The Sleestax - My new skink army

[Necros]

So since I clearly don't have enough projects to work on, it's time to start a new army! Skinks!!

The goal of this army is to build a fun to play force of around 1000 pts tops, but primarily it's a modeling and painting project. Since the army is getting a new book & models in February, I'm going to building the general troops first to get the bulk of the army out of the way while I wait for the new stuff to get released. The army list will basically be something like ... 1 skink chief (general), 1 skink priest (scroll caddy), 1 stegadon, 1 unit of salamanders, 1 unit of razordons (if they get to be units?), and with whatever points are left over I expect to have about 2 units of skinks with blowpipes and 3 with javelins, around 13-15 models each. Will depend on pts in the new book of course. But in the meantime, I'll be starting 2 boxes worth of skinks, 1 box will be all javelins & shields, the other will be all blowpipes. They will probably take the next month or 2 to finish anyway, so by the time they're done the new stuff will be coming out and I can continue.

As far as modeling goes, I plan to use the Gale Force 9 skirmish movement trays for each unit and try to build each unit kind of as a mini-diorama. Since it's a small army, I don't mind spending a little extra for stuff like that. And in games, pretty much everything will be skirmishers and the trays will make it a whole lot easier to move around especially in the first few turns.

For painting, I plan to have all of the skinks resemble those teeny red poisonous frogs, the "Strawberry Poison Dart Frog". here is my first test model :)



I think I'm happy with the skin, not totally sold on the weapons.. but I didn't want to make them too dark and have them blend into the arms. Maybe they would look better as silvery instead of goldy?

The pics suck, but the colors are actually much brighter. I'll have to mess with my camera settings and lighting I guess. The recipe I used was red gore, badab black wash, blood red drybrush. The blue on the legs was vallejo stormy blue drybrushed heavy at the bottom and light at the top, badab black wash all at once when I did the red part, and then ultramarines blue drybrush for some not-so-bright highlights. The skin on the head fin was orange before I washed it, but it kind of blended in after the wash and now you can't really tell.

Sounds like a lot of steps but he was actually pretty easy to paint. shouldn't be a big deal to get them all done assembly line style.

Anyway, wadaya think so far?

[Nightsword]

I'm loving the skin, though was the wash still wet when you took the picture? The blend between red and blue looks nice, and you'll do better sticking with gold over silver IMO. There is a couple of things you could do to the gold if you wanted to try. Since your clearly a fan of the new washes, you could wash the gold areas leviathan purple, then thraka green. Then what you do is reapply the basecoat very thin (I'm assuming shining gold?) and highlight with shining gold/mithril silver, and if you want super shiny, mithril silver on the very edges. Gives you a great looking gold effect. Check out my Troll Forged on my log to see how that looks.

Great work bud.

[Necros]

Thanks

Yeah for the gold it was shining gold and just devlan brown wash that I also used for the boney parts like the toe talons, etc. Maybe I'll try some quick highlights for it. I just don't want to get too involved since I will need to paint a whole lot of these guys even at just 1000 pts, so I want to get them done quicker so I don't burn out I was even planning to just dip them at one point but I decided the washes do a good enough job and I'll have more control over it. I will probably speed up the base coat step and use the Army Painter blood red primer spray. That will save me a lot of time.

[Mr.chair]

Looks great. You captured the poison dart frog look perfectly. The only thing that confuses me is why he's holding a comb in his left hand. He doesn't even have any hair!

[Necros]

Got my first 15 skinks painted, the blowpipe unit. I'm about to get started on the bases and the skirmish movement tray. I got some aquarium plants that I'll be mixing bits of in with some grass and a couple of little lizards from the jungle swarms on the skirmish tray just for spice. And a couple of greenstuff mushrooms and other doodads like that. So, here's where I'm at so far

[Nephilim of Sin]

These are looking great. I personally like the weapons just as they are. Great choice in color and execution. Can't wait to see it when the base is done.

[Necros]

First unit is all finished now :) 15 skinks with blowpipes!






Next on the list will be 16 skinks with javelins :)

[Thurizdan]

Will the ones with javelins be a ranked up cohort unit? Rumour forum says that's how javs will appear in the new book.

[Bunkka-Pop]

Yeah, javelin skinks may rank up in forthcoming lizzie book. But they may be upgraded to skirmish too, if my memory serves me right.

[Edahlo]

Interesting color scheme, it works really well!

As for javelins, I think that if you upgrade javelin skinks to skirmish, they also get blowpipes. Meaning that you can't have skirmishing javelin skinks anymore. I may be wrong, but this is how I interpreted the romours.

[Necros]

yeah that's my plan. I'm going to have 16 skinks surrounding 2 kroxigors (when the new ones come out) arranged in a 6x4 block.. or maybe I'll do 22 skinks but I didn't want the unit to get real big and unwieldy. But I'm not sure if they'll have standards and musicians... in the end I plan to have 2-3 units of blowpipes, 2-3 units of javelins w/ kroxigors, a stegadon, a unit of salamanders and a unit of razordons.

[ekxw]

look great like poison frogs, uhmm the kroxigors will use the same escheme?

[Necros]

I'm not sure yet. I could make them all the same colors, and they would fit together and be uniform but I'm also wondering if maybe I should make everything different. Maybe base every different thing on a different poisonous frog But then they might not look right mixed in with the red & blue skinks....

[ekxw]

red black, red black and blue maybe?

but they have to look different, the front part of the body will make the difference i think, painted with some yellow or white could look great

[Necros]

Yeah there's so many different combos you can do.. I found this site that has tons of pictures of all different kinds of poison frogs..

I was thinking of going with the light blue & black spots for my shamans, orange with black dots for chiefs. I was going to do the scales on the javelin shields a dark greenish brown.

I still have like 2 boxes worth of generic skinks to make, my goal is to just have them all done by the time the book comes out then I can start focusing on the new models and I'll have all the regular troops out of the way since it's gonna take the longest to do all of them. I hope I don't get burned out painting so many though

[Aflo]

Nice scheme on those skinks. I think a very dark green/grey (think crocodile-esque) would llook great on the Kroxigors, myself.

[ekxw]

just do what i do, paint 5 saurus 5 skins, and so you wont get bored, also if you paint some other miniatures just to get the scheme it will go much better

[bravey]

They look very poisnious!

[Necros]

yeah I just want to get the 2 first units out of the way then I will do them in smaller batches.. maybe 6 at a time since there's 6 on a sprue

I like the crocodile idea for the krox's, I was kindo of thinking about that too. I was also considering using these models for my kroxigors, but I was afraid they would be too small since they come on a 25mm base.. but they should still be bigger than the skinks... I don't plan on adding any sarus models, I wanted it to be an all skink army, i'm just adding the kroxigors since I don't think a block of just 25 skinks will do very good.

[de Selby]

The colour scheme is great but I also wanted to compliment you on the skirmish base, good effort.