On the Bench: Amethyst Veil (Retro Blog)

Heavy Metal

Before I roll into the next step of the project, I wanted to mention a change I made to the project plan. It’s not a major change, but it was one that I thought I should make so I can be ready to play at least in part come May. The change was to swap the cairn wraiths with the second unit of skeletons in the plan. With the change, I now anticipate that I will have a fully painted warband ready in time for the next season of the league.

The revised project plan
Skeletons (10) w/ full command [CCC]
Lich
Cairn Wraiths (4)
Skeletons (10) w/ full command
Wight King
Grave Guard (10) w/ full command
Vespero’s Vendetta (5)


Something to Ponder: As I write today’s post and think about the changes I am making to the project plan, I came to wonder what would be the use of a vampire with the ethereal power. There are only two units that he can join, ghosts (you know what I mean *wink*) and cairn wraiths, and unless the vampire is a lord, it will not have any additional vampire powers. I thought maybe a lord with the power plus the additional magic levels and one of the summoning powers (hint: skeletons) parked in a unit of cairn wraith to protect it, but that seems like a waste. So has anyone come up with a good use for the power?

For today’s painting, I assault the metal portions of the model. You may have caught in yesterday’s picture a preview of the color scheme, so I’ll recap it here and just talk about my challenges and reasons for using it.

Chaos Black (4:1 chaos black: thinner)
Chaos Black: Black Grey (3:3:2 chaos black: black grey: thinner)
Black Grey (4:1 black grey: thinner)
Black Grey: London Grey (3:3:2 black grey: london grey: thinner)
London Grey (4:1 london grey: thinner, 00 size brush)
London Grey: Light Grey (3:3:2 london grey: light grey: thinner)
Light Grey (4:1 light grey: thinner)
Light Grey: Skull White (2:2:1 light grey: skull white: thinner)

There are a few reasons for using the color scheme above to represent steel metallics. The first reason is I like the ‘cartoon’ look on my WFB models. If I were to compare this with video games, I would say I like the look of Super Smash Brothers Brawl over the look of Gears of War (Just talking artistic vision and not gameplay or story). Second, I don’t want to have to deal with the drawbacks of working with metallics. Don’t get me wrong, I like the look of them, as I have used them extensively with certain 40K armies, but you need to be careful with which brushes you use and need to make sure you really clean your painting supplies before switching from metallics to non-metallics, otherwise you may get the glitter effect.





Next Time: Beating my drum.