The Legion rises - Valtteri's Undead - January Rank & File

First month of my first OWAC done! And it went great!

I managed to avoid getting sick (not a mean feat with little kids in daycare and school during winter), painted all the models I intended to and a few extras to boot.

My plan was to paint a nice block of Skeleton Warriors with a hand painted banner, a Wight to lead them and my first leader model, a Necromancer. I knew this wasn't going to be too difficult, because I had already painted two units of skeletons as a test, so I had the process down.

Behold! The start of my legion:

(These skellies were painted before OWAC9 but the Ogre is brand new)

Dr. Kemmler's painting clinic

I don't have a narrative for my army yet, though I might get inspired later on. So I'll focus on painting.

January goals.

These skeletons are 3D prints from Celtic Miniatures. Like I wrote in my first blog post, I didn't feel like hunting down dozens of old plastic skellies. I really dislike stripping plastic models of old paint jobs, not to mention cleaning mould lines from already assembled minis. These prints were really easy and fast to clean and assemble and they have a perfect old school aesthetic. And great shields to boot!

My painting method is dead simple:
First I spray them with a white primer.
Then I do the bases: dark brown followed by drybrushing of lighter browns and greys.
I then paint everything that isn't bone: swords, banner pole etc. I only paint a base color and maybe a single highlight.
Then I clean up the bone with white, correcting any mistakes I did previously.

Base colours. Ha. Ha.

After the skeletons are basecoated I moved onto the shields:

These were primed black.

I painted the red patterns first, because it required multiple layers and was messy. Then the dark grey parts, tidying up the red borders. 

The skulls were first painted brown, then layered with a bone colour. They were further highlighted by a light beige and pure white.

Metal parts were painted last, no highlights.

Shields progress.

I glued the shields on in preparation for the final part - cracking open a bottle of liquid talent.

Ready to rise from the grave.

Some of you might have guessed it already. I'm of course talking about enamel washes, namely the hobby sensation that is Streaking Grime.

In case you're not familiar with this method I'm going to give a quick breakdown.

You need:
Thinned enamel paint aka wash.
Thinner/white spirit. I highly recommend an odourless one!
Old crappy brushes (these paints will ruin your brushes).
Q-tips or make-up sponges.
A metal pallette.
A pipette/dropper makes using the thinner easier and less messy.

Tools of the trade.

Enamel painting couldn't be simpler.
You drown the model in the wash, wipe most of it off with a Q-tip dipped in thinner (remember to change the Q-tips after a few models, they will not last long) and then wait for a day or two until the paint has dried.

Below is an example of this. The third pic is after the paint has just been wiped off, the fourth pic is what it looks like after a day.
You will end with a nice, moderately dirty model with a nice matte finish. Remember to use bright basecoat colors, otherwise you will end up with a drab model.
I used a few different tones for colour variation (Mig & AK Streaking Grime and AK Dark Streaking Grime).

It might be a good idea to varnish the model before using enamels and thinner, if you brush them too hard you might dissolve some of the previous paint job. I don't bother with plastic models but do it with metals, just to be safe.

Rise my minion!

Painting the banner probably took me as long as the whole unit of skeletons. It's an old-school printed paper banner from the 4th ed. Army Book which I then painted with acrylics and a brush. The hardest part is the black lining at the end. Thin paint, a good brush and a prayer to the old gods does the trick!
As a kid I thought the idea of painting the black&white banners to look like the ones in the Army Books was a cruel joke. No mortal could do it. Well, turns out you can!

Childhood ambitions: Unlocked.

The Wight was painted just like the skeletons, only with more colours. With the Wight I did some preliminary highlights on the bone, cloak and the winged helm and a used varnish to protect him.

I feel like a new man after that bath!

All of my Wights will be painted in the colour scheme of the Army Book, though with more muted colours.

Twins!

You might remember that the Wight on the cover of the Army Book has a menacing green blade. When I started this project I decided that I wanted to give all my wights weapons like that. And because I like to challenge myself now and then I settled on doing them with a NMM-like technique. 

Now, I can't actually paint NMM. My brain just doesn't understand how light reflects and bounces off different surfaces. So I just look at reference pictures and copy them. This works just fine with simple surfaces like swords but with this battle axe I just had to guess. Turned out pretty good though!

Spooky.

The Necromancer was painted with a traditional GW style of basecoat, wash and highlights. No enamel shenanigans here. I needed a change to keep things interesting, And I also wanted to make sure he has more vibrant colours than his dead companions. A pink magical sword just seemed appropriate.                                                                     

He's looks fabulous in pink.

Now wait a minute, why did I paint a Leader when it's a rank&file month? Well, that's because I've never really played Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Sure, I tried it as a kid but it just didn't take off, like I wrote in my intro post.
I really want to play now that I'm building a proper army for the game. With the test units from before OWAC9 I've got a nice starter force but no leader. Hence the Necromancer. Don't worry, he will be surpassed by a more powerful ruler when the time comes. Mwahahaa.

I actually have a game of 4th/5th edition WHFB lined up with a friend next month! Hopefully I'll get to do a little battle report for February's post.

At this point I still had a bit over a week left of January, so naturally I decided to paint some more models! Who needs rest, eh? I painted two Skeleton Ogres (available from Ral Partha) which will act as unit fillers. They count as 2 models a piece for the challenge but since they represent 4 skeletons I'm using that as their point cost. I also painted a few more skeletons to round up my previous unit to a nice 30 models and some test models for Mummies and Zombies. I finished an old skeleton drummer as well after taking pics of the skeleton unit, he will replace the horn blower.

Ogres, pre-shading before the enamels.

Extras.

Participation fee and gifts

Somewhere around this time I remembered that I needed to paint a model for the organizers. I managed to pick up this old spindly Wraith, gave it a quick paint job and shipped it off to Jaakko. I decided to paint him more corporeal than ethereal, I felt it suited this model better. Hope you like it!

Stab, stab, stabbety stab.

To top this month of I bought a bunch of reinforcements from around the globe. 
The sweetest part was these two models, gifted to me from Tom - free of charge! Thanks mate, greatly appreciated!

Best.

Stats

So here's what my painting looks like after the first month:

25 Skeletons w. Swords&Shields, including Command Group	214 points	25 models
Wight	37 points	1 model
Necromancer Champion	163 points	1 model
2 Skeleton Ogres	72 points	4 models
2 Mummies	90 points	2 models
Total	576 points	33 models

With my previous units I already have close to a 1000 points painted, enough to play my first game!

Phew! That was a long post. Respect if you managed to read through it.
For December I'm trying to paint an unit of Zombies and maybe some extras too. See you then!