Painted Blue Horrors

These are Blue Horrors, part of the Chaos Daemons faction I’m gradually working on for Warhammer 40K. I’m kind of doing these in the wrong order since one would normally start with Pink Horrors (which I don’t even own yet) then they split into two smaller, weaker Blue Horrors instead of dying. The Blues then split themselves into a pair of Brimstone Horrors upon their deaths. They can all be bought and fielded separately too so there is no need to always put Pink Horrors in the army list. I’m not really sure how best to use the Blue Horrors though. If I just want cheap body blockers and tarpits then Brimstones seem to be way to go, whereas Pink Horrors are the option if I actually want them to achieve anything.

Anyway, the Blue Horrors were pleasingly fast and simple to paint up to my satisfaction. The whole lot got painted blue all over (the clue is in the name, after all) then I picked out the weapons and jewellery in silver. I chose silver since it provided a nicer contrast to the skin than bronze. Finally I picked out the flames, tongues and teeth to brighten the lot of them up. I’m quite happy with the results, especially considering the amount of time expended on them.

Next on the painting table: Troll Axer.

Painted Brimstone Horrors

My good friend Gareth had a bit of a hankering to get back into Warhammer 40K, and so I agreed to join him. I do have some Harlequins to use but I realised that since I already have pretty much one of each kit that exists for that force, it would be hard to expand much. We might not go to big games anyway, but I took the opportunity for a new project anyway. After some discussion, I have ended up with Chaos Daemons, and my recent birthday present included a box of Blue Horrors and Brimstone Horrors.

I don’t even think that Brimstone Horrors were in the game or the story the last time I touched Warhammer 40K, but they seem like quite cute little chaps. They are dirt cheap (the ten pictured barely cost more than a single Space Marine) and have stats to match. I guess that their main purpose is to get in the way and hopefully soak up some bullets intended for bigger and more dangerous part of my army.

As befits a unit of probably the cheapest models in the game, I didn’t spend too long on this lot. A yellow coat was followed by orange on most of the raised parts and then red on the highest sections and the tips of the flames that the Brimstone Horrors are made up of. I then picked out the eyes and teeth, mainly because otherwise they looked a little too much like they were only fire (i.e. and not little imps) at a distance.

Next on the painting table: Troll Impaler.

Harlequins family photo

Here are a couple of photos of my complete Harlequin family so far. I’m pretty sure that this is not even a legal force in 8th ed Warhammer 40,000, so if I want to take them out to play with others then I’ll need to collect some more. I’m not sure whether that’s likely to happen any time soon so I have plenty of time to consider how to continue the paint scheme with any future miniatures.

Overall I am very happy with the coherent look of the force when they’re all together like this. It’s quite satisfying to finally complete a project.

Painted Harlequin Starweaver

This is the last part of my current Harlequin collection to get a paint job, the Starweaver. This miniature is one of the reasons that I bought Harlequins in the first place; I’m just a huge fan of vehicle sculpts with riders hanging off the side. The main function of the Starweaver appears to be transporting the Harlequin Troupes around without having them shot by small-arms on their way across the board. In practice what happens to me is that the Starweaver is blown up by anti-materiel weapons, then small-arms kill off all the now-disembarked riders. Probably this is more an indication of how good I am at Warhammer 40,000 than any indictment of the Harlequins in general or the Starweaver in particular.

The paint scheme was intended to match well with the rest of the Harlequins I’ve painted. The crew received the same treatment as the Harlequin Troupe who will ride in it, and the Starweaver itself has ended up looking like a bigger version of the Skyweavers. If I get more Harlequins I’m not sure whether to stick with the same scheme entirely (seems fitting to have an army coherently attired) or mix it up a bit (since these are space-elf dancers who’ve mastered the mysteries of the universe but still choose to walk up to their enemies and shank them personally). Anyway, I had a good time putting these bits together here; the crew were done separately and then glued onto the painted Starweaver right at the end of the process.

Here are a couple of close ups of the crew… or possibly the crew and a random rider who thought it would be fun to hold onto the side of a speeding hovercraft-thing.  I’m pleased to see that the gunner has subscribed to the classic Warhammer 40,00 meme of ‘Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!’.

I’ll get the rest of the band together in the next couple of days for a family photo.

Next on the painting table: Dronbot Remotes.

Painted Harlequin Skyweavers

I finally got down to business and polished off this pair of Skyweavers for my Warhammer 40K Harlequins. As usual, I don’t play enough to know any deep tactical tricks so I just tend to have them zooming around taking shots of opportunity at anything that I think they can take down with Shuriken Cannons. They are fast enough that usually I can get them into range to shoot anything I want, though most things in Warhammer 40K seem to have such enourmous gun ranges that unless we played in a squash court there would always be a viable target.

The riders got the same treatment as my Harlequin Troupe, with black and white undersuits and red coats. I struggled quite a bit with the jetbikes themselves as I didn’t want them to be the main attraction, rather I hoped that they’d be a little bit muted and have attention drawn to the crew. Obviously ‘muted’ is a relative term in the case of Harlequins. In the end I was very happy with the results and the dynamism of the riders was really part of what drew me to pick up Harlequins in the first place. I have only a Starweaver left to paint now from my initial buy-in but I did promise my son that I’d match his Necron purchases in order to have similarly sized armies so maybe there is more coming after that.

Here are two bonus images with a different lighting to show the close-up of the riders.

Next on the painting table: Datsue Ba.

Painted Shadowseer

This is a Shadowseer for my Harlequins. As far as I can tell they are supposed to mainly work as a wizard, but there is a certain element of supporting my own units passively too. In general I’ve found that she just walks around slightly behind the Harlequin Troupes and makes them a bit more annoying to deal with.

I deviated from the paint scheme of the other Harlequins by avoiding red and using purple instead. Hopefully this will make her stand out a bit on the table top as otherwise I worry that the whole army looks a bit same-y from the other side of the board. On the other hand, perhaps that would be helpful instead of having my son shoot her every time we play!

Next on the painting table: Carrion Emissary

Painted Harlequin Troupe

These happy dancers are a Harlequin Troupe for Warhammer 40,000. In game they appear to be a close combat or very short ranged shooting unit and have a load of abilities to get them there by ignoring intervening terrain and such like. According to the army book I have (which I think is not the current one any more as it includes all the other Eldar and Necrons) there is a vast variety of weapons that they can carry at various costs, some of which are more expensive than the base Harlequin. Presumably these are all good for particular tasks but since I don’t have any experience I just equipped the Troupe with whatever looked nice. In the few games I’ve played we just assumed that the whole Troupe carried the same loadout for convenience.

The miniatures are absolutely beautiful to put together; they look dynamic but are not fiddly to either assemble or paint. Some of GW’s competitors could learn from this, though in general I suppose that I prefer the game balance of those other systems even with the slightly less amazing miniatures. Painting-wise the Harlequin Troupe got more or less the same treatment as the Troupe Master except that I stuck to a slightly more limited palette (avoiding blues for the most part) to link them together as a unit.

I would like to dedicate this post to ‘Junit‘ (i.e. June-unit) as proposed by the excellent Azazel. I always love their hobby blogging challenges even when I don’t take part.

Next on the painting table: Shadowseer.

Painted Harlequin Troupe Master

My son expressed an interest in Warhammer 40,000 over Age of Sigmar, so he got a treat (for good behaviour) in the form of some Necrons. In order to have something to play against him, I dithered over the armies that didn’t even exist properly last time I played the game and eventually picked up a few boxes of Harlequins. I will admit that it was a real retail pleasure to walk into the GW store to pick up a bunch of toys and chat with the redshirts about them. This chap is a Harlequin Troupe Master. Considering that he comes in the box with the regular Harlequins I had assumed that he was the equivalent of a sergeant or champion, but it turns out that Troupe Masters are the ones in charge and take up an HQ slot accordingly.

I had forgotten how easy to assemble and paint GW miniatures are, even a dynamic one like this with plenty of detail. Looking at the ‘Eavy Metal team pictures of Harlequins and many others on the internet clearly demonstrated that me successfully copying the colour scheme was about as likely as running to the moon so I picked a much simpler approach. The ‘lowest’ level of clothes (i.e. those closest to the skin) were black, then white above that, and finally then a bright colour. This chap got red but if we go far enough down this rabbit hole then I might need more Troupe Masters and will give them blue or green coats or something to keep them distinct. I vaguely remembered something about Eldar (of which the Harlequins are a part) using some magic stuff called wraithbone instead of metal so I went with that style for the weapons. Overall, painting the Troupe Master was a real pleasure.

Next on the painting table: Harlequin Troupe.

Painted Daemonettes

Following from the Seekers I posted last time, here are the accompanying Daemonettes from Games Workshop’s Chaos Daemons range. Like the Seekers, the miniatures went together very easily and painted up nicely without too much effort.

I deliberately chose garish colours since that was part of the fluff for Slaaneshi units back when I last actually read any of it (i.e. in Slaves To Darkness) and found it a nice change from trying at least slightly naturalistic colour choices for some of the Malifaux I’ve worked on (though admittedly some of that stuff is also somewhat bright). In the end, despite how easily they painted up I did find it a bit of a chore completing ten almost identical miniatures; I guess that this means that I shouldn’t go too deeply into any horde armies for any systems. Indeed, this is one of many appeals of skirmish systems.

Next on the painting table: Philip and the Nanny.

Painted Seekers

These are Seekers from Games Workshop. As part of my ongoing attempts to either encourage my children to follow my geeky path, or possibly to tone down their enthusiasm to the point where we ever talk about something not related to toy soldiers, we each picked up a Start Collecting box for the (new to me) Age of Sigmar game. Interest in actually playing Age of Sigmar seems to have waned in favour of Warhammer 40,000 (magic space guns > just magic, at least as far as I can tell) but I have tremendously enjoyed the process of painting my way through the Daemons of Slaanesh box.  I’m aware that I could notionally play them in Warhammer 40,000 as well, but I’m looking into more ‘space-y’ armies to fit my perception of the aesthetic better and in any case a friend seems to have a potential use for the Daemons.

I will admit to having some issues with Games Workshop over the last decade or so. In summary, I love their miniatures and consider them to be pretty much the best manufacturer still. But the balance of their games (except Blood Bowl, which seems to have been a community effort) is almost universally terrible and this leads to unsatisfying games when played between adults of comparable skill levels. So it was with some trepidation that I jumped back down that particular rabbit-hole. Still, I suppose that if I’m mainly playing against my own kids then the balance is not really important as I can just modify things myself as needed.

I painted the Seekers, or as I recall them, Daemonettes on Steeds of Slaanesh, in two parts. I had already decided on a bright pink and purple scheme for the riders so I felt that something more muted would be suitable for the riders and eventually went for black hide and white underbelly. The assembly and ease of painting is significantly better compared to Wyrd miniatures and it is probably this that is at least in part leading to the dominance of Games Workshop in the industry.  I found this lot even harder to take decent photographs of than usual as they’re big enough that my lack of skill with the camera shows up the short focus compared to the depth of shot I would need.

Next on the painting table: Daemonettes.