AoS Build and Paint

I decided it was about time to stop trying to avoid it and give Scenery painting a go. I love this result and it’s so easy to do. Unfortunately this pic doesn’t really do it justice, when it’s on the table it looks fantastic.

I bought some Azyrite Ruins a while ago and I’d recommend them to anyone, honestly it is such a good value and flexible set, you can use it on pretty much any mat you like and it just works. You also get little treasure chests which work as scatter terrain or objective markers.

I liked it so much I went ahead and bought the Blasted Hallowheart set that comes with a board to play on and another bunch of Azyrite ruins sections, another fantastic value set that gets my full recommendation.

Anyway, on to the paints!

• Spray with Corax White
• Wash all over with Seraphim Sepia
• Fairly heavy Drybrush with Screaming Skull, lesser towards the base of the scenery
• Drybrush areas towards the top of the scenery with Deepkin Flesh
• Another layer of Seraphim sepia focused on the very bottom of the ruins.

The gold details were picked out with Liberator Gold and washed with Reikland Fleshshade GLOSS.

Creating some shading on the ruins so that they appear darker towards the base and lighter (and slightly bluer) towards the top really helps ground them on the table.

Had a bit of a slump in hobby time due to a number of commitments but today I found some time to revisit an ol friend, Horticulous Slimux, to base the model properly and check over the few details left to paint.

So far I’ve got the base done, waiting for it to dry.

I’ve went for something fairly simple but trying to implement it well with the model.

So, the steps are –

• Sand, from a day out with the kids at beautiful Tyrella Beach 🙂
• Medium cork pieces from serious play for small rocks dredged up by the rakes on the back of mulch
• Small cork pieces from serious play to create patches of heavier texture and areas of overturned soil from the rakes.
• A pile of maggots and a cheeky wee nurgling from the nurgle sprues
• GW grass tufts.

Once it’s dry I’ll get it painted up, more than happy with how it’s turned out so far though.

This is the forth model I’ve ever based lol. Two others are in this thread and the first one is not for public viewing as I totally screwed it up 😀 Before now I would have just put some paint down and with the shadespire minis the bases where good to go already.

Sprayed up the Knight of Shrouds to paint tonight during HNL. Decided to also spray up a lord ordinator in case I feel like switching it up later. I’ll post progress throughout the night.

That’s the bit I was most worried about done. Initial washes are drying.

Flames and ethereal robes washed in a 3:1 mix of lahmian medium and nihilakh oxide, then the upper portion of the ethereal robes washed in drakenhof nightshade. Horse flesh washed in a few layers of incubi darkness thinned into a wash with water.

Lots still to do but I’m calling it done for tonight 🙂

Finally got the chance to finish the Knight of Shrouds. Added highlights across the model and based it. Attempted a glowing effect on the base. Not entirely convinced it worked but glad I gave it a go and I’m happy enough with it for now.

Paint breakdown –

Watching a bunch of Soul Wars content today and rather than try to blitz through the Stormcast Vanguard straight away, I took a bit of time to consider a colour scheme for the Vanguard and how I wanted to differentiate the Stormcast chambers on the table.

So I grabbed a Hunter and went to town. This is the second attempt at him which I’m pretty happy with and this will be the scheme I use across all my vanguard.

The steps are –

• Spray with Retributor Armour
• Shade with Reikland Fleshshade Gloss
• Highlight Armour with Auric Armour Gold
• Celestra Grey for the Pauldron, inside of cape and wolf claws
• Shade those areas with Nuln Oil
• Brighten again with Celestra Grey
• Incubi darkness for Helmet Plume, sword hilt and cloth strap skirt thingy (what is that called?)
• Shade those with Drakenhof Nightshade
• Highlight with Kabalite Green
• Leadbelcher for the crossbow gun and blade, shade with Nuln Oil
• Pick out features of the crossbow gun with Retributor Armour and shade those with Reikland Fleshshade Gloss
• Zandri Dust for the back of the cape
• Dry brush cape with screaming skull
• Shade cape with Agrax Earthshade all over
• Allow to dry then shade with Agrax earthshade again, this time using it to define a pattern for the fur
• allow to dry again and once more, shade with Agrax Earthshade to add further depth to the pattern on the fur.
• The centre of the orb he’s holding is painted with Celestra grey and then painted over with very thinned down Nihilakh Oxide.
• The base is Astrogranite Debris texture paint, drybrushed with Celestra Grey and shaded with Agrax Earthshade

Got a few hours over the weekend to finish up the Plaguebearers, Nurglings and Horticulous Slimux himself. Such a fantastic model to work on. There are so many details that I will go back to when I get the rest of the armies painted, for now though he’s looking great.

I really wanted a fairy tale look to Horticulous, from I first saw the model I got a Lewis Carroll vibe so I wanted something colourful that could show up in an Alice in Wonderland nightmare. I knew exactly how I wanted to paint it and aside from trying to get it done quickly (there is a bit of tidy up needed) it’s came out pretty much how I would have liked.

When he’s on the table alongside his band of stinky wee mates, it works well.

I won’t point out everything here but I’ll list some of the more interesting bits below. Horticulous himself was painted in an identical manner to the Paguebearers which I detailed earlier in the project.

The painting steps for the top half of Mulch the big slug beastie were

• Stipple (paint loads of dots all over) with Thousand Sons Blue and Sybarite green
• Wash with Army painter blue tone leaving the edges white
• Wash the edges with army painter purple tone

I did this to create a textured look to the slugs flesh.

The bottom half of his body is just washed with Seraphim Sepia followed by a second shade of Seraphim Sepia focused on the recesses. I Still need to paint the hoof like toe nail things but I’ll do those in Screaming Skull and shade with Agrax earthshade.

The steps for the shell were –

• Base with Incubi Darkness
• Highlight with celestra grey for a really bright line
• Shade all over with Army painter purple tone to tint the whole thing towards purple.
• Paint Nihilakh Oxide into the recesses.

Moving onto the Stormcast Vanguard next, will probably be the weekend before I get time again but I’ll be super motivated for it because I’ll be sitting with a shiny new copy of Soul Wars as well 😀

Can’t wait.

Like I said, I wanted a quick scheme that would look good on the table, and I’m really pleased with how these have turned out so far.

The main scheme is just shades.

• Wash all over with Athonian Camoshade
• Carroburg Crimson for the open wounds and guts as well as along their back and spine
• Seraphim Sepia for the pus and boils

If you’re going to do this same scheme, one tip would be to go easy on the seraphim sepia. I found it dries much darker than you might expect and as a result it’s a little heavy handed in places. All the same it looks great on the table with a nice strong contrast so I’ll likely just leave as is.

I think once the details are picked out on these such as the teeth and eyes, as well as getting the weapons painted they’ll be looking really well. They could be tidier but they’re just a bunch of battle line guys, I’ll be spending a bit more time on the heroes etc. I’ve already started Horticulous Slimux and he is great fun to work on.

Great thing about this is I’ll have a unit of plaguebearers good to go in no time.

I took some time yesterday to get the base coats done. I stuck the models to strips of card in batches of five or so using double sided tape and took them into the back garden for spraying. The GW sprays can be a bit expensive just like everything else GW but the convenience of grabbing them from a local store and base coating over 50 models in under 30 minutes is worth the price to me, otherwise I’d never get any painting done.

The majority of the Stormcast got sprayed with Retributor Armour, everything else got hit with Corax White. The Stormcast on Chicken Horse mounts got hit with Corax White, most of the model is the mount, the riders are not seperate one peice models that can be lifted off so they got hit with the white as well.

My favourite part this early stage is when you first base coat the models and the details start to pop out at you.

Once I got the kids to bed last night I took a couple of hours to start painting the Nurgle models, I’ll post some pics of those later. I did the easiest scheme possible as this is a mass speed paint for the most part, I just want good looking painted armies quickly so I can get them to the table. I think they turned out great so far so I’ll detail the paint scheme when I post the pics.

After blowing some cash on a bunch of hobby this month, I thought I’d start a project to help keep track of getting it all built and painted. I’ve been really enjoying AoS over the last year, the changes they’ve introduced to the game since launch have really made it into one of my favourites.

The first thing I got excited for this year was the Idoneth Deepkin, I collected a few units for them a while ago and again, hadn’t got them built. So with the announcement of AoS 2.0 I reckoned it was about time to put it all together and make a concerted effort to get it all ready to go. We’ll see how far I get lol.

Let’s kick off this project with what I got built in the last 12 days or so.

First off, I picked up the Blightwar box set. I really wanted to get a collection of the Vanguard Stormcast to add to the small force of basic Stormcast I already have as well as to build on the sacrosanct chamber in the Soul Wars box when it hits.

I love the Nurgle units here, just take a look at that Horticulous Slimux model, it’s a great model to build and honestly can’t wait to paint that. I reckon once painting starts the Nurgle will be the first in line.

To add to the vanguard, I also picked up a start Collecting Set, so far I’ve only built the Lord Aquilor so the rest will have to get built this week at some stage.

I also got my Idoneth Deepkin collection built, will be adding to these guys as time goes on, amazing models and a fun army to play. So far I have around 1100pts or so. The eels are like hens teeth right now so I haven’t grabbed any yet. Will be picking up an Eidolon of Mathlann as well. The only thing left to build for the Deepkin are a unit of reavers. Lotann is in two bits right now just to keep him a bit easier to paint, rather than having to navigate a brush through all those tentacles.

I know I posted this pic in the image gallery, but seriously, look at this guy! I love this model.

Considering the Soul Wars box is Stormcast Vs Nighthaunt, I picked up a couple of models to bolster the ranks. I only picked these up last week and haven’t had a minute to build them yet.

And last but not least, some scenery. The Azyrite ruins are a great set from GW and what would the Deepkin be without their Ship Wreck.

I’ll keep the project updated as I make progress through the collection. My pre-orders are in for Soul Wars so I’ll be posting pics from that as well when it hits.