The Shysh Reaper

Swinging into action comes the third of the Endless spells. This one is specific to the Nighthaunt unlike the previous two. I picked up the box for completions sake to be honest as I don't rate any of the spells in it that highly. They are good, don't get me wrong, but I think they are currently out competed by the standard spells from Malign Sorcery. This model is pretty cool though so as a distraction from the Chainrasps I painted it. I wasn't happy with how the Aethervoid Pendulum came out and this is essentially version two. I made the highlighting more extreme and I think this captures the jade colour I was going for better. As for the metal pieces and the wood I didn't want these to be in natural colous so I kept them within the scheme. The metal is mainly blue with some stippled silver to give a metallic impression rather than just being straight up mettalic. My method for doing this could be a little better but as I've only begun experimenting with the technique recently it came out well enough. The flames were another experiment. I have been doing them mainly blue and for this I changed that to green. I think its actually better for magical flames but I am not sure that it would look as good on the ghost models. They definitely look better with a more blue shade, probably as this ties in well with the cowls they have. Next up I'll be painting the Grimghast Reapers and Spirit Torment.

Tomb Banshee - The Lady of Laments

You might have seen her before but now she is actually finished. When I started painting her I had no idea how I wanted to do the base. Now that I've made the decision its time for her and the Knight of Shrouds to finally get done. As her base is pretty large and fairly empty I made sure to add a good section of cobblestones/flagstones. I could have added a few more decorative elements to make it look a little more interesting but as these take a lot of time to do and I only have ten spearheads left to use I thought I'd reserve the railings at least for some of the characters or on bases that are smaller so I don't need to use so much. I think the dark grey stone contrasts well enough with the lighter models on top and also doesn't distract from them. A lot of basing schemes at the moment go for very high contrast and I often find myself looking at the bases more than the models. If anyone has a few spare spear tips from the Freeguild box I'd take them off you.

The Horde is Complete

I've the first twenty Chainrasps done. As I've said before: painting twenty in one go is pretty soul destroying. I do have another twenty to do for my eventual list but for now I can bask in the glory of having finished these and quickly move on to the next unit. I am going to continue working my way through the Soul Wars box, even if the units aren't complete they still will add to the army and reduce what I have to paint when I do pick up units boxes. I put together the Grimghast Reapers, more on that tomorrow, and I'll start on them tonight.
The colours I'm using for the army will remain the same. I'll bring some red into the Reapers to break up the scheme just slightly. It'll also tie in well with the Black Coach as it has some proper cloth elements. I really like the combination of Incubi Darkness with Stegadon Scale Green, both are GW paints. It's a nice subtle highlight and with the larger Grimghasts I'll even try to bring this up to an edge highlight of a stronger green, Kalibite Green (GW). The models are mush larger than the Chainrasps and I think the large dark surface that dominates them would be too boring without at least a subtle edge highlight to bring it up.

Aethervoid Pendulum

I've been making progress on my Nighthaunts, I swear! However I've also been making progress with my endless spells. I'm not sure why I decided to paint the Aethervoid Pendulum, we'd been talking about it during last weeks game and maybe that spurred me into action. Its done now and ready to be swung in earnest. The spell seems okay but I'm waiting on a ruling to see if it really can travel only in one direction or if it can move back and forth along its line of travel. Its far more useful if it can go back and forth though also its potentially for more dangerous to my own army. If I cast this spell I'd much prefer that it keep going forwards towards the enemy than potentially coming right back at me.

I went with a simple paint scheme in keeping with my Nighthaunts. I was inspired by some of the work I've seen done on the Necrons and I think the sharp (but barely visible in the photograph) highlight of green brings some nice variance in the model. I'd actually be tempted to add another final highlight but we'll have to wait and see on that front as I have to get the Chainrasps done. A solid evenings work will see the full twenty ready for the battlefield.

Chainrasp Horde

Disappointingly it seems I will have a lot more chainrasps to do in the near future. Now that the book has been released I've seen the battalions and the most interesting ones are comprised mainly of chainrasps. I knew I'd have to paint more but as these do take quite a while to paint I had hoped forty would be close enough to suffice. That would fill the minimum requirement of the battalions but to be effective I think I would have to go for two units of forty. Hopefully we will get a good multi-part kits for these that has a little more variance than the ones from the boxed set. at least that would make the painting a little less tedious.

Having complained a lot I'll switch gear and show you the current status of the twenty models from the starter box. These are just about done. Most of the work left are little details and the bases. I got a good bit of time over the weekend to paint which helped me to progress with these nicely. The cloaks could probably do with one more highlight but I don't have a colour suitable for this at the moment so I have to search a little further. I don't want the hassle of mixing any paints for these. As far as is possible I want to go with readily available paints. The cloak is Incubi Darkness, washed with Nuln Oil and then highlighted with Incubi darkness and Stegadon scale green. The quality of the photograph here makes it impossible to really see much of the paintwork. Still the highlights are subtle, the way I like them, but they are just not visible enough. I'll spend a few moments on the GW website later in the day and see what paint might fit with the ideas I've got.

After the Chainrasps are done I want to start with the Glaivewraith Stalkers. I haven't as yet taken any off the sprue but as these are larger models hopefully they will be easier to put together and possibly quicker to paint. It is easy to forget that the larger surface area of a model can take a lot longer to paint than something smaller. The endless Spells for example take an age to paint simply because the surface areas are massive.... maybe I need a bigger brush? Anyway more on them towards the end of the week.

Purple Sun of Xereus

I picked up the Malign Sorceries expansion when it came out last weekend. The spells look amazing and its nice to have them represented on the battlefield again, just like in the good old days of fourth and fifth edition. They were removed I think, as templates at least, once sixth rolled around and this was probably for the best. However as models these work excellently on the battlefield. Not only do they look cool but they have a big impact on the game. I suppose that's just conjecture on my part as I haven't used them yet but it does look like they'll be huge.

I was mainly interested on the Grave Tide but for some reason I probably did like everyone else and glued the Purple sun together. This was easy enough as the internal frame worked a treat. I guess they might begin to use this on other bigger models in the future as it makes them very sturdy. Everything pushed together well despite the smaller spikes being a little too sharp for my delicate thumbs. The kit has a big problem with gaps and while I filled them all using the Gloss Varnish method it just wasn't enough. I should have done a coat or two more to really smooth them out. As this was the first time that I had tried the method however I can't expect great results. Next time I'll know. As for painting I didn't want such a dark orb as is shown in the picture and I didn't want to go and buy a load of purple paint that I'll barely ever use. I had a purple wash and that was going to suffice! With that in mind I sprayed the Sun white. Over the purple plastic it was hard to get a solid colour so in the end I had to brush a layer of white on. Over that I added some diluted Druchi Violet. This came out quite pink and so I gave the recessed areas a second wash to deepen the colour and bring it up to a more purple hue.

The fun started next with a simple line highlight of white along the most raised areas. I could have targeted this better but the effect I got is good so I'm happy with it. At that stage I had the Purple Sun basically done but as it was essentially all one colour it looked really boring. To change it up a bit I started blending the tips of the spikes out to Incubi Darkness. This worked really well on the downward pointing spikes but on those that pointed upwards it was hard to control the wash and prevent tide lines. Again it came out good enough that I didn't really worry too much about fixing any errors. For the base piece I decided again that going purple with it wasn't going to look that good so I went for a blue green. Its subtly different from the spikes but not much and most people won't notice it. Finally when it came to basing the model I went with a fairly standard basing scheme to match my armies and the board. However I guess that the passage of the Purple sun must have some effect on the ground behind it and so I used one of the crackle texture paints to give that effect and I painted it to look like ash. All in all this model was good fun to paint and while it won't see much board time sadly it will look great in the collection.

More work on the Chainrasps

Progress continues apace with my Chainrasps. I definitely think that batch painting 22 models wasn't the best decision but at least I still feel like I am making some progress. I've done the basic washes on them all now and tonight I'll be hitting them with a special Coelia Greenshade mix to create a greater depth on the white robes they have. That shouldn't take long but so far that prediction has been wrong at every step. After that wash is dry I can apply some more localised washes of Waywatcher Green to create some variance in the colours. It's totally unnecessary but breaks up what could be a rather monotonous scheme. If all goes well I can even start the highlighting stage. The target is to have these done by the end of the weekend. I don't know if that will include the bases but it would be nice if it did.

Chainrasps and a few others

Work has started on my Nighthaunts. I picked up everything last week and then promptly got distracted by a Purple Sun. Somehow I had the idea that it would be quick to paint. It wasn't but its nearly done now, more to follow on that during the week. As for the Nighthaunts the models are lovely but rather flimsy. It takes a while to get them off the sprue and once you've come to the point of putting them together you will discover a lot of gaps that need filling. They are great, don't get me wrong but one of the limitations of push-fit models is gaps in bad places. I tried to fill them with some gloss varnish and it worked for some. Though I noticed that if you aren't careful in applying it you will actually exacerbate the problem by creating two ridges that run parallel to the gap you need to fill. people have recommended GW's 'Ardcoat for the job and that might be better. I was using Vajello gloss Varnish.
Anyway I have managed to get two of the three colours on these guys that constitutes their base coat, Ulthuan Grey and Incubi Darkness. The third is for the metals and is Leadbelcher. Once that's on tonight I can start washing the models and hopefully I will make rather rapid progress from there. I have pre-mixed both a blue and a dark green wash so I don't have to worry about getting ratios correct each time. The only wash I'll still mix by hand is Waywatcher Green as I use it very sparingly over the models.
If all goes to plan I'll be able to post updates each day this week and by the end of it I'll have the bulk of the Starter Box done. That's the plan anyway.