A small preview of the conversion I’m planning for my plaguebearers. I had hoped to find a ton of the ymargl heads from the Genestealer box, but they are very difficult to come by – only two heads per box and I don’t know enough Tyranid players! Instead I went to ChapterHouse Studios and bought a ton of their metal knock-off heads. I don’t think they are as nice as the GW ones, but…they exist, and didn’t cost $5+ per head, so…I’m in.
The guy in the back is lying down because he’s to top-heavy to stand. Something I’ll have to correct for when I put them on square bases.
Tall Paul made fun of my Escalation League army at CHOP Sunday August, questioning whether I owed everyone in the league a beer since I hadn’t finished my models. I replied that each of my models had 3 colours, to which he said “what, blue, blue, and blue?” I was irritated, but he was right. My horrors and flamers only barely got more than blue on them recently (I was counting the base as a colour!)
My 1000pt models now have 5 colours on them (and the daemon prince could almost count as “finished”, if I could find his blasted arm!).
Because I tend to keep a backlog, sometimes the timing gets a little weird. I want to post about painting the horror models, but I’ll be playing with them on Sunday well before you read about it. 🙂 So I’m adjusting my schedule a bit.
Just put a first highlight layer on the models. Mixed some Sotek Green with some Acrylic Medium, Ushapti Bone and some water and went to town. The idea is that I’ll highlight up, and then shade down, so I’m not worried about the recesses right now.
I’ve got 2 of the new models mixed in with 20 of the older ones, and it strikes me how much I like the older ones better. They are twisted and contorted, mouths stretched painfully wide to let another horror out of their gaping maw. They have 2 limbs or 4 or 6, some flailing and some kept close. These are fun models, and it’s more fun than I remember to put this layer of paint on them. I painted these models once a few years ago – well before I started giving a shit about improving my painting techniques.
(Oh, I’m also painting the Flamers at the same time with the same paint scheme. Might give them something to change it up, or might not. In the meantime, it’s “the horrors” painting series. :))
I’ve join a builder/escalation league. Now I have a ton of models to paint. But it’s ok, because the plan is to use this army at Adepticon next year, for the team tournament and possibly more, depending on how I feel about it when I’m done.
However, the 500 points/month scale doesn’t work for either my schedule, or the quality of the paint scheme I’d like to put out. My plan has been to put 3 colours on each 500 point chunk each month so that I’m tournament legal, and then create buffers for myself along the way.
For the first 500, I’ve got 20 horrors, 3 flamers and a Herald of Tzeentch. My next 500 points has a Daemon Prince that just needs to be glued back together, put on a new base and then raised in quality (he doesn’t go in the final army) and 2 Beasts of Nurgle. Which means that I can spend the next month focusing on getting this bigger chunk of the army up to the standard I like.
Which means I spent the last month painting bases. (and all the other hobby shit I get up to.)
A bunch of bases get a basecoat.
I didn’t like the final yellow of the test model, so I changed the rocks to red. I really like how this turned out – it’s a really strong contrast to the (currently) barely visible difference between the green and blue on the model itself. I tried to keep to the slate look for the top, but it was harder this time to get it to look slate, and not just like green rocks.
Here are some of the worst photos I’ve ever taken, of the current final product. The top photo is a little browner than the bases actually are, but the bottom photo is pretty representative. (I figured out how to make my phone-camera do white balance better…these were wicked orange at one point).
Unit of 10 horrors.
Herald of Tzeentch on the left and 3 flamers on the right.
Another unit of 10 horrors.
When I say something like “glazing watered” or “watered” for any of this, I mean that I took a small brush of that colour, mixed in 2 brushes of Acrylic Medium and then doused it with enough water that it ran around on my palette if I wasn’t careful. The idea is that when you put it on the model, there are spots of black, but that it’s mostly a darker transparent.
Red Rocks
The red rocks went something like this…
Scab Red all over the place, make those rocks red.
Watered Chaos Black, applied all over the place.
Watered Rhinox Brown, applied all over the place but in particular into the recesses.
Watered Charadon Granite. This was a good idea here, but a bad idea on the slate.
Watered Stegadon Scale, mixed with some Chaos Black along the bottom half of the rocks. This isn’t enough to make them green, but gives the bottom rocks a colour similarity to the top.
At this point, the rocks are pretty dark.
Less watered Scab Red to bring the highlights back in.
Watered Blazing Orange on top of the red.
Lamenters Yellow. I pulled this around a bit, trying to create lines of highlight.
The Lamenters dried shiny, I hate that. After I finished that, I did a really light and dusty drybrush of Codex Grey over it. Again, this is to try to create some similarity between the top slate and the bottom rocks. It also hid some of the shininess and lightened the red up a bit.
Slate
The slate started with Sotek Green and followed the same procedure as the test model. I think I may have just highlighted with Ushapti Bone though, which may be why these guys were more green and less grey…
You have to go over this with a lot of watered Black. A lot. Put the paint on the top and then pull it towards the middle. Because most of the liquid you just applied is transparent, you can see the black bits and pull them where you want them to go.
At one point I did a watered Charadon Granite, this was a really bad idea. Instead of the nice seafoam green, it became more Dark Angels Green, which was not at all the colour I wanted. Had to re-highlight with the Sotek+Ushapti. Don’t add anything resembling brown to this part of the model.
Just keep painting black.
I added some watered Codex Grey, but I just blacked over it again.
When I ran out of patience, I did a light dusting drybrush of the Codex Grey. I think this made a really awesome difference, but I’m slightly worried that all of my previous work has been hidden by it (really light dusting!)
Next Steps
Now I have some models to figure out. Also, Patrick will probably have some comments on the bases about something I should change. This Sunday is go time! We’re playing a ton of 500 point games, and we’ll be taking photos for the paint voting!
