"Oh Brother!" - Horde Brother

Abominations are bad enough 

as mindless rampaging nightmares. 

But to come across one that actually 

attempts to instill some sense of tactics 

in its brethren, now that’s a pain in the neck!

~Zombicide

Hello, hello! It's that time again, time for The Art of Caesura!

Last week we looked at a very unconventional abomination - the zombie-unicorn Chromatiz. This week we have we have a more traditional looking mutant zombie orc: The Horde Brother. 

In the game, this guy is brutal. When he turns up another abomination joins The Horde, meaning that another hulking abomination has a better chance of entering the board - and with a horde of zombie-orcs to boot! Deadly!

As I had mentioned on my post about the Orc Necromancer, I didn't fancy blending greens for all of the orcs in the box, so this is the first model for which I used some of my new greens. 

Seeing that this guy has a lot of skin on him, I was looking for ways to mix up the skin tones for some visual interest. To this end, I painted his green skin Castellan Green and his belly and chest with Ushabti Bone and then used the same technique that I had used on my Balrog for the irregular border where the two colours meet. You can see it better on the work-in-progress photo above. I then shaded the green and Ushabti with another new purchase: Athonian Camoshade and highlighted with Deathworld Forest and then Death Guard Green (man, it's going to take me a while to memorize the names of my new greens!)

While we're talking about variety in skin tones, I'll briefly mention his left hand. I say "briefly" because I can feel a rant boiling up inside me...uh oh...it's coming...I really REALLY don't like the style of his left hand or the general cartoony style that this anatomical atrocity prescribes to. I managed to only mention this in passing with the Vault Warden's tiny legs - containing this rant, but I fear I can contain it no longer. 

I feel that this style has become a movement in the past little while. One of the first really good (bad) examples of this style of gross (almost whimiscal) take on proportions, was that Gnasher-Screamer guy from that Kill Team expansion. When I first saw it, all I could think was "oh dear." This was more recently followed by the Zerker for Necromunda. 

It's a style that I find reminiscent of Diablo III (which for me, totally lost the dark foreboding tone that the first two games had, trading it instead for cartoony proportions, animations and bright glowing effects - luckily from what we've seen of gameplay trailers so far, Diablo IV seems to be making a return to the original tone). 

Now, before I get too far off track (too late) I want to emphasize that this style is not "wrong", clearly there are many people who love it, but it's just not for me. Really not for me. Like really really. 

Whew, okay I think I got that out of my system (until it comes time to paint Moloch from Rise of Moloch, then I'll get triggered all over again - WHERE ARE HIS LEGS?!?!). 

Where was I? Oh yes the skin on his left hand. Over the base colour, I just painted the whole thing with 2:1 Black Templar: Contrast Medium. I then feathered out the Black Templar paint using a brush wet with Contrast Medium the closer I got to his "shoulder". I then hightlighted it with a very diluted mix of Castellan Green and Abaddon Black.

As per my previous quandary about what colour to paint the keratinous horns, luckily I now had it figured out from painting the Fatty Bursters. As I said there, I was looking for a colour scheme that could provide unity across the range of abominations that have these horns to show that they are an effect of the zombie plague. I also wanted a colour scheme that would stand out against the different skin tones that I would be painting it on. That's how I settled on the icy blue horns. They start a deep navy blue (standing out against light skin - like the Fatty Bursters) and highlight out to icy white (standing out against dark skin tones, like this guy right here). 

This icy blue, then helped to inform my colour choice for the Horde Brother's organic armour plating. From a deep turquoise, I edged it with pale blue, in the style that some people paint the chitinous armour plating on tyranids. 

My favourite part of this model (aside from his left arm) are the details hanging off his belt - things he is carrying with him to lure in other abominations to join the Horde. They reminded me of the details on GW's giant kit. He's got a whole pig, a drumstick and a nice rack of (hopefully) lamb. 

In the picture above I was trying to demonstrate some of the blending I did on his upper traps and rhomboids, I tried to create some muscle striations which you can kind of see on the right side. 

You can also get a bit of a look at another element I really like: his right pauldron. I painted it the same way as I painted my Blood Bowl Ogre's gut plate: Leadbelcher coated in Contrast Snakebite Leather and then heavily dry-brushed with Leadbelcher and then Stormhost Silver. 

So that's the Horde Brother. Not my favourite miniature of the set, but still some fun details, and a nice opportunity to try something a little different on his great swathes of skin. 

See you next week for more on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: Dark - Season 3 (finale!)

Next Week:

A tactical break from the zombie plague...