We all have our favorite army that we’ve been collecting for years, slowly adding new units to it as our painting and hobby skills progress. Then one day you notice it, your old stuff doesn’t look half as good as the new units! Well today I take a look at how to fix that without repainting everything from scratch.
I have been collecting Death Guard/Nurgle since the first Demon codex came out in 2009 and it quickly became my favorite army. This of course means that I want to add all of the new toys to it as they come along and wow has Grandfather Nurgle been blessed of late. As it turns out my painting skills have vastly improved over those 5 years as well as what I consider acceptable for tabletop quality.
With the new Plaguebearer models my interest returned to Chaos. I wanted to add them into my existing 2,000 point Mono-Nurgle Demon army but try and push the limits of my tabletop standard for them.
The very first thing I knew I wanted to change was the base. Basing as a technique has evolved dramatically over the past decade, going from green flock to the mini dioramas that are more common now. While I didn’t want to do anything that extreme I knew I had to improve the overall look.What seemed like a good idea at the time just seems exaggerated and cartoonish to me now.
This is the first of the new Plaguebearers I had painted. I now have 4 done and they take me around 8 hours a model. Not something I want to do to replace the 35 existing Plaguebearers I already had painted. I went for a much more muted and realistic approach across the whole model, from mroe realistic and subtle skin tones to weathering powder on the sword and that new base I was talking about. Now I faced the problem of the new guys not fitting in with my Demon army and my Death Guard who they frequently ally with.
I didn’t want to repaint my army that I had put 5 years of work into so I started to look for little ways I could tweak them to bring them closer to my new standard. Bases were the easiest fix, I scraped the static grass off with a hobby knife and added a new layer of sand before painting. Another technique I use is selective highlighting and shading. I don’t want to repaint the whole model but little bits are fine. I made the shadows a bit more subtle, repainted the sword with my new rust technique and added the black horn.
Now this guy still looks a little off next to the newer models but much, much closer then before, and when looking across the table at an arm’s length you can’t even tell. Now lets take a look at my Death Guard.
The original scheme from 2009. Notice the bright red bolter (still like red bolters), purple power cables and cartoony base.
I went through and repainted the gun casing, new base, added a little weathering powder here and there, viola, like new. It really doesn’t take very long compared to painting a model from scratch and it is very rewarding. If done right you can bring new life into your existing armies.
You can see that I did much of the same on this guy but I also added a few extra effects since he is a character.
I have done this same technique with my DIY Space Marine chapter, the Sons of Dorn. I first created them back in 2006.
Painted lovingly with all of the enthusiasm of my 16 year old self.
Now clearly this guy started out at a much lower standard so there is only so much I could do, but he does fit in much nicer with the newer additions.
Hopefully this has inspired a few of you to take your brush back to a few slightly aged armies and add a new highlight here or there or tear of your green flock bases for something more modern.
What are some techniques you have used to update an old miniature? Do you think it is worthwhile or do you move onto the next army and never look back?
Tyler is a life long painter and hobbyist and took home his first Golden Demon award at the 2012 Chicago Games Day. More of his work can be found at his blog, Mengel Miniatures.
Tyler Mengel, the man behind Mengel Miniatures. He is a well-known tabletop miniatures hobby and painting enthusiast. Tyler's work has appeared on Warhammer-Community.com on multiple occasions. He began writing for BoLS in 2012.
