More loyal heroes added to my Sigmar's Children Stormhost

My Sigmar's Childern Stormhost is expanding at a slow but sure pace. I keep a small number of  Stormcast assembled and primed, ready for when I just feel like splattering a lot of (pink) paint around. Recently this allowed me to finish painting (and I have to look the names up): a Lord-Castellant, a  Knight-Vexillor with Banner of Apotheosis and a squad of Annihilators. Or as I know them: knight with lantern and doggy, knight with banner and three knights in very heavy armor (there are reasons I'm not employed as a Battle Tome writer ;).

Stop! Hammertime! /obligatory opening.

For those of you not along with previous posts (and not interested in clicking the extraordinary handy link above): Sigmar's Children is a figment purely of my own imagination. I have not borrowed from any handily available background material at all...cough...It is a Stormhost led by Lord Celestant called Fulgrim also know as The Phoenician. As a host they strive for perfection in all things. Their most prized value (aside from perfection) is loyalty (of course). That's almost redundant. Being named after their creator, I can't see any reason for treason in their future. Yes I did not steal any background from anywhere for that backstory...

I have a love/hate relationship with this banner. I love that it exists, but hated painting it. 

Anyways lets start with the knight with banner or (looking the name up again) Knight-Vexillor as he's called. This is one of the models from the Dominion set. That makes it one of the redesigned Stormcast. These are more lightly built, compared to the original ones (for instance these Hammerers Liberators). That's a very good change if you ask me. The old Stormcast just didn't scratch that fantasy itch properly. On the whole they looked too much like the average ridiculous computer game characters (still glaring at you Dragon Age 'my dagger looks like two-handed sword' Origins). Now to be sure I try not to mind silly gigantic battleaxes too much (I don't want to get into trouble with Conan after all). But the combination of silly hammers and humongous shoulder pads most Stormcast sported, especially the first liberators, just didn't work. They looked more like American Football players then Champions of the god of Order to me. 

There was no need to thin my paints with water for the back of the banner, tears where flowing freely at that point...

Changing the shoulder pads on these new Stormcast has been one of the better design decisions by GW when it comes to the Stormcast. I also like that they've kept the extra robes on the armor. Where else can I practice my wild animal skin painting techniques? Finally I'm quite happy to see a slow but steady return of banners in units. I love banners, the more the merrier. 

Now that is a paladin of order I can get behind. I'm thinking of discarding/selling most of the first generation Stormcast still littering my plastic pile and only adding newer ones to my Stormhost.

With that said, I hated painting this banner. And I thought painting the old metal on metal on metal Dwarves was bad. Then I got started on this banner. The pre-shaped plastic is a hellish experience to get to look right. I must admit I've lost count as to how many times I had to rework lines and add extra detailing. I think that after the third round of extra blacklining (followed by cleanup because I'm quite clumsy (and suffer from mild tremors)) I decided to just call it a day. That said, I think it worked out okay in the end. And man is it good to have more banners in the army.

"Don't worry about the warpstone glow from my lantern, my chaos hound hates corruption so all will be well."

The knight with lantern and doggy is yet another lord of something or other (Lord-Castellant to be sure) . This is one of the older Stormcast. I found him in a Warhammer Quest Hammerhal box. Now this model is bulky, but on this sculpt it just works. The combination of the lantern, the big halberd and the pose look awesome if you ask me. I couldn't resist giving both his hourglass and lantern a warpstone glow. I know I should actually go for Azyrite Blue, but I can't shake the feeling that this Stormhost may one day be more into the warp then anyone at all can foresee. The green will come in handy then (contrasting rather nicely with the pink also helps).

I painted tiger stripes and it worked (I think). Another painting milestone reached. 

The eagle headed tiger next to lanternman is a Gryph-hound. These are noble beasts that detest corruption. I like to think of them as the Chaos Hounds of the Order pantheon. But that may just be the oldschool gamer in me giving these new-fangled models a place. The smooth back of these creatures really invites experimentation. I kept a few pictures of tigres handy as I gave the creature its stripes. At this point I should mention the colors used (so I can look these up myself at a later date). The most important color on the capes and the hound is Tau Light Ochre over a Zandri Dust base with (a random) yellow mixed in to highlight and a burnt umber mixed in to shade. I like how very orangey it popped out. It took a bit of courage to add the leopard spots and tiger stripes to be honest as the blend I achieved on the robes and fur was rather nice.

"Can we bash the joy of following our lord and saviour Sigmar into your skull today?"

Finally my Stormhost gets a second unit instead of more lords (the Stormcast suffer a bit from High Elf Syndrome (Everyone's a lord, no one a serf). These are called Annihilators. I hate to make the comparison, but they are basically the terminators of the Stormcast world. Heavy armor, shielded and almost impossible to kill (not entirely like terminators on that last count then). Looking them up on the internet I found out they represent exactly the sort of thing I actually don't like about wargaming (unkillable units, with overpowered special characters a close second* (both preceded by re-rollable 2+ saves)). Then again, they look awesome. That is in spite of shoulder pads too big even for American Football. I'll call it power-dressing, and pretend I can use that to tie these models to the eighties. On a whim I tried to overemphasize their shoulders even more by painting their legs a dark purple/black (Screamer Pink over Black). It was inspired by an old John Blanche Chaos Marine Legions illustration I printed out and stuck to the wall for inspiration (it worked, I was inspired). 

Quick update, fixed that face. Luckily he's bald. I was not in the mood to have another go at painting white hair :).

On a side-note, zooming in on the picture above, I realize I gave the central one an unhelmeted head and completely forgot about that during painting. Oops. That one's getting a bit of a touchup soon, I promise :s. 

* Or as it is called a basic tournament list.

Tapping these guys on the shoulder should present no difficulty at all, getting their attention by tapping  on their shoulders is an entirely different story.

Lets ignore that silly mistake and just show the back of this unit. One last detail to mention is the back of the shield. I kept these separate from the models during painting, but decided against painting in details and going for black instead. It was quite an easy decision to implement :) It also somehow works to make the shields stand out (I think). Then again I'm a bit ashamed of going down a path that easy and lazy. Maybe mentioning I experimented with blacklining on all these models helps offset the laziness. I never thought I'd give that old technique a second go (and with as much effect as it has had on these models, I'll keep using it for now). Perhaps I shouldn't think about it too much and just stick together the Stormcast with spears (and look up their names). That way I'll have three units for the 'horde of lords' to order around.