Been doing some work on my undead chaos "Legion of Hell".
As I have noted before, Chaos armies are interesting because they have at least three different flavors; Chaos Warriors, Beastmen and Demonic. Players can specialize in one type or have a composite army. As for me, I'm building out one army of each type but currently concentrating on a demonic "Legion of Hell" for an anticipated game when I am back in the States in a few months.
As part of that army, I'm putting together several blocks of flamegeists as line infantry.
The story behind these models really gets to the heart of my mental dysfunction. When GW started releasing their Nighthaunt figures last year, I was really torn. I actually think these models are very cool. I like how they're designed. GW has really come a long way in the time since I first started wargaming nearly 30 years ago. I loved a lot of those models from the 1980s and 1990s, and I am just as much a sucker for
Oldhammer as the next 50-year-old nerd. But I just have to admit, the prowess of GW's sculptors has insanely improved over the years. Even in plastic, they are creating beautiful, dynamic and above all,
interesting designs for their games. So I greatly look forward to any new line of undead that they produce.
But the Nighthaunt line left me in somewhat of a pickle. If you read the sidebar, you'll know that my OCD extends only to skeletal models. I field skeletons. Not zombies. Not mummies. Not vampires. Not ghouls. And certainly, not
ethereals. No ghosts or specters or wraiths. As the tag line says: "Nothing but bone!"
Now, this is a rule often honored in the breach. I do make exceptions in certain cases. Specifically, I'll collect zombified versions of various creatures (dragons, wyverns, trolls, etc.). I'll allow zombified versions of certain things that are poorly represented or just not available in a skeletal form (mostly demihumans; elves, dwarves, orcs, Skaven, lizardmen, etc.). And, of course, the "rule of cool" does apply. I'll accept a zombified version of something where the sculpt is, as a friend of mine from Boston used to say, "wicked awesome". Maybe as a character or leader.
But the Nighthaunt models are problematic. A well-adjusted person would just be like, "OK. I collect ghosts now". But building regular line troops from ethereals? That was just a bridge too far. I can't go there.
Now, almost all the Nighthaunt miniatures are partially skeletal. They are actually, in the classification scheme of early Warhammer Fantasy editions, and the old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game, "wights". Technically, the term "wight" is just the Anglo-Saxon word for undead ("wiht"). Meaning a reanimated corpse, either zombieish or skeletal, depending on age. Think of the wights in GoT.
But in the old classification scheme, wights were half skeleton, half wraith - with a solid skeletal upper body and ethereal lower half.
Now, I still don't play wights so I began thinking of how I could actually use these figures. I thought maybe I could do some conversion work and give them legs, but the way the models are designed, this would be really difficult to do even with extensive conversion skills.
But then I hit upon an idea that has been rolling around in my head since I first got my (still unassembled) Mortis Engine. I thought maybe I could paint the wisps of ethereal energy as fire and make it look like it was a skeletal chariot emerging from hellfire.
Now that would be a cool way to do up these Nighthaunt figs! And I could then make them into the backbone of my demonic "Legion of Hell" chaos army along with a few units of infernals (flaming skeletons) and undead demons.
So I bought a bunch of Nighthaunt models off of eBay (Glaivewraith Stalkers, Dreadscythe Harridans, Chainrasp Horde) and started planning.
Now painting the flame produces its own set of challenges, since the ethereal wisps were not sculpted originally as fire. The sculpt lends itself well to flame actually, and would be even better were I to do some putty work. The big challenge is figuring out where the flame is the hottest on these models and where it is coolest.
Now a lot of people paint fire with a deep red at its base, moving up to red, orange and yellow at the tip. This can look cool, but it's technically incorrect. Fire is lightest where it is hottest. The red parts of fire actually are the coolest part. So fire will be hottest and lightest at its source. But where is the source of the flame on these models?
You could make the area right under the cloaks the source of the fire, painting it white-hot and then proceeding to yellow, orange, red and then red-brown to charcoal at the very tips. But I really want to try and promote the idea that the skeletons are
solidifying out of the fire. Therefore, the area beneath the cloak has to be the coolest. The other option is what I went with. The source of the fire is from the ground, where the flame is emerging.
This creates its own specific challenges though. One jet of flame (coming from the ground) has to contain the hottest elements, but
both the surrounding wisps of flame, as well as the area towards the cloak have to be cooler. Remember, the tips of flame are the coolest.
So what I ended up doing was trying to imagine an axis where the fire would be at its hottest, with the flame getting cooler in both directions from that axis.
So with that in mind, I started the job. First, resisting the urge to assemble the pieces, I primed each half with white primer from Vallejo. At that point, I bathed the lower half of the models on each side with GW's Lamenter's Yellow glaze.
After that, I began glazing the models using the orange-ish Bloodletter glaze. working from both directions toward the imaginary axis, trying to feather the glaze into the yellow as I got closer. Also, I tried to lighten the glaze and keep the yellow in the deeper recesses of the flame.
After which I mixed the dark Clotted Red from Reaper with glaze medium and started to glaze the area under the cloaks and the tips of the flame, working the glaze down into the orange.
Next, I painted up the cloaks mostly using a mixture of some glaze medium and GW's Incubi Darkness. The skeletal parts are Scale Color's Thar Brown with an Agrax Earthshade wash.
So, as you can see below, I have more detail work to do, but the basics are done. By the time I go back, I should have several units of flamegeists done to support the Legion of Hell. I'm also thinking this particular unit of Glaivewraith Stalkers could do double duty in my Undead Chaos Beastmen army.
