The Brush and Boltgun Hallowe’en Special

Booo!

Welcome to our special Hallowe’en post! As Hallowe’en was on a Wednesday this year, we thought it would be a good opportunity to post about some spooky miniatures or scenery we’ve been working on, to keep things on

Ghosts and ghouls aplenty.

 

Adam

Asked to contribute something to our Halloween post was a bit of a puzzler for me. I  tend to do historical or quasi-historical armies. I used to have a large Undead army for Warhammer Fantasy (R.I.P.), but have since sold that to fund new projects.

Rather than feature any models, I have chosen an item from our Brush and Boltgun terrain bin, which I built in January of this year. I was finishing off all of my old Cities of Death terrain when I noticed I had lots of spare walls and accessories that could be used to make more terrain!

After a bit of thinking, rather than rubble piles or something similar, I decided upon the following design of a Sexy Imperial Graveyard (the rest of the year it’s just a regular graveyard but at Halloween every costume appears to need to be ‘sexy’).

The basic skills used on this project, as well as the colours used, are listed in this previous article about Cities of Death.

The first thing I built was the altar for the back of the piece. This is as it dictated the size of the piece. This is two of the buttresses from the Sanctum Imperialis kit, with a piece of 1mm plasticard in between. Across the top runs a thin plasticard strip. I then cut a floor panel to size, to go in front of the altar.

I used the lanterns from the Cities of Death accessory sprue and two of the ‘gargoyle’ eagles with another piece of plasticard in between to make the altar shelf. The banner is from the Empire Greatswords kit.

This looked a bit bland from behind, so I added a vent from the Mechanicus building kit to the back.

Once this was built,  I worked out the size of the graveyard using the wall-pieces. I then cut a piece of 2mm MDF to size.  After that, I cut a number of oddly sized squares from plasticard to form the path, as well as rectangular ones to form the gravestones. I gathered together a number of the small winged gargoyles from the Cities of Death accessories sprue and mutilated a few, to look like battle damage. I also snapped one lamp-post from this sprue, and added the other whole.

This was done first, as I then coated the base board with textured paint (see the Cities of Death tutorial for more on this magical substance!) and pressed the walls, lamp-posts, gargoyles and path/gravestones into the still-wet mix.

This done, I then scraped out a few shell holes next to the battle damaged gargoyles and graves using a clay shaper into the still-wet textured paint.

After that, it was just a matter of waiting for it to dry, painting it and then adding static grass. The transfer on the banner is from the Imperial Guard Tank Transfer sheet.

Apart from that, all the techniques you will need are covered in the article tagged above, with the stones are all painted in the same way as the building walls.

And there we have it! A spooky (/sexy) graveyard for your troops to fight and die over. And perhaps rise again from, if Typhus and his plague zombies are around!

Have a good Halloween and don’t get bitten!

Rob

With the plan for the Hallowe’en post arriving the week before Hallowe’en, I figured it would be about time for me to paint up one of the Nighthaunt miniatures from Warhammer Underworlds Nightvault. I loved painting up the miniatures for the Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire box, so wanted to try and do a decent job on these ones too.

When the Nighthaunt miniatures arrived in the latest Age of Sigmar starter set, I was impressed with them, and set about painting one of the Easy-Fit Banshees for a tutorial, using the Nighthaunt Gloom technical paint, but that only served to wreck the miniature. To me it felt like I was just using a thick shade, or a thin paint, that didn’t really do what I expected it to. For me, if it needs to be thinned with medium to be used properly, it’s not sold fit for purpose, so I binned that pot and passed the Banshees to Mike. I had played around with the Citadel Technical paint Hexwraith Flame though, and decided that, as it worked well without having to mix anything with it, my Nightvault ghosts were going to be Green, not an ethereal grey. Regardless of colour, they still go ‘woooooo’ and drift across corridors behind you without your knowledge.

I decided I was going to paint up one of the Chainrasps, as I liked the look of them, and the headless chap especially, the only thing missing was his horse. The first thing, was to spray him white. Now I shook the can for an age, and still managed to get an almost textured coat on there, but I can work with that, so it’s not too much of an issue.

Once the undercoat was on, it was time to apply a liberal coat of Citadel Technical Hexwraith Flame to the ghostly parts. As Hexwraith Flame is quite a vivid green, I wanted it to show up as really bright on the miniature, so applied a good coat of it. Once it had dried, any sections which didn’t look bright enough I added a little more to.

I couldn’t put my finger on what I loved so much about the colour of it, but R Kid nailed it this evening, when he said it looks like the colours of Slimer from Ghostbusters, and that’s what it is. The cloth over his shoulders I painted Black, and then started to build up grey highlights, using Vallejo German Grey initially, then adding white to it in increasing amounts. The sword blade and chains were painted with Vallejo Model Air Chrome, the hilt with Vallejo Model Air Rust, while the base was painted with Vallejo Flat Earth, and the rocks were painted with Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey. The rose was painted with Xereus Purple.

Next I added an initial layer of shades. The blade, rocks and chains were shaded with Nuln Oil, the hilt and soil with Agrax Earthshade and the branch/briar on the base received Athonian Camoshade.

Once the initial shades were dry, I highlighted the stone using Mechanicus Standard Grey, then adding white to it to make three mixes, each getting lighter. I applied these to the stone, then moved on to the second found of shades. On the blade I added a few layers of Agrax Earthshade to the flat sides, leaving the ridges and edges with the metallic showing through. The blades on these miniatures are really good and have plenty of dents and grooves moulded onto them, so it was just a case of adding more Agrax to the recesses, and less to the raised areas. I also added this to the chain and shackles, between the links, and around any joins in the metal.

I added another couple of layers of Athonian Camoshade to the Briar too, as well as a few touches of Agrax Earthshade around a couple of the thorns. Druchii Violet was added to the rose.

The part I’d been dreading was left to do, and that was the white on the ghostly sections. As it turned out, it wasn’t so bad. I added a drop of water to some Vallejo White and just built up layers of the white on the ridges and edges. The miniatures themselves do a lot of the work, and with the Hexwraith Flame being darker in the recesses, it’s it basically highlights where you need to add the white. Brilliant! The final touches once the white was finished were to add highlights of Genestealer Purple, and Emperor’s Children to the rose to give it a highlight.

That’s it from me for today! Have a great Hallowe’en, and try to remember that the undead are people too, they just want to haunt you.

Mike

I absolutely fell in love with the Nighthaunt models as soon as I saw them. I wanted mine to look just like the studio models, they’re one of the only armies I’ve ever seen where the sculpting and painting is just perhaps. However, I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do this. It’s quite a different technique than I’m used to and a far cry from edge highlight power armour panels. It took me a couple of test models, just trying out techniques, and cross referencing some of Warhammer TV’s excellent video tutorials.

You can use either of Citadel’s technical paints Nighthaunt Gloom, or Hexwraith Flame (As Rob has) over a light-coloured basecoat, making sure you don’t use too much, like a shade, and keeping a wet brush handy to make sure that it doesn’t pool (You can also use Nihilakh Oxide for this). Then you can drybrush Ulthuan Grey, then Pallid Wych Flesh in varying intensities over this to create a ghostly, ready to battle look, if you want a quick method for lots of ghosts.

However, I wanted to recreate that blended look that Games Workshop used on their studio versions of these models.

I basecoated these Chainrasps with a white basecoat, then painted the model with Ulthuan Grey. Then I did about 3 or 4 light glazes of Nighthaunt Gloom. To do this, I mixed it with Lahmian Medium, as you would do to create any glaze (You can do this with any shade paint), about 1:3 Nighthaunt Gloom to Medium. Then I painted this on sparingly, from the top of the model and allowing it to dry. At first it will give a subtle blue colour, but keep adding layers of glaze until you are happy with the intensity. I then highlighted the folds of the cloth, quite roughly, with Ionrach Skin, to give it that dirty cloth look (In future I may swap Ulthuan Grey for Ionrach Skin in the first instance), then a smaller hightlight of Ulthuan Grey, then an extreme highlight of White Scar.

The cloaks were painted black and highlighted, then the wood was painted Dryad Bark, given various colours of washes to make it look irregular, and drybrushed with some lighter browns.

Rusted weapons are really easy to achieve, basecoat using your dark metal colour of choice. Then drybrush and stipple a rust colour, I used Ryza Rust for this. Then all you need to do is highlight it using a lighter metal colour, and add some small scrathes and nicks to the blade.

And there you have it, a fully painted Nighthaunt Chainrasp. You can use these methods for the rest of your Nighthaunt army.

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Happy Hallowe’en!