Warhammer Fantasy Revisited

Short update today. A bit more base work on everybody just to tidy things up and finished off and varnished the Black Orcs and Warlord. Tomorrow its bases for them, a matt spray fixing up the Battle Standard Bearer and we’re done 🙂

Recipe was an AP plate mail undercoat, Vallejo black ink airbrush and then brushed with AP Bright Gold and monster Brown, and from Vallejo Ivory, Yellow Ochre, Oily Steel, German Cam. Dark Green, Leather Brown and Dark Green. Then the ubiquitous AP dip (although these guys got Dark tone unlike the rest of the forces).

OK, so made it across the line with three days to spare in Orctober. bad planning on my part, should have added in a giant or two 😉 Calling this lot done for now. 2 forces tabletop ready. The Goblins (green bases) will get added in to my existing Goblin horde whereas the Orcs (desert/badlands bases) will form a new army.

Combining preshading and Contrast paint worked well. Mixing down Contrast paint with matt medium also worked well. Combining the Contrast paint effect with AP soft tone varnish gave satisfactory results, with Strong Tone or Dark Tone it seemed to overwrite the underlying contrast. Combining contrast and regular paints on the minis gave interesting results but if doing a large project in such a short time frame again I think I’d either go for preshading/contrast paints exclusively/targeted ink washes or shading/regular paint/AP varnish. Having said that, I do think preshading/contrast/thinned down AP Soft Tone would work well if staring down an impending tournament deadline or similar. Anyhow…

Apologies, the group shot is a little out of focus but couldn’t get the depth to work for all the minis (231 by my count) in the one shot…

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Got in a game of 6th ed last night. Funny how recollection of different versions of the core rules start to bleed into one another but I think we ended up getting most things right.  My Empire were soundly thrashed by the green horde, as befitting a capstone game for Orctober. MVP of the match was the snotling pump wagon who trounced two detachments of halberdiers, the mortar and half of the block of spearmen, capturing a standard in the process. Great fun 🙂

Am apparently feeling a little burned out with regard to painting after the push in Orctober but still keen to keep the momentum going. Plan is to knock off my current ‘in progress’ (or at least the stuff that’s presently looking at me…) warhammer fantasy projects by the end of the calendar year so I can then mix things up a bit with historicals and some other stuff I want to progress (LoTR, Frostgrave etc). So, broad overview in approximate order of priority is as follows:

Pirates – 3 blocks of 10 foot in progress, plus a captain, caster and standard bearer. 33 minis total. Need to do the metals, ivory, hair colouring then ready to varnish and finish.

Miscellaneous characters – A Middenheim BSB; mostly done, need to do another coat of white on the banner detail then a targeted wash, varnish and base. Bretonnian character, just need to paint the horse then varnish and base. Dogs of war Paymaster. Only primed so far… 3 minis total.

Chaos – Slaanesh I have 2 blocks of foot ready to base, need to finish the character (base colours are started) and 20 daemonettes (Skin tone airbrushed on). Khorne 2 blocks of 15 foot, 2 chariots and a character. Tzeentch 2 blocks of 15 foot and a block of 5 knights (don’t know if I’ll get to any more Tzeentch characters). Nurgle 2 blocks of foot (one of 15 and one of 16 which is just messing with my head…), 2 characters on foot and 5 knights. Other than the Slaanesh models everything is primed and has the armour main colour airbrushed on.

So if I draw a line there we have 162 minis to finish, excluding the Slaanesh foot that are already up to the basing stage. I’ll try to do the chaos bases all in one go. I’ll also try to paint all the horses at once to make the process a little more efficient. If I can get the horses out of the way and finish the pirates and miscellaneous characters then working on all the chaos at once should be fairly quick due to the consistency of some of the detail colours. Will see how we go anyhow 🙂

A quick bit of painting, varnishing and detail and I have the remaining pirates finished. I’ll concede that the battle standard may be a just a little on the large side but I guess it will be easy to differentiate form the normal unit standards. Was a printed design with aluminium foil glued within for structure and wrapped around a metal spear as I trust the metal ones to not snap during normal gameplay.

Also finished off my Middenheim BSB and Dogs of war Paymaster, so rounding out three forces this weekend. Now just need to knock over the rest of the Chaos…

Have been listening to an incredible band called SKYND for the last couple of months. The aesthetic of their video clips (probably NSFW, very very dark, they are basically a true crime version of Sabbaton so insert all applicable trigger warnings etc here…) has inspired me to get the Daemonettes finished. Anyhow, check them out if you want to get an idea on the direction I want to take these minis in.

Skin tone got a Vallejo Violet ink wash thinned down heavily with airbrush flow improver. The blue streak on the hair was a large quantity of Liquitex Matt Medium combined with GW Contrast Ultramarines Blue. The Magenta on the hair, eyes, lips, claws, feet and tails was again the matt medium, a drop of each of Vallejo’s Red and Violet inks and a few drops of the GW Contrast Darkoath Flesh for warmth.

Also painted up an Avatars of War mini to act as a hero/leader for the force. Lighting looks a little stark on her in the photo. Was going to post a close-up but she is probably a little bit too ‘sexy time’ to show on a public forum.

Plan from here is to do the metals in gold and the cloth in white as I like the idea of them wearing something akin to a mockery of sacred robes. And if I can find a fine enough brush, get my hands steady enough and summon up the courage, eyes in gloss black and maybe a touch of color shift paint over the top…

Shifting back to more of a conventional approach on the daemonettes, which has slowed my progress somewhat. Still, happy with the way they are coming along. In somewhat related news, I worked out that the brushes I’ve been using are now all about 3 years old. Have switched to a new one with a point – did you know more of the paint goes where you want it to and less of it to where you don’t when your brush has a point on it? I know, right?…

A coat of Vallejo Brass down on the metal areas of what we are going to call the clothing as I find it gives better coverage and more warmth than gold) , and a coat o Vallejo Deck Tan on the cloth to later be worked up to an Ivory. Then just some targeted washes on the brass, a possible edge highlight with gold and a complimentary shade on the claws and bone protrusions and I can shuffle this lot across to the ‘ready to base’ pile.

Have taken the block of daemonettes about as far as I want to. Actually quite happy with the way that they have turned out and I don’t want to risk doing too much more to them at this point in case I screw them up. So they are parked until I can get a matt coat over them all then I will do the gold jewelery on the character (I’m thinking any oopsies will be easier to correct if done on top of the matt varnish…) and then I’ll base with the 2 blocks of Slaanesh chaos warriors. Better photos thereafter – the below is the least out-of-focus one I took apparently…

Additionally got the Bretonnian characters horse painted (a couple of thin coats of AP Oak brown) and got an AP strong tone varnish coated on him. Not sure what happened with the varnish but it went on much darker than usual (perhaps I hadn’t mixed thoroughly enough?…), so got an old brush and some mineral turpentine and brushed the raised areas back to where I was happy with. Also got a base coat down on the 10 Chaos cav and 2 chariot beasties (basecoat Vallejo German cam Black Brown, first highlight AP Dirt Splatter, 2nd highlight AP Werewolf Fur).

And finally, my goal for the next few weeks is to get the below painted up to the AP dip stage, dip and matt varnish and then base everything that I have queued up. So painting 10 cav, 2 chariots, 90+foot and baseing same and another 50 infantry. If I can do that, I’ll have painted over 1,000 fantasy minis in this calendar year, or 12 forces worth in 12 months. Will be a wee bit of a push but let’s see where we land 😉

Brief addendum as I’ll forget the recipe if I don’t jot it down now…

Daemonettes got  a targeted thin glaze/wash of purple ink to the recesses, edges & shadows on their skin tones. Metal areas were Vallejo Brass. Cloth was a base of Vallejo Deck Tan, both cloth and metal then shaded with a targeted hit of homemade black wash. Cloth subsequently highlighted in Vallejo Ivory (could afford a retouch of the Deck Tan next time to soften the contrast post-wash). Bone protrusions coloured with AP Skeleton Bone.