The Old World Army Challenge: JamesG's Nibelung Valesti (200 pts)

The goal for this first month was to come up with a color scheme that can work with a variety of armored and natural figures and maintain the overall feel of the Norse army. I picked a couple of line infantry, a Yeti, and a hero that was both armored and natural (a Valkyrie and a Pegasus) to try and accomplish this.

First up was the Valkyrie. I had planned to paint her later in the challenge, but once I got started I stuck with this figure for a while. The Pegasus gave me a chance to try some different techniques working with white that I spent a lot of time on. The wings received a few different thin washes with white drybrushing and that worked well. We were watching a lot of Bob's Burgers at the time, too, so Tina Belcher demanded that attention be paid to all of the horse's body details.

The Valkyrie herself was a little odd in that she has large armor plates along with lighter armor and then areas of skin that are completely...let's say...unprotected. I altered this style a little by using a Space Wolf greyish color to make it look like there's a second layer of lighter armor. I ended up liking this a lot and then added brass on the largest armor pieces to make them stand out. The lance got a spiral because hey, I used to have Bretonnians and it's just muscle memory at this point.

Our friend Umaro the Yeti/Snow Troll was up next. He's a drybrushing dream and I played around with a few different base colors before settling on this. Picking out the exposed skin of the face, hands and feet in a different but complimentary color was meant to make him a little more believable as a primate and potential henchman of Gorilla Grodd.
This guy is my first Reaper Bones success, so thanks to all the OWAC members that shared tips and experience working with this wack-a-doo material. I can't complain about a 40mm base critter for $3.99.

Then we have a couple of line infantry to round out the points for the month. These little pillagers are vikings from Gripping Beast, a kit that I've wanted to pick up since it was released. I chose to make them a little less dark-agey for the purposes of being in a fantasy army, so they've got some nice bright blues and yellows to go along with their 4th ed-style goblin green bases. They may be ready to ransack the Empire, but they still need to observe the vibrant colors of the day, back before we got all angsty and started painting everything black.

All in all there were few models, but this foundation gets me moving forward with a clear plan for everything else; we all know the paint flows faster when you already know which colors to grab!

January's Roster