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Evil, or just misunderstood?

I’m starting the year with a couple of test models for one of this year’s big hobby projects: the cosmic “Bond Villains” that are the Word Bearers. I’ve kinda fallen in love with how comically over-the-top evil they are, yet also comically inept.

This was just supposed to be a quick and small project using kits I had in my backlog, but it’s since grown arms and tentacles as it turned out I had passively acquired a lot of CSM kits over the years, and Christmas added a couple more… oh well!

The paint scheme itself is relatively simple, though given how much trim there is on Chaos Marines, I hesitate to say it’s “quick”:

  1. Spray the whole model silver
  2. Wash the trim with Gryph-Charger Grey Contrast paint
  3. Drybrush everything with Necron Compound
  4. Paint the armour panels with Flesh Tearers Red Contrast paint
  5. Apply Black Templar Contrast paint to the soft materials between joints and to gun casings
  6. Paint the tabard, horns, and pistol holsters with Ivory
  7. Wash the weapons and power pack with Nuln Oil Shade
  8. Anything golden is given a coat of Nazdreg Yellow Contrast paint over the silver. Bronze is Snakebite Leather over silver
  9. Belts and other leather details like the holsters are given a coat of Garaghak’s Sewer Contrast paint
  10. Shoulders are filled in with Black
  11. Bones and horns are given a coat of Skeleton Horde Contrast Paint, with some Snakebite Leather blended into the base of the area
  12. Tabards are painted with a mix of Black Templar and Dark Angel Green Contrast paint
  13. Eyes are painted with Tesseract Glow, straight over the silver. A little bit was added around the eye, to create a glow effect
  14. Any touch ups to the trim were made with Plate Mail Air by the Army Painter

And that’s it for now… I’m hoping to avoid edge highlighting by relying on Contrast paints doing their thing, and shading down, rather than going lighter. I might add an oil pin wash for more separation between areas, once I’ve done the transfers, but I’m not 100% decided on that.

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So it was a bit of a frustrating day, today. Late yesterday I was struggling with differentiating between the bone armour and the unpainted areas of the model, so I had the “bright idea” To apply an oil wash to the armour, to give it a bit more definition.

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out very well. It shifted the colour of the armour closer to a dark vomit brown, with no way of fixing it without a lot of layering – which is far more work than I was prepared to do on this project, at this stage. Do some sort of repaint was on the cards.

You might notice that many of the models in the photo above are now a very dark colour – for simplicity, I’ve painted over the armour in a dark metallic colour – Burnt Iron from the Vallejo Metal Color line. I went with this as it is effectively one coat coverage and flows incredibly well from the brush, making it fairly easy to cover up the old armour colour.

I’ve still got the Knights and second unit of Warriors to redo, but I’m hopeful I can blast through them too tomorrow… although the Knights are incredibly detailed and fiddly. Avoiding the non-armour sections on them is a pain, as I found when I did one as a test

So … yeah. The project has already taken an unexpected turn. Let’s hope it’s the last time , as I know if I encounter too many issues I’m liable to get disheartened and abandon it 😕

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I’m a day late posting Day 10, as I spent so long painting miniatures yesterday! It was by far the longer time I have managed to devote to hobby time in several months.

The whole day was basically spent batch painting different details across the whole Slaves to Darkness army – cloaks, furs, cloth, and boots have been based with an appropriate Contrast paint, as has the Chaos Lord’s Karkadrak.

Hopefully Day 11 will be metallics and some other details that will bring things close to “tabletop ready”.

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After a bit of a marathon – but last minute – airbrushing session, I managed to get the basic zenithal highlight applied to my Slaves to Darkness army. Nothing too fancy, but enough to establish the main armour colour, and set it up for washes and weathering. It also gives me a nice base for using Contrast paints on unimportant details like belts and boots.

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Today I had several jobs I needed to do, so I didn’t get a massive amount of hobby done, but I did manage the most important step for my Slaves to Darkness – I got the first layer down on their armour. (The colour is Trench Brown by Colour Forge, which is a match to Steel Legion Drab by Citadel).

Hopefully, tomorrow, I’ll manage to get all the airbrushed highlighting stages done, which should just leave filling in the other details with simple base costs and/or Contrast..

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Not the most exciting update today, but an important step forward: todays hobby tine was spent priming all of the Slaves to Darkness that I’d been building all week. They’ll be getting another spray tomorrow, of the shadow colour of the scheme I’m planning to do, then I’ll need to break out the airbrush to finish off the armour.

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Today I built the contents of the current Start Collecting! Slaves to Darkness box set. This was a quick turnaround for me, as I only received the box this morning!

The Chaos Warriors and Chaos Lord were a joy to build, going together quickly and easily, with most joins andthe like hidden in clever ways – which is to be expected, as the models in this set are modern “Easy to Build” push-fit miniatures.

The Chaos Knights were slightly more frustrating to build, especially the unit champion, who just didn’t seem to want to go together without either popping apart again, or with some massive gaps. By clipping of some pegs, and applying some extra plastic glue though, I managed to get it assembled with only a small amount of cursing. The rest of the unit were slightly better, with the most frustrating issue being the distribution of the parts across all 3 sprues, instead of being grouped together logically like most other kits.

With a core set of units assembled now, hopefully the weather will hold and I’ll be able to start getting some paint on them this weekend!

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The other night I found the rest of the Chaos Warriors I’d bought 11 years ago, so todays hobby was spent clipping them off the sprues, cleaning them up a little, and assembling them.

The keen eyed among you will notice they’re partially painted – apparently I had decided to paint this batch while they were still on the sprue. I won’t be sticking with this paint job: they’ll get a painted over at the sand time as the rest of the army. The previous layers were airbrushed on, so they’re thin enough I shouldn’t need to strip paint off the models.

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I’m late posting these Chaos Sorcerers (and familiars) but they were built yesterday, on day 3 of my hobby streak.

The models are the Sorcerer Lord that’s been around for years, and the Warhammer+ subscriber exclusive miniature “Mibylorr Darkfang”. Both were super simple to build. Depending what other models I pick up for my growing Chaos army, I might use Mibylorr for my leader in a Path To Glory campaign.

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Today was productive, thanks to a lazy Sunday afternoon. I managed to build 2 units of Slaves to Darkness – Warriors and Knights – that, (shamefully?) I’ve had in my backlog for 11 years …

My hope is I can get a good chunk of them on the way too finished this week, ahead of the new army box arriving. I’ve been trying to create a mortal Chaos army for a long time now, but something always seems to happen that derails the project. Fingers crossed for this attempt!

I’ve got more Knights and Warriors to build, along with some heroes and a chariot. If the weather doesn’t play nice, and I can’t get the already built models sprayed, then the alternative goal is to finish building the rest of the backlog.