The new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar is almost with us, and the massive launch box is available for pre-order in just over a week. Skaventide pits the Stormcast Eternals of the Hallowed Knights Stormhost against the vile Skaven. Among the Stormcast Eternals are members of the Ruination Chamber – veterans of many deaths who are on the cusp of losing themselves entirely. We caught up with Max, the Content Lead for ’Eavy Metal – our very own elite of the elite – who told us about the journey of painting the Stormcast Eternals for Skaventide.
Initial Steps
Max: Every miniatures release has to say something about the setting it's based in, working both as individual pieces and as a cohesive whole. When we were scoping out the initial direction of Skavetide, we realised that we wanted to present something new and fresh, something that we hadn’t seen before with the Stormcast Eternals.
We went back to a lot of John Blanche’s early artwork for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, things that were created before there were established rules and boundaries in place. There are aspects of his work that we hadn’t really expanded on, and we spent time thinking about which parts could present a new angle on the modern Stormcast Eternal identity.
My initial pitch was “Let’s not paint them gold” – and at that point, we weren’t even thinking about what other Stormhosts we could use. Our core idea was to make these Stormcast Eternals darker and more sinister, to work with death motifs across their range. We had to strike a balance between colourful and muted to reinforce those ideas – they may be bleaker, but they’re still Sigmar’s chosen!
After some initial colour testing and prototyping that focussed on realistically rendered metals that were weathered and beaten, as well as some more unconventional flat colours, we worked with Phil, the lead background writer, and made the call to go with the Hallowed Knights. We opted to convey different tones for the different miniatures, from the fresh, gleaming Liberators to the weathered and beaten Reclusiarchs.
This was also an opportunity to revisit all the major Stormhosts we’ve painted or shown in battletomes over the years. We took a Reclusian, a Liberator, and a Vindictor, and presented modern interpretations of every single Stormhost for their Warrior Chamber and Ruination Chamber.
These are often quite different, either darker or using colour inversions. This is especially useful as it helps cover the breadth of independent designs within each chamber, keeping things fresh for people who commit to painting just one Stormhost, by giving them some visual tools to differentiate between chambers and characters. It also let us push some similar-looking Stormhosts a little further apart with some tweaks to their visual identity.
Core Colours of the Hallowed Knights
We wanted to focus on the slow chipping away of the soul and personality from the Reforging process. Each death is accompanied by a slow erosion of your humanity. Some of this is conveyed through the miniatures themselves – as Stormcast Eternals are reforged, so is their armour, becoming more ornate as Stormcast die and return to battle and rise through the ranks over the centuries. There is also the patina and weathering that accompanies the ageing of the armour. We decided to go quite heavy in places with the weathering, especially on the Ruination Chamber, adding to the heft and lending it that bleaker tone to convey their purpose and attitude.
Skaventide is a great opportunity to demonstrate the journey of a Stormcast Eternal. As a Liberator of the Warrior Chamber, both the Stormcast Eternal and their armour are fresh. The Reclusians of the Ruination Chamber have been reforged over and again, and they are worn and torn. They are more resilient to chaos, with decades or centuries of experience, and they have become powerful fighting machines closer to tools than humans.
The weathering shows the cost of war on the miniatures themselves, presenting the underlying lie of the immortality Sigmar had promised. There’s a bit of a bleak, gothic dourness to it – it’s not all bright blue and gold any more, as there’s a cost associated with Sigmar’s plan. This really is the whole history of Stormcast Eternals in one box.
Honing the Identity Through Characters
Warhammer is built around mighty heroes who battle against the odds. When painting the heroes from Skaventide, we wanted to get across that each one is a champion with their own rich history. It’s easy to find one good colour scheme and replicate that across every single miniature, but it can also make everything look a little samey. The little details breathe life into individual characters, and deviating from recipes to add details really helps from a world-building perspective. Minor details such as subtle weathering, different colours and arrangements of fabric, or unique freehand elements all mount up and help them feel further apart.
We concept a lot of ideas early on in the process that we consider very strong options in miniatures, but often have to whittle all those elements down to one idea when choosing how to paint a particular model. We had a unique opportunity to work on a broad selection of ideas for the sacred flame motif that appears frequently in the Ruination Chamber, and rather than settling on one idea across all of the miniatures, we decided to approach painting these elements based on both how it was sculpted and the character's role. The blue flames were a really striking spot colour, but we didn’t want to restrict ourselves to this same magical flame across every unit or across every Stormhost. The chance to paint a number of variants of characters and other models meant we could explore all these different permutations – some of which you’ll see later.
All of the above worked together to help us convey the personality and purpose of each hero. Sometimes, that flame motif is just that—a motif forged in metal. At other times, it’s sacred, cleaning fire as the Lord-Vigilant is a mighty commander with a powerful runic ablaze with magical energy. In contrast, the Knight Questor is that character who forges ahead of the main force, often on a clandestine mission, so he has instead a regular torch for illuminating dark places.
When we paint these heroes, we don’t intend to say, “This is the only way they can be.” The breadth of the miniatures in the Skaventide box allowed us to present a variety of examples to push even further in your own miniatures, really individualising them to be your own personal characters.
The New Gryph-creatures
The Stormcast Eternals are joined once again by a new selection of mounts and companion creatures, a darker range of Gryph-creatures that complement the more sombre feel of the Skaventide box. One common pitfall when painting chimaera creatures is that it’s quite easy to make them look like two separate animals stuck together. We always want to portray our magical beasts as real creatures that are born into the world how we see them, so there’s no stark dividing element. We tend to take a core element from one creature and blend that through into the other.
We knew quite early on that we were going to settle on corvid archetypes. If we had painted them in the same colour palette as other Gryph-creatures, we would run the risk of undoing the work the sculptors had done in creating atmospheric mounts and companions. We wanted to capture some of that gothic, creature-of-ill-omen vibe that comes along with animals like black cats, crows, and ravens.
From these initial principles, painting them was primarily compositional work, making sure that the face of each creature reads well, and bringing elements like countershading for the chest and torso which introduce contrast and help them to read more naturally. We introduced some muted colour elements where needed, but without ever going overboard to push them too far into the fantastical. There’s always a balancing act – they can’t be pure black and incredibly dour, but we don’t want to just add in colour without really thinking.
Thanks Max. We’ll be catching up with him again for a look at what went into painting the Skaven half of Skaventide shortly. Pre-orders open on the 29th of June!