"Crush Your Enemies" - Darkoath Chieftain

A Darkoath Chieftain has set his feet upon

the path to glory or damnation.

His every deed is meant to win the favour

of the gods.

~ Games Workshop

Happy Friday on The Art of Caesura!

With only three more models to paint (including the one this week!) we're quickly nearing completion of Silver Tower!

This week is an important one! The Darkoath Chieftain is my favourite hero and the guy that I play as in Silver Tower and he's just a big bad-ass barbarian. I left him for last partially because I always get anxious about painting my favourite models and characters lest I bugger them up (hence, Grimgore Ironhide is still unpainted after over a decade!). I also hesitated painting this guy because I had an important decision to make:

So, what was my hardest decision in my whole Silver Tower model-making process? Which arm to use for the Darkoath Chieftain!! This decision has literally taken me almost two years to make - since I first got Silver Tower! I really couldn't decide, but was originally leaning towards the battleaxe because: it looks brutal, it's one of the weapon attacks on his card so is more WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), and I kind of dug how it made him look more just like a big brutal barbarian. 

My wife preferred the severed Tzaangor head (she's bloodthirsty like that). The obvious solution was to magnetize it all. So I painted up both arms, but damn it, the smallest magnets I have are 3mm wide and his forearm is about half that. So then I tried to pin it in a way that I could swap out the arms but after drilling it all out there wasn't enough friction to hold the arms on and they would just fall off. So I finally just ended up making a decision, and I ended up going for...the severed head!

Lest you think I was just pandering to my wife, on much reflection I do think the Tzaangor head looks a bit cooler (I know this is wildly subjective, but the "rule of cool" is always how I end up rolling with my minis), plus I came to see that having the Tzaangor head to ground him in a setting (Silver Tower, or at least Age of Sigmar) was actually a strength. It added to his narrative. Also, I still have about a hundred Conan minis to paint, so I'll definitely have my fill of painting generic barbarian-types! A final benefit of using the Tzaangor head is that the blue provides a spot colour that balances the warm skin tone and reds of his rags. The blue also sympathizes with the blue of the grips of both of his weapons (dagger in scabbard, and BRODESWODE!!), and the two blue gems (on the scabbard and on his ring) which helps to pull your eye across the model.

So I pulled out a Tzaangor from the herd I did a few weeks ago to use for reference and the only thing I did differently was to add the blood and gore dripping out of his neck-stump. To contrast it's skin, (and really, just for fun) I made his blood a toxic orange using Ryza Rust [mixed with Lahmian Medium (not what it was designed for!)] washed with Reikland Fleshshade and then Carroburg Crimson before re-highlighting with Ryza Rust and then two coats of gloss varnish. 

Other little points about his painting process:

Skin: I have really been putting my Scale 75 Flesh paint-set to work on these Silver Tower heroes! We've had a ruddy skin tone for the Doomseeker, a dark skin tone for the Warpriest, a light skin tone for the Shard and now this week is more of a "standard" veering towards Mediterranean Caucasian skin tone. I started with Basic Flesh, washed with watered-down Reikland Fleshshade, Basic Flesh again and then a mix of Basic Flesh and Light Skin with a final highlight of Light Skin. 

His red-leather loincloth is darker on the outside (Mephiston Red with Agrax Earthshade) and lighter on the inside (Mephiston Red with Basic Flesh) and I tried to do some "wear and tear" lines and markings to add some texture.

Metals: I tried to differentiate his coppers a little: All began as Hashut Copper (the only non-silver or gold metallic I have) and his "belt buckle" and other belt bobbins were given one wash of Seraphim Sepia, his pauldron was washed twice with Agrax Earthshade and once with diluted Nuln Oil and the demon-faced vambrace on his right forearm was washed with Druchii Violet then Seraphim Sepia (similar to the Doomkeeper). 

Above is a close-up of his magical sapphire ring, and below are the shots of the hand I finally settled on: the Tzaangor head (you can see the orange gore in the second picture below - as always, click on the photos for better quality versions).

And that's a wrap Chieftains and Warqueens! See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: Black Panther

Reading: Gotrek and Felix: Slayer

Listening: "Out for a Rip" - Shark Tank

Next Week:

Weaving the mists...