Oldhammer Skaven Jezzail Team

As frequent visitors to this blog know, I'm quite a fanatic Skaven collector. Four classic Jezzail Teams are a part of this collection as well as three of the latest edition (late middlehammer I think). Just before Easter weekend I decided to dip one of my classic teams and give them a new coat of paint.

Oldhammer Skaven in a properly oldhammer setting for the picture. I'm still deciding on an airbrushed puff of green for some OSL around the warpstone pellets. Maybe I'll add that at a later stage.

I have some very fond memories of ordering my first Skaven army by telephone (yes young'uns it was in the dark, sorry times before internet shopping). Part of the fun was spelling my then home town's name to the mail order troll (Aalst/Waalre is not easy for native English speakers even when you spell it out over a crappy international phone line). The other fun part was that the mail order people always had something interesting to offer in the way of specials. In my case Skaven weapon teams (back then Warp Fire Throwers and Jezzails only) where half price. So instead of two of each, I bought four. Thank you, younger me.

Warpfire Throwers and Jezzail Teams where an important part of what attracted me to Skaven. I'm quite happy to own a lot of these (even though I can never really field them all).

Back then you bought single (two Skaven) Jezzail Weapons Teams. These days you select them on a warscroll as a group of three. So I've been alternately fielding a classic group I painted almost thirty years ago (and rebased a few years back) or a group I bought and painted quite recently (and never put up on my blog (tsk tsk)). Trouble is the old ones have an old paint job. I have learned a few tricks over the decades. Part of me wants to strip them and see what they look like with my current painting skills. Another part of me wants to kick the first part. You should honor your old efforts and not just strip models. Especially as they've been shooting enemy models for most of those years.

Painting these classic guns is harder then you'd think. Especially as I get older and need the magnifying visor more often to figure out what I'm looking at.

A while ago I realized I had four of these teams, painted more or less equally. As you place them in groups of three I could just throw one team into the dip and see what happened there. Still nostalgia held me back. Up until now. They recently fell out of a box of 'to dip or not to dip' models. I looked at them and decided to do just that. Here's a before picture.

Giggle away, I'm still retroactively chuffed with my thirty year old paint job and slightly sad to dip them. That's me, fielding painted armies since the eighties!

If I recall correctly a White Dwarf article back then explained how to paint flame patterns. I tried this with some succes and (almost) every model I painted back then has a flame pattern on it. The green metallic on the helm was part of the Metallic Paint Set I was completely in love with back then. The base, badly glommed on brown and a bit of railway (sawdust?) flock was typical for the time. It reminds me I made the right decision to rebase my models, even the old ones.

I love this dramatic shot of the weapons team hunting for the last monks in La Maisontaal. They never should've kept that old artifact in the basement!

I started painting the models with orange robes, but decided orange provided to little contrast to the human skintone I like on (most of) my Skaven. So I changed my mind and gave the gunner a black robe and the 'stick holder' a grey one. I decided to keep the entire scheme muted and gave them matching brown hoods. I painted the pouches, belts and ropes with different GW browns (its Mournfang Brown on the belts and pouches, XV-88 on the ammo pouches, Dryad Bark on the hoods,  Rhinox Hide on the wood of the gun, Ushabti Bone on bits of rope and Zandri Dust on the dagger handles). I painted the metals with Valleojo Metal Color Steel (highlighted with Runefang Steel and rusted with Rust by the company whose name I can't find*). The black Robes are Vallejo Nato Black highlighted by mixing in a bit of white (almost all highlights where put in this way). Also I dipped ta a very subtle bit of Bloodletter Glaze around the Lugganath Orange eyes). All in all I'm really happy with this paint job. I'd almost dip the other three, but can't quite make myself do it. Maybe I should just look out for more jezzails (I still don't have the true Middlehammer ones!).

*Great marketing there guys that implemented the formula formerly sold by Modelmates!