Seldon9 is Painting Conquest – The Old Dominion

This was the warlord in the latest Old Dom starter. I’d bought it to bulk up my army for the tournament and now had time to paint him.

The Strategos was a level up from the Xhiliarch, determining strategy for a larger army.

Once again I made a scenic base and he can use the retinue bases if needed. Similar sort of process to the others so I’ll post the finished pics.

There’s quite a lot going on with this sculpt. He wears a lion skin above his helmet and has a mixture of accoutrements over his torso which need some picking out. Cool sculpt though.

Tournament day and I had enough painted to field an army. I’d tried to get some practise games in but fate decided I could do one. Have to confess I largely to take pictures.

I ran fairly small regiments thinking in my previous tournament my opponents could pull a few tricks with the extra regiment cards they had. Old Dom are tough. The Archimandrite was my warlord in a block of legionnaires with a view to just keep reviving them. Xhili was with Praetorians to occupy a zone and add a bit of punch.

I have few light and heavy units so my army tends to come on a couple of rounds in.

Round 1 against the Wahdrun
We were just trying to grab objectives and kill each other. Wahdrun can choose some kind of drum beat to give them some bonuses.

I pushed up to one of the early zones as fast as I could. I didn’t have a lot of pace so no mucking about. The Wahdrun bombed in some Raptor Riders who gave a prodigious kicking.

I have a unit of Moroi I like to run up the board and give my opponent an early problem. Something to hold them up and give me time to get to the zones. This went ok till the Tontorr turned up.

I had no idea what that thing could do. I thought it would be slow. No. I’d positioned my Moroi in an awkward spot to deny access to a scoring zone. Worked ok for a bit but the Tontorr got involved and crunched them.

My rolls to bring on my troops were going badly. Then the Tontorr got clear and could traverse almost half the table! I hadn’t even got my heavies on before it was in my backline. My Praetorians folded and I didn’t see how I would catch up with too many units just entering the field. Game over. I didn’t even get to try out my Varangians or Bone Golems.

Round 2 against the 100 Kingdoms
This time I was matched up against my friend who’d organised the tournament. He’d planned to step in if there was a drop out.

Once again we were scoring zones. He had two regiments of ranged units, one set having crossbows. His army was a kind of demo army so lighter on cavalry than he normally prefers.

I think his ranged units were a problem for him. He kept them back whereas my entire army poured into the scoring zones. My Bone Golems flattened his early troops before getting charged back by his cavalry. Ultimately he took them down but I followed up with the Varangians. That was clobbering time. He attempted a duel to see if he could shift my Xhiliarch but that guy is tough. No can do there.

On the other side the Archimandrite struggled to keep numbers up and he eventually positioned a null mage close by. The Archimandrite killed himself attempting a foolish cast. A regiment of Steel Legion followed up and I struggled t hold them up.

Overall I dominated a zone faster than him and got ahead to the point where he couldn’t catch up. At some point the Old Dominion just set their shields and they’re hard to shift.

Round 3 was an Old Dominion mirror match.

I was quite pleased to see this. My opponent had played for longer than me and had some useful tips. He was also trying a few units I was wondering about – two regiments of the ranged Caryatids.

Those Caryatids were nasty. I’d been quite blase about fronting up to ranged units, not there. I ran my Bone Golems and Varangians straight up the board and flattened them. They did quite a bit of damage though.

I had some luck in this game. My units came on quickly. My tactic of running the Moroi up early had an unexpected consequence. It pushed back line of reinforcement meaning he had to come on from the back of the board. This gave me an early advantage getting to the zones.

After that the game came down to the quality of our troops. I got an early lead and just hung on. By the end of round 10 I was one zone score ahead. Close, but another victory to me.

Overall it was a chilled experience. I came third 🙂

Interesting command model you can add to a regiment. Gives your regiment Aura of Death +1. Heh heh heh.

It’s painted with a white look to it’s armour. I stuck with similar colours to the Archimandrite. But of course, the egg of evil thing it’s carrying is the important piece. I gave it a bluish purple colour because that’s a death evil magic scheme.

On a side note this unit’s arms kept falling off. I also found it awkward to photograph.

Another new unit. The Archimandrite animates a pile of junk strapped together from tombs and graveyards. Strange unit that didn’t appeal to me at first but really grew on me as I started building them.

As always I start with a preshade. I painted red parts with thinned Cavalry Brown and stone parts got good coverage with Basilicanum Grey contrast. Metallic parts got an undercoat of P3 Bloodstone. The bones wreceived sveral shades of Agrax Earthshade.

Next I drybrushed over the stone parts with ScaleColour Boreal Green SC-42 and then Spring Green SC-47.

After this it’s just highlighting. ScaleColour SC-26 for bone highlights and undercoats. Dabbed metallics for the metal parts.

Ooh new unit. Most tactics advice I see for the Old Dominion is buy these, then buy more of these.

I skipped the oil wash on these guys. I just liked them as they were when I reached the oil wash stage.

Really I just switch colours round a bit. The blue parts were painted with Vallejo Xpress Space Grey 72.422 over a white drybrush.

New approach. I still do a bit of a preshade. Partly to see the parts of the mini and also to make the brighter areas show up better when I go over them. I feel I can go a little bit too dark on my figures.

Next I go over the mini with P3 Bloodstone. This is to give a simple undercoat that I can let show through when I paint the figures.

After this I overbrushed the metallics and splodged on other colours as described in scheme1. I use overbrushing as being a bit like drybrushing with more paint and only brushing top down.

Simple contrast on the red parts and no further shading. I just used Vallejo Bone White on on any showing body parts. Very simple with a final, purple oil wash.

After completing the first starter I got a little burned out with the project. Seemed like I’d done a lot just to get a basic starter. I attended a small tournament my friend ran. I didn’t really know what I was doing but it was good fun. Then I moved on to other projects and let this slip a bit. It taught me that I didn’t like the Kheres. So I’d focus on Legionnaires as a basic unit.

Then my friend announced another tournament at 1500pts. I said I’d attend but was short on units. I needed to get more stuff out fast. My original scheme for the Legionnaires was a bit too slow. Time for a new method.

Xhiliarchs were leaders of units of 1000 men. Originally standing out as skillful, martial leaders, they’d be trained to be able to manage the logistics of running force. These units retain more of their personality than most of Hazlia’s troops.

I undercoated the figure with Boreal Green SC-42, Navi Blue SC-54, Leather Brown SC-31 and Irati Green SC-43 for an overhead highlight.

Once again this unit has a scenic base and a stock base with covered indents.

After that it was mainly picking out metallic details and beefing some of the green highlights a bit.

This unit has two bases. One is the standard ranking base that comes with the model. I 3d printed some blank bases to fill the unused gaps. I may need this base if I add a retinue.

Otherwise if it is just the warlord I’ll use the scenic base.

My first warlord – the Archimandrite. This fellow is a magic user who brings reanimated spirits and golems to the table.

The figure for this had such good detail I was largely able to preshade and apply contrast and thinned paints. I tried to vary the metallics used on the hat and stave using ScaleColour metallics like Decayed Metal (SC-87) and Necro Gold (SC-71).

The green magic was progressively airbrushed shades of green. Red and purples were contrast paints Vallejo Express Red (72.406) and GW Magos Purple.

I got to my first Warlords and wanted to do a scenic bases. Even though these units are indiviudal they sill receive a ranking base. They look a bit lonely by themselves. I found some stls and printed a couple of bases with a single indent for a figure.

I 3d printed some pillars and where appropriate attached some bits of a zombie rising from the earth. The pillars were primed black and drybrushed on the outside with SC-35 Deep Red and on the inside with Navi Blue (SC-64) and the darkish Boreal Green.

The Old Dominion have some spirit-like units they can take as light infantry. The sprue can build both the Kheres and Moroi. Unfortunately I don’t have the colours listed and the progress pics weren’t so good.

I didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Preshade and contrast mainly for this. The Kheres models had some magical effects which I added more white around for the OSL.

The smoky, lower body was just preshaded and tinted with blues and purples.

Clothing was just preshaded and painted with contrast for both the Kheres and Moroi.

Metal parts were just base coated with more faded metallics and I tried to blend Silver and Steel on the knife blades.

Skin was worked up from dark green to a light, almost luminous colour and shaded with a purple oil wash.

The OSL spell effects were progressions of yellow, orange and red applied with both brush and airbrush.