Narrative punching bags. (Stagsbrew's Tomb King army)
Feb 1, 2024 19:17:47 GMT
pellegrim, grandmasterwang, and 2 more like this
Post by stagsbrew on Feb 1, 2024 19:17:47 GMT
I don’t plan for Tomb Kings to be my main army in The Old World, but seeing that they’re going to be playing a big part in the new lore to come, I figured I’d pick them up so I have an army for narrative games.
I also plan to share my undead models across Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts where possible. To that end, I needed to come up with a paint scheme that was suitable for both factions. After reading the Warhammer Chronicles The Rise of Nagash I was inspired to make an army based around the city-state of Rasetra.
Rasetra in the novels makes great use of the jungles that surround its borders, which I feel allows me to use more of a diverse colour palette than just the harsh tones of the desert. That being said, I still wanted my Skeletons to feel like ancient dead. The thing that really separates the Tomb Kings from the Vampire counts in my opinion, is the age of the dead they raise.
To help age my skeletons, I’ve gone with a dry, arid plain style of base to sell the idea that these reanimated corpses aren’t from the freshly bloodied fields of Sylvania, but the scorched earth of Nehekhara. The base style also needed to be one that I could then alter for my upcoming Bretonnia army, as I want them to reflect one another to help sell the narrative. To avoid going insane, I also decided that the bases themselves shouldn’t be too complex, considering I need to do nearly a hundred of them.
I also plan to share my undead models across Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts where possible. To that end, I needed to come up with a paint scheme that was suitable for both factions. After reading the Warhammer Chronicles The Rise of Nagash I was inspired to make an army based around the city-state of Rasetra.
Rasetra in the novels makes great use of the jungles that surround its borders, which I feel allows me to use more of a diverse colour palette than just the harsh tones of the desert. That being said, I still wanted my Skeletons to feel like ancient dead. The thing that really separates the Tomb Kings from the Vampire counts in my opinion, is the age of the dead they raise.
To help age my skeletons, I’ve gone with a dry, arid plain style of base to sell the idea that these reanimated corpses aren’t from the freshly bloodied fields of Sylvania, but the scorched earth of Nehekhara. The base style also needed to be one that I could then alter for my upcoming Bretonnia army, as I want them to reflect one another to help sell the narrative. To avoid going insane, I also decided that the bases themselves shouldn’t be too complex, considering I need to do nearly a hundred of them.
Once I had finished magnetising all of the bases, it was time to get to work.
First, I primed the bases black and based them all with a thin coat of Citadel’s Agrellan Earth. I only used a thin coat of Agrellan Earth to ensure that there were as few cracks as possible, as I only intended for it to act as a background for the basing material.
After the Agrellan Earth had dried, I then applied a layer of basing glue and dunked the squares into a pot of Army Painter’s Brown Battlefield. Once that had dried, I then went over each base, adding additional Agrellan Earth where the basing material hadn’t stuck.
Finally, I added a few tufts of varying colour and size to a few of the bases. I made sure not to go overboard here, as whilst I wanted some hints of life, I wanted the army to look as dry as possible.
Now that I had finished the bases, I started assembling the archers. I haven’t yet decided on how I plan to use the archers in games of The Old World, so for now I’ll be painting them in groups of ten.
I had some difficulties with building the skeletons, specifically when it came to attaching the quiver to the back of the model. Rather than spend too long messing around with this on all of the models, I instead cut the sling of the quiver and attached it to the models with superglue.
I prefer the look of the models with this style of quiver; it gives them a cleaner look that will also help make the models more faction agnostic.
Now I had built the first ten models, I primed them with Grey Seer and base coated the skeletons with Coat D'arms Bone and the bows with Coat D’arms Bilious Brown. I found that these paints were somewhat thin, even when placed directly onto the wet palette. I went over the models a second time and was much happier with the results.
The quiver and loose straps of clothing remaining on the skeletons I painted with a mix of Coat D’arms Barbarian Leather and a small amount of Putrid Green to help hint at the rot that has long since travelled through the remains of this archer and his clothes. The arrow feathers themselves I painted with Citadel’s Corax White to break up the palette of brown and beige that I was leaning on.
I had some difficulties with building the skeletons, specifically when it came to attaching the quiver to the back of the model. Rather than spend too long messing around with this on all of the models, I instead cut the sling of the quiver and attached it to the models with superglue.
I prefer the look of the models with this style of quiver; it gives them a cleaner look that will also help make the models more faction agnostic.
Now I had built the first ten models, I primed them with Grey Seer and base coated the skeletons with Coat D'arms Bone and the bows with Coat D’arms Bilious Brown. I found that these paints were somewhat thin, even when placed directly onto the wet palette. I went over the models a second time and was much happier with the results.
The quiver and loose straps of clothing remaining on the skeletons I painted with a mix of Coat D’arms Barbarian Leather and a small amount of Putrid Green to help hint at the rot that has long since travelled through the remains of this archer and his clothes. The arrow feathers themselves I painted with Citadel’s Corax White to break up the palette of brown and beige that I was leaning on.
Once all of the base coats had been painted, I gave all of the bone parts of the model a wash with Citadel’s Seraphim Sepia. I then finished the models off with a dry brush of Longbeard Grey.
This unit took me the better part of a week to build and paint, but I feel like the next batch will take significantly less time now I have settled on a paint scheme. The archers were a joy to paint and, despite the age of the sculpts, I still think they turned out great.
