing the pics.

[Freddy]

Great painting!

[Anatoli]

Giant lost child and Loran silverbeasts painted up. Speedpainted my way through these two and am pretty happy with the end result. Many monster types in this game lend themselves well for airbrush/oil/enamel washes and drybrushing as a shortcut.

We have now played through 2 of the base game scenarios and both my wife and I are suprised on how fun and tactical the combat in this game is.

[Anatoli]

Two more hunters. Sadly the white balance went off the rails on the Logarius wheel armed hunter.

Edit: I repainted the wheel armed hunter, swapping white for black as in the original artwork and it looked a lot better. I will post new pictures with the next batch of miniatures.

[Spinal Tap]

Outstanding brushwork, I actually like the overblown white but sure the repaint will be great.

[Anatoli]

Took a break from painting for a couple of weeks, distracted by PC gaming, family and work - and several bouts of kindergarten pestilence that our son brought home as a gift haha...

But got inspired and returned to painting up Bloodborne. I'm almost done with the Kickstarter extras that and actually look forward to painting up some of the retail available expansions that I got.

First off, I finished the large huntsmen with their weird hand rake/plow/thingies. I also finished all the remaining extra Hunters and while I was at it I re-did the cloak on the Logarious wheel hunter the match the artwork. It did a lot to improve the look and make him appear a bit more menacing.

[OSHIROmodels]

Great work 

[gnomehome]

Fantastic work.

[Plynkes]

Great to see another Bllodborne thread. Loving it.


Fear the old blood...

[Anatoli]

Thanks for the kind words guys.

Some more minis, these were mainly oil washed and drybrushed, nothing fancy but also not the most fun models to work with. Happy to just get them done.