Revisiting Warmaster – Spring Clean 2024

Harpies were next on the painting table.

I wanted to go a little lighter on the skin colour for these harridans, so used Citadel Kislev Flesh as the base colour, with Citadel Flayed One Flesh as the highlight after a wash with Reikland Fleshshade.

The other colours are the same as used elsewhere in this project. Wings followed red hair/fur, the lower legs brown fur/hair. There wasn’t really a good opportunity to tie in the yellow and blue colours on the Harpies, but they echo the Chaos Hounds quite well.

Having finished up most of the lighter units, I’ve mainly got the heavily armoured units left – the Chaos Warriors and Knights, plus some chariots.

I was a bit worried that my chosen colour scheme might not work very effectively on the armoured guys – there’s a lot of metal plate that if I lean too hard into the blue/yellow might end up looking too much like heraldic knights, but I also don’t want too much plain metallics, as its just a bit boring.

I grabbed one of the Chaos Warrior units to paint up and see how things went. First step was a little repair work to give one chap a replacement sword blade. The original had snapped off just above the hilt at some stage and was no where to be found, so I greenstuffed a new blade. A bit rough and ready, but not noticeable when painted up.

I carried on with my established paint scheme, and was pretty happy with the end result. I think leaving the metals at the wash stage with no highlight helps with the overall darker and grimmer look of the models.

A second unit of Chaos Warriors all finished up. Basically just a repeat of the last unit but changing around the colours for some things to add variety.

In many ways, these chariots are the antithesis of what I really like about the Warmaster range. Rather than single piece, cleverly sculpted strips, they are (by necessity) fiddly little multi-part models. The big spikes on the yokes mean that they overhang the bases so they can’t be ranked up nicely too.

Still, they look the part, although I ended up leaving a bit too much black rather than leaning into something more visually interesting. Still no socks on the horses. Selective breeding in the wastelands eliminates such patterning.

First of the two Chaos Knight units all finished. Again not much to be said, just continuing the paint scheme already outlined previously.

So far I’ve been busy working on units, but it is time to get some leaders and other characters painted.

There are seven figures within the Warmaster Chaos character pack – a mounted hero and hornblower, a hero on foot and a standard bearer, a wizard standing on a stone pillar, a gibbet cage scenary piece and a weird mutant creature that looks like it is bursting out of the ground.

I grabbed a few 30mm square bases and played around with a few different compositions of the figures, before settling on the combinations show in the pictures. Pieces of cork were used to give some additional height to the bases. They were sprayed black, and given an initial overbrush with Vallejo Model Colour London Grey, then a lighter drybrush of Vallejo Model Colour Medium Grey.

Where multiple figures were on a base, they were painted separately and then glued on before adding the basing texture.

One unit left to go now, which are currently in a Dettol bath awaiting a scrub clean.

Final unit for this project is a second unit of Chaos Knights. I saved these to last, as they were possibly the last painted models I did 20 odd years ago before I fell away from the hobby.

Stripped of their original paint via a dettol bath, they were re-colourised to match the rest of the army. I’m pretty happy with the difference in the end result.

With the last unit done, time to assemble the warhost. I’m pretty happy how the colour scheme looks across the final army.

In Warmaster terms, there’s just shy of 1400 of troops here, although there’s been no real thought in putting together a coherent army list for a game. This project was very much about the painting. Most likely these guys will first be used to play an entirely different rule system than Warmaster, with Hobgoblin a potential option.

I was initially worried that I would bounce quite hard off this project. Recent experience of painting up some 3D printed 10mm Skaven ended up being a bit of a chore. However  I was very pleased to find that the Chaos figures were an absolute joy to paint.

I suspect this difference in enjoyment might be related to the two materials used, and how this impacts the end sculpts. I think the 3D prints look fantastic, but the metal figures were just a step up in terms of ease to paint. The restrictions that metal as a material puts on sculptors means all the stands are a bit flatter, without so many intricate cuts and folds as the 3D designs, which get fiddly for 10mm figures. Yet the metal stands have been so cleverly sculpted that they are still full of detail. Clearly there’s a lot of personal preference here, but I’d definitely lean towards hunting down more old metals over 3D prints if I want to expand this army further.

A few shots of different parts of the army to end the project (I really have to get a better setup for photography of groups bigger than half a dozen figures…). Thanks to anyone who has followed along, and a hat tip to @Nogbadthebad for prompting the idea for this Spring Clean Challenge.