Keep Calm And Blog On: A Painting Update For Chaos Dwarfs & Chaos Space Marines

Well it's all gone a wee bit weird, hasn't it?

My home country of the United Kingdom has had a rather big and rather surprising referendum result and as a politics nerd I've been following it, to the detriment of this blog which has had a few part-written articles on the to do list for a while.  Instead I woke up Friday 3am for the electoral count and fallout, continuing to hit Refresh on BBC news on an hourly basis ever since.

I could write paragraph upon paragraph about this turn of events, but it's not even vaguely what this blog is about.  This is a place about daemons, dwarfs, dragons, superheroes, holodecks, psychics and dice.  Real world issues stay off and do not interrupt.

Also, I think it would do me good to not think about it for the next wee bit! 

At least the Americans are seeing the bright side.

So let's catch up on what I've been up on the painting front instead and not even use the words Brexit, Farage, Eurozone, Constitution, Crisis, Denmark, Romanians, Neo-Fascist or Civil War.

Wait, that's two words.

Ach, you know what I mean.

A lot of drybrushing, the reverse of the usual "progressively lighter shades"

So you may remember I painted some Chaos Dwarf golems a wee bit ago.  You know, big lava looking monsters?  Neon orange with darker and darker shades over them?

"I could tell her they were gifts.  Yes, gifts from a friend in Edinburgh she's never met."

 You may also remember I got some more golems when I was in Edinburgh in April, as part of the alleged "weekend away for my anniversary with Sister Superior".  You know, when I got load of geeky things?  I told Sister Superior it was mostly a bargain and she didn't question it too hard?

Yeah, so if I'm going to get yet more unpainted bits of plastic I really need to paint them to justify the spend.  And paint them I did, with three more golems ready to roll giving me a unit of six silicate hard-men!

Sprayed white, basecoated orange and washed in yellow.  Next to a previous finished golem.

These were done very similarly to the last one: start with an flourescent orange base, wash in yellowy orange into the cracks and then drybrush up with red, brown and finally a grey.

The differences were minor parts of the process because the original ones came out a big orange-and-grey with not much of the inbetween stage - all the grey ended up obliterating all the variation in orange, red and brown!  However this time I was a bit more careful with the drybrushing, decreasing the size of the brush with each darker colour.

A heavy drybrush of Mephiston Red

 The result was much gentler shifting in colour, in which the previous hues shone through even as  I went darker and darker.

Rust next and a smaller brush is used to prevent it from going all the way down as much as the red.

The Yellow wash was also done differently.  Rather than just thin the paint down with water, I used glazing medium as well.  While my experiment with making my own pink glaze was a disaster, adding some glazing medium to watered down paint gave it a thicker yet see-through texture which helped it cling better into the recesses.

A tiny brush puts some Shadow Grey on, which is a little too pale at this point, and the ash wasteland base is applied

 The end result as my pictures show is Golems who look more like I originally imagined, more "hot" with a yellowy orangey core that slowly steps up.  There's patches that seem more molten magma, other segments seem to be crusting over, but the figure isn't just orange and grey.

A close-up top view of one of the figures.... and it's real base.

 While doing this I discovered why I was having problems ranking the figures up - Mantic golem are supposed to be on special large bases but I had used generic Warhammer large infantry bases like you'd use for Ogres or Trolls.  As you'll see the extra bases give them a bit more space, and by defaulting to the smaller bases I had made them far too cosy - whoops!

Still, I took some care to assemble the three new ones and the end result is that once all the colours of paint were on, they could rank up fairly well.

Six golems, with varnish and a little darker grey added.

So with that I've got a big chunky unit of Golems ready for my next game of Warhammer, Kings of War or whatever other fantasy game takes my fancy!

Back in Spaceman land, I haven't neglected the Chaos Space Marines.  I've played a few games in the Anarchronista 40,000 campaign - new updates to follow, naturally - and that has required me to get some new figures ready.  A wad more Chaos Cultists have been the current painting project, including a pair of Forge World Rogue Psykers who are very keen to summon forth dark energies and direct them against the foes of Slaanesh.

You know Sister Superior compares me to the Pokemon known as Chimchar.  Can't think why.

Why when I have so many power armoured guys still to paint am I working on lowly Lasgun-wielding canon fodder?  That, my friend, is because I have been looking to expand into a slightly different area.  I want to use my cultists not as cultists, but as Renegades & Heretics as featured in the Forge World army list found in Imperial Armour 13 and 5.

This is effectively a traitor militia force made up of all the rag-tag wastrels, quislings and scum of the galaxy - the sort of people who, if the Daleks invade, would think they could turn traitor to humanity and obviously the Daleks would give them a reward!  Why, I'm sure those Chaos Space Marines will shower them with praise and definitely not use them as living mine clearance aides!

...He so dead.

Chaos Renegades ally very well with the Chaos Space Marines.  Their tactics are very different, of course - their basic troops are absolutely rubbish, but cheap and cheerful versus the Chaos Space Marines who tend to be elite but expensive.  Almost all my CSM troops are either Fearless or excellent Leadership while the Renegades are... well, unlikely to stand still when the bombs start dropping, let's put it that way.

Their army gains access to much of the Imperial Guard back catalogue of tanks however and that's where allying them in comes in handy.  Thanks to eBay, it got even handier, as for the price of one new Leman Russ tank I am the proud owner of three different models.

Left to right I think we've got the rapid-firing anti-infantry Punisher, the building-levelling Demolisher and the burning plasma of the Eradicator.

I'll go into the tactics and specific applications for combining these two armies another time - for now, it's enough to say that I'm hoping they bring cannon fodder and artillery fire support while my CSM remain the speartip that does the taking and holding of objectives.

Finally, there is one other painting update I know you'll all be desperate for...

A quick pick taken from my mobile phone

Yes, I have repainted over the botched Imperial Knight with a coat or two of pale pink and it's done wonders.  For some bumpier sections I just went with a very heavy pink drybrush but for the large plates I just painted lots of it back in, leaving a perimeter of darker pink/purple behind

While not perfect it's a lot better than it was.  Decorating the shields, shoulders and banner can now commence without me worried that the whole thing looks a bit of a blob!