Chaos Lord on Demonic Steed

Finally we're back over to an army project. Sure, we both know I'll change direction tomorrow, but let's enjoy this for today. While we're on honest admissions, I'm an overthinker and wasn't sure how to paint him as the symbols indicate he's Chaos Undivided, or at least not overly committed at this point. The current Games Workshop schemes are very "on rails" for the Chaos ranges, and it's pink and purple if you're Slaanesh, blues for Tzeentch, red for Khorne and green for Nurgle. Reading back through my Slaves to Darkness and Realm of Chaos, Chaos should be a cacophony of colours; perhaps a single colour to the fore, but shouldn't be limiting you to just one or two colours.

Colours aren't tracked as I've chipped away at parts of it over the past few months whenever the mood took me. But there's magenta, purple, green, blue ... you get the idea, there's a lot of everything on here. 

A challenge of metal models is the handling to avoid rubbing off paint. This fellow was a particular pain because of the size, as I couldn't put it on a painting handle. I feel this will be a recurring theme on my metal cavalry, and need to think about sub assemblies to make it easier in future.

This was the miniature where I realised if I ever want to field a painted Warriors of Chaos army, I have to make a few compromises on the way in terms of quality, as painting everything to this level is unsustainable for seeing a finished army in the next decade. I'm at peace with this now, and feel it should be easier to finish more models faster.

If I had a penny for every time I'd swear I'd scheduled a post to publish on time, but actually hadn't, I think I'd be £1 to the good by now. For someone with 40 years playing and working with computers, I should be better at this basic level nonsense!

Gerda von Evilstein

Another quick midweek project to keep momentum going with my Warriors of Chaos army. A lot of Slaanesh-inspired purple, pink and blue, with some stippled yellows for a touch of contrast to break up the various textures.

Finding a painted reference for this model was incredibly hard, but I recalled an old White Dwarf cover with a similar but definitely different model, which was helpful to think about handling the complexity of the leg sculpts and gave me inspiration for the hair.

(lovely quality image from FriendOrFoe)

Nazgob, Orc Shaman

It's a classic sculpt, isn't it? Such a good one, and great to paint. It carriest the same weakness as all old sculpts which is the feet are horrid, so I've buried mine in lovely flowers.

Not a complicated paint for this. Same skintone as my Orc army with a little extra because he's a character model, and they deserve a little more effort.

• Skin. Dark Sea Blue. Moot Green. Greenish White, Ice Yellow and a little Sunny Skintone.
• Robes. Magenta. Ochre. Greenish White.
• Metal. Dark Sea Blue. Black. Greenish White. Moot Green. Magenta. 

 Most of my attention on this one went into the sword if I'm honest. While the magical bone staff is iconic, I wanted to play with adding more colour into my NMM but still retaining a shiny feel. This one has colour from the environment reflecting in the blade. The angles were quite gentle and I wanted to add more depth to them. While you can see the final version in the shots above, below is where I started and refined my way to.

 

Sir Rex Raffles

REx is *the* dwarf I've wanted to paint for decades, but felt the eBay prices were too steep to justify a purchase. I painted King Diamond for a friend last Christmas (https://www.nerodine.com/2025/12/king-diamond-imperial-dwarf-commander.html) and as an unexpected thank-you, he kindly gifted me Rex when we met up earlier this year.

This chap can trace his colour lineage back to Wayne England's beautiful Imperial Dwarfs in White Dwarf 135. I would recommend reading this article from the excellent Realm of Chaos blog rather than me rehashing what they've already said so well. You can see the blue and cream as a theme in my dwarfs across various model ranges (https://www.nerodine.com/search/label/dwarfs) and it's no coincidence, as the scheme struck me as impactful and somehow just right for these little fellows.

I don't like painting the chainmail on these older sculpts, so it's rather perfunctory but I tried pushing my NMM on the helm itself as the main attraction and feel the majority works well. The angry squirrel dog monster atop the helm is a mixed bag, but it's fine. Trying to be more precise on my mark marking for the tiny helm was sufficient reward on this piece.

• Cloth. Magic Blue is at the heart of the colour scheme. Highlighted with Ice Yellow or simply white, and shaded with Magenta to make it more interesting.
• Wood. Armour Brown as the main colour, then really whatever else was on the palette to make it lighter or darker in places. It's really about creating texture, then positioning the shield so the longer stripes follow the arm rather than cross them. Very happy with the result.
• Gold. Armour Brown, Yellow Ochre and then Ice Yellow or white. There's a little orange in there in places just for colour interest so it wasn't a straight gradient of yellow.
• Steel. Neutral grays with a little green to reflect the environment in the lower areas.

There were at least four models with a similar pose; two with helms, two with crowns, but this fellow just stuck in my affections and I'm honestly delighted he's now painted and in my army.

Orc shields

There's tens of thousands of painting tutorials. Almost all of them will be better than this, but I was asked by a couple of people for a step-by-step on how I've painted my shields, and was happy to oblige. It's also a useful way to track what I'm doing as a repeatable process on my army.

We're going to cover brushes, paints, process and future changes I might make. 

Let's start with the brushes because they're important. You don't need small brushes for the majority of detail, and it will slow you down to use small ones! While I have a 00 Series 7 for the final details, the majority of the work is done by these two horror show brushes to the right of it. They have not been loved, but are fantastic for this sort of project.

 Paints

• Vallejo Leather Brown 
• GW Wyldwood Contrast 
• AK Dark Sea Blue
• Kimera Magenta
• AK Ochre 
• AK Greenish White 

Process

Basecoat shields in Leather Brown, metal elements in Dark Sea Blue, and suns in Magenta. All you want is a consistent coat of paint as a starting point.

Wash everything in thinned down Wyldwood Contrast paint, except the suns. I applied it a little heavier on some shields than others just for variety. Don't forget that the symbols will be glued to them later so they don't have to be perfect. The goal is hitting any recess area that the paintbrush won't reach in later stages.

Take a big flat brush, and a 1:1 mix of Greenish White & Dark Sea Blue with almost no water added, and drag and stab it across the dark blue areas. The idea being I have my light source top left so the darker areas will be bottom right. Ensure you run the brush along every edge in a rough fashion. This isn't drybrushing, or stippling per se, it's just ensuring paint goes on the surface to create rough texture and start to build a sense of battered metal.

Using my round brush, I now add a very messy glaze dragging the brush upward to the top left corner ensuring I'm only catching raised surfaces and not going in the recess. This just helps to ensure the finish isn't chalky. 

Same process again but 2:1 mix of Greenish White & Dark Sea Blue this time. I swapped to a round brush and focused more on the upper left quarter of the pieces for most of the paint, but then ensured I brightened up areas like tusks, any edge facing upwards. Still a very ugly stabbing and dragging motion and not a lot of water.

As before, then a glaze of this over the top again. 

Now the fun part! I swap to the small brush and just using Greenish White, edge highlight the upper edges. Add a few random drags, stabs and then we're done.

At this point I move to the suns and using the Ochre apply the same approach with a lot of heavy stabbing and dragging from the top left. One nice feature of any yellow is that there's a bit more transparency than other colours, and over a pink or magenta it creates a nice warm tone. 

Now onto a 1:1 mix of Ochre and Greenish White and the same again, but a smaller area. Really focus on that upper left corner. By this point you should have more reds in the bottom right, then moving into an orange tone where the magenta and ochre overlap, up to a fuller yellow ochre, and now some whiter highlights.

Finally add a few touches of just Greenish White on the edge of tusks, horns and such. You don't need a lot of paint, just a stroke or two to catch an edge and make an interesting angle.

Done! Total time taken was 70 minutes for these, including pausing for notes and photos, and drying time. I plan to sit and do all the others in a single batch after this, and think the process will only take a few hours in total for everything. These aren't painted to win competitions, it's just to add character to an army, in a way that's fast to replicate across dozens of shields. So many shields. What on earth was I thinking.

What Would I Change?

There are two possible changes for the future.

• Making the dark areas darker. My colours aren't very dark so there's scope to go back in places and push up the contrast by using more Wyldwood to darken areas.
• Weathering. I plan to do a lot of rusted and weathered armour and weaponry, and could bring some of the oranges from those elements into the symbols on the shield in the darker areas.

Orcs & Goblins begin

Another army for The Old World? I know, I know. However, to get table time with my Chaos Warriors, they need opposition, so I started picking up models last year. This is another of those old armies I've always fancied but couldn't face painting due to the numbers required but somehow here we are, with a Orcs & Goblins battalion box assembled over the break between Christmas and New Year. I'm an idiot.

 

And a work-in-progress on my first test model! 

 

New Recruit (https://www.newrecruit.eu/app), has fast become my favourite army list builder, and I used it to write up a basic list based on the Orcs & Goblins battalion box. It's not a legal force yet but it's helpful to gauge the mix of models I'll need to add through the year to round out the force. My interest is rule of cool rather than whatever the current tournament meta is, as I play infrequently enough to make that a non-requirement.

Speaking of cool, I also have the awesome shaman sculpted by Brian Nelson.

 

(Not my paintjob, but the first reference photo I could find) 

 # ++ Main Force ++ [706 pts]
## Characters [65 pts]
Orc Weirdboy [65 pts]: Hand Weapon, General, Wizard Level 1, Battle Magic

## Core [461 pts]
Goblin Mobs [117 pts]:
• 20x Goblin [5 pts]: Hand Weapon, Thrusting Spear [1 pts], Shield, Light Armour [1 pts]
• 1x Boss [7 pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [5 pts]
• 1x Musician [5 pts]
Goblin Mobs [117 pts]:
• 20x Goblin [5 pts]: Hand Weapon, Shortbow [1 pts], Light Armour [1 pts]
• 1x Boss [7 pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [5 pts]
• 1x Musician [5 pts]
Orc Mobs [227 pts]: Boss [7 pts], Musician [5 pts]
• 30x Orc Boy [7 pts]: Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Big Un's [2 pts]
  Standard Bearer [5 pts] (Magic Standard)

## Special [180 pts]
Orc Boar Chariots [90 pts]:
• 1x Orc Boar Chariot [90 pts]: 2x Orc Crew (Hand Weapon, Cavalry Spear), 2x War Boar (Tusks)
Orc Boar Chariots [90 pts]:
• 1x Orc Boar Chariot [90 pts]: 2x Orc Crew (Hand Weapon, Cavalry Spear), 2x War Boar (Tusks)

Wardancers, Wood Elves

I don't elf as a rule. I can Eldar, but that's totally different because they're from space. However, this year on a Secret Santa, I drew a name of someone who is very much into elves, figuratively speaking. Trying to determine what people have and don't have on their armies, and what you can add as a guest painter, is a challenge.

Unsurprisingly, there's quite a bit of green present. I added a few different hues for variety, but the palette is essentially green, blue and a little yellow.

There's a little elephant in the room, or rather a normal elf among the dancing lads. Trying to track down the original wardancers was a real pain, but I wanted a selection of older, metal models and found this beauty from the very early elf range in 1987.

While I enjoyed the challenge of trying to paint it in a more modern fashion, the sculpt itself will not be remembered fondly in time. The hands and feet are oversized, the sword lacks definition, and the face and hair are awkward. But it's another of those projects where it's oaky to say "it's fine, we're done" and move on.

The sculptor? Jes Goodwin. I wonder if he ever did anything of note ...

King Diamond, Imperial Dwarf Commander

I've had a mighty need to paint a classic, oldhammer Imperial Dwarf for a few years. A mighty need. However, brushing through the cobwebs of nostalgia there's only actually couple that actually appeal as painting projects. This is one of two

The second challenge is how should it be painted, and why? I'm more mindful that painting projects don't always need to live in my display shelves, and if they can go somewhere to be loved, then maybe that's what should happen. A friend of mine is mad about old Warhammer dwarfs. His passion for oldhammer outstrips mine, so he felt like the natural recipient.

 

One error you might notice is there's a directional mismatch of the woodgrain front and back, so one to keep in mind for future projects, but my friend is a gracious fellow and I'm sure he won't grumble.

Matching to an existing army is always a challenge and moreso when my friend has opted for a quartered red and cream, AND already has this model! Here's the only shot I have of his troops by way of comparison.

 

 His is painted entirely in silvers with a brass rim to the shield, so I've opted to make this one a little brighter, and have a gold crown not silver then steel edging for the shield. Obviously the shield boss means I couldn't add a decal to match, but that shouldn't be a problem. Ignore the discrepancy in basing, as I've kept mine neutral and a boring square base as I suspect his army will move to The Old World very soon.

I'm pleased with this little fellow.

Slann Starmaster

A good friend of mine casually mentioned she had a Slann Starmaster just sitting around (lame pun intended), had no interest in painting it, and would anyone like it. "Yes please" said I, as after seeing the Marc Masclans one from Golden Demon (https://www.instagram.com/p/DQT6YVQDYvC/?img_index=1), realising it was pretty darned fantastic sculpt. I don't want to keep the beautiful frog, because it doesn't have a place in any of my collections, but painting it and giving it back to its rightful owner? Yes please to that.

 I remembered to take a couple of progress shots of the base build for a change.While the model's straight forward, the base was a head scratcher. I tried foam tiles at jaunty angles, but that didn't look right, so in the end I settled on larger foam blocks covered in texture, then carved lines in with a knife and blunt pencil.

 

Chaos Basing

Holiday season has been a pleasant slowdown from painting in the last few weeks. As a small filler post while I'm finishing up a few things, I thought documenting what I'd done on the basing for my Warriors of Chaos.

In the past I've had a tendency to overcomplicate life and come up with weird and wonderful schemes, so on the current armies I'm keeping it simple (stupid) to not get in my own way. In the previous post I mentioned that it's a few pieces of cork as rocks, some gravel and tiny stones, then sand atop everything. 

Here's what the basing materials and early stages look like. Cork and slate are superglued in place first and usually a tactical position to cover basing holes, or create resting points for feet and weaponry. Then liberal application of PVA across the rest of the base, a sprinkle of the heavy gravel, then the lighter gravel, tapping back out into the box each time so any loose material is saved for later, and finally the sand over everything.

The ballast fixer is great, but I can't stress enough how awful it smells. It's fine on one model, but when you're basing 80+ models at the same time, it's a powerful odour and I was happy to leave these out in the garden for a day to avoid the worst of the smell.

 Google have added a potentially interesting feature to Blogger, where it will auto-generate search links for useful terms. I tried it on my previous post, but the decision making, and therefore quality of links is poor. I don't think anyone wants to search for blue, for example, but the link to NMM is excellent. It could have utility in the future, just not yet for me.

Warriors of Chaos: Marlockt Beastface

So, it's time to share the test model - Marlockt Beastface.

He's done with NMM but I think that needs to change on the next model as it doesn't quite suit the feel of what the army should be; which is encapsulating that late 80s feel for how things were painted. Loath to repaint him at the moment, so next test model will be the starting point and then I can make a comparison between them. 

The freehand on the shield is a bit wonky, but captures the late 80s vibe I'd like and doesn't feel especially polished, which is fine for me.

  

The model is metal primer (yes it's oldhammer), black primer for grip, white ink over the top of that for general volume and light, magenta on top of that (bear with me), blue in the shadow areas to create a more purple tone, then layer up the colours quickly atop that. Sounds arduous but it works well enough en masse, so I'm hoping it'll speed the project up long term. Even if right now I'm thinking "Dave, you're an idiot".

Basing is simple. It's a few pieces of cork as rocks, some gravel and tiny stones, then sand atop everything. Left to dry overnight then a ballast fixer applied to make it rock hard. But maaaaan that stuff smells AWFUL. Leave it outside if you can because it's stinky. After that, just a couple of earthy tones on the base and job done.

Warriors of Chaos

Starting one army and focusing on that would be perfectly sensible, so ... that's not happening. I'm also going to dive into the The Old World too.

I saw there's a fantastic challenge running on this blog (https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com) and realised this is the structure I've been missing from a lot of my projects. In my rush to demonstrate how clever I am by painting whole armies, I manage to actually achieve nothing but a series of half-painted or abandoned armies.

Their challenge feels a bit cluttered with so many participants, but I love looking at the results. For the second half of 2025 I'm going to follow along! I'll aim to paint a unit per month, starting with infantry. I've made headway in preparation and finally based my oldhammer metal collection.  

 

They're set up in units of 20, but I won't be painting them quite that fast! This is just to gauge the effect and how it looks en masse, and I adore them already. This will probably be plenty for the next 6-12 months I think, but there's more in the drawer - in desperate need of a paint strip and some pieces need fixing. No-one needs to see that though, it's quite boring.

In addition, I've created a unit filler for the four Chaos Gods to use in different sized units for variety and adding a more thematic approach. Khorne and Nurgle were easy enough to finish up but I need to decide how to enhance the Slaanesh and Tzeentch ones now. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The big challenge is sitting down to prime everything. It's going to take quite some time to go through everything and get it ready for painting. My silly brain also wants to ensure post-prime that everything is grouped up by Chaos God so I put the right colours on things. Well done brain, making my life significantly more complicated yet again.