Paintguide: Vampire Counts Tomb Banshee

Vampire Counts Tomb Banshee

Uuuhh I have really looked forward to paint this model. I simply love the posture it has.

I began the painting project with googleling what and how people out there painted this model. I really love the colorscheme this model has on the picture of its package, so i found WarbossTae's youtube video on how he painted the model to look like the picture on the package. I decided to follow his directions as close as i could with the colors i had at hand.

This is the list of used colors:

New Citadel Color Name	Old Citadel Color Name	Vallejo Color Name
Mephiston Red	Mechrite Red	Heavy Red (141)
Celestra Grey	Astronomicon Grey	Heavy Bluegrey (144)
Fenrisian Grey	Space Wolves Grey	Wolf Grey (047)
Caledor Sky	Enchanted Blue	Magic Blue (021)
Abaddon Black	Chaos Black	Chaos Black / Black (051)
Nuln Oil (shade)	Badab Black Wash	Black Wash (73201)
Sotek Green	Hawk Turquoise	Falcon Turquoise (024)
Balor Brown	Snakebite Leather	Cobra Leather /Leather Brown (040)
Ushabti Bone	Bleached Bone	Bonewhite (034)
White Scar	Skull White*	Dead White (001)

Step 1:
Undercoat the entire model with white. As you can see on the back of her dress, i hadn't assembled the miniature well enough, so i had to use some Liquid Green Stuff to fill the big gap in the lower part of her dress.

 

Step 2:
Paint her hair with
Citadel Mechrite Red (new name: Mephiston Red; Vallejo Heavy Red 141)

Paint her dress and skin (except her face) with a watered down
Citadel Astronomicon Grey (New name: Celestra Grey; Vallejo Heavy Bluegrey 144)

I do not have the Astronomicon/Celestra Grey in my paintrange, so i had to look at the color and see what i could mix from my own colors. The Celestral Grey is a light gray with a vague blueish tone to it. I had a really old bottle of Citadel Space Wolves Grey (New name: Fenrisan Grey; Vallejo Wolf Grey 47) at hand and a bottle of Citadel Enchanted Blue (New name: Caledor Sky; Vallejo Magoc Blue 021) . With that i made a mix similar to the Celestra Grey

Paint her armor Abaddon Black

  

Step 3:

Paint Badab Black Wash (new name: Nuln Oil) into her hair and face.

  

Step 4:

Paint her dress and arms with a heavy watered down Citadel Hawk Turquoise (New name: Sotek Green; Vallejo Falco Turquoise 024)

  

As you might have noticed i did the same error as WarbossTae regarding the waterratio on this color. I thought i has a decent ratio, but please be aware that there should be a lot of water and very little paint.

Step 5:

Paint a watered (60 water/40 Paint) down Astronomicon Grey on on all higher areas as seen on the picture on top of this page. I did water it quite a lot more down, and then applied more layers of this paint. This gives me a bit more control on the highliight.

The first one or two layers gave this look:

  

After layer 3 and 4 the model looked like this:

  

You can now see the higlight is on place.

Step 6:

Her armor has a vague brownish look on the edges, so i used Snake Bite Leather on all the edges of the armour. This was also drybrushed a bit up on the armor itself. The very edges of the armor was painted with bleached bone

  

After some final higlights with heavily thinned down white to the dress and skull, and some black cleaning up on her armor, the model is finally done. It has been really fun to paint this model.

My aim was to make the colors as true as the original box picture, and i think that the result is fairly good:

 

Forrest Goblin Spider Rider

So it's been a while since my last post..

I have been pretty busy with real life stuff..

But.. i now have som spare time to try and continue with my project(s)

Although i did felt like trying to paint something a bit different that the massive amount of undeads i have in line :P.

So i got my sons blessing to try and paint some of his Orc & Goblins army.

I quite enjoyed painting something different that undead flesh all the time :D

The miniature i have painted is a goblin Spider Rider.. and i must say that finding a poisonious look for a spider is quite hard, but i googled a bit and found some spiders that Braad-82 had painted at warseer which i loved the look of so i though i would make my first spider just like that and i am quite satisfied with the result:

  

I have tried to wetblend the colors of the spider in a way where the joints are black.. and the orange/reddish colortheme looks - in my oppinion - poisonious :)

Goblin Spider Rider

Melkhior on Winged Nightmare

A long time ago i bought a small box with a Vampire.. I think i bought it because i thought it was neat with a vampire mounted on a winged nightmare.

Melkhior on Winged Nightmare

Many years later i then discovered that this mounted Vampire was in fact Melkhior the Ancient, the mentor of Zacharias (on his zombie dragon), which i had also bought.

Today i decided to begin painting this miniature. I began with the winged nightmare. Since it is actually called a "nightmare", i decided to keep its colors "hellish" colors. So i undercoated the nightmare with Chaos black. The colors are kept very simple, being black and red. I am not done yet, but this is how far i have gotten with the Winged Nightmare:

Melkhiors Winged Nightmare

Melkhiors Winged Nightmare

The Wings of Melkhiors Winged Nightmare.

The staff on Melkhiors Winged Nightmare

I figured that the bloodveins on the nightmare's wings needed some extra highlights, so I actually painted orange right on top of the red and I do like the result:

I have also done a bit of work on Melkhiors staff and book:

02-11-2013
Today i nearly finished the base. I still need to do some highlight on the stone though..

03-11-2013

Today the worst thing happened!!. I accidentally dropped the miniature on the floor. The miniature got ripped of its base, the back of the chair fell off, Melkhiors staff fell off and the right wing got a bit loose. So i am trying to glue it all together again (this is the really bad thing about multipart metal miniatures). Once this Nightmare's several new layers of glue has hardened, i am going to give it a real neat layer of varnish and hope that it will keep the model assembled.

06-11-2013
So i finally got the beast glued back together again, using several types of glues (i am still looking for a great metal glue which can be bought in Denmark...). The base is also finished and this is the result:

Melkhiors Winged Nightmare

Next up is Melkhior himself. I decided (so far) not to glue him onto his nightmare, but this decision depends on how good the Melkhior miniatures sticks on the nightmare, once both have been painted and varnished.

07-11-2013
So now Melkhior has been basecoated with a white. The reason for basecoating white is due to his - soon to be - pale skin color. 

23-11-2013

After a short break in painting (i have had a lot to attend to in real life), i have now painted Melkhior with his base colors as shown below (sorry for the poor quality of the piture)

and some more pictures from my "extra hand" setup. The best tool ever!!

This is the final result

Melkhior on Winged Nightmare

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This is what HammerWiki writes of Melkhior:

Melkhior was a Necrach Vampire and a disciple of Wsoran, the first of the Necrachs. It is therefore likely that Melkhior was once an acolyte of Nagash and was turned vampire by Wsoran. After fleeing Nagashizzar when Alcadizaar had assassinated Nagash, Wsoran and his fellow men, including Melkhior, went into hiding to study Necromancy.
One of Wsoran's finest and most diligent students, Melkhior seized one of the moments in which his master's soul travelled the spirit world to betray and kill Wsoran. Some say it was the Book of Nagash, given to Wsoran as a reward, which wispered Melkhior to do so, though his true motives are unknown.

The next that is known of Melkhior is that he lived in a hidden tower in the Forest of Shadows in the Empire where he caught Zacharias redhanded while the Necromancer was sneaking into his tower to steal the Book of Nagash. Melkhior granted the Blood Kiss to the thief, turning Zacharias into a vampire and his pupil for the following years.

Melkhior taught Zacharias everything he knew but never let his student near the Book of Nagash. Melkhior, however, was keen on indulging in "bloodfests" coinciding with fits of insanity. On one such moments, Melkhior returned to his study to find Zacharias reading the Book of Nagash. Melkhior attacked, but Zacharias escaped. He then sent out his dark servants to hunt down Zacharias, who remained out of his grasp.

One day, Zacharias returned to Melkhior's tower on the back of a great Zombie Dragon. A great battle ensued. No-one knows what the result was, some say Melkhior was killed, other say he escaped and hides, plotting his revenge, but the Book of Nagash and the magical wealth that Melkhior had acquired fell into Zacharias' hands.

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From Unholy Tombs Website:

	M	WS	BC	S	T	W	I	A	Ld
Melkhior	6	6	6	5	5	4	8	5	10
Winged Nightmare	6	4	0	5	5	4	2	3	4

Points: 760

Weapons:
Painbringer

Armour:
None

Mount:
Melkhior rides a Winged Nightmare into battle (see Vampire Counts army book, page 48 for the monster's special rules).

Spells: 
He is a level 4 wizard and always uses Necromantic spells.

Bloodline Powers:
Melkhior the Ancient has all the powers of the Necrarch family as well as the normal +1 to cast spells of the Necrarch bloodline.

Insane:
Melkhior is a gibbering horror who lost his sanity a long time ago. He is completely immune to all psychology, like other Vampires, except that he is subject to the rules for Stupidity. See the Warhammer rulebook for details.

Painbringer:
Painbringer is the black sword of Melkhior, said to be made from the magical life force of insane men. The mere touch of this blade brings insanity and hideous pain. If Melkhior hits his opponent, his enemy is immediately wracked with great pain and will suffer a -1 penalty to all his To Hit rolls for the rest of the battle (note that only one -1 penalty is applied, regardless of how many times the opponent is hit).

Grimoire Necronium:
The Grimoire Necronium allows Melkhior to cast one of his five Necromantic spells without using any Power dice. Note that you must choose which spell this is at the beginning of the game, after you rolled to determine his spells. Melkhior can cast this spell once per own Magic phase (ie he cannot recast it using dice) and the spell is cast at a power level equal to its casting value (Invocation of Nehek is cast at power level 7, for a 2D6 strong spell). Each time you use the book roll a D6: on a roll of 1 it runs out of power and cannot be used for the remainder of the battle.

Black Cloak of Lahmia:
This cloak is one of the great treasures of Lahmia, the city of the Vampires. Merely looking at the cloak can make eyes bleed and sanity vanish. No shooting attacks can be made against a character wearing the Black Cloak of Lahmia. This means that Melkhior may not be targeted by war machines or normal missile fire at all. He can be targeted normally by magic missiles (arrows from a Bow of Loren, etc) and spells(such as Fireballs).