Category: AoS

Intermission: Archers of the Living City

AoS

I’ve unfortunately suffered from an inflammation of my wrist for the last few weeks and have not been able to paint while I wait for it to recover. While the cause was my work and some heavy mouse use, the repetitive motions of painting also trigger those bits of my arm that are currently inflamed. I figure then that I may as well show some old work while I can’t produce anything new. Fingers crossed this is the only such post I’ll have to make, but we’ll see how we go!

Today I’ll showcase this unit of archers I painted a few months before I started this blog. I painted these just before my son was born, and therefore was at home a lot with a heavily pregnant wife and had a lot of painting time on my hands (This was 2020 and I was in full work from home mode due to covid too which meant I was basically at home 7 days a week). I’ve always loved these Empire archers, I think the models are extremely characterful and they were a joy to paint. I spent “character” amounts of time on each effectively painting them one by one, which meant I wasn’t particularly quick, but it was a very enjoyable process.

At the time I was really enjoying the background of the Cities of Sigmar faction for Age of Sigmar, especially with the idea of the Living City, a city in the realm of life, part human-built, part elf-built, and overgrown with trees. I decided to paint these archers as if they can from there, hence the greens of their tunics and the mossy basing.

The mossy bases were done by painting sand in greens, which was quite a lot of fun and I quite like the effect. If you’ve followed the blog for a bit you might have noticed I quite like my forest bases, and this was another attempt at trying something different in that genre.

I spent a lot of time on the tunics, having a few weeks before watched a video by Sergio Calvo on YouTube where he ran through his process for leather. Going from cold brown, to warm brown, followed by ochre and bone for the final highlights. I loved the look and wanted to try it hence why these models are covered in scratched up leather!

After painting these models and having enjoyed the process so much I toyed with the idea of making a full army for the Living City and I painted up a couple more models, first up this character model my brother in law printed for me as a gift (thanks!).

This was my first time painting a resin 3D printed model and I was blown away by the detail available on what was a relatively cheap resin 3D printer.

This was a very fun model to paint, lots of details. If you look really closely you can see some of the print lines but you have to know where to look.

The final model in the collection was a bit of an experiment and got a bit rushed if I’m honest, and I think is the poorest paint job on these models. This is an old conversion of mine, with the upper half of the plastic Karl Franz riding griffon glued to a pair of Empire Greatswords legs. This was right at the start of my playing with GW’s contrast paints and I was keen to see if I could get a convincing peacock feather effect by using them over metallics.

The result is ok, it looks a little bit better in real life, but photographs a bit poorly. If I were to do it again I would make sure to not let the contrast layers dry, and make sure to blend them a bit better, you can see some rather drastic transitions between the colours there at the moment.

I hope you enjoyed looking through this small collection, and on my end I hope I can get back to painting soon, I’ve been missing it!

Mines and Meteors

AoS, Terrain, Warhammer: The Old World

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted anything, almost a month! A few local events in the card gaming sphere have gotten my interest lately and regular painting sessions have been replaced with card gaming and deck building! This is all mostly over now and the paintbrushes have been dipped in paint once more.

A few months ago I planned a narrative game with a friend pitting my Skaven against his Wood Elves. The game would be centered around a chunk of warpstone falling into Athel Loren (the forest the wood elves mostly live in for you non-warhammer fans!), and the Skaven tunnelling up into the forest to seize it!

The scenario requires me to make some terrain to represent the meteor and the tunnel holes dug by the Skaven, and the date for the game being set to mid next week it was about time I got to it!

This was a relatively quick project, and like most terrain a lot of fun to put together! The meteor was made from polystyrene that I roughly shaped with a knife and then sprayed with a spray can right up close. Aerosols melt polystyrene when blasted up close which is really undesirable usually, but I thought it might give some interesting texture here, and I think it worked out nicely!

The tree stumps are just interesting looking sticks from the garden, and the whole thing was brought together with some sculptamold for modelling of the crater and give some form to the ground areas.

The tunnel holes were also done using sculptamold, with some planks made from balsa wood added to show that lovely Skaven craftsmanship!

I’m now all ready for the game next week, and will try to remember to take photos to post up!

Overgrown Ruins

AoS, Middle-Earth SBG, Terrain

I’ve done a bit of terrain painting over the last week, tackling a bunch of forest bases I’ve accumulated over the years. These are all the same kit, Citadel Woods which I believe are not sold anymore unfortunately. I’ve somehow amassed a bit of a collection of them and it felt like time to finally get them painted!

Taking pictures of these gave me the opportunity to take pictures of some more terrain I did up a little while back, this time not old kits, but pieces I 3D printed. The files are from RM Printable Terrain from their Stormguard collection. I was waiting to receive the mat you see the pieces on before I took photos.

I didn’t necessarily plan on painting these trees to match, but I think the ruins and the trees work nicely together and I’ll definitely have them both on the table at the same time for games going forward.

Look forward to getting some games in amongst these!

Thanquol and Boneripper

AoS, Warhammer: The Old World

I previously mentioned that I’d been reading the Gotrek and Felix novels while painting my Skaven, and as a result had an eye out on eBay for the models of the protagonists and of their nemesis: Grey Seer Thanquol! I managed to get a pretty good deal on the models and have had them for a few months now, ready for a coat of paint. A few public holidays lined up nicely over here and I decided to get the Skaven side of that equation painted.

I had a lot of fun painting these models, they’re classic metal Games Workshop models with their exaggerated features, and are really satisfying to paint. While the rest of my Skaven have some blue greens on them, I wanted Thanquol to stand apart so I painted him to match some of the art that graces the book covers. The basing was done to match the army however, and I find that usually does a good enough job of making a model belong.

I decided to go for a classic Warhammer green crystal sword on Thanquol. It could have come out a little smoother but I’m happy enough for an army model.

I’ll have to paint up Gotrek and Felix themselves at some stage, but for now at least my Skaven are bolstered by the most infamous Skaven of them all!

2000pts of Skaven

AoS

Well I don’t often (maybe ever?) post twice in a day, but I ended up with a few hours of spare time I wasn’t expecting so decided to tackle the last model I needed to paint for this army (for now!).

This is the Warlock Engineer from the Island of Blood starter set. A cool little model (love the blunderbuss with a scope on it!) that was really quite fast to paint. I’d planned on just doing the basecoats tonight, but got carried away.

Once again not much to report on the painting front, he was painted much like my other Skaven, although with a little more care than the rank and file!

Once I’d finished him, I couldn’t resist setting up the whole army together for a photo!

So there you have it, the 2000pts of Skaven I’ve been working on for quite a while now, arrayed in front of my unfinished fortress, with the Dreadfleet mat hanging behind it for a very mystical looking sky! This feels like a nice achievement, as while I’ll definitely paint more Skaven models in the future, my goal at the start of this was to get to the 2000pt mark. It’s also taken me a while to get here, as my first post on the army was back in October last year, so almost a year ago.

I’m not too sure what I’ll be painting next, I have a couple of other projects on the go but I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up using this as an excuse to kick off a new one!

Clawlord

AoS

Back this week with another Skaven model, this time a Clawlord! This model was a limited Skaven warlord that came out around the time of the Island of Blood set, paired in a duel with a High Elf Noble. Both the elf and this Skaven are really nice sculpts and as I bought both at the time I’ll have to paint his elvish counterpart at some stage.

Not much to write about from a painting point of view, he’s painted much like the rest of the army although I did spend a bit more time on him than I would a regular trooper. His main new feature is the fact that I painted the pupil on him rather than just the red iris I did on all the other models in the army.

The tail is quite a prominent feature of this model so I made sure to spend a fair amount of time on it, adding a bit of colour variation, and picking out all the lovely (🤢) details. Overall though a really fun model to paint!

I’m currently in the process of rewriting the army list as a result of the new Skaven rules being released a month or so ago, but so far there is a good chance he’ll be the second to last model I need to get done for 2000pts which is rather exciting. I do love finishing projects! This also means that next post on the army is likely to features shots of the entire army together which should be fun to do.

Warpfire Thrower

AoS

A quick one this time round, I painted another model for my Skaven army, a Warpfire Thrower, a cool (or not as it turns out!) little weapons team.

I really like painting weapons teams, whether fantasy or historical, as they always represent a little vignette. This makes for interaction between models that is often absent in armies of individually based models. Here we have a hapless rat that was clearly wandered too close to the last jet of warp fire!

There is a fair amount of detail on this model considering it was a starter set model from back in the day and must have been 2-3 pieces at most. The fire on the rat was fun to paint, if a bit challenging as I’m used to having a bit more space to try and get some fiery gradients happening! The smoke billowing out of the reservoir looks a little rough in the photos but seems to work well enough on the tabletop, so I’m happy with it overall.

This gets me one step closer to finishing the original 2000pt list I’d put together, only two characters left now, although with the new army book having been released a few weeks back it’s likely it would have to change if I ever decided to play it in a game.

The Deathmaster and the Word Bearer

AoS, Horus Heresy

I’ve had a bit of a rocky few weeks hobby wise, as I’m getting married in a couple of weekends and wedding prep trumps painting models! I’ve still managed to fit in a few painting sessions however and here’s the output of that!

First up we have this Skaven Deathmaster, a really cool model from the Old World times that made it through to the current era (loosing his special character status in the process!). I wanted to tie him in with the rest of the army while keeping that cloak as black as possible, hence the teal highlights on the black.

The second model is one of GW’s representations of the Space Marine Primarchs during the Horus Heresy period. This is Lorgar, the Primarchs of the Word Bearer Legion, probably the most treacherous character in the stories. Cool model, he’s fairly big (probably more like a 54mm model), but not as big as some of the other Primarchs. I’m happy enough with the paint job overall, but really chuffed with how those flaming skulls came out!

He was painted to celebrate the release of the new edition of the Horus Heresy game. My local hobby store Beyond Odyssey (Go see them if you’re in the Perth region!) organised for a few local painters to paint up Primarchs for the launch.

Anyway that’s it for this update, not too sure how much I’ll be able to do over the next few weeks, so may be a while between posts, but then again the if odd dull moment does crop up I might get something else painted!

Verminlord

AoS

Back with more Skaven, this time the big cheese himself: the Verminlord!

Specifically I built the kit as the named variant Screech Verminking, and he is by far the tallest model in the army at 6.5in/ 17cm. Ever since this kit came out right at the end of the old world Warhammer I’ve wanted one, so it’s nice to finally have an excuse to buy and paint it.

It’s a fantastic model, but I found it quite daunting to paint, because of its size and the amount of detail all over it. I’ve been practicing techniques I knew I would have to use on this model on other models in the army, refining my big model skin on first the Stormfiends then the Hell Pit Abomination.

The skin was painted in multiple stages, alternating airbrushing and brush work to get a nice mix of smooth gradients and nice texture all over the model. The early airbrush work set the overall tones (darker reds below, light skin above), followed by layering and highlighting by brush in three stages, painting in detail where the model was a bit flat (painting the rings on the tails took some willpower!). Finally I used the airbrush again to add some more tones in, with some dark reds and purples to enhance the shadows. A final brushed on highlight took care of any areas where I overdid that last airbrush pass.

Overall I’m very happy with it, I painted it roughly over a week and a half, in a few paint sessions scattered over the period. It makes a nice centre-piece for the army.

With that, I only have a few heroes and a small weapons team left to complete my 2000pt list. Will I have the willpower to stick with this and see it through, or get dragged back to the North African desert or some other project entirely? I have no idea and will find out over the next few days!

Gnawholes

AoS

I’m getting rather quite close to having finished my 2000pts of skaven, so the last stretch motivation is kicking and and I painted some more models for the army tonight: the gnawholes.

These are terrain pieces you can place as a Skaven player after the gaming table is set up. They are effectively magical tunnels that allow your Skaven units to pop up in fun places, such as right behind enemy units.

It took me a long while to get around to painting these models, I just really struggled to get motivated. I knew I was going to have to paint them in sub-assemblies as all the scaffolding is intermingled and it would have been hell to paint fully assembled. However I really dislike painting in sub-assemblies and often put off models where I just have to do that. These models also live in a weird space for me, they’re terrain but also part of the army in a way, so I couldn’t decide if I should paint them like terrain (i.e. quick and dirty), or army models (a bit more care involved). In the end I split the difference and went for somewhere in between, taking a bunch of shortcuts to make sure I could paint them in the one evening.

This mostly meant relying on the airbrush as much as possible, dry brushing where it made sense, and some fairly harsh highlights where it didn’t.

At the end of the day I’m happy with them, they look quite cinematic with all the glowing and fit nicely next to the army. I’m down to characters (including one that is probably the largest model in the army) and a little weapons team, so overall not too much more to go to get these all done. This is just as GW have announced a new Skaven army book which might require me to update the army – oh well!