Narvia the Acolyte

The very eagle-eyed reader may have spotted that, in amongst the various blue horrors I showed last month was this evil little chap.

Personally I wouldn’t have known him from any other blue horror but anyone who’s a Warhammer Underworld’s aficionado might recognise him as a member of the Eyes of the Nine, the Tzeentchian warband from a couple of seasons ago. Mostly I bought the set for the leader, Vortemis the All-Seeing, one of the coolest looking Tzeentchian sorcerers ever made in my opinion. For those not familiar with him, here’s what the studio model looks like.

The way I saw it, I was buying Vortemis and getting a bunch of other models free, and as the price for the set wasn’t too painful on the wallet that was something I was happy to do. Now as it happens I’m still to paint Vortemis but I did have one of his acolytes, Narvia, sitting on the painting desk – and as Narvia is a lady and therefore qualifies for Fembruary this seemed like a fine moment to get her finished.

I gave her a dark skintone to help her stand out from the other Kairic Acolytes I’ve already painted (and because, speaking personally, I think she looks damn good that way). All being well I’ll remember this when I get around to assembling and painting her frenemy Turosh, the other Kairic Acolyte in the Eyes of the Nine set, and paint him the same way.

For those worrying about what’s happened to my Tzeentchian cabal that I was working on back in January fear not, I’ll be getting back to them as soon as Fembruary is over. For now however I’m enjoying my marathon charge through all the unpainted ladies who’ve been waiting for attention on the desk.

A Chew End Gene – Part 5

Work has been a bit on the busy side over the last few weeks so my progress on the cult of Tzeentch has slowed down but fear not gentle reader – the Changer of Ways still holds my heart in his constantly mutating palm!

The next thing I wanted to add to the warband was a Kairic Acolyte with vulcharc (that’s the weird looking bird familiar that accompanies the human cultists of Tzeentch). I already have a vulcharc that I painted up to serve as a Sheen Bird for my Cawdor gang in Necromunda so now it can do double duty and return to the role its creators originally intended for it amongst the Kairics.

Now I just needed a Kairic Acolyte to act as its owner/servant (I’ve no idea how this relationship works but I doubt being bound into the service of Tzeentch ever turns out well). This chap, who’s well on his way to mutating into some kind of chaos spawn – or perhaps if he’s lucky ascending into a Pink Horror – fit the bill nicely. He’s been heavily converted with a mixture of Pink Horror parts (mostly the head and arms) to create a fitting servant of the god of change and mutation.

Normally the vulcharc would be on the same base as its owner but I quite like having it based separately. The rules for Warcry state (and who ever imagined they’d see a discussion of game rules here eh!):

“Pick an enemy fighter within 20 inches of this fighter. Until the end of the battle round that fighter cannot make disengage actions”.

With the vulcharc on a base of its own I can pop it next to whichever poor so-and-so it’s giving a vicious pecking, which to my eye looks a lot more cinematic and engaging that using a token.

Alongside these mortal slaves I’ve also conjured up another pink horror, converted in much the same way as the previous two.

For now that’s all the pink horrors for the warband painted, although I may come back and make a few more at a later date.

And speaking of horrors I also painted up a couple more blue horrors.

As far as I’m aware that’s all the blue horrors I own painted now, although they’re sufficiently small (and I’m sufficiently disorganised!) that there might well be one or two more lurking in a box somewhere. Either way they’re certainly due a group shot!

Speaking of group shots I realised the other day that I never posted a group photo of the rainbow of brimstone horrors either, so – no time like the present and all that. Behold the skittles of doom!

I still have various models to be added to this warband but I’m going to be taking a little break from it so I can concentrate on all things related to the Fembruary challenge over the coming month. I promise I won’t leave the Changer of Ways hanging though, and will get back to his labyrinthine plots in March. In the meantime here’s the warband so far.

Of course it goes without saying that my Warcry addiction is as strong as ever so even though I’m not going to be working on this lot for the next few weeks I’ll still be  putting together a warband for the game.

Change Need We – Part 4

Just a quick update to the Tzeentchian cult as, with complex and arcane movements of my brushes, I summon a Flamer from the Realm of Chaos. This is a hell of a weird creature isn’t it, I must admit before I painted one myself I didn’t ‘get’ it at all. It grew on me whilst I was working on it though and it was certainly a fine chance to play around with bright colours and magical effects.

Next up, more misguided humans who have sold their souls to the Changer of Ways.

Need We Change? – Part 3

For my Tzeentchian cult I want a proper mix of Chaos monstrosities and other dubious characters. Those that have been following me for a while will know that alongside humans and daemons a few beastmen are an absolute must in my book. Plus I’ve been wanting to paint some of the new Tzaangors since they were first released back in November of 2016 (which I guess means they’re not exactly new are they? Time I got on with it then eh!). I really like these models but they are hellishly fiddly to paint, you’ve got to be in the mood for all the little details if you’re going to do them justice. The other thing which delayed me has been trying to choose a suitable colour scheme, I’m not overly enamoured of the blue skin used by the Games Workshop studio team, despite weird colours being very much part of Tzeentch’s repertoire I want something a little more natural for mine. Of course when it comes to Tzeentch natural is a relative term…

However that doesn’t mean I’ve packed the blue paints away – in fact they’ve been hard at work as I powered through a few more Blue Horrors.

Some readers may recall this partly-pink Blue Horror which I showed recently.

He got quite a good response from everyone who saw him and I enjoyed painting him so much that I took the idea even further with this one. Don’t worry though, it’s not a trick I’m planning to overuse until it descends into cliché, I’ll keep the others relatively normal looking and blue from now on.

Lastly I painted up a few more Brimstone Horrors, so that should those Blue Horrors meet their unnatural end they too can divide into malevolent magical sprites. I painted the first one as living flame in the same style as the studio models but with these I decided to go for a range of different colours. That way in the middle of a game it’s easier to point out exactly which one you’re talking about “I’ll attack the green one” rather than “No the one on the left, no my left, no not that one… etc”. Who could have guessed that someday I’d use gaming rather than purely aesthetic reasons for choosing a paint scheme – it seems we live in strange and interesting times indeed! That said I reckon the range of bright colours look great, they were fun to do and they add to the Tzeentchian aesthetic so it’s all to the good.

Anyway, that’s it for the moment, I’ve still got various other Tzeentchian oddballs sitting around on the desk and at the moment I’m not sure which I’ll tackle next, but I’ll aim to have something else finished for the Changer of Ways by the end of the week.

We Need Change – Part 2

If I’m going to have a warband of creepy Tzeentchian types, dedicated to complex schemes and the destruction of order and structure in all forms, then a few daemons are a must. Unfortunately the rank and file of these daemons are the Pink Horrors and for my money they’re some of the worst models in GW’s catalogue.  Just take a look at these ghastly things.

Horrors is definitely the word! Something else is clearly in order. I’ve kitbashed a few alternatives over the years but never really settled on anything that I liked. Continuing in that proud tradition these are my latest attempts to conjure up some horrors, this time blending the plague bearers (in my view the best of the four lesser daemons, these models practically paint themselves) with the less offensive parts of the standard horrors. I tried to pass off the various wounds in the plague bearers as the flesh of the horrors reshaping itself, with results which – to be frank – look mixed. I also went for a darker paint scheme which hopefully helps make them look more brooding and ghastly and less shite than the studio versions.

I’m still not entirely satisfied with these and only time will tell whether I decided in the end that I’m happy with them or if I want to try something else. Either way I have another one part-painted on the desk so I’ll finish it up as well and see how I feel after that. As usual any thoughts or feedback is very welcome of course.

Change We Need – Part 1

Over Christmas and New Year, in between decking the halls with social baubles and passing round the hand-santaiser I found the time to fall under the sway of an insidious cult of madness and mutation, dedicating myself to change regardless of the cost. I’ve had a scheme for a while now to start a collection of Tzeentchian cabalists and their daemonic allies with which to either carry out labyrinthine schemes of complex evil or get a few games of Warcry in, whichever proves to be more straightforward. This time we’ll be taking a look at everything I finished over the break and hopefully later in the week I’ll have a couple more done as well.

My plan is to put together a warband containing both daemons and mortals with roughly a thousand points of each. That way I’ll end up with two warbands to use in the game, sometimes as allies sometimes as adversaries depending on the schemes of the Changer of Ways. At the same time I can paint the whole thing as a single project, with each “side” providing inspiration for the other. It should also help me not to get bogged down, if I get bored of daemons I can switch to mortals and vice versa. 

To get things started we have a pair of Kairic Acolytes. These are the human followers of Tzeentch, petty sorcerers and schemers who make up the rank and file of the cult. This first one is taken from the (now no longer available) Silver Tower game. Whilst I don’t own a copy of Silver Tower (sadly as I’ve heard it was a lot of fun) I do own some of the models from it and this guy is one of them. There was a bit of damage to the blade which I tried to cover over with a magical effect, although honestly I’m not entirely convinced it’s worked. It looks better in hand that it does in these pictures but it’s still not quite right. Damn it, what do you people want from me – perfection?!

Whilst the last model was built exactly as the designer intended this one has been given a few tweaks as I tried to play up the strangeness that comes from being part of a Tzeentchian cabal. He’s also the first miniature that I completed in 2021, so he’s my contribution to the “First of the Year” challenge currently being run by Ann’s Immaterium.

I also added some horrors which will form part of the daemonic contingent. My dislike of the Pink Horror models is well known, although I have a scheme to do something about that which should be ready to show off in a day or so. I am however rather fond of their smaller cousins the Blue Horrors and I’ve got quite a few of them gathered on the table waiting for attention.

When a Pink Horror is killed it splits in half, forming two bickering Blue Horrors, each of which is busy blaming the other and complaining about whose fault it is that they were slain and ended up losing their gestalt status as the superior pink form. I wanted to capture this by painting the large hand on this one in pink, it’s either the last part of him to dissolve or he’s just about to grow back into a fully fledged pink horror.

Once he was finished I realised that I’d enjoyed painting him so much I painted another straight away. 

If things go really badly a Blue Horror may end up getting killed again, at which point all that’s left is a spark of barely sentiment, spite driven magic; a Brimstone Horror.

Like the Blue Horrors I’ve got plenty of these kicking around the painting desk so expect to see more of them in the coming weeks. First things first though, I need to do something about those horrible Pink Horror models. It’s a bit experimental and I’m not entirely sure it’s going to work so watch this space!