 |
| My Stormvermin |
Phew! Finally finished off these guys today (a national holiday in Japan - 春分の日- the spring equinox) and they are ready to join my warlord clan. These are the unit that readers decided I should paint next in a poll I had up earlier in the month - they were the top choice by a mile!
Pics below, followed by some hints and tips and a High Elf update:
1. Filing and filling.
When assembled, watch out for pieces not meeting cleanly. Difficult to see with a black undercoat, but when painted this leaves you with very obvious gaps. Due to the models, these are particularly obvious in the case of stormvermin because the joins are in really visible places. The armored shoulders and the cloth robes being two good cases in point. Liquid Greenstuff should make this much easier to solve (before painting obviously!) than in the past.
2. Make the champ special.
With good reason, the Stormvermin unit champion (or "Fangleader") is one of the most popular sculpts in the whole Skaven range (I think). I am glad I decided to do something different with him to the rest if the unit. I'd recommend this to anyone, as he makes a great Warlord model. Making him different from the rank and file means he looks better if you ever do decide to use him as a warlord. (From what I read, many players don't take stormvermin units, preceding to keep the extra points for more core, so this is quite likely.)
3. "Focus on the candy".
Stormvermin models are pretty detailed, so to speed things up, consider only doing details (layering, edge highlighting etc.) on the command (champion, musician, standard bearer) and whatever other models will be at the front. Because stormvermin are highly detailed, with lots of spikes, nooks and crannies, they look absolutely fine (imho) with only basecoats and a Devlan Mud wash. Models with lots of flatter surfaces are harder to get away with for this I think, as they just tend to look too dark and there isn't enough contrast.
Let me know what you think!
In other news...
...I spent most evenings this week working on my secret high elf project. I decided to go with white shields and green gems as they seem to work best. I might keep pure warlock purple shields for champions however as I think it looks very striking. That will match the warlock purple edging on the chainmail coat and should look pretty good.
(Models below have had washes, but no highlights or details - e.g. eyes aren't done)
TIP: As they are fiddly, and to maximize the speed, I started by mounting all the shields on either end of some pens using blu tack. I could then do one, rotate the pen in my left hand and do the other shield, set them down, pick up another pen and repeat.Next up, Elven faces.
*Squeek*
The stormvermin look great. It's always so satisfying finishing a unit.
ReplyDeleteCheers! Yeah, it is oddly satisfying. I don't know about you but a ritual I have is to to get out the finished unit the following morning when I get up to check it out in again in the morning light.
DeleteThat probably sounds really weird but I think it comes from the fact that I usually finish a unit late at night.
Of course, in the cold light of day I usually immediately spot mistakes...(sigh)
BUT the thrill is still there!
:-)
Storm Vermin do indeed look great. How do you find them to rank up? I had to resort to working out the only way I could rank them successfully, and then numbering the bases to make sure I never had to do that again.
ReplyDeleteI like the spear elves too, the white shields with green gems will look great. (By mistake I ended up buying the Vallejo airbrush white instead of the model colour one - it makes for more coats, but the end results after 6 or 7 do look whiter than white).
"How do you find them to rank up?"
DeleteFrankly, as we Brits say "A royal pain in the a**!" In fact, your comment has reminded me that this was one of the worst things about the unit I made, so I might edit my post above and add that under the tips (if you don't mind!)
Thanks for the comment!
Cheers,
Squeek
Go for it. And yes us Kiwi's also use the same expression. They're also a royal PITA when it comes to removing figures from the rear ranks during combat. Mostly due to the tails I think. Maybe an adjustment of the tails so they're on a different angle might work... hmmmm...
DeleteFantastic paint job strange seeing such pretty looking Skaven. Bright colour is actually a great option and makes them stand out from the normal browns and greys
ReplyDeleteCheers! A few people have said "Blue is the new red" for Skaven this year and that there seem to be brighter coloured armies out in greater numbers.
DeleteSo I guess bright may be "in"? My clan may not be winning on the field (or even playing at all...) but at least they are fashionable!
:-)
Great job! Keep going!
ReplyDeleteCheers! Still plenty of unit types that I haven't tried yet.
Delete:-)
Despite not being terribly popular (as far as I can tell)next up may be some Poison Wind Globadiers or a Warpgrinder or two...