Imperium Terrain

This was an impulse purchase – I am lucky to have a nearby hobby shop that is finished with GW, and as such is getting rid of a lot of their stock cheaply (It does mean that my nearest GW/Miniature shop is approx. 50 miles away now, though!) – Anyway, I’ve picked up some of their Fantasy and 40K clobber at a steal, and fully intend to showcase here later!  Unfortunately, they are older models, so there will be nothing revelatory or “I was the first ever to cover this model” stuff, in fairness, this was never what the site was about – but I thought it’d be fun to run through some of these pieces.

This was my first peice of terrain for 40K – Honoured Imperium.  I liked the statue immediately – was easy to assemble and looked well when it overshadows the smaller miniatures.  I’d imagine that as a piece of gaming terrain it is pretty useless though.

The stages for this one were simple.  I toyed around with the concept of a stone-effect statue, but decided that my Fantasy terrain was replete with Fortress-Styles and bare hills, so thought I would try to replicate something that I did with Dreadstone Blight (Will post pics later) a year ago.  The plaques and wall-art of Dreadstone Blight I picked out in a tarnished brass effect.  I have always liked the verdigris on the Skaven metals, and this was a logical inclusion to any colour scheme where bright metal was exposed to external atmosphere.  I thought this would be a nice – if predictable and speedy way to kick out this piece in jig time.

So – the stages:

• Primed with Chaos Black.  Don’t use black as a prime coat often, but for 40K, as I start painting them, it seems more appropriate for the inkier tones than Fantasy, LOTR or Dreadfleet.
• The Pedastal base was my go-to formula for sontework – Chardon Granite with a medium-heavy drybrush of Dheneb Stone.  Some might want to add Rotting Flesh in a mix with the Dheneb Stone (1:1ish), but I like the even coat that foundations like Dheneb Stone give cut surfaces.  If it were rocks, I’d approach it differently.
• The basecoat was Tin Bitz and Vermin Brown mixed to about 2:1.  I hate when bases are metals, so always try to include a neater colour.
• I added some liquid Green Stuff to the head and leg seams to reduce the obvious split, but then had a ‘good’ idea to use it sparingly to smudge up one side of the model to account for atmospheric wear.  I decided to go against making battle-damage effects to the piece, as one type of degradation would suffice.  What have I learned?  Liquid Green Stuff has limited applications, and is best suited to hairline gaps – I really had to plough on the stuff to make a difference in the cloak piece and leg seams, and even then it may not have been worth the errand.  You be the judge!

• Wetbrushed with Shining Gold.  Heavy enough dose to cover all of the basecoat except the interior shade pieces.
• Drybrushed sparingly with Burnished Gold.  This is a metallic that I hate more than the rest, and is only useful for putting on top of Singing Gold.  Even then, I would shake it to the last the get the correct pigment evenly dispersed as I find it really wants to settle quite fast. I used this coat on flats and top showing parts of the model mainly, and the old maxim that less is more rang true,
• This penultimate step was the verdigris.  I used Hawk Turquoise as a cheat, really watered down.  The first time I tried this, I was mixing all kinds of dwarf bronze and scally green to get a proper copper-sulphately looking mixture, but really Hawk Turquoise will fit the bill and is far less messy!  I applied it to logical weathered areas, and again, sparingly.  The instinct is to layer it on, but isolated drybrush strokes do the job better.
• Finally, a slight highlight to the odd sharp edge of Chainmail or something like Mythril Silver if desired finish off the piece well.

The finish has to be touched up in spots – I overdabbed the Burnished Gold over the shield, and the banner on the shield needs to be inked with a name, but as I’m new to 40K, I don’t know who it should or might be yet! Overall though, I was pleased enough with the final draft.  It was a pretty easy piece to do up quickly, but I enjoyed the extended break from the Dreadfleet!  I may yet go longer!  I fit this one in amidst models from Dark Reach boxset and it was a welcome break during that run –  I have the other two pieces of terrain that came with the Honoured Imperium to complete yet, and they will be similarly used as link-breaks.

The model colour scheme may not be everyone’s cup of joe, but I think that the effect is strikingly different from game models while being suitable for the 40k universe.  I’d be interested to know what anyone else might think or suggest otherwise!