Dark Eldar Incubus - quick update

Just a quick update tonight to show you guys the progresses on the Incubus. I painted the helm mask and the main chest plates white, following the same progression I used while paining my Aegis Defence Line but adding an additional highlighting step using Vallejo Game Color White Primer, a more brilliant white then Skull White

While the last layer of white was drying I did some touch up work on the armour and the green under suite. Thank I put down the base colours for the remaining parts of the helm (with Vallejo Liquid Gold Red Gold) and the first layer of colour on the horns (with Formula P3 Rucksack Tan)

Stay tuned for more updates!

Painting purple cloath

 

Just a quick update on my Dark Eldar test models: tonight I've painted the loincloth and the ribbons on the Incubus and I did it with purple of course! :)

The colours I used are:

• Vallejo Game Color Black (any black will do)
• GW Liche Purple (from the old range)
• GW Warlock Purple (from the old range)
• Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite (or GW Bleached Bone)
• GW Dechala Lilac (from the new GW Edge paints, see here for a review)

And this is a quick summary of the steps I followed:

1. Liche Purple base coat over black primer
2. Liche Purple mixed with black (1:1) in recessed areas
3. A 2:1:1 mix of Liche Purple, Warlock Purple and Bonewhite layered all over but avoiding the recessed areas
4. Three more layering steps like the previous one but with more Bonewhite added to the mix each time
5. A 2:1:1 mix of Liche Purple, Warlock Purple and Black washed all over (thin the paints to a wash consistency)
6. A 1:1:2 mix of Liche Purple, Warlock Purple and Bonewhite glazed on the top most areas
7. Dechala Lilac glazed on the very extreme edges of the cloth, with some of the previous mix blended in to smooth things where needed

Oh I almost forgot the obligatory messy palette pics!

'Eavy Metal Citadel Edge Paint Set review

WHAT'S INSIDE

For 46 € (or 35 £, or 58 $) you get a nice black box that hold 9 Edge colours inside the usual 12ml paint pots, an 'Eavy Metal Detail Brush and a little, twelve pages long, colour booklet

The booklet show us six ways we could use the colours, like painting gems, doing hard edge highlights on Space Marines or Dark Eldar armour but like the recent "paint tutorials" found in White Dwarfs they just don't go in too much details of how things are really done

THE COLOURS

The first thing you notice when you look at the colours is that they are very desaturated and light (as you could expect from colours designed to be the last highlight on your models). They are almost pastel-like

Flayed One Flesh : a bit sandy, but with some red in there

Dorn Yellow : I was expecting some sort of light cream colour but it's more yellowish than that, like lemon cream I could say ...

Krieg Khaki : a light olive / drab green

Gauss Blaster Green : is very similar to Vallejo Foul Green, a very light green, but more desaturated

Blue Horror : a very light blue / grey

Baharroth Blue : this is basically teal. My first impression was of a lighter hawk turquoise

Dechala Lilac : lilac, pure and simple

Fulgrin Pink : a nice pink, with a bit of lilac / purple mixed in

Lugganath Orange : do you know those big pieces of salmon found in supermarkets?

THE BRUSH

The 'Eavy Metal Detail Brush is a Kolinsky sable brush with a good tip, a small belly and it has good snap (the hairs return in positions after being bent). It's not the best brush in the world but it sure is much better than the standard Citadel brushes.

White the tip is good, it's not as good as a fine Kolinsky sable brush can be and for what we pay this brush (more on this later) we should except the best sable...

I took a picture of the Detail Brush together with a Winsor & Newton Series 7 (a size 0). The Detail Brush is the short one:

As you can see, the tip of the Detail Brush is good but not as fine as the Series 7 one. And keep in mind that this it's not a brand new brush like the 'Eavy Metal one

Also, the belly of the brush (the section between the metal corona of the brush and the very tip, this is where the brush "hold" the paint) is smaller: this could be fine but for much less money you could buy yourself a Serie 7 Miniature (shown on the right in the next picture) that sport a belly just a little smaller than the Detail Brush and the same nice tip of it's big brother:

THE TEST

The first thing I did was to put the colours in action on little piece of white paper to see what they really look like: I just picked up a bit of colour form the pot with a wet brush and painted it on the paper

Dorn Yellow is a very nice lemon-yellow indeed but I really can't say how much I like Gauss Blaster Green

Blue Horror will probably make many Space Wolves howl at the moon while I'm seriously thinking to use Baharroth Blue and Dechala Lilac for my Dark Eldar.

Fulgrin Pink is ... pink, but I really don't know what to say about Lugganath Orange.

To make a comparison with the Layers line of colours I tested out in the same fashion also Temple Guard Blue:

It's more opaque and more saturated than, say, Baharroth blue and it was much thicker also


The second test I made was to use the paints as glazes by thinning them with more water then in the previous test:

I used the same quantity of water for all the paints: around 3 parts of water and 1 part of paint for the first step (the big puddles in front of the respective paint pot) and adding two more "parts" of water in the next step (the more translucent layers)

IS IT WORTH IT?

Let's do some math here

This kit come at 46 € while a single paint pot is 3 €. This mean that we pay as high as 19 € for the brush.

Here in Italy I could buy a Winsor and Newton Serie 7 for around 8 € so no, the kit in itself is not worth it.

Would I suggest to buy one or two pots if they get released individually? I would say yes they would add some interesting colours to ours palettes


UPDATE: THE PAINTS ON THE FIELD!

I recently used some of the Edge paints to do the last hightlights on my Eldar Wraithknight. You can see here the completed model.

Here is a list of the colors I've used:

• Baharroth Blue: highlights on the blue areas. The teal / torquoise add a nice hard edge to the azure of the previous highlight
• Blue Horror: the black areas you see on the model are painted in a very dark grey and highlighted progressively with greish blues so Blue Horror was the perfect final stage for those areas
• Dorn Yellow: highlight on the yellow areas
• Gauss Blaster Green: highlights on the green base

The Kabal of the Golden Rose - colours scheme test models

Since the beginning of my journey in the dark alleys of Commorragh I decided that I will paint my Dark Eldar following a custom paint scheme because I don't like very much the "put hard-edge highlights everywhere" ones found in the Codex.

But I also liked since the beginning the fluff behind the Kabal of the Obsidian Rose as it is full of treachery, deception and state-of-the-art weapons, three things that a self-respected Dark Eldar live for!

To put two and two together I decided that my Kabal will be an elite portion of the Obsidian Rose, with more treachery, more deceptions, more state-of-the-art weapons and it's own colours scheme and today, after months of thinking this over, I started to paint three test models from my Kabal.

I decided to use two Whyces and one Incubus because in this models you could find most of the common elements present in other Dark Eldar models: armour, the Wych suit, skin and weapons that ranges from metal swords to pistols and rifles

When I designed my colour scheme I put down the following key points:

• the armour must be of a golden colour
• the under armour / Wytch suit must be dark, possibly a gradient from black to another colour; it must not be a single solid colour
• I wanted to use purple somewhere, because I like purple!

Starting from here I came up with a colour scheme based on green, yellow, purple and red

After assembling the three models and filling gaps and holes I primed them with Vallejo Acrylic - Polyurethane German Panzer Grey Primer using my airbrush. I used my new Iwata Revolution Mini HP-M2 that I reviewed here. I used German Panzer Grey instead of Black so I could actually shade it with a darker colour.

When the primer was dry I put down the green gradient on the suit:

I created the gradient using the following colours in succession:

• Formula P3 Coal Black from Privateer Press : it's a dark blue / green that work very well as first highlight for black
• Game Color Scurvy Green from Vallejo : one of the best green colours around (at least for me!) and one of the main colours of my scheme
• Game Color Jade Green from Vallejo : the mid tone green in the Scurvy / Jade / Foul green combination
• Game Color Foul Green from Vallejo

With the green pretty much done I started working on the gold parts. I used paints from the Vallejo Liquid Gold range: this are metallic paints that actually contains real metallic particles instead of the crystalline mika flakes found in the common acrylics metal paints. Because they contains metallic particles they use isopropyl alcohol instead of water to avoid rusting and so they should be thinned with isopropyl alcohol

The armour fist layer was done with a couple of thin coats of Red Gold witch, as the name imply, is a reddish gold:

I then highlighted it with thinned down Old Gold, a yellow-white gold:

Next, I put a mix of Old Gold and White Gold (guess what? an almost white gold!) in the more exposed areas:

Finally I used pure White Gold (thinned down of course) as an extreme highlight. You could see the end results (for now) in the following pictures:

Warriors of Chaos Skullcrushers of Khorne: unboxing and sprues pictures

Just published a new unboxing video on my YouTube channel : the new Skullcrushers of Khorne for the Warriors of Chaos army

I've also snapped some high-resolution photos of the sprues:

Skullcrushers of Khorne sprue 1 - front

Skullcrushers of Khorne sprue 1 - back

Skullcrushers of Khorne sprue 2 - front

Skullcrushers of Khorne sprue 2 - back

Skullcrushers of Khorne sprue 3 - front

Skullcrushers of Khorne sprue 3 - back

This is a really nice kit and, as you could see in the video, I really think we could mix pieces from the Bloodcrushers of Khorne kit to create unique miniatures: this is what I play to do for my Khorne army :)

The Secret Xmas Project

I'm working on a special project that will be a Christmas gift for a friend of mine. Just a little comment for now: this thing requires too many magnets!

Warriors of Chaos Be'lakor Daemon Prince (Finecast) unboxing

Last week I got my last order from Games Workshop, the recently released Finecast versions of Be'lakor the Chaos Daemon Prince and the Khorne Chaos Lord on Juggernaut. These are Direct Only products so you could order them only from GW itself and they came in a generic white cardboard box.

The content of the boxes is what you expect from a Finecast miniature, a bunch of resin sprues that hold (or try to) all the pieces of the models

Be'lakor, also known as the The Harbinger or The Dark Master in the Warriors of Chaos fluff and it is a really evil looking Deamon Prince

I don't play Warhammer Fantasy Battle but I like this model very much and I think it will be a nice addition to the growing list of Chaos model I'm collecting

The miniature come in four sprues, along with a 50 x 50 mm square base. In the first sprue you find the main body, the head and the chain mail loincloth

The chain mail loincloth is well detailed and it will go along very well with what I'm planning for my Chaos models

The horns on the head are pretty big and are adorned with rings: a common theme in this miniature as you could find some of them also on the legs and on the wings

A second sprue is dedicated to the Be'lakor' legs

The wings are the predominant element of the remaining sprues and are beautifully detailed with many rings, chains and skulls

This last two sprues also includes the tail and the two hands, one of witch held Be'lakor sword

I'm a bit disappointed about the sword: I was expecting more details on the blade

As this is a Finecast model, mention should be made of the quality of the model I received. From past experiences I was expecting big holes caused by air bubbles or miscast due to bad mold alignment and I'm really surprised by the lack of such defects on this model. Maybe I just got lucky for once or maybe GW finally figured out how to make Finecast work

I've also made a short video review of Be'lakor on my YouTube channel


In the following days I will post a similar review of the other miniature I got along with Be'lakor: the Khorne Chaos Lord on Juggernaut