Valten, Exalted of Sigmar and Flagellants

I’ve had a productive week, getting a fair bit built and painted. I’m still inspired by the idea of playing out a big game set in Warhammer’s Storm of Chaos campaign, specifically the battle that occurs as part of the relief of Middenheim by a combined army of Empire, High Elves, and Dwarfs. It sounds like a great excuse to break out our collective collections and play a very large game for most of a day (using the Midgard rules).

For those not in the know, Middenheim is a big city built on a mountain in the Empire, and is the target of a very large Chaos invasion led by Archaon, the biggest baddest Chaos champion. Middenheim is pretty much impregnable because of its natural defenses so the Chaos forces settle down for a long siege. Meanwhile Karl Franz, the emperor (of the empire!) gathers an army to relieve the city, with troops from many provinces of the empire. Along the way he’s joined by a Dwarf army and a High Elf army who both recognise the threat posed by the Chaos invasion. Alongside Karl Franz is Valten, who as a young man single-handedly wiped out a beastman attack on his village and has since been hailed/raised as Sigmar (the chief god of the empire) returned. There’s a whole interesting sub-story a to whether that is the case or not, but regardless the powers that be seem to buy into the story (or at least realise that if the people believe it it doesn’t make much of a difference). As a result, Karl Franz gives Valten the warhammer (the one on the cover of all the books), Ghal Maraz, and when the elves and dwarfs join up with Karl’s army, they also gift equipment to Valten, the dwarfs give him a suit of armour (that was orginally meant for Sigmar himself) and the elves a mighty steed (sired by the horse of Tyrion, the greatest high elf hero).

The reason I’m telling you all this is that I built and painted a custom model for Valten, and tried to capture the story in that model. Valten had a model at the time of release of the campaign book (~2004) and I think was re-released as a Finecast model during that later era. I was scouring ebay for the model and despairing slightly at the prices (and postage, UK or US to Australia is veeery expensive these days). After some deliberation I decided to just convert my own out of a model I’ve had my eye on for quite a while: the Cities of Sigmar Cavalier-Marshal.

The character of Valten is a bit of a tragic, maybe reluctant hero in my mind, the cavalier model really has a weary look to it that I think really fits Valten so it seemed like a great base for the model.

I removed as much iconography off the horse as I could and added lots of spare high elf bits I had big around to sell the horse as a gift from the elves. I kept the armour on the rider as is, the cities of sigmar range armours have a very angular look to them which I think is good for a dwarven made suit of armour.

For the head I liked the expression on the Cavalier model, but Valten has long hair and a long beard, while the Cavalier is clean shaven and short haired. So I decided to do something I do rarely, which is to sculpt! It was a bit daunting to build up this centrepiece model and to try my hand at something new right on its face, but I found this very handy tutorial by Valbjorn on YouTube and at least I knew I was going in with a plan. The result is ok I think, a bit rough in some places (not helped by the age of my green stuff) but it does the job!

For the painting stage I stuck to blues, whites, and gold as a scheme. This is how the original model was painted and helps with the whole Elven influence on the horse.

The cavalier model comes with a very cool scenic base meant to fit on an oval base. I decided to go for a 60mm round base instead so had to fill out some of the extra space. I cut up some chaos bits and blended everything in using a mix of acrylic paste and sand.

Overall I’m very happy with the model, was fun to get kit bashing and even do a bit of sculpting. It’s been a while since I painted a bigger character model and that’s enjoyable too. Getting to spend some more time on some of the details I would usually keep simpler for regular army models makes for a nice change.

Valten is not all that I finished this week, I also painted up the first batch of some Flagellants for that same empire army.

Four of these are originally Mordheim models, some of the first models I ever bought in fact, as part of the Witch Hunter warband for the game. They’ve seen a lot of mistreatment throughout the years, and all had some breakage over that time, so I fixed them up with some plastic parts. The other four are from the current (still 10+ years old I think), plastic flagellants kit. I have another 8 to paint up of these, for a future update.

There you go, busy week but I’m happy with what I got done!