Finished my first Stormcast unit and it belongs to...drumroll...the Sigmar's Children Stormhost

Stormcast are the face of Age of Sigmar and I've had a lot of trouble with them from their release. Not the  regularly encountered 'they are the faceless face that killed my hobby' sort of trouble but the 'how do I paint these properly kind. I found this three year old post documenting my search. Short version of my troubles: painting them gold does not work for me, black makes them fit in a bit too well with my Undead and Skaven and Stegadon Blue made them look too much like science fiction warriors. In the end it took a bit of cynical Scifi theft to get my own Stormhost and pick my colors. I proudly present a unit of liberators from: Sigmar's Children.

I had a lot of fun experimenting with paint techniques on these guys, one of them was using blue to paint shadows (in stead of adding a wash). 

Stop me if you've heard this backstory before but Sigmar's Children form a Stormhost that strive for absolute perfection. They celebrate their victories before the battle takes place and proudly fall in line behind their Lord Celestant who's known as The Phoenician. I can't see this failing at any point in the future ;). 

The leopard skin cloak came out quite nicely but the robes on the Liberator Prime gave me trouble. I painted these white, nicely blended (if I say so myself) from grey and it looked unfinished. In the end I repainted them with Stegadon Scale (as a nod to my previous choice in Stormhost). I think it was a painful but wise decision. I also think this caption is way too long...

On a slightly more serious note I tried to get a bit more of a fantasy vibe going with my poor Stormcast. I added a cloak (and gave leopard spots a go), added some free hanging chainmail and painted battle damage to the shields. I also went through great lengths to add a banner. After all: what is a fantasy unit without a banner? Another old school trick I've used on these models is black lining. It turns out that this - more than brazenly pink armor - really helps sell the stormcast (at least to my eyes). And (I almost forgot) I used some old Chaos Warrior hammes to add a bit of variety to their weapons (or is that foreshadowing?). 

This was the only unpainted Rat Ogor I had left. Should I go out and buy more or rejoice in finishing a unit?

This Rat Ogre Ogor here is completely unrelated to the Liberators above (for now). It sat half painted in my windows sill so long I took pity on it and gave it a quick paint job on a Saturday morning (To be honest I put it on the table unpainted and felt guilty enough about that to prioritize a paint job). I tried another new found technique that sounds obvious when you type it: adding lighter colors where the light hit. This greatly increase the contrast for the skin and I'm rather chuffed with the results. 

Yes more Skeletons! I can hear my collection of Necromancers high fiving from the display case. 

To finish up this post: here's another bunch that won't be looking at me with angry dead eyes (at least not from the paint station). This is a unit of 40 skeleton warriors that I managed to repurpose from a mystery bag I found a while back. I gave these a very simple paint job with an oil wash but then the project stalled, waiting for me to paint spear shafts and shields. This has been resolved now. I opted for simple red shields with a lot of weathering for contrast, I suspect watching too many Blanchitsu videos inspired me to go for a bright red contrast. The banner is a free hand on metal foil. I was all set to apply decals to it, but then thought 'just paint a free hand you lazy #@#$#' and I think the end result is the better for it. With that said I've cleared up a back log of finished painting jobs. Lets move on to the next one now.