Milestone 1 is complete and I met my goal. It took a bit to fully nail the colorscheme I wanted aside from the given of using Turbo Dork’s Let Them Eat Cake and Sweet Dreams. Knew that I wanted to do something different from my more grounded Hundred Kingdoms scheme and decided to go with blue fire and orange cloth to accompany the purple. Decided to also prepare for the future milestones by making sure everything was primed and some of the future units at least basecoated. Didn’t get as far on that goal as intended due to a combination of increased ability to demo in person and the beginning of 1.5 playtesting.
Regardless I was able to successfully complete 1 Inferno Automata, the Hold Raegh, the Tempered Sorcerer, 6 Hold Warriors, and 6 Hold Ballistae. Also thanks to Walter’s Workshop’s speed painting challenge I also painted the Tempered Steelshaper. One challenge I decided to take on for this army while painting is to make sure that there are a variety of beard colors and some variation in skin tone. The latter will be more evident as I get more painted since this time was more about figuring out the general recipe for the army. I am predominantly using Scale Color and Turbo Dork paints for this.
For the weapons I decided to go with Scale’s Necro Gold highlighted with Victorian Brass and Heavy Metal for the blades and the hafts/ballistae are Turbo Dork’s Six Shooter highlighted with Scale’s Heavy Metal. That steel recipe is also what I did for some details like the designs on the shoulder pads. Was originally going to go for a gunmetal but found that when the armor shifted that the shift color made the gunmetal very hard to see. For the clothes I used Indian Shadow followed with layer of Kalahari Orange. After that I did some stippling with Tenere Yellow followed by a wash of GW’s Casandora Yellow. The skin in this milestone was primarily Indian Shadow followed highlights in Arabic Shadow and Pink Flesh.
I am particularly happy with how the fire on the automata and sorcerer turned out. That is all Turbo Dork paint, about five layers of Ice to Never followed by Da Ba Dee on the edges and Pearly Gates in the crevices. Ice to Never is supposed to be a colorshift but it’s not too noticeable with mine since I think that bottle was part of a dodgy batch but it’s still a lovely shade of blue that looks nice and ethereal.
Decided also to try a more traditional method for basing. Wanted to have it look like they are taking the field after a light snow has fallen. So I based with a mixture of unpainted sand, grit, and green meadow flock. Then I glued some flower tufts from Huge Miniatures on the characters and those will make an appearance later as well. Once that all set I dabbed some modpodge on to the ground for sealing and lightly on the flowers then dusted them with some old Citadel snow flock I had laying around. Really happy with how it looks and think it provides a nice complement to the overall paint scheme.
Anyways now it’s on to Milestone 2 where I’ll be painting two more Inferno Automata, six Hold Ballistae, and 18 Hold Warriors since I want to have both a well rounded First Blood force and a small Last Argument warband.