An unending swarm of seething Skaven has descended on the Mortal Realms, and only the immortal(ish) champions of Sigmar can hold back the tide in the new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar. A few days ago, we had our own staff here at Warhammer Community paint the Skaven half of the Skaventide launch set, and despite how fantastic they managed to make the utterly horrible ratmen look, we still need the Stormcast Eternals to make a stand.
Luckily, our writers and designers are powerful, and they found the time to produce some awesome results before Skaventide arrived. Here is their work.
Joel
My small collection of Stormcast Eternals started when I wanted to paint up the lovely Yndrasta model, but I loved the white-gold colour (copied as best as possible from the stunning 'Eavy Metal version) so much, that I decided to do a force based around that colour scheme as devout followers of Sigmar's champion.
As a complement to the bright white-gold and white, I've used Gal Vorbak Red and Screamer Pink as a rich colour for the cloaks and decided to give them some black sand bases inspired by the volcanic beaches in Iceland, which I think succeeds in helping the miniatures stand out.
I really enjoyed painting the new Prosecutors, who were my first choice to go with Yndrasta. Then, I thought the Reclusians were an excellent addition as a more elite unit, and they have loads of fun details to paint.
Rob
Once upon a time I dallied with the idea of making a Tempest’s Eye army combining Freeguilders, Kharadron Overlords, and winged Stormcast Eternals from the Tempest Lords, but never got around to painting them. Lo and behold, Skaventide arrives, and the Prosecutors I love so dearly get a brand-new miniature.
While most examples of Tempest Lords have them in flat blue armour, I wanted to try making mine metallic, so I also took on some Liberators to use as testbeds. It was also a nice surprise to see that the choice between hammer and shield and twin hammers on the Liberators is purely cosmetic, so I could mix and match to give the squad a more individual, heroic feel.
After several failed attempts to mix silver and blue paints together, I instead sprayed them all in Leadbelcher, drybrushed successive layers of Ironbreaker, Runefang Steel, and Stormhost Silver, and then hit the whole lot with a careful coat of Ultramarines Blue Contrast paint.
The good news was that this made the dark blue armour settle nicely, and a quick coat of Nuln Oil defined the shadows perfectly. The bad news was that I now had to paint the white details over a dark metallic base coat, and this ended up taking even longer than the armour did – especially the wings on the Prosecutors.
Luckily, the details on these miniatures are super crisp, so they pick up the light really well. That’s the good thing with metallics – they can hide when you’re not so good at painting highlights, like me.
For the bases, I covered them in Armageddon Dust and then spent a good while creating the perfect custom mix of Gryph-Hound Orange and Blood Angels Red (that I was very proud of) to give it a nice ruddy tint, before remembering halfway through drybrushing them with Squig Orange that we sell Martian Ironcrust for exactly this purpose.
I have yet to recover from this.
Luke
I snagged myself a trio of heroes again, but this set was more demanding than the Skaven. The new Stormcast Eternals are big, impressive miniatures with lots of layered armour and cloth to get lost in. I wanted to get a feel for what the new Ruination Chamber miniatures would look like in existing Stormhost Schemes, so I decided to paint all three differently.
For the Lord-Vigilant on Gryph-stalker I chose the warlike Astral Templars with their gorgeous burgundy armour and rich gold accents. I also added some pink and purple tones to his corvid mount to both contrast the dark blue-ish grey and tie him together with his master – they do say that dogs/gryph-hybrids take after their owners, after all…
I decided to paint the Lord-Veritant as one of the uncompromising Knights Excelsior with chipped white armour representing her time in the field purging Chaos the hard way. I gave her a blue cloak but went with a darker recipe than the cloak of the Lord-Vigilant, hopefully adding a sombre and serious tone to an otherwise bright miniature.
I went a bit left field for the Lord-Terminos and cooked up a metallic green recipe inspired in part by Kieran’s Knight of the Realm from the Bretonnian article. The metallics are much bolder as suits the Stormcast Eternal, and the process was applying thinned glazes of Warp Lightning Contrast and Abaddon Black over Leadbelcher, highlighted with Stormhost Silver. I gave him a green cloak to match, and had a lot of fun making it as luxurious as I could with glazes of progressively brighter greens, though I think the freehand motifs on the internal cloak still need a little work.
The layered cloth and metals on the miniatures presented a fun challenge, and I tried my best to separate those layers using different recipes to complement the tiered effect. Overall, I am pretty pleased with the results, and I have a few more ideas I want to try out on some of the other heroes.
David
I chose to paint my Liberators as the iconic Hammers of Sigmar, first because I love the look, and secondly because it can be very quick and easy to paint them to a battle-ready standard. I am eager to get some Spearhead games in as soon as possible.
I undercoated the models with Retributor Armour and painted the scalemail and hammers with Iron Hands Steel. I washed the gold with Seraphim Sepia and the silver with Nuln Oil before dry brushing everything with Stormhost Silver.
With the majority of the model painted, I tackled the shoulder guards with Caledor Sky and a targeted wash of Drakenhof Nightshade, before painting the weapon wrappings with Screamer Pink. After that it was just a case of picking out the rest of the details.
I am quite pleased with the eyes, which I wanted to look as if they were crackling with the power of Sigmar’s Tempest. This was very simple to achieve – just paint Corax White into the recess, and on the lower edge of the eye socket, then drop in some Aethermatic Blue Contrast paint.
Tom
I long ago settled on the Knights of the Aurora as my Stormcast Eternals of choice, mostly for the colour scheme, though they do seem like cool dudes from their eight or nine lines of lore. I went with the Knight Questor, and opted for the most straight-down-the-line paint recipe of all time, in a style I privately refer to as “‘Eavy Metal Max”.
This meant a black undercoat followed by Leadbelcher on the armour, Caliban Green on the cloak, Liberator Gold on the trim, Mephiston Red on the red bits, and Mournfang Brown for the leather. This was complemented by a liberal wash of Nuln Oil and a few highlights and a spot of targeted drybrushing to bring it all back up. I don’t really know what blending is, but apparently if you do that on the flames moving down through red, orange, yellow, and white, it will kind of look like fire, just so long as no one goes and takes too close-up a shot of your work.
Thanks guys, now back to work! We’d love to see your own painting experiences when the Skaventide launch set arrives, so post them over at X/Twitter and Facebook and be sure to check out our in-depth interview with the legendary ‘Eavy Metal painters for more inspiration.