How to Paint a Skaven Warlitter

In my last post, I described the materials and process in scratch-building a Skaven War-litter. This time, let's look at how to paint it. As always, I'm not claiming to be a good painter! All my painting is just so I can get an army on the table that looks good from a distance.

On reflection, the Skaven Warlitter is actually made of 3 distinct parts:

1. The Skaven Warlord
2. The litter-bearers (crew)
3. The Howdah

As I have posted "How to Paint" guides for both the Skaven Warlord and Skaven Stormvermin before, this post will just focus mainly on the howdah.

Step-by-Step:

1. Assembly 

(see part 1: "How to Make a Skaven War-litter")

2. Undercoat

I use GW Chaos Black spray, but any modelling undercoat spray will be fine! I prefer Black to White as this is a more forgiving colour for beginners. Anything you miss during painting will just appear to be in shadow.

3. Basecoats

Apply basecoats to the model (See list below)

Note: I still have some of "old" GW/ Citadel paints lying around. If you aren't familiar with them, here is a conversion chart I made to match them up with "new" paints.

• Calthan Brown: Wooden planks, giant rats (fur)
• Vermin Brown: Wooden plans (do some planks with this colour, or other, lighter browns, to add some variety to the wood)
• Tallarn Flesh: giant rats (flesh)
• Knarloc Green: Standard/ Flag. Also any warpstone chunks (embedded in skull eyesockets)
• Ice Blue: Skaven Shields.
• Abaddon Black: Arrows (added later)
• Leadbelcher: Metallics - halberd blades, spikes, chains etc.
• Dwarf Bronze: Skaven icon, shield parts.
• Auric Gold: On edges of the Skaven gold icon on the front of the howdah
• Bleached Bone: Skulls, cords (attaching flag to flag-pole)
• Sunburst Yellow: Goblin shield heraldry.

4. Washes

The litter after washes

• Agrax Earthshade: All wooden parts, flag/ standard, bones,
• Nuln Oil: metallics (spikes, shield parts, chains, blades etc.)
• Ogryn Flesh: Giant rat flesh.

NOTE: After highlights and drybrushing (Step 5, below) I made and applied a rust wash using watered-down brown and orange.

5. Highlights/ Drybrushing

After highlights/ drybrushing/ edge highlights. e.g.
Goblin shield (top edge) chains, blades, skulls etc.

• Calthan Brown/ Skull White (80/20 mix): Drybrush raised areas of wooden planks and edges of wooden planks.
• Bleached Bone/ Skull White (80/ 20 mix): highlights on skulls, bones etc.
• Leadbelcher/ Chainmail (50/50 mix): Highlights/ edge highlights on blades etc.
• Calthan Green/ Scorpion Green (40/60 mix): Edges of warpstone chunks in the skulls.
• Tallarn Flesh/ Elf Flesh (50/50 mix): Giant rat skin.
• Calthan Green/ Skull White (50/50 mix): Flag. You can do successively lighter mixes on the raised area of the flag.

From a painting perspective, you are done with the Howdah at this point!

Litter-bearers/ Crew:

As mentioned above, paint these as you would any Stormvermin (guide to mine here).

After painting, they should rank up and look something like this (ready to balance the howdah on top.)

Not ranked up, they can be used as normal, and look like
they are just carrying spears and clubs.

Ranked-up, and ready to lift the war-litter.

The final touch to the litter-bearers (if, like me, you don't want to glue them together or glue them on to a base) is to magnetize them. This will make it easier to use and move them when they are carrying the war-litter. I use magnetic sheet for this, as you an see in this tutorial.

Stormvermin, showing magnetic sheet attached to tray and bases.

Hope this is useful!

In my next post, I will look at how I made the 28mm arrows that you can see on the finished war-litter.

(EDIT: here is a link to "How to Paint a Skaven Warlitter")

Cheers,

How to Make a Skaven War-litter

What self-respecting Skaven warlord wouldn't want to ride into battle on the shoulders of his minions, elevated above the common ratmen and the enemy? 

The Skaven War-litter allows your warlord to do just that...

...not to mention also being an easy way to add some extra attacks, increase your warlord's armour save AND keep his "look out sir" roll.

How do you get a war-litter? 
At time of writing, you have to build one yourself. However, it is actually not too difficult, and the materials are probably in your bitz-box already. Additionally, there are lots of good examples on the net that you can draw inspiration from. 

In this guide, I'll lay out what I did to get a war-litter ready for painting. Also, I'll show you how you can kitbash the litter and bearers so they can still be used separately (in other words, you won't lose x4 litter bearers by gluing them to a war-litter that you might not always want to use.)

Ready?

Building the War-litter - gather your materials!

Howdah:

Plastic sheet 1-2 mm thick. (I used leftover GW movement tray material, which is 2mm thick.)

• Floor: x1 (30mm x 37mm)
• Side walls: x2 (20mm x 40mm)
• Front wall: x1 (20mm x 30mm)
• Rear wall: x1 (20mm x 30mm)

Optional: front wall "trophy panel" (optional): x1 (20mm x 20mm)

TIP:  For speed and convenience you might want to use a material that is thinner and easier to cut than GW movement tray...

Decoration:
x1 Skaven Warlord (sold separately - I use the Island of Blood Skaven Warlord)
x1 Flag (Stormvermin unit flag works well.)
x5-6 shields (Skaven shields are great, but a variety from different armies works well.)
x12 Spikes - to decorate the walls and repel boarders (I used old Goblin spear tips, but any old swords can be cut down)

Optional: x1 -2 giant rats (Skaven players often have these left over from their sprues)
Optional: Chains and skulls (Chaos bits?) 
Optional: x2 halberds and chain to make a weapons rack inside the war-litter.
Optional: x2-3 arrows (more about making those later!)

Litter-bearers:
x4 pre-assembled Skaven Stormvermin with halberds (I prefer them to Clanrats, but the choice is yours!) 

TIP: The halberds you want are held in their right hands (on their left as you look at them). Do not glue them onto the bodies yet!!

Assembly!

Front and right side (Click to expand)

Left side (Click to expand)

Right side (Click to expand)

The difficult thing here is not the litter itself, but actually the litter-bearers. Let's look at them separately later.

War-Litter.

1. Score the plastic to simulate "grain" in the wood. Before gluing everything together, you will want to score the plastic to make it look like wood. To do this, take a box cutter and run the blade down the plastic vertically. Don't do everything evenly. You are trying to create a "plank of wood" effect.

2. Cut the top and bottom of the walls to simulate "planks". Cut the edges of the panels so they look random, and like planks of wood.

3. Glue the war-litter. Glue sides, front (and optional "trophy panel") and rear to the base.

4. Decorate. Glue optional decorations into place around the walls (e.g. chains, spikes, shields, rats, flags, weapons rack etc.)

5. Add arrows. Glue/ drill arrows into place.

TIP: When adding the arrows, think carefully about the angle and positioning. Would they stick "straight" out of the wood, or angled up (more likely, if they had come as a volley from long distance).

The howdah is not ready for undercoating.

Litter-bearers.

1. Assemble x4 Stormvermin bodies on bases, without their right arms (on your left as you look at the model.)

2. Cut away/ file down the shoulder armour/ shoulder pad on the Skaven where the arm will be glued until the arm will fit closely to the body with the arm pointing up and with the halberd haft horizontal (parallel to the ground.)

TIP: Before gluing each arm, carefully eyeball the arm and halberd hafts so that you glue them on straight...
They don't have to be perfect, as you won't notice it when they are on the table, but you want the halberd hafts to line up horizontally when the litter-bearers are ranked-up, as shown in the images below. 

Notice how the halberd hafts line up.

3. Glue arms into place.

4. On the front two troops, cut the halberd blade off where it meets the haft. Then glue them to the opposite end of the haft (Glue blades towards enemy), so they are now pointing in front of the model. Remember - pointy end at the enemy!

5. On the rear troops, cut the halberd off where the blade meets the haft. Save these two blades (or stick them on the front of your war-litter as I did!)

6. Glue modeling sand to the base in preparation for undercoating.

So, you now have the assembled war-litter and litter-bearers.

What you will find is that by pushing the bases of the bearers together, the hafts of the halberds should roughly line up, allowing you to balance the howdah on top...

TIP: Do NOT glue the howdah onto the litter-bearers at this point, even if you intend to glue it later! That will make painting the litter-bearers almost impossible...

In my next post "How to Paint a Skaven Warlitter", I'll go into detail about the colours I used.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments!

Cheers,

Finished Skaven War-litter

Here is my scratch built Skaven War-litter. 

Fit for a king...
...Or at least for a Skaven Clan Warlord! 

The War-litter on the move! Spikey!

True to the Skaven ethos, it was made from scrap (spare bits) from my bitz box over the course of a couple of days. In gaming terms, it seems like a pretty good way to add some protection and power to the standard Warlord (an additional x4 WS 4, STR 4 attacks from the litter bearers and +1 armour save).

In a future post, I'll outline the process I took, but for the moment you can see that fortunately I had lots of access to spikey stuff in my bitz box!

Four of the strongest Skaven Stormvermin carry the litter into battle....

The walls are reinforced with shields. Rusty spikes are
attached to the walls to dissuade the enemy from climbing aboard.

The litter-bearers aren't glued, so they can still rank up
and be used in a unit if I am not using them to carry the litter.

However, put the litter-bearers together and they rank up so that the
litter can be balanced on top of them.

I magnetized the crew and their movement tray, so when they carry
the litter they are stable and easy to move.

War-litter team leader sez "That ways - go that ways!"

Detail of the weapons rack...
(easier to see with the warlord removed!)

I tried something new for this project, which was making my own 28mm Black Orc arrows. I wanted to stick these into the outside of the war-litter. I think that creates the effect that it has been under attack or is in the midst of battle.

I'll add a "How To" to the blog when I can!

Cheers,

Painting Skaven Stormvermin.

"They are finished my lord", said his aide de camp, as the Archlector turned and passed his gauntlets to another underling. Indeed, he himself had come to that conclusion some minutes ago on seeing most of the Skaven left flank turn and run before sheets of searing flame. That new boy the College of Magic had sent was proving to be capable beyond his years, his proficiency demonstrated by the cleansing blaze that had sent the vermin scurrying (accompanied by an unpleasant smell of burnt hair). His magical power spent, the wizard was now in his tent, exhausted.

A whinnying and a spray of dirt announced the arrival of a messenger on horseback. "Report!" growled the Archlector. "Reinforcements on the left flank, sire" 
"Numbers?" 
"Some thousands my lord." 
A lieutenant-general saw an immediate opportunity to offer an opinion: "Surely of no consequence sir? The enemy have lost tens of thousands on that fl..." 
The archlector (alone in his party in having fought the rat-men before) cut him off in mid sentence. He looked up at the rider once more, his forehead creased with concern. "Composition?"
"Heavy infantry my lord. Well armored and..." there was the briefest of pauses. 
"...unusually disciplined".
Knowing there to be only one type of enemy troop that could match that description, the archlector immediately turned once more to his commanders, steel in his voice. 
"Reinforce the left flank immediately! What troops do we have available?" 
"Some levies, light troops from Osterland, a brigade of sword and some outriders sir" 
"Send them all..."
"Immediately Sir!" the aide ran away.

"...and let us pray they are enough."


Here is a guide to painting Skaven Stormvermin to a "Tabletop" gaming standard. You certainly won't win any prizes for this, but you will have a unit that looks pretty good on the gaming table. (imho). 
NOTE: I painted these some weeks ago, so the colours and amounts used are rough, but they should give you a good idea of how I painted the unit! Painting a test model first is a good idea.
EDIT: Following the launch of the latest Citadel Paint range in 2012, please note that the colours listed below are from the previous range. I hope to have time to rewrite in the future, but for the time being, you can use the conversion chart/ list I made here or use the official Citadel Conversion chart here.

Paints used: Chaos Black Spray, Skull White, Snakebite Leather, Mordian Blue, Codex Grey, Fortress Grey, Calthan Brown, Shining Gold, Tallarn Flesh, Dwarf Flesh, Elf Flesh, Boltgun Metal, Chainmail, Mithril Silver, Blood Red, Bleached Bone.

Step 1: Preparation.
1. Remove the model from its sprue.
2. Carefully file or trim any excess flash from the model. (If the latter, use caution!)
3. Glue model to base.

Step 2: First Basing.
I like to get the application of materials to my base done at this point to save trouble later. Doing it now allows you to correct any troublesome issues with sand or glue without worrying about any painting you might have done.
1. Sand or trim any flash from around the edge of the base. (It really show sup when you paint it...)
2. Paint watered down PVA glue onto the base, carefully avoiding getting excess glue onto feet or shoes, claws, paws etc. (the model's - not yours)
3. Sprinkle a few pieces of crushed coral onto the base. (Obtained at the aquatic section of any pet shop) I find that 2-3 is enough.
4. Sprinkle sand over the base, so all remaining areas are covered.
5. Allow to dry.
TIP: If you have sand that has flowed over the top of the base and onto the sides, scrape or rub it off now. This will allow for smoother painting of the edges later and will look better and tidier in the end.

Step 3: Priming/ Undercoat.

Prime the whole model. I use Citadel Chaos Black Spray. Black is ideal for a model that will overall be darker in tone (and more forgiving for beginners - if you miss painting anything in hard to reach places it just looks like shadow.)
TIP: Make sure you also prime the edges of the base at this stage. This will make it easier for you to paint them later. It is easy to miss the edges and that will mean you need to use more layers of Snakebite Leather to cover the bare plastic (or undercoat all the edges Chaos Black later.)

Step 4: Second Basing.
Personally, I like to get the bases done a bit further at this stage by wetbrushing/ drybrushing the sand. This is because after reaching a satisfied high upon finishing the detail on the bodies themselves then doing lots of bases right at the end is a bit boring. Most people (I think) wetbrush/ drybrush the bases as the final step.
It is up to you!

1. Wetbrush/ Drybrush Calthan Brown evenly over the sand.
2. Wetbrush/ Drybrush Snakebite Leather lightly.
3. Drybrush Codex Grey or Fortress Grey.
4. Paint edges of base with Snakebite Leather.

Step 5: Basecoats.

In this step you will add the basic colours to the model. It is better to use multiple thin coats than one thick coat.

• Boltgun Metal: Weapons
• Chainmail: Overbrush this onto the chainmail areas, so black is left in the recesses.
• Tallarn Flesh: Skin, tail, ears, etc.
• Mordian Blue: Cloth or armour.
• Snakebite Leather: Straps on vambraces and on the back of the armour.
• Shining Gold: Chains, earrings etc.
• Calthan Brown: Weapon hafts.
• Bleached Bone: Skull on unit banner

Step 6: First Layers/ Highlights.

A layer of lighter blue on the robes.

Highlights of Ice Blue through to a lighter blue on the edges of the armour 

In this step we build up the colours ("Layering") in progressively lighter shades on raised areas to achieve greater variation between light and shadow. This could be lighter but separate colours (Tallarn Flesh> Dwarf Flesh>Elf Flesh) OR by adding Skull White in ever-increasing amounts to a single colour.

Most of the time, I do highlights after washes, but with this unit, I wanted to do a layer first and then use washes to see how it turned out before doing some more layers and drybrushing. (I think either looks fine.)

• Mordian Blue/ Ice Blue: (2:1) Raised folds of cloth/ (armour on champion above)
• Codex Grey/ Fortress Grey: (2:1)

Step 7: Washes.


This step adds shadow and depth to what currently looks like a very "flat" model.

• Devlan Mud: Weapons, robes, breastplates/ armour (everywhere except skin)
• Ogryn Flesh: Skin, tail, feet etc.
• Gryphonne Sepia: Skull on unit banner.

Step 8: Second Layers + Drybrushing.

Having done a first set of layers and then washes, I now did a second set of layers to create more differentiation between the deep shadows created by the washes and raised areas of the model.

• Ice Blue, then Ice Blue/ Skull White mix: (1:2) Raised folds of cloth/ (armour on champion above)
• Dwarf Bronze/ Shining Gold mix (1:1): Earrings etc.
• Codex Grey/ Fortress Grey: (2:1)
• Dwarf Flesh/ Elf Flesh mix: (1:1) Skin, leaving some of the previous darker shade.
• Bleached Bone/ Skull White: Teeth, nails etc.
• Snakebite Leather/ Skull White mix: (2:1) Belt edges, leather straps on armour etc.
• Blood Red: Eyes.
• Mechrite Red/ Blood Red: (1:1) Tassel on weapon (Champion)

Then, use an even lighter shade of the colours you used in layering the model, and carefully "Drybrush" raised areas. This adds a final natural-looking highlight. 

TIP: When drybrushing, first remove almost all of the paint on your brush first by dragging it along a tissue or piece of kitchen towel, otherwise you will get "smears" of paint rather than just leave a fine dusting on raised areas.

• Codex Grey/ Fortress Grey: (1:2) Cloth/ robes.
• Mithril Silver or Chainmail: edges of weapons.
• Ice Blue/ Skull White mix: (1:2) Raised folds of cloth (or edges of armour on the unit champion)
• Elf Flesh: Skin, feet, tail etc.
• Blood Red: Tassel on weapon (Champion)

Option: Edge Highlights. Using a light colour, paint a thin line along any straight edges that would have a natural shine or that you want to stand out. (e.g. Mithril Silver on weapons or armour. See image below.)

Step 9: Final Basing.

After basing. (Note edge highlights on weapon, armour)

You can see the Snakebite Leather highlights more clearly.
(Belt edges)

 Adding some grass or other details to the bases makes a huge difference to the final look of the unit (much more than I first appreciated) and it is one of the simplest things you can do.

• Dab/ brush PVA glue onto base.
• Sprinkle or plant static grass.

I think we are finished! This is how the final unit ended up. I hope you like them.

Cheers,

*Squeek*

Stormvermin finished! Image showcase.

My Stormvermin Champion Fangleader ("The Pastel Predator")

 *Squeek*

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:

I will post a painting guide in a couple of weeks (work is pretty busy at the moment) but some hints and tips that come to mind to remember next time:

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)

 The problem with painting spear elves is the shields. Getting a decent white, even off a Skull White undercoat, takes at least 3-4 thin coats as far as I can tell so far. Doing 30 shields x4 coats each the other night nearly drove me mad!

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*