Necromancer, Balewind Vortex, Plague Drones, Festus and Waywatcher

Its been way too hot to paint recently. Add a few busy weeks and a brief 'discussion' with grandfather Nurgle to that and the blog fell silent. No longer I say! Okay enough with the dramatics, time to play catch-up. Here are some models I finished over the past month. Lets start with (in my very humble opinion) one of the coolest models ever.

Rise my minion, rise!

This Necromancer (hard at work) was sculpted by Tim Prow for Die Hard Miniatures I ordered him as an extra to the Law and Disorder Kickstarter he ran this year. More models from this Kickstarter are on my paint station. Unfortunately I got distracted by working on a million projects simultaneously, otherwise I would have shown of some of the other cool stuff as well.

Keep your hands, arms, feet, legs and pseudopods inside the ride at all times.

For instance this Balewind Vortex is a very useful Endless Spell in Age of Sigmar (it increases the range at which a wizard standing atop it can throw spells around the table). I ordered it last year because I really needed it for a game (or so I told myself) and it has been lying around in a cellophane wrapped box all this time. Yesterday I unpacked it, was surprised it didn't even come on sprues, glued it together and painted it in one sitting. Sometimes you just hit maximum painting zen.

Oh no it's got a serious case of Pink Eye! Grandfather Nurgle approves.

I skipped oil washes in favor of the Nuln Oil shade (confusing name in this context). After airbrushing basic grays and pinks I covered the model in a gloss coat (Alcad III) and started applying  straight and watered down Nuln Oil to it. The metal was painted with Scale75 Decayed Metal and drybrushed with GW Gehenna's Gold. The most important thing to bring this model/piece of scenery to life turned out to be a few selective edge highlights in Celestra Grey and Ulthuan Grey.

On my list of creatures I would not want to meet in real life: Plague Drones.

These Nurgle Plague Drones had been lying in the back of a cupboard for over a year now. I bought them as a for sale half of the Blightwar box set in 2017. I had a lot of fun painting the wings to look flashy. They've been airbrushed over black with Chameleon Royal Burgundy paint I picked up from Green Stuff World I used a recess wash of Drakenhof Nightshade to get some definition in the wings. For all of you still cursing while assembling these majestic creatures: pin the wings. Its very easy and it really helps when you glue the models together.

Not pictured: the insane detail on the bodies. There are faces of people stuck in these monsters. Wonderfully disgusting. 

I took the time to paint some veins on the Plague Drone's bodies to make it all a bit more disgusting. I will most definitively be using that technique again.

Painting veins is rather easy and adds to the whole 'not very clean' concept. 

Another mental note is to go even lighter with Nurgle. All the brown/black/green shades and oils really darken the models down.

I see you Festus, now get of my paint station you lout.

Regulars of my blog may have seen Festus the Leechlord lurk around in the background of photographs over the past few years. I bought him three years ago and immediately started painting him. But every time I worked on him a bit I got disappointed with my result and frustrated with the model. Nurgle in my opinion is quite easy to paint to a tabletop standard but nigh-on impossible to paint to something that actually shows it is (slightly) above tabletop. Festus has a humongous amount of detail making the job even harder.

I shall simply declare you finished now.

In the end I took a deep breath added extra washes and details and decided to just proclaim him finished. Time to move him from the paint station to a display case and all that (I still need a new plastic Great Unclean One if I ever want to put a full on Nurgle host on the table).

A classic Wood Elf Waywatcher by sculptor Gary Morley (I learned rifling through Solegends). I think you can safely say this is one of his better sculpts.

Last but certainly not least is this old Wood Elf Waywatcher. This model was given to me by a friend at the local gaming club. He got him in a set of older Dark Elves and didn't need him (thank you Eelco). The Waywatcher also has a lot of detail. First off he's wearing one of those cowboy style neck scarves. On the metal it looked a lot like a strange beard. It only really started popping out when I gave him his zenithal prime coat (that alone is a good reason to always go for zenithal priming).

On the subject of Gary Morley. The sword in the air pose could almost be called his signature pose. Quite funny to see how many of his models are standing in this exact pose. 

The second surprise was his cloak. At first I thought it was rough (badly sculpted) fur. But again thanks to zenithal priming I could see they were leaves. Or as I called it: an excuse to use some autumn colors. If I ever get around to painting a Wood Elf Wanderer army it will be in autumn style. Painting individual leaves in different shades of red and yellow took a bit of extra time, but I think it was time well spent. Another lovely model I really want to use on the tabletop someday.

Don't tel me, but that's more then I can paint in one extended painting project fugue.

With this bunch blogged about a few quick snaps of my hobby table halfway through last month. No ambitions here at all. Please ignore last months half painted Skaven in the background ;).

Writing captions I actually see the 30 spearmen and 30 archers are not pictured. They were probably floating in Biostrip-20 during this process.

I've dug out a lot of classic high elves with the intent to get them painted. Right now the ambition has been scaled back to ten Silver Helms, thirty Spearman, a chariot and maybe thirty archers. But there's also the Blackstone Fortress set to distract me and a number of amazing Die Hard models from the Kickstarter. Also a Blood Knights side project has been calling to me... On the plus side, I'm not really painting an army so I can just mix and match projects. Now to actually start blogging in earnest again. Maybe a few quick tutorials next (and I'm far behind on my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay articles). So much to do, so litte time to do it in.

Please give us proper rules! And offer the Classic Chaos Familiars in metal in stead of Finecast (while I'm wishlisting).

A quick bonus picture to really wrap things up. I bought these two Chaos familiars back when they were new and with all the High Elves drowning in Biostrip-20 I dunked these two in as well. Unfortunately the AoS rules for Chaos Familiars are beyond horrible (two fragile models need to be behind enemy lines around their wizards to be of (short) use). So they will just stand around in the display case next to a few other classic familiars. Maybe they'll rewrite some rules later on...