Heresy & Heroes

Before we even start this, if you haven’t done so already, head over to Warhammer Community and read the story about Harry and his son painting this mini – it’s way (waaay) more important and interesting than reading my drivel. But if you’re in the mood for a little drivel, do continue on – I’ve got plenty of it to share around. And now, back to our usual feature. 🙂

Quite unexpectedly, Games Workshop were kind enough to send Bastian Carthalos to me and I’ve been happilly working away on him. While this character is very much belonging to the Hammers of Sigmar, I inducted him into the Ashen Stars (my own Stormhost that you can read about here) because no-one, not even Lord Commanders, are immune to the curse… Let’s take a look at this big (BIG) fella.

What a chonkster. What an absolute unit. This guy is huge – like, Primarch proportions if you’ll permit me to cross the streams for a moment. All those memes people were making about him being an alternative model for Vulkan – let’s just say it would be far from impossible to do that. And he has that poise and purpose that you want a general to have – that’s some great posing and positioning from the Miniatures team.

When it came to painting him up as a member of the Ashen Stars, i was presented with a problem though. I started that Stormcast army over 3 years ago now, and I haven’t really worked on it properly for a long time. The golden-boys side of the Dominion box remains untouched (though come to think of it, so does the swampy-boys side – one day), but what’s more troublesome is that the way I paint (especially) metallics has evolved a lot in that time. So I had to drag myself back into the mists of the past (2018-ish) and relearn how I painted back then to fit this guy into that army. It was tricky, but I think he matches them quite well, even though I changed up a couple of things.

The model was undercoated black, and then I picked out all of the metallic areas with Leadbelcher, the brown leather with Rhinox Hide and the bone-coloured cloak with Ushabti Bone. All of that got a covering of Agrax Earthshade and was left to dry. Once dry, I highlighted the metallic areas up through Ironbreaker to Runefang Steel, before using Nazdreg Yellow, thinned with some Contrast Medium to create the brass/gold areas. The leather cloak was given a series of treatments (from sponges, brushes, etc) with XV-88 before being sealed in with Seraphim Sepia, and the bone-coloured cloak has lifted back up all the way to Screaming Skull.

That was the bulk of the model done so I focussed on the red areas next, the purply haft of his hammer and the lighter banner bits before adding the 5 pointed star to his cloak buckle and moving on to the base. Oh, that base. Normally there’s like a stone or two on the bases of this army, but on here there are tonnes, as well as two skulls (I’ve fixed the dodgy eye I painted in one of them post photos), and the brazier thing too. I’m not happy with the lines on some of those tiles, but as I got this whole thing finished in about five hours, I’ll live with it. This army was always meant to be played with, not lauded as a painting masterclass.

Once that base was done, I cracked out the Rhinox hide, Typhus Corrosion and Ryza Rust and went to town with the weathering – by far the most fun step with this scheme. I got him all grossed up with the signature look of the Ashen Stars, before cleaning up his base rim and calling him done.

In a way, I’m sad to see the back of this miniature. He reminded my why I like Stormcast Eternals, and he was a simple fun paint in a short period of time. Given weeks with him (and I’m not complaining at all here – it was very kind of GW to send him my way) I think I could have done something really special with him. Genuinely tempted to buy another one to do just that. He’s super easy to put together too, and there are minimal mould lines to worry about. Also, having looked at his bonkers rules, I’m trying to find a way to squeeze him into the army I intend to play, but we’ll see.

Onto the next project for me, though I have a packed couple of weeks so it might be quiet around here for a little. And I’m aware that there are at least a couple of articles that I have promised that have fallen by the wayside but I will get back to those as soon as I can. In the meantime, have an awesome weekend filled with hobby goodness. Onwards!

P.s. Here’s a good size comparison with a Liberator for you: