We were favoured in an email from keen wargamer and fan of HOTT 2ed edition Gareth Fowler who showed us his approach to basing, painting and preparing two pre-selected 24AP Armies he got from Alternative Armies. We asked him if he could furnish us with a wee article and some pictures to share and he kindly did. All the miniatures are from the HOT 15mm Fantasy Range and are codes HOTT1003 and HOTT1005 from our 24AP HOTT 2nd Edition Armies which come with free element bases.
Also see our BLOG if you are keen on Dwarves for new Handgunners and updated images of our codes. Over to you sir!
I picked up the two army packs (orcs and dwarves) as a good pal of mine has a multitude of 15mm HotT armies and I was keen to get a few quick and simple armies painted to offer him an opponent.
After unpacking and cleaning the (minimal) flash and mould lines from the models I decided to paint the orc army in a colourful and grimy style and the dwarves with a brighter, more heroic tone.
The models were mounted on long sticks, pressed into blobs of blu-tak (other than the larger ones which were mounted on corks for painting)
The orcs were primed white with an airbrush, the skin basecoated a mid green and the metal parts undercoated black. Having just taken delivery of a set of the Army painter speedpaints, I set about testing them on the cloaks and cloth areas with decent effect, once I had got the measure of the thinner properties of said paints (they are very much like a thick glaze).
Once the basecoat/speedpaint areas were finished, the metal areas and small points of detail were blocked out in preparation for the “instant grime” of Quickshade strong tone dip, which I brushed on sparingly to a few models, let to settle for a minute or two, then brushed the surface again with a larger brush, moistened with white spirit which pulled the majority of the tone from the models surface, leaving the colours more vivid but still affecting a grimy look, especially in the recesses.
The orcs were then selectively highlighted using the base colour or similar and a complimentary highlight in the odd place.
The dwarves were primed black, then sprayed from above with white ink (again with the airbrush) to pick out all the great detail and to assist with targeting!. After re-painting the metal areas black, I painted the basecoats and metallics from the inside to out and then gave the warmer colours a thinned wash of strong tone and the metallics a thinned wash of grey speedpaint (which I was very pleased with, for a first attempt).
The beards and hair were tidied up with white and were finished with varying colours of red/brown/grey and yellow speedpaint. I then added a mid and a highlight to the blue and red tabards, painted the leather areas brown and highlighted them with tan, and finished with a highlight on the brightest part of the metallics.
One of the axemen was converted to a standard bearer with a length of brass rod and a printed flag. All in all, the dwarves took a considerably longer (but very pleasurable) time to complete than the orcs but I am pretty happy with the result.
Basing consists of fine ballast glued to the MDF bases, washed, mid and highlighted, then a couple of types of 2mm static grass was added along with some shrubs, rocks (horticultural grit from the garage!) and a few tufts.
Lastly I would like to add that the free bases included are a great addition being nice and chunky resin easy to lift and to mount upon then to move about without touching or damaging the miniatures. The miniatures were a joy to paint and though the axes on the Dwarves are thin it is more than worth it for their style plus the Ogres are wonderful! The flag came from Wargame Designs and the transfers are from Veni Vidi Vici. Oh and taking pictures of 15mm is really hard!
We hope you enjoyed this read.
GBS
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