Painted Hag Queen

This is a Hag Queen, another hero choice for my Daughters of Khaine army in Age Of Sigmar. She’s a cheap support character who has mainly found success in my games by staying away from actually fighting the other side and instead by encouraging everyone else to do the fighting for her (which they do, apparently with glee, considering the number of dice rolled per model). Whenever someone has managed to pin down my Hag Queens to combat, that pretty much is the end of the story for them.

The Hag Queen was a quick easy model to paint and get out of the way (especially after how long it took me to get through the Bloodwrack Shrine). I’m not over enamoured by the sculpt but it’s an easy enough process to slap some colours on her and call it good in the name of completing a project; I will admit that this goes double for miniatures that in reality I will hardly ever use on the tabletop. In general I’ve found the Witch Aelves and their associated characters to be pretty quick to get through, though I would still pale at the thought of dealing with 3 units of 30 which I understand is a tournament staple. After the Hag Queen, I have just one more Daughter of Khaine to finish (the charmingly named Slaughter Queen) before I have finished the whole lot… for now.

Next on the Painting table: Jaga Jaga, the Death Charmer.

Painted Bloodwrack Shrine

This is a Bloodwrack Shrine for my Daughters of Khaine army in Age of Sigmar. I’ve used it as my general in the rather few games I’ve played in the system and it has done an adequate job holding the centre of my line. I consider it an anchor of sorts since it is considerably tougher than the rest of the Witch Aelves, although this is probably fitting since the army as a whole has opted for the famous ‘chainmail bikini’ approach to armour.

I didn’t spend over long painting the carriage itself, partly because I want the focus to be on the crew and bath (!) and partly because it’s not really very exciting to paint. In retrospect I would have swapped over the skin colours between the Medusa and the Shrinekeepers; the contrast between the dark brown skin and dark green scales on the Medusa doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped. On the other hand, I quite like the way that the bath of blood looks considering how simple it was to paint. Overall I’m pretty happy with the end result and it makes rather a nice centrepiece model.

Observant readers will note that my Bloodwrack Shrine is halfway between the proper build and a Cauldron of Blood, which is the other build option in the kit. This is because I got part way through assembly when I realised that the Bloodwrack Shrine is meant to have a huge mirror mounted where my Medusa sits (she is really meant to be in the bath). Even in a world where magical bikini-clad elves push baths filled with blood around the battlefield, it struck me as a bit silly to bring a mirror along – surely it would get smashed the first time they rode over a bump in the road. More importantly, I didn’t fancy my chances of painting a mirror that didn’t look awful. Even more observant readers might also spot that I’ve put the dais on the wrong way round; the central spike is supposed to be at the back. Oh well.

The blood shows up really nicely against the relatively drab skin of the snake part of the Medusa. The kit comes with another two characters (they ride the other build) so I’ll get them out of the way shortly and put up a family photo.

I deliberately kept to the same colour palette as the regular Witch Aelves for the Shrinekeepers except for using silver armour rather than bronze (which would blend in too much with the carriage).

Next on the painting table: Hag Queen.

Painted Blood Sisters

Here are small unit of Blood Sisters, part of the Daughters of Khaine force I’m gradually building up. They’re basically the melee equivalent of Blood Stalkers, trading a fairly trivial ranged element for more close-up stabbing action. We don’t play anything like enough Age of Sigmar for me to have any strong thoughts on how best to use Blood Sisters; I’ve generally just rammed them into something that isn’t already swamped by Witch Aelves and hoped for the best.

Just like the Blood Stalkers, the Blood Sister kit is great fun to assemble and paint. Blood Sisters are actually meant to have a sort of face mask and sensible hair thing going on, but I much prefer the ridiculous flowing manes so I used the alternative heads (that are meant to go on the Blood Sisters instead). In general I tried to keep the same palette as the rest of the force but went for a dark red on the snakey-bits as I felt that would be more fun to paint at the time.

I dedicate this post to Azazel‘s Scenic and Squaddie September challenge. Many thanks to Azazel for leading these monthly blogging challenges.

Next on the painting table: Gun Boar (again).

Painted Blood Stalkers

Here are a unit of Blood Stalkers for my nascent Daughters of Khaine force in Age of Sigmar. In game I’ve found them a little disappointing as they’re quite expensive for a very low number of not-very-exciting bow shots, and their melee presence has never been able to make up for this. My experience so far can be summarised that they move up, shoot a couple of arrows into something, then immediately get overrun. As usual, I think that this is likely to be player error; notably Blood Stalkers have great movement speed so probably I should make more of that.

I really love the miniatures though, so I can forgive their performance on the tabletop. They call out to the Ray Harryhausen fan in me, who has not really grown up since watching Jason and the Argonauts etc in the mid 80s. I had all sorts of ideas for varying the skin tone of the snake part, but realised that if I wanted them to look like a unit then I’d need to have something more to visually link them together than just the hair (and fairly skimpy armour). So in the end I painted a nice bright green and cream combination for the snake part and tried to match the general approach of the Witch Aelves for the rest of the miniature. I’m very pleased with the final results.

I dedicate this post to Alex from Leadballoony‘s Fembruary Challenge.

Next on the painting table: Druze Shock Team with Chain Colt.

Painted Witch Aelves

Here are some Witch Aelves, the start of a burgeoning force of Daughters of Khaine for GW’s Age of Sigmar game. Appetite for Age of Sigmar seems to wax and wane somewhat at Chateau Argentbadger and I’ve actually ended up giving away the Slaanesh Daemons I had painted to a friend. So when excitement started to build again I treated myself to a couple of boxes of Daughters as they have extremely nice miniatures. Regular readers, if there are any, will know that I’m a sucker for a dynamic sculpt so an army of dancers seems like an easy sell to me. In game these are the basic troops available to the faction. With no ranged weapons there’s not much choice but to throw them right down the other side’s throat at the first opportunity. This suits my preferences nicely and has been fairly effective in a couple of games. The Witch Aelves are all attack and no defense (fittingly, considering that their choice of armour is that fantasy staple: the chainmail bikini) and I’ve lost the whole unit a few times simply by allowing the other unit to attack them before I could get my swings in.

These first three are the command group. I have to admit that it’s not super-clear who is meant to be the champion but we finally worked out that it is the Witch Aelf shown here in the centre on the basis that she has the biggest hat and the fanciest knives.  The lighting is showing the skin up as a bit shinier than it really is but I’ll put that down to bad photography rather than bad painting.  The white hair is part of my ‘vision’ for the force – how I imagined them looking even when I was buying the kits.

The light blue brings a nice bit of colour to the unit along with the bright white hair.  I thought about doing the gloves and leggings the same colour but decided it would be too bright.  If this army lasts long enough in my attention to require a second unit I’ll probably go with red cloth to differentiate between them.

I feel that the bronze armour gives a bit more contrast with the skin than my other choice which would have been the steel colour of the knives.

Finally, the unit all together.

Next on the painting table: Troll Whelps (again).