cornixt:
I wrote this offline, then accidentally wrote over the file with something else. So here goes again.
Finally, my painted army is collected into a single glorious whole. The 4th/5th edition portion has been mostly languishing in a box for the last few years since I finished painting it. My whole army has crossed at least two oceans, several thousand miles of land, before sitting in storage for months and years. At the end of its world tour it was inspected by customs (who opened every single box of miniatures and completely ignored everything else I owned) and nearly all of it survived with only the odd arm or shield fallen off. Last weekend I finally had some free time, some inclination, and I actually remembered that I’d been meaning to do this, so I got it all out and took some photos. 4k of classic 4th/5th edition big hats and 5th edition O&G slaves, plus a further 1k of conversions. I still have a load of unpainted big hats that will slowly make it into the army, and a ton of unfinished conversions for the army, maybe 2k in total. I forgot that
The photos haven’t turned out all that good, but I didn’t realise until I’d pack it all away. It took me an hour to get them all out and set up. I remembered that I had some empty miniatures cases that I’d bought for this purpose - 10 minutes and they were packed. I used Kaiser Rushforth cases, the cheapest cases I’ve ever found and great quality too. Very flexible system so you can mix and match unit types in the same case. I thoroughly recommend them. I got all of the big hats in a single case, including all the war machines and Taurus.
Info/history on the models:
I was part way through rebasing some of the models when I first packed them away, so there are a few that are unflocked. The silver Death Rocket was the first CD model I ever painted and I think it looks awful now. The crew came out pretty good except for their hats. They still have the original brown paint that I mixed because the starter paint set didn’t include it (the starter paint set at the time was missing quite a few of the colours that GW said were essential in all their painting guides!).
The plastic warriors are where I honed my colour scheme. I used a lot of Enchanted Blue because it went over everything (such as mistakes and bare plastic) so well. It undercoated better than Skull White and Chaos Black and had a very strong pigment. I still have the original pot. The warriors beards were Midnite Blue with a thin black wash. I was trying to emulate the GW colouring. The more recently painted models have plain black beards.
The Great Taurus has been painted three times so far, each layer going over the previous. Started out blood red, which looked too dark and crappy. Then I painted the blood red over a bright yellow base - much brighter, but also silly. The mane also gained a white streak down the middle. The last coat was Red Gore. The horns went to plain black. Very little highlighting or shading. I rebased it when the base size went up to 50mm square so the weird rocks I originally made for it are no longer present. Should’ve flock it too. The rider was my first conversion. I gave him a hoof for a foot, taken from a beastman model. I cut it down so much that it was practically a sculpt carved from plastic. He was my most prized model for a long time, and is still the one with the best eyes I have ever painted. He is attached to the Taurus using an unglued pin - the same method I use for nearly all temporary attachments.
The most recent addition was the lord on foot. I got him already half painted and the back banner refused to be unstuck. Since I couldn’t removed it, I worked with it and added some plastic DE banners. He was completely repainted, and with my much greater experience he turned out really well.
Most of the hats are metallic coloured details on black. This is by far the easiest and best looking way of painting the hats for someone of my talents. Trying to do red arrows over black like the GW scheme was horribly messy. You can recognise the older models from the much brighter and more varied colours. Big tip: don’t paint the skulls on hats white.
The Black Orcs are normal plastic Orcs that are painted and armed to look like Black Orcs. I did this long before there were any hints of a plastoc BO set. The Goblins are partially reconstructed from the 4th edition plastics and the 6th edition plastic Goblin leftovers, so they all look pretty much like normal 6th ed models. I saved myself a lot of money doing these two units this way. The HG wolfriders had lent a couple of wolves to a chariot conversion that you can see in the back of the unit. I didn’t want to risk taking apart the bases that were stuck with old blu-tac, but I can do it if I need to. I swapped one of the HG BT crews with my Blood Bowl stand-ins to add a little more variety to the army. It was an easy way to get rid of obvious model repetition.
What I have not yet painted but may be added next: Lammasu, second taurus, full BC converted unit
