GT Prep work: The Army Paint Scheme

I don't actually recall how much I have been blabbering about me attending my first GT Final Tournament, but I am even though it's a wild card choice for good sportsmanship. More specifically, good sportsmanship for being bludgeoned to pieces several times over the course of two days and still laughing and joking about it all, but hey I'm not complaining.

One thing about my army I wasn't really keen on was the colour scheme, I mean I hate painting cultists, bikes, daemons(to a degree) and I didn't have much in the way of basing my army - it looked like shit in other words - so I scored pretty low for the possible 20ish points for my paint score. Out of all of the things in the Tournament these are almost free points. So why didn't I go for them more?

The answer is I didn't have time to paint everything beautifully and coherently. Using some old models and older basing techniques alongside some rushed, unfinished models then you have yourself my usual rag tag army. This time, however, I have decided to go in with a full colour scheme down to the bases and I am pretty happy about it. So here are some pictures showing off my painting and some blabber talk about why I picked my scheme.

My paint scheme actually began with my first Imperial Knight, I bought a resin lava base from Dark Arts Miniatures and I loved painting it so much that I bought some Biker and Cavalry bases too. Unfortunately, not having enough money to cover 50+ Hounds, I had to drop back onto normal bases and work from there.

After the release of the new "Snow" paint I thought it would be brilliant to have a Snow-Lava effect going on, like the snowy world was cracking and falling apart as Daemons rose from the lava - I might make an "Armies on parade" board of this one day.

I've used the Khorne Base & Evil Sun Scarlet on the dogs and lava, highlighting with Troll Slayer Orange. Probably not the greatest of layers, but it does the trick.



For the Bikes/ power armoured units I layered Lead belcher, Iron breaker and Runefang steel washed down with Null Oil then highlighted again with Runefang to get the crisp edges. I followed up on the bikes with Leadbelcher coated in a thicker layer of Null Oil to help the biker stand out a little more.

Here are my Cabal Sorcerers.
Each sorcerer has some Iron Warrior Cheverons somewhere on their person, however it is mainly on their bikes. Kit bashed with two Chaos Biker kits, two Cromlech Stave kits, a few Night Lord raptor pieces, a Imperial Knight helm, a Chaos Chosen model and the 30K Ahriman model mounted on the Dark Art Miniature bases, they look very individual in their appearance. As you can see the Jump Packer still needs to have his base finished, and he is meant to be holding The Last Memory. To Do list.

 
Here, we have Kharn The Betrayer, Cypher the Fallen Angel and the 6th Sorcerer in the list. Kharn requires a re-base, however I don't want to repaint him because I want to keep my original work. I might get the new Kharn model, but for now I still enjoy the original.

For the snow on the bases I used the Valhalla Blizzard textured paint and Middenland Tufts for the grass. I decided to go with bright grass colours to keep the light theme of the entire models, though they still look bloody and grim. I find the hint of green complements the whites and silvers of the base and the models.

Some things are still to work on, mainly the summoning bank of Daemons. Some bases need re-doing and some painting - the 10 hounds in the corner need finishing off. Only a week to go but I am getting there!
 
Invisible bases are so easy to lose... 2 units of 3 Scrramers 2 Heralds and 3 Bloodcrushers make up my Incursion and Sacrifice choices. They are going to be joined by a Nurgle Herald and my Summon choices are going to have some Plague Bearers joining them before the week is out.

Hopefully I will get it all done in time for a big shoot where everything look perfect. My next posts will be about how the games went etc etc with hopefully some close ups and stuff.