From the Archives: Steelheart’s Champions

Nothing new finished for this week’s post, so back into the archives we go! This time I’m presenting the Steelheart’s Champions from Shadespire.

I’ve only got one good picture of the group, as I hadn’t figured out my photo setup when I originally finished these models. Later when I took the above photo, for some reason I didn’t bother taking a shot of their backs. Not a big deal though, as apart from the leader they are not really that interesting from behind. I showed Severin in a previous post, but here’s the rear view again for convenience.

While I started the Revelators Tactical Squad before these guys, they were actually the first group of minis that I finished after the very experimental Chaos Cultists. Of course, there was plenty of new techniques to try out with these guys as well, such as painting faces, a big cape and using washes and glazes for tinting steel. The sword and the cape were not too successful, but I labeled them good enough. Overall, I’m still very happy with the models. As I’ve mentioned before, the color scheme is called “Silverlions”, and was nicked from Thilo Engels, aka Banzai1000.

Getting these models was actually pretty much a happy accident. When I got back to the hobby I though it would be just 40k, as that’s what I had been doing back in my teenage years and WHFB had never been too interesting to me. But when Shadespire came out I was really awed by the models and was also intriqued by the game. Shortly after the release I happened to see someone selling an unused copy for half-price, and that was too good of a deal to pass up. I thought that I’d get it just to paint the models, but it turned out that the game is brilliant as well, which was a nice bonus!

Silverlions Liberators

Azazel‘s February hobby challenge is dedicated to neglected models, which I’m sure we all have plenty of. I decided to dive back to my Age of Sigmar starter set (the first one) and get at least the ten Liberators done. That would mean that I have all the line infantry and the Khorgorath done, leaving “only” the elites and the characters. Here’s the first half of the Liberators done.

I wanted to use the same color scheme that I used for my SCE Shadespire warband. It’s called “Silverlions” and was created originally by Thilo Engels, aka Banzai1000. I really like the look and and it’s pretty fast to paint too. I wanted to paint to these up quickly, but still I ended up doing pretty much every step that I took with Steelheart’s Champions, except that I didn’t highlight black and was a bit more lenient towards mistakes.

Comparing the Liberator Prime to Severin Steelheart, the results are pretty close to each other. I maybe could have done another appliaction of thinned Druchii Violet, but there’s a hint of color and I think it’s enough. And to think it took me a month to paint the Champions (three models) and these five guys were painted in a week..

The red on the cloak/skirt/whatever was the only thing that I couldn’t color match, and it ended up brighter than on Steelheart. I tried layering with Wazdakka Red, but as that didn’t look right I changed it to Mephiston Red. I think I like this more though, so I don’t mind.

The five remaining Liberators are on the pipeline next. The steel armor and the black bits are already done, as I did those at the same time for all ten, so they’re pretty much half-way there.