Verminlord

This is the last miniature I have painted for the Skaven project!

I will post more about my final thoughts on the project in another post, so for now, I will just focus on the miniature.

I was not sure whether to add the Verminlord or not to the Army, as it is an iconic figure from 4th ed. but I have mixed feelings about it. As I got it in the last lot I bought I decided to give it a try and see how it turned out.

I have changed slightly the pose and have magnetized the right arm so that I can store it easily. A bit of greenstuff was used to model some additional fur to make the joints of the different parts smoother.

The colour scheme follows the same pattern that I used for the rest of the army, but with a more crude approach. The different colours are applied with less of a shade to go for a stark contrast between the different tones of the skin, from chocolate dark brown to flesh. The different bells and chains are painted using the same techniques as for the rest of the Army, using extreme weathering.

The last touch was to put a poison globe in the base, next to two plastic giant rats.

The Verminlord adds 600 points to a 4th ed. Army and it does not exist on 3rd ed. but it could be used as a "count as" figure to proxy a Chimera for example for a total of 250 points.

Painted in 2016

Skaven Standard Bearer

I was missing a simple Standard Bearer for either splitting my clanrats or for my slaves, so I got this one that is using a whip, which will fit nicely with the slave unit.

A Slave standard bearer costs 5 points both for 4th and 3rd ed.

Painted in 2016

Imperial Knight: Painting (II)

I have already published the first part of the Imperial Knight articles here.

Today I am showing the Knight fully painted, with all the base colours, just waiting for the next step, which is weathering.

This Knight is part of the Sons of Horus Army as an ally, so I have decided to paint him using the colour scheme of the House Ærthegn.

The colours of this House are black and red, and they do not use ornate heraldry or too many decorations, so I decided to go for a worn look as opposed to the usual shiny looking Knights.

The patterns are quite simple, stripes of black over a red canvas. The name of the House repeated in the scrolls and a few simple symbols painted on some flat surfaces.

Symbol of the house

As you can see here, the symbol of the house is not too complicated, so I decided to try it out in the shield of the Knight, free-hand style. First, I drew it with a pencil, then I colored it with a fine brush and watered down colours.

The shield waiting for some weathering to be done

For the body I went for a simple bare metal scheme and colours for a few cables, lenses and the flat armour surfaces.
Perhaps it cannot be seen in these pictures, but the metal contains different tones as I tried to get a more aged look for the parts that should not move too much, and a shinier feel for the ones that should be kept oiled and moving. I will also repeat the same idea with the weathering.

It is a shame that after painting the face, it will not be seen anymore as I glued the mask on top.

Upper body view before attaching the shoulder pads and upper armour

 I got the inspiration for the paint scheme from this picture. Black stripes on the shoulder pads and a big red strip on the top.

Upper view of the Knight

I wrote the name of the Knight on top of the door as well as a small free-hand icon that I saw in the Lancer Knight model. You can see the image below.

Lancer Knight

For the banner I also wanted to do a free-hand and I decided to follow this pattern, but excluding the heads on the left, because I did not like them too much and probably I would not have been able to do them anyway.

I was not sure whether to add a few chains and skulls to the Knight, but in the end I decided to leave it like that as I have tons of miniatures to paint this year and I was already a bit fed up with all the work that went into magnetizing it.

To sum up, here is a full view of the Knight, with all the different weapon options, that are magnetized. The banner is not yet glued as it would make it a bit difficult to work on the legs.
This has been a very tedious work to do, as I painted every single piece separately before gluing them together. With this method I ended up painting tons of details that are now fully covered and will never be seen, but I also made sure that I did not miss anything.
I did everything with a brush and watered down paints to make smooth surfaces, so it took me a lot of time. I am not looking forward to repeat it soon!

Now the funny part can start with the weathering!

Assasin

When I was making an army list the other day (a few months ago...) I realized that I only have one Assasin in the army, which is the Deathmaster Snikch so I decided to get my claws on an assasin model.

In this case it's one of the newer models, simply because I think it fits quite nicely with the older models and because everybody wants a Wolverine Skaven!

It is a quick paint job with different shades of black using blue and grey.

An assasin costs 30 points in 4th ed. and between 31 to 75 points in 3rd ed. depending on the level (5-15).

Painted in 2016