Wargaming Tradecraft: Hordebloods

Another Hordeblood takes to the field! Today, the Champion Hero boldly leads his fellow Champions across the field of battle in full painted glory.

This'll be a full WIP from start to (mostly) finish. I'm withholding one section as it'll be its own tutorial.

The first thing is modding and the Champion Hero needs a weapon befitting of him - Thunderfury!

After cutting the end off his normal weapon, I need to create the skeleton for his new one. To scale it, I line his hands and hilt over my tablet and zoom out until the shapes roughly match. (See how slick that works?)

I then use a piece of thin, clear plastic from a Privateer Press container and trace the weapon out at the correct size.

This, I cut out.

The stencil gets covered in green stuff, one side at a time, which is then cut roughly to shape.

It takes a little carving, but I get a smooth-ish shape equally thick on both sides.

I cover that with a thin layer of green stuff I can shape, then scrape and smooth in to the shape I want. Fun Fact: You can use wet sandpaper to sand green stuff for a smooth finish.

The blue of his armour is just a bunch of layers. It starts with a deep blue around the edges, blended to a strong blue in the center of the armour plates. To add character, I take some lighter blues, moving up to white, then highlight with fine lines.

You can also see his red tabbard... it's the one constant thing that all my models have, therefore it's painted first.

His golden trim is next and I'm still painting NMM for these guys.

It starts with a dark, then chestnut brown and moves in to some golds and whites.

After a little darkening and more highlights it's about where I want it to be.

At first, his sword was kind of plain.

You'll see in the lower pics that I went to a hashed shade / highlight which gives it a look I really like.

Still a little torn here... I kind of want to add a gel'd lightning effect, but I also like where it ended up.