Steelheart's Champions

In need of a little project with a definite start and end, I picked up the Shadespire box set; 8 miniatures and 6 hexes of terrain to build and then It's done.

So here's the first of the warbands from the box - who will obviously double up as an age of Sigmar Skirmish warband.

For the palette I took my cue from the italianate baroque masks the Stormcasts have been saddled with and looked at Venetian Carnival costumes. From there I got the green and gold with purple and turquoise accents.

Strictly speaking, following this the masks themselves should be white but I HATE THEM SO MUCH I didn't want to draw attention to them.

Painting was very simple- a zenith prime followed by a thin glaze of dark green then a drybrush of yellow-green. The whole then had a green wash added as a filter to tie it all together.

The bases were painted using the same techniques and palette as the various bits of scenery I've been doing for Caliburn Fell which also happens to match the Shadespire boards.

As an aside the bases in this kit are bloody brillant.

Enjoyed these and the Khorne nutters are next.

The Pig Iron Wide Boyz

After a few digressions and a family emergency (my 3 year old son broke his leg and so spent a week in traction and then 5 weeks in a full lower-body cast over Christmas), I finally got my Necromunda Goliath gang finished.

As with the previous members, I kept the Mad Max aesthetic and worked on the assumption that these chaps have come from the dust and filth of foundries deep in the Underhive; so after painting there was a liberal application of ochre and oxide pigments. As well as the usual dusting I also experimented with a new pigment binder which allowed me to really cake it on like thick mud. I'm generally happy with the effect - the issue, of course, is that we don't know how it will react with varnish which is always the unknown quantity when dealing with pigments. As soon as they are coated, I'll report back.

In the meantime, here are close ups of Smak, Gripper, Twos and the rest of the ladz.

Stix and Twos guarding the doors. 

'Gripper' Jenkins

Blade

The Gates of Minas Morgul have opened...

"Before them went a great cavalry of horsemen moving like ordered shadows, and at there head was one greater than all the rest: a rider, all in black, save that on his hooded head he wore a helm like a crown that flickered with a perilous light."

Tolkien, The Two Towers

After all the recent conversions and sculpting, it was nice to get back to simple painting. These were a birthday present from my wife nearly six months ago and they are lovely miniatures. They really pack a punch visually, and fit really well with the Morgul and Nazgul aesthetic from the movies.

I used the weathering and corrosion technqiues I'd learned doing the AOS28 and INQ28 stuff to dirty them up and I think the marriage of those weathering techniques to a more realistic paint scheme worked well.

One thing I did do was, when I based them, I added a trail of dead grass where they'd passed. This, I think, was vert in keeping with Tolkien's conception of the Shadow.

Annoyingly, the effect is so sublte that unless someone points it out to you, you don't notice.

Finally, just for fun, I looked to see if they matched the look and feel of the Mouth of Sauron:

Nice, fun little project and it's always lovely to get back to Middle Earth.

Ash Plains Drifter

He can turn himself into a stranger

Well they broke a lot of canes on his hide

he was born away in a cornfield

 When the moon was a cold chiseled dagger

Sharp enough to draw blood from a stone

A fever beats in his head like a drum inside

Some say they fear him

Others admire him

Because he steals his promise

One look in his eye

Everyone denies

Ever having met him

Ever having met him

******

The conceptual inspiration for this one was one of those fabulous Clint Eastwood movies that have haunted my imagination since childhood; in this case, the supernatural tinge of this little beauty:

Long ago, I built a set of Cold One Knights mixing and matching different versions of lizards and knights. I had one left over and so the idea took form.

The body was made from some Dark Eldar legs, genestealer cult body, mechanicus legs... he's a real Frankenstein style creation. The final touch was a ragged, torn cloak to help sell the drifter look. 

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Painting was using the palette I've developed with the accent colours of red and blue. Lots of washes and glazes again. 

I am very proud of this; again, he's come out looking the way I wanted. He also fits in well with the other half of the Drift. As I mentioned in the last post, the project is evolving into two distinct strands. We have the semi-official remnants of Imperial culture and then the Ash Waste wanderers. I think these hang together very well indeed. 

And here's the whole set of characters so far: