Sword<Pen<Brush - Joining the Legion

Having finished (ish) my Menoth I've started a new project. I put aside my army of crazed, fanatical, God-bothering zealots and have started up a new army of crazed, fanatical Dragon-bothering zealots. Big difference is these zealots also come with their own giant, gribbly, land-shark dragon-monsters. Ooooh pretty. 

That's right I've been seduced by Everblight over to the Legion. Switching out to Hordes to try the other side and getting to play with some models I love and with characters I enjoy. Yay! I started myself off with the Battlebox and a Forsaken, but have since had a big ol' box of models delivered to my door including some legionaries, some Nephalim, and a bunch of solos, along with the Spawning Vessel (recycling is good) and some casters (eVayl, eAbsylonia, Saeryn and Rhyas). 

I have a long standing tradition of painting my armies using alternative paint schemes. I like to take the normal or studio approach to an army and put my own spin on it, usually just shifting the colour scheme slightly (see my cream Menoth) to add a little individuality to my painting. On top of this I like to pick out a palette of colours for the army and stick to those paints on every model in the army to tie them together. If you look through the army books for most miniature games the paints for different models will shift slightly as different times and different painters or techniques show through, but I like to paint my generals with the same colours as my fodder to keep them unified. This was a bit of a problem with Legion for two reasons: 1. There is a big difference between different studio approaches meaning there is no real set way to paint the army (which seems to be a trend in Hordes where the factions are inherently less cohesive). 2. I don't really like the studio paint scheme anyway. Too pale. 3. Also I have a bunch of Citidel paints that I have no intention of swapping out and most of the paint guides are for P3. (I know I said two reasons. Sue me.) 

The other thing I wanted to do was nice bases. For anyone who's seen my Menoth army the models are decent but the bases suck. I'd decided to try out the latest Citidel 'cracked earth' magical paint and to be honest it was a huge flop. It hardly did what I wanted (cool dry cracked desert?) and just ended up looking like I'd slapped some light brown on and said 'good enough'. I was both thoroughly disappointed and also commited to using the stuff on the rest of my models. Not this time. Not for my Legion. Did I mention my friend recently started making gorgeous resin bases? Well he has! Check them out: http://solidgroundstudios.co.uk. I decided to do his Rocky Bases as thematic snowy bases and bought a whole bunch. 

I started on the four Shredders from the Battlebox first, as they were the easiest and most 'expendable' if I didn't like my paint job. Truth be told by the time I finished they were a lot bluer than I had intended but the more I looked at it the happier I was with them. The way I did it was by starting with a base of Fenris Grey, painting up to Ice Blue by way of Shadow Grey, before adding a highlight of Space Wolves Grey (yeah some of these paints are ooold). I was also especially happy with how the models came out on the jaws which were a simple Elf Flesh layer with a red wash which I think contrasted well with the teeth, which again, were very simple with Ushabti Bone leading up to pure white:-

With them completed I turned my attentions to the lovely Forsaken. I initially didn't like this sculpt when I saw it but this is definitely a model that I didn't like on paper but really liked once I had the bare metal in my hands (see prime Feora as another example).  I decided to leave the darker undercoat showing on the membrane of the wings but otherwise it was the same technique;

Next I threw out the big guy - the Carnivean. Sticking to my main approach I kept the paints the same. The chitin armour is much more prominent on this model, and took some more effort to achieve a good effect. I wanted a dark brown for the scales to contrast with the vivid blue of the flesh and so I started with a cover of Rhinox Hide for the base and then gave each scale and plate a highlight on pretty much every edge I could find with Mournfang Brown before touching up the most raised areas with a touch of Khemri Brown:- 

Finally for the battlebox I painted Lylyth, one of my favourite narrative Warlocks. Unlike the bulk of the army Lylyth has equipment and such to paint. For the metal I based the whole area using Chainmail, then washed it heavily with Asurman Blue to almost completely stain the recesses before painting the raised areas with Chainmail again to get a dark/light contrast I was pleased with. The cloak was a base of black painted up to Necron Abyss with a highlight of Regal Blue to finish. The leather straps were painted in the same brown as the beasts' scales while her hair was the same paints as their teeth, and the same blue tinted skin across the army:

I left it at that for a while due to a (temporary) lack of models combined with moving home. I've resolved both issues now, and have started to make some more headway with my Legion by churning out another couple of Nephalim using the above techniques, first a Bolt Thrower and most recently a Soldier:

I'm really enjoying the change of pace and I'm looking forward to getting them on the table once I've built my forces up a bit more next year, but for now they're a fun hobby side project to keep me occupied while I keep playing my Menoth (to whom I fully intend to keep adding). 

Thanks for reading I hope you can take something from my humble paints (though if you only take one thing away it should definitely be that http://solidgroundstudios.co.uk has awesome bases you can buy!). If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to let me know!

-M