Hordes: Frostfang Brood

When I just tried digging up a link to my write-ups on the color scheme for my Warmachine/Hordes armies, I found an article for The Vermillion Menofix but I didn’t see one for my Legion force.  So to remedy that I snagged this off another forum and have copied it here to my blog.

Looking over my Legion of Everblight models, it didn’t take long for me to decide to go with a color scheme that matched their background in the frozen mountains to the north. I immediately decided to have a cool blue be a dominant color and worked from there, eventually coming up with a ‘bone-and-blue’ scheme shown below. I won this warpack in a drawing the day of release and I began assembling the models relatively soon thereafter. The paint job was chosen to be unique at the time, but it turned out that since I started a number of people have had the same idea and my models were by no means the first ones done with this scheme.

Many of the techniques I started using on my Legion models were relatively simple and there were a great deal of large expanses to do but still… for some reason I felt drained after painting these up and had to take a break for a bit before picking the brush back up. I don’t think I’ve ever painted a miniature (or group of miniatures) that took as much out of me as the Legion of Everblight Warpack did.

Originally the warbeast flesh started with a touch-up of Vallejo Model Color White over an initial white primer. I usually prime in grey, not white, but I decided to go this route on just these beasts because the alternative – to try and get a solid smooth coat of white over dark primer – was something I didn’t want to try. Initially I washed the entire fleshy areas with a mix of Midnight Blue and a tad of Black and then started highlighting back up by adding Cape Cod Blue and eventually White to the mix. I’ve since changed my recipe and have included the new one below.

My Ogrun skin tones were done in the same manner as my new dragonspawn flesh recipe but my Nyssians have a more intense blue hue. I didn’t want every model to have the exact same skin tone but I needed them to all look cohesive on the table so I replaced the grays used in dragonspawn/Ogrun skin with a sky blue. The comparative results are visible below. However one unifying feature I’ve kept on every model are solid black eyes.

Other than the carapaces on the beasts and the blight on some of the infantry, I didn’t want any warm colors on my models at all. I wanted to look at them and think “frigid.” I used a similar color to the studio scheme on the leather but went with a more intense blue for mine. I’ve also only used the silver family of metallics – no golds or bronzes (which are warm colors) anywhere. For basing I chose a snowy rock scheme for the warpack that matched their origins in the frozen highlands. I started with a layer of concrete patch to represent earth and the rock outcroppings were built using corkboard that was cut down to a usable diameter then roughed up to give it a slightly more natural look. The snow is 4:2:1 mix of baking soda:acrylic medium:water.  I tweak the mix slightly as I apply it to achieve the consistency I want.

Dragonspawn/Blighted Ogrun Flesh
Base: Appelbarrel Rain Gray
Shade: Wash Appelbarrel Midnight Blue + Black
Highlight: Midnight Blue up through Delta Ceramcoat Cape Cod Blue (a light gray/blue)

Blighted Nyss Flesh
Base: Appelbarrel Sky Blue
Shade: Wash Appelbarrel Midnight Blue + Black
Highlight: Midnight Blue up through Sky Blue + White

Bone/Blight
Base: Appelbarrel Goosefeather
Shade: Successive light washes of Appelbarrel Brown Oxide + Applebarrel Dark Burnt Umber

Blue Leather
Base: Appelbarrel Midnight Blue
Shade: Wash Black
Highlight: Midnight Blue + Cape Cod Blue