How to Resurrect your Warhammer Army | Classic Tomb Kings

from the scorched Sands of the old world rise the tomb Kings skeletal Warriors from an ancient Dynasty risen again to reclaim their former glory in this video I'm resurrecting my tomb King's Army taking it from a collection of used models in bad shape to a presentable Army that I'll enjoy having on the tabletop I'll take you through the process of restoring old models and share some tips and tricks that I've developed in over 20 years in the hobby to get armies onto the table quickly so you can spend more time gaming or just enjoying looking at them let's get to it [Music] the tomb kings are an army that I have a very special relationship with them being the intersection of two of my long running obsessions ancient Egypt and Warhammer the release of Warhammer the old world and the return of the Tomb Kings it only felt right that I dig up my old army and give it new life my tomb Kings Army was mostly purchas used and I started collecting it in about 2016 a period when the Army had been discontinued for years and all the kids were out of print now many of the models I was able to get were in pretty bad shape there were a lot of models I wasn't able to get my hands on I had several different batches of skeletons that I'd acquired over the years and the original paint jobs didn't look great and they didn't match each other either now after playing my first games of Warhammer the old world I became inspired to get my tomb Kings into a more presentable condition a while back I purchased this bone giant a model that reminds me quite a lot of a certain quest in Majora's Mask you guys remember this one I do anyways with tons of projects on the go I wanted to develop a painting scheme that would come together quickly but look great on the table now often times I'll strip old paint off a model if I think it needs it and I'll show you the best ways to do that later but for this one I felt it was in good enough shape to paint right over it so I sprayed it with white primer and started painting now my Approach was to paint the largest areas first and refine from there doing this is my favorite trick for painting armies that you actually want to play with because it means your model will become mostly presentable really quickly almost every model has three or four colors that cover 95% of the model so by painting these colors it'll already look 95% better than an unpainted model on the table refining a model to be at a better standard is usually a matter of diminishing returns and everybody has their own preference and skill levels that'll determine how far they want to go and how much time they're going to spend personally I become more motivated to finish my model to a decent standard once the main colors are on and the model starts to come to light life or unlife as the case may be you can see what I'm talking about here at this stage I've only put four different speed paints on the model plus a different Brown for the base Rim at the distance that most games are played this model looks really presentable it looks quite good of course we can still refine it from here for this model I start by adding some contrast to key areas by using a wash of strong tone in addition I brighten up some of the bone areas with a dry brush of pure white it's at this stage that I also decided to add an accent color something that'll make my Army really pop and I chose a vibrant turquoise blue something I call fance Blue after the Egyptian ceramic technique of the same name fance is a ceramic material that was used and prized by the ancient Egyptians for its resemblance to turquoise but it had the ability to be able to be molded and worked into a wide variety of shapes and uses made from silicat alkaline salts and powdered metals usually copper it's been speculated that fance might have been made from the waste materials of drilling through hard Stones the Egyptian method of drilling and cutting through hard Stones involved copper tools and abrasives which would have produced powdered copper and certain minerals as a waste product it's pretty cool to think about and since I love ancient Egyptian architecture and the mysteries of how it was constructed this connections with the method of ston working just makes me love it even more so fance has an incredible vibrant color but also has a beautiful translucence and in the Met Museum where I first saw these pieces they share the case with many gold artifacts and in my opinion they outshine them they just really catch your eye and even after thousands of years they look incredible it's hard to capture in photos but these pieces seem to almost glow in any event fance was used for over 4,000 years across the Old Kingdom Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom so fance blue is the perfect quintessentially Egyptian accent color for my Army it also contrasts beautifully with the Earth Tones and bronzes and Golds this may sound obvious but choosing a unified color scheme that really Appeals to you personally is one of the big tricks to getting you to want to paint your whole Army so with that covered let's move on now one of the daunting things about painting a Warhammer Army is painting regiments of 20 or more troops at once but with a simple scheme it can be accomplished easily in less time than you would think this unit of Tomb guard for example I traded for from a friend of mine and as you can see they have a bunch of different mismatched paint schemes that are all chipped up and are badly in need of repainting again relying on a simple scheme to do a lot of the leg work I paint with army painter speed paints over a white base now speed paints provide some contrast and shading in just one coat so they're perfect for saving time on a paint Scheme since they're even thinner than normal acrylic paints they also flow nicely into cracks and grooves which saves even more time the final touch that I add is to provide contrast and definition by applying a wash to the whole model my favorite wash for this purpose is strong tone strong tone doesn't stain or discolor the surface too much but it's seeps into the deepest cracks to define the edges between materials which really helps bring out details like the individual ribs on skeletons and face details and things like that at the risk of stating the obvious every step that you add to a painting scheme compounds when there's 20 models to paint so the simpler you can make your scheme the quicker you can get a unit of 20 models painted like these ones here this took me just one evening and it's an incredibly gratifying feeling to get so much painted so quickly an air hairbrush is not a necessary tool for Army painting but they certainly do some things incredibly quickly and effectively take a look at these shields for example which I want to paint fance blue after sticking them to a piece of wood I can hit them all with a coat of blue in less than 30 seconds and moreover I can add a beautiful gradient with a lighter blue in the same amount of time for smooth surfaces like this to achieve this effect on 20 Shields with a paintbrush would probably take a couple hours of careful blending let's talk for a moment about what I call the dirty secret of painting Warhammer fantasy models because your troops will be lined up in these blocks of let's say 20 guys the guys at the back are just naturally going to get a lot less attention moreover once the arrows and magic and everything starts flying those guys are going to be removed as casualties probably pretty soon so it's perfectly normal and acceptable to spend more time on the front rank of guys than on the very back ones when you have an army that might have 100 different minis in it It's Perfectly Normal that they're not all going to be painted to your highest level now sometimes with old models you want to start from a fresh clean slate so you can paint to your highest ability without old paint getting in the way in these circumstances stripping the model down to its original state is your best bet with metal models the best stripping agent that I found is acetone I put the model in a glass jar covering it with acetone then give it a swirl you'll see some paint lift off immediately I often let it sit for a few hours or days and then I come in with an old toothbrush to help loosen up some of the old paint and scrub it down to clean metal the paint should lift right off easily here you can see clearly the importance of knowing your materials acetone will eat right through both the NIT trial and latex disposable gloves that I normally use so get yourself some proper rubber gloves this is also the reason why you need to use a glass jar because a plastic jar will also possibly be eaten by the acetone and you don't want to mess with that some sometimes it takes two rounds of scrubbing res submerging the piece in between but in the end you should get a gleaming bare metal piece ready for paint hell yeah if your miniature has any plastic components any at all do not use acetone it will melt them into sludge however this same process can be achieved on plastic minis using isopropyl alcohol so try that instead one of the things that can really slow down a speed painting project even after you've already determined a palette of colors for a color scheme is knowing what color to paint things models are often covered in weird little details pouches straps weird scraps of cloth and miscellaneous bits of kit that can take valuable time and brain power to determine what color to paint them if you paint things the wrong color it can end up looking weird and detracting from the model as a whole so I've developed a method for solving this problem on the go and it goes like follows first paint everything that you know what color it will be usually this is stuff like skin armor and metallic bits these will help you to see how the model is shaping up for this ushabti for example I painted dark skin and gold armor with these colors in place you can choose what colors to paint the other bits more easily for example this Su shabti has a bit of cloth near its black skin if I paint it very dark it will not stand out as well as if I painted a pale color so I opt for this light tan color based on really nothing more than the fact that it's right next to the dark skin and the contrast between those two things will look great I can now see easily where my accent color will likely have the most visual impact on this row of decorative bits on the model's golden mantle so by following this simple system I have a nicely balanced looking model even though I spent very little time painting it the balance of light and dark and color across the model gives a balanced composition that will look better on the table than the amount of input effort would have you think I used the same method on this screaming skull catapult after painting all the bone areas which I knew would of course be bone color and picking out the wood areas in a pale wood tone I should mention at this point that if you ever need any reference images for ancient Egyptian wood there is a lot of original wood intact inside some of the Old Kingdom pyramids such as the so-called bent pyramid and the Pyramid of my Doom I just think that's really cool so I mixed two speed paints together to try to get a tone that would kind of approximate the same shade of that wood for authenticity once I've painted those colors in I can evaluate the model as a whole and see what I think would look best in the remaining areas to be painted I decided to paint these mummies and the bandages that wrap the uprights in a very dark tone giving some much needed contrast and variety now with a wash of strong tone for some definition I dry brush everything lightly with off-white to really make it pop so for a piece that I was able to paint in just over an hour after my son went to bed results look great the dark and light contrasts make the model look both balanced and complete so there you have it guys a few simple tricks that allow you to get an army from any shape into a presentable and cohesive force just just the span of a few evenings with new game systems coming out all the time I think getting armies ready for the table is an important skill and sometimes blitzing through the bulk of an army to get it ready for the table is an important step to getting there giving us more time to game work on centerpiece models and make some terrain I want to give a huge thank you to all of my patrons for their continued support you guys are the best if you want to join my patreon and support the channel links will be below for that as well I hope you enjoyed this video guys and we'll see you next time on Eric's hob Workshop

Channel: Eric's Hobby Workshop

Views: 76,981

Keywords: tomb kings, games workshop, warhammer the old world, miniature painting, warhammer fantasy, the old world, citadel miniatures, tabletop gaming, warhammer age of sigmar, painting tutorial, how to, the oldworld, ancient egypt, undead, fantasy

Id: ojG-43RUuyY

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2024