The Return of She Who Milks (part 4).

Alright mateys, here is She Who Milks!

After some work mounting her onto the base she was more or less completed. I spotted a few things I chose to touch up on, but after that the model was done.

I added grass tuffs to the base as I wasn't too pleased with how the modeled ground  looked in the end. They add a touch of "reality" and they also help break up the monotony.

After conferring with Da Masta Cheef, we agreed that the model looked more interesting holding the detached tank hatch in her raised claw.

All in all, I am happy with how it turned out and I am keen to paint more Slaaneshi models in this scheme.

Oh, the Hero Bases were a good investment for making your models appear a bit more interesting and part of an environment as opposed to being just a another game piece.

The Return of She Who Milks! (Part 3)

With the main model pretty much finished it was time to work on the base. This is one of the new Hero Bases that I thought would make an impressive pedestal for She Who Milks, my venerable Keeper of Secrets minature.

The first thing I did was basecoat the turret using Graphite which is made by Craftsmart. I pretty much have this color scheme memorized having perfected it around the year 2000, but I still wanted to reference it to be sure. So I dug out one of my Imperial Guard tanks from it's place of storage..

Long lost cousins: a comparison.

I knew that GW retooled the Leman Russ Battle Tank almost a decade ago, but I was unaware that the turret was so radically altered. The design features are all present, with exception to that bit that comes out on the side that I put the smoke launcher on, it's just clearly wider. Now, I realized that this new turret isn't from the actual tank model, it's a base, but it's still very interesting to compare the two.

The original Leman Russ tank.

Another reason to pull out this old tank was to see how I detailed it, what decals I used, etc. I hope to get back to my Imperial Guard at some point and when I do I would like them all to match!

Pewter Grey.

Pewter Grey was washed on to the turret over the Graphite. By washing, what I did was mix the paint 50/50 with water and dab the color on by going from the edges of a given surface toward the center leaving the Graphite exposed in center and around rivets. I then went in an applied thick concentrations of Pewter Grey around the edges.

Country Grey dabbling.

 Using water I thinned down some Apple Barrel Country Grey and dabbed it onto turret. This created a faux blending effect giving the model a faux sense of depth. I then hit the edges with a thicker layer of this paint.

White Scar highlights.

Finally I applied a thick dot of White Scar to all the rivets and bolt head. I next slightly thinned some White Scar for the final highlight.

Next came the insignia on the side of the turret. I wanted it to resemble my finished Russ so I hand painted a red square and after digging through my vast decal collection found a mailed fist holding a sythe that I thought went well with the older Russ.

Badge added.

As I typically do I once again used Microsol to wet the transfer. After that I dry brushed, in very strong strokes, the mud. I wanted it to appear like a splatter effect as if this turret smashed hard into the mud. It's a subtle effect, as I didn't want it to distract too much from the whole model.

Mud splatter.

You'll also notice that I finished the blown out gun barrel. I used Niln oil and Abaddon Black to achieve this look. Bolt Gun metal (the shiney mid- '90s version) was applied to the break points along the barrel.

With that I was done with the turret. Next I figued out where She Who Milks would stand and drilled a hole for her foot peg. After I tore her off of her previous base, I painted a Worm Purple dot on the bottom of her foot to mark where the other pin should go, then quickly placed her on the turret. The wet paint marked exactly where I needed the pinhole to go.

Mounting prep.

Next I drilled and pinned a bit of brass rod into place.

Foot pinned.

 And finally, after a bit of work and some super glue, she was now mounted!

Mounted!

It seems that this post is running long, so I'll reveal her in all her glory in the next post (part 4), so I hope you come back and check out the final model.

The Return of She Who Milks! (part 2)

The Dairy Cow of Love continues to be colored.

I used Apple Barrel English Blue on the 'black leather' areas. I think this gives the leather a slightly worn look about it.  Also I base coated the metal circular plates that form a belt and that hang on her back with Burnished Gold.

Leather and gold.

Next I washed the Burnished Gold with Chestnut Ink. Then I basecoatws the armout with an old Citadel Metallic pianted called Amethyst Purple.

Chestnut Ink on Burnished Gold. Amethyst Purple armor.

I applied the Amethyst Purple to the armor on her head as well as repeated the color steps for the gold trim. I started to work on the horns and teeth at this step also.

Coloring the head.

Shining Gold was added as a highlight to the gold. I then drybrushed Mitheril Silver on top of the Amethyst Purple.

Mitheril Silver drybrused over Amethyst Purple.

A wash of 1:1 water/Druchii Violet was applied over the armor. I really like how vibrant this made the armor appear and I am quite pleases with it.

Druchii Violet wash on the armour.

I finished the horns and teeth bringing the bone color up to a white highlight. Finally I painted Mitheril Silver on all the spikes, buckles and sharp things that appear across this miniature, of which there are many. 

Mitheril Silver spikes.

Next, I have the base to paint up before relocating this model onto it. That will be covered in part 3.

Turret base primed and ready for part 3...

The Return of She Who Milks! (Part 1)

Of all the sinister rogues in my collection, is there one as vile or as feared as She Who Milks? First revealed to the world many years (and 40k game editions) ago in a joyous Battle Against the Exodites, this vile fiend has only made a few appearances on tabletop, and this blog, since that time. "She" is an original Rogue Trader era model that has sadly remained in a semi-state of neglect.  I recently found her in a case all by herself and I lamented upon her rediscovery that I never finished painting her or any of my Slaaneshi models. Furthermore I thought how sad it is that as these models are slowly being redone in plastic that these original Greater Daemons are shrinking in size and relevance.

Dwarf Flesh basecoat.

That same day I happened to stop at one of the local gaming stores and bought a box of the new Hero Bases. The biggest base has a destroyed tank turret which can be used as a pedestal. I immediately thought that this would be a great way to redo She Who Milks. So above you can see the two models together.  She Who Milks is wearing that same basecoat that has been on that model for well over a decade now. I had a Dwarf Flesh basecoat on her which I was going to bring up to a pinky-fleshy color. (This was getting away from the temptation to paint her like a black and white dairy cow, as even I thought that would be just too damn silly).  I was going to copy a scheme from a model I had seen in White Dwarf at the time but I must have lost interest as other projects (and real life) no doubtfully pulled me away.

In the beginning  (i.e. the late '80s) Slaaneshi daemons were painted in a wide variety of disturbing and unsettling pastel colors. They were freaky. When the '90s rolled around they started to use caucasian flesh tones which looked disturbing also but a bit boring. In more recent times the purple-hued color the GW painters have been using for their Daemonettes has grown on me and I decided I wanted to give it a go. But I didn't know how they were doing it until I found Duncan's tutorial on Warhammer TV.

They start off by priming the model in Mechanicum Grey. Not having that paint, I decided to skip that and just paint the next color over the Dwarf Flesh.

Warpfiend Grey layer.

I painted Warpfiend Flesh over all the skin and the claws. The claws were already basecoated black and since I want them to be darker anyway I thought this would work out well.

Double-coat of Druchii Violet.

Next I applied 2 coats of Druchii Violet, and added another coat to the claws for a deeper tone.

After that I decided to deviate from the tutorial (it's just a guideline after all) and use a deeper color they have called, appropriately, Daemonette Hide.

Daemonette Hide coat.

Being that there is a lot more skin on this thing than there is on a typical Daemonette, it made a lot of sense to me to have an extra layer of tone.  I think worked it out nicely.

Warpfiend Grey applied again. 

After that, I got back to the script and added another layer of Warpfiend Grey. 

Slaanesh Grey top layer. 

Finally topping that off with Slaanesh Grey. Duncan suggested on the Daemonette to use this color as a highlight. Again, being the size that this model is, I chose to be a bit more liberal with this layer.

Slaanesh Grey/White mix highlight 

 And then I added a layer, in a highlight fashion, of a Slaanesh Grey / White mix. This I thought really did the trick. The model had a few small bumps which I wasn't sure what they were supposed to be... zits? Warts? I just painted them White and moved on. I Also added the slightest white highlights on some of the top-most areas of the minature. In particular I made sure to make the knuckles on the clinched fist white to perhaps accentuate the power behind that flex.

Black leggings.

In the end I decided to make She Who Milks wear black lingerie. I figure it would constrast better than anything else. Also any other color could throw off the entire model's vibe. And a clawed pinkish hermaphrodite cow demon has to have the proper vibe, yes?

Here be Daemons!

Actually being home on a weekend with no other plans, I seized the moment to see what Da Masta Cheef was up too. Turns out he was available and we agreed to a 1225 pt game, to which he chose to deploy his Exodite Eldar. Having never had the chance to battle against this warhost, I decided to return the favor and not use my status-quo armies or armylists (Space Wolves or Orks) and instead use one my smaller armies. I chose to field a Daemon army, as I have never used the codex before and wanted to give them a spin in these waning days of the 5^th edition. Plus I recently put the only finished model in this army in my display cabinet and he’s been whispering dark thoughts to me ever since…

The 1^st thing ye might notice, is that my Daemons are all very old models. I have a lot of the newer ones, just not assembled yet. I have opted to keep them on the square bases, as this doesn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference in 40K, but a huge difference in WHFB, and I want the option to use this army for both systems.

Expecting to have to quickly build a few boxes of plastic models, to make up for deficiencies in the army list, I was quite surprised to discover just how expensive these units are! In fact, I had to leave some models behind including the only painted model in the army (Skippy the Bloodthirster) as I decided to go to a theme. Knowing that I was facing elder, and having recently read up on Slaanesh’s…um, relationship…with the elder, I decided to stick with a Slaaneshi theme for the most part.

So here’s what the dark gods mustered for my warhost:

# of models in unit	Unit Type	Unit name	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Save	Points
1	HQ	She who Milks -Keeper of Secrets	8	4	7	6	4	10	6	10	4+	285
		Transfixing Gaze, Soporitic Mist, Pavane of Slaanesh, Daemonic Gaze, Unholy Might
13	TROOPS	Daemonettes	4	4	4	4	1	4	1	8	3+	182
10	TROOPS	Plague Bearers	4	4	4	4	1	4	1	8	3+	180
		Icon, Instrument
13	TROOPS	Pink Horrors	2	3	3	3	1	3	1	10	4+	256
		Icon, Bolt of Change
5	ELITES	Friends fo Slaanesh	4	0	5	4	2	5	5	10	5+	150
4	ELITE	Flamer of Tzeentch	4	4	4	4	1	4	2	9	2+	170
		Bolt of Tzeentch
TOTAL
46												1223

46  Models @ 1223 pts

I came up with the name She Who Milks while sticking the cow head onto my old-school Keeper of Secrets. Must’ve been the teat, and the words ‘She who Thirsts’ echoing in my head after reading Path of the Renegade.  Knowing that Da Masta Cheef and I share a similar twisted sense of humor I ran with it!. (update: here's his exodite list for this battle. )

Assembling my motley, unpainted Daemon host, it was off to the mortal realm of Bristol, where the unsuspecting souls waited to be harvested…

Speaking of their unpainted condition, and to dive a bit into the history of my Daemon collection,  I must touch upon the origins of my chaos collection. I was introduced to Realms of Chaos in art school. Two of my roommates had the books, the original tomes Realms of Chaos Slave to Darkness and Lost & the Damned, and I was sucked in by the amazing art and stories contained within. Understand that this was ’94, and although I had been a 40K player since January ’89, I really had no idea that these books contained so much 40K info. Well these roommates and I started a Friday night Realms of Chaos campaign, and I quickly found myself with a small Nurgle army. In fact that roommate’s paint jobs are still on the Nurgle faction, I just never got around to cleaning them up! The only model that I put any paint on is the Keeper of Secrets, and that’s only base coated.

 Fast forward almost 2 decades later, and here I am with more Daemons than marines (count me in with the legions of players who dislikes the current Chaos Codex –they took away my daemons!) but for some reason, I just never tried to play with Codex Daemons; until now! Perhaps it was the indecision about the bases? Or maybe I was under the assumption that I didn’t have enough models or something? Who knows! All I know is, that I have a surprisingly big army just waiting to terrorize denizens of the 41st millenium!

It was an objective battle and Dawn of War. The Exodites had left the security of their Maiden World and were investigating the ruins of an Imperial settlement. Clearly something was not right here… soon the forms of Daemonettes  of Slaanesh, Pink Horrors fo Tzeentch and a Keeper of Secrets, the unspeakable She Who Milks materialized into the mortal realm to claim these unguarded Exodite souls.

I quickly learned about the quirky nature of daemonic materialization. !st lesson, don’t put your models that can’t shoot directly in front of the guns! In this pic you can see the Daemonettes standing firmly before the unit of guardians. As you can see by the final pic, I was down to the one Daemonette, and figured I would charge in. I got some kills, but they beat her back into the warp.

She Who Milks made quick work of this unit here, and feasted unquenchingly on the soul of the Dire Avengers and the Exodite Farseer.

Not before they blade-stormed half of my Pink Horrors away (surprisingly good shooting attacks those horrors have BTW). I consolidated She who Milks into this cover

(in hindsight, a bad idea) as the wraithguard, represented here in the form of guardians on cold-ones (hey, they’re not Exodites without their lizards, right?) came onto the field.

They were able to spot her and blasted away 3 of her wounds! Enraged, and probably a bit turned on actually, she jumped out, used Pavane of Slaanesh to pull the exodites closer, then charged in and butchered them all! It was that or be shot to death, right? On the next round, the Warlock was crushed by the love offered by the nurturing bosom of She who Milks. 

During all this (and I didn’t snap photos everywhere as I wasn’t planning at the time to get this in-depth with this battle-report, after all my minis are unpainted! But I digress) the unit that we voted the MVP of the Exodites, the guys who shot and tore apart the Daemonettes, blasted away my Flamers of Tzeentch, returned to the objective and shot away the final wound of She who Milks! Screaming with orgasmic joys, she was shunted back into the warp on a carpet of fresh Eldar souls. My Plague Bearers had arrived, took out another squad of Guardians before plunging into this MVP unit and eliminating them. 

 Over on the other side of the table my Fiends of Slaanesh (or Friends, as Cheef’s Swooping Hawks were to discover that they were) had been whittled down by a lot fire before killing the Swooping Hawks and being killed themselves by Cheef’s Autarch on Jetbike –ur, I mean, Griffen.  The Autarch was killed by the only accurate shot fired all game by a Pink Horror with Bolt of Change and destroyed.

So here it was, a game I thought I would lose when it started. My die rolls were terrible in the 1^st few Rounds while the Cheef;s were strong. But we reached this point where I had 2 scoring units on objectives and he had no scoring units left. The Swooping Hawks quickly blasted the Pink Horrors away, before plunging into the Plague Bearers to contest it. I killed a good number of them, but this is how turn 7 ended, as a complete sprawling melee, other wise known as a draw!

It was a good, and exiting match, and fun 1^st outing for my daemons. I would like to try them again, and build the rest of the army. It’s fairly small army and ought to be quick to paint, but with my time so limited I think I will stay focused on the Wolves and the models on my painting table for now. This also serves as great show case for Cheef's brilliantly painted models, and I hope he's inspired to expand this army a bit more (I think he needs Rangers, they fit well with the Exodites and are supported by the background. And they kick ass!)

Awesome game Cheef, let’s do it again soon!