Blog The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog UPDATE:12/2

The name of Xapati, ancient Lizardmen god of vengeance and retribution, is called down by the denizens of Lustria upon the enemy before striking a blow of revenge. While not as well-known or as revered as Sotek, Tepoc, and the other Old Ones, Xapati has his own legion of followers and the ruins of temple cities dedicated in his honor still litter the jungles, particularly in the south. Of all of the temples of Xapati, only one still stands relatively in tact.

The city of was once the home of a powerful and dangerous Slaan Mage Priest named Tiqtiqlan. His visions would often spur thousands of skinks and saurus into the thickest jungles to retrieve stolen temple artifacts and punish those thieves who would dare to defile such ancient and arcane items.

However, even the might of Tiqtiqlan could not hold off the dreaded diseases and plagues of the Skaven during the Great Blight. As spawning after spawning of Saurus was sent to its inevitable doom, Xaxlachaq's defenses became weaker and weaker. Finally, Tiqtiqlan gathered his own personal temple guard and took to the field himself. In one of the most brutal and devastating battles of the Great Blight, Tiqtiqlan's magicks dismantled the Skaven threat in the southern horn of Lustria and obliterated all traces of their foul diseases. However, Tiqtiqlan himself was infected, and in just days, fell deathly ill.

He summoned his most faithful and promising Skink Priest, Xtapl, to his side. With his last ounce of energy, Tiqtiqlan imbued Xtapl with knowledge of magicks and gifts of sight far beyond those of a normal Skink Priest. With that last act finished, Tiqtiqlan died.

Xtapl, Blessed Son of Xapati, set about rebuilding the defenses of Xaxlachaq. However, most of the spawning pools were poisoned or destroyed. The ground over these failed pools was consecrated, and no further spawnings were brought forth from them. Eventually, they dried up. Not a single Saurus has spawned in Xaxlachaq since the day Tiqtiqlan died. No Kroxigor spawn either. It is left to the Skinks to protect Xaxlachaq, under the watchful guidance of their Skink Mage Priest, Xtapl, and to exact Xapati's wrath upon those who would trespass in Lustria.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So the theory behind my army is pretty simple: it will only contain skinks, or skinks riding things they found in the jungle. Everyone else has been poisoned permanently, and can't spawn.

The initial list I am building will consist of:

Skink Mage Priest
Skink Priest on Engine
Skink Chief on Stegadon
16/2 Kroxiskinks with command
11/1 Kroxiskinks with musician
32 Skinks with command
11 Skink Skirmishers
11 Skink Skirmishers
3 Terradons
3 Terradons
2 Salamanders with Extra Handlers

From there, I will expand out. Everything will look pretty much like what it's supposed to be, except I have some conversions planned for the Kroxigors and for the Slann.

Okay. That's enough of that. On to the painting part.

I decided to start easy and sort of work my way up to the more complicated stuff. I figured the little 11/1 unit might be a good place to start, so I cleaned them up and threw them up on the paint rigs.

I had an idea for my bases, but to do it, GW's bases won't work. I bought a few bags from Litko, and they turned out to be perfect. If you buy from them, get the 3mm ones. They are awesome.

So. Painting, then. I started off by primering everything in white. Normally, I primer black, but I want my colors to pop a little here, so I went with white. After priming, I gave them all a thin coat of Vallejo Golden Yellow. I wanted some of the white to shine through at the high points, so the basecoat was pretty thin.



When that was dry, I washed the whole model with Gryphone Sepia. I freakin' love Gryphone Sepia. I have run through at least four pots since it was released. Best. Wash. Ever.



After the sepia was dry, I went back and washed the recesses with Ogryn Flesh - especially the face, back and hands. I wanted a little deeper shadow in those parts.



To do the basic skin, I started by lightly layering Vallejo Golden Yellow back onto the skin, being careful to avoid the shadows I'd just created. I highlighted with a light layer of Vallejo Golden Yellow mixed with a little Vallejo Lemon Yellow and a tiny drop of white. The top highlight on the most raised edges was done with straight Vallejo Golden Yellow and a white, in about a 50/50 mix.



I want my army to be visually stimulating while sticking to the same basic color palette, so I think what I am going to do is paint each unit in a different pattern but keep the same colors. So this first unit, I decided to do striped. I started the stripes with GW Calthan Brown. I like this foundation color, and I use it to basecoat every time I do browns, reds, and oranges. Love it.



I started highlighting the stripes with GW Calthan Brown mixed with a little white.



The top highlight just adds a little more white.



Still WIP, obvi. More to come!

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Hey,

I really enjoy the fluff of your army, I was intrigued while reading through it. It's a good concept and it sounds like you're going to make the army exactly to theme, nice. I like the first pics you posted, keep up the good work and I'll look forward to seeing your updates. Thanks!

Iggy Koopa

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

I really love the tiger stripe look. I think this army will look great all completed and together if you stick with the consistent styling. Great work so far.

My only comment would be that their eyes blend in too much and almost disappear. I wonder if putting a brighter color not used in your scheme could make them pop more.

Keep it up! I can't wait to see some more photos!

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Thanks.

The eyes aren't done yet. In these pictures, the eyes are still "primer colored."

Here's what I'm hoping they will look like (ish) when I'm done:



I'm going for slightly brighter colors, but you get the point...

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Looks great so far I love when people take there color schemes from real living reptiles.

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Quick update:

Not a lot of time tonight, so I just blacked the weapons, jewelry, and teeth.

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Nice, cool idea for a colour scheme. Good work!

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Wow Xtapl those came out great

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Had some time to work on stuff today, so here's what I did:

Kind of hard to see here, but now I just did a few details. Eyes, claws, jewelry. Jewelry was done in one of my favorite colors: Delta Ceramcoat Laguna Blue. Such a loverly color. Claws were done straight gray tones by mixing black and white to the right color, then adding more white for the highlight.



The wood shafts of the javelins were based with GW Calthan Brown and highlighted with Vallejo Golden Brown mixed with a little white.



You can also see, from that picture, that the shields really started to annoy me. I thought they'd look really good in the same color as the unit, but the more I worked on them, the less I liked them. I decided to go with something more complementary. Greys and blues seemed to do the trick, and I like the contrast a lot better now.



The gray is, again, straight black and white mix. The blueish tone was done by mixing Laguna Blue into the gray I had just created, then mixing Laguna Blue into the highlight I had just created. I think the shields look really nice now.

Don't have a picture (Honestly, I'm painting it the exact same way as I'm doing the skinks, anyway.), but I also built, primered, and basecoated the Kroxigor for this unit. I think it's going to fit in very nicely.

.

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

I love the fluff of your army, about the Skink Mage-Priest, just put a skink on palanquin just like Tetto'eko, there was a topic with a really cool conversion of Tetto'eko, try that.
About the color scheme, I like it and it's original, those tiger stripes.

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Already on something similar for the Slann .

This morning:

Jewelry was basecoated with GW Tin Bitz and highlighted with GW Chainmail. The top highlight was GW Mithril. Gold stuff got done in Tin Bitz, with a GW Shining Gold highlight. Then I washed with a little of my "magic metal wash," which I use from a big pot that I mixed. It contains Tamiya Smoke, Tamiya Clear, GW Brown Ink (the old, good stuff) and GW Badab Black (mostly to take the shine off), plus some Future Floor Wax and a little water (all mixed directly into the pot). I just shake it up before use and roll. (I put a marble into the pot as an agitator. Works wonders for keeping the mix smooth.)



I also caught the "Kroxigors" up to the rest of the army, which was surprisingly easy. I will say the process, however, reminded me exactly how much I freakin' HATE metal models. There are few things as annoying as getting your paint job almost exactly how you want it, accidentally dropping the model less than a foot onto the table top, and finding you've chipped the paint. Stupid.

So, anyway, this afternoon, I'm on bases...

And now I've started to turn my attention toward the bases.

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

You paint really good mate, its pleasant to look at your pictures. The backstory is fantastic aswell! good excuse to focus on skinks!

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Drop it? Try simply holding it. My salamander constantly chips off paint when I handle it. Metal models are a real pain to work with, the paint just doesn't stick. Nor does the glue, really. xD

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Thanks, all.

Okay, so I'm done for today. I have finished off the bases.

First, I sketched out the mosaic design. I used one old Skink glyph that I found. (By the way, if anyone has links to pictures of other Lizardmen glyphs, please PM me. I have a couple, but I'm going to run out by the end of this army if I can't find more...) I laid down a piece of packing tape, then stuck all the bases to it in perfect rank order (so they wouldn't slide around on me). Once they were all secured, I got out my metal drafting ruler and a pencil and sketched out the outline.

The gray parts of the tile mosaic are straight black and white, as before. I kept adding white until I got to the final highlight on the teeth part, which was almost pure white. Then, I went back to the dark gray and did the same thing, except adding Laguna Blue instead of white.

Once the paint was all dry, I glued down some of my "special sand" (it's a mix I made of Woodland Scenics talus and playground sand, so it's both very fine and has some bigger rock pieces in it) and then painted it black. I drybrushed the sand up from Calthan Brown to a mix of Calthan and Vallejo Golden Brown. Then I picked out the larger rock pieces in gray and highlighted them with a little gray + white.

I then glued down Gale Force 9 static grass (the "green" variety, which is ace), and also stuck on a few fronds from an aquarium plant I got for a buck at my local Target. I don't think I want to go overboard with the aquarium plants because I think it can detract from otherwise nice paint jobs, but a little here and there probably won't hurt.



So that's it for the bases! I just need to do a little gluing tonight (after the LOST finale, of course!) and this first unit will be in the books!

Eventually, I will have to think movement trays, but I haven't decided on a style yet, so I'm leaving that for last, I think.

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Great job, this army is going to look awesome!

Out of curiosity - what is the thing your skink champion is holding that looks like a bell?

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

your bases are wonderfull!! an inspiration!

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

I love the base, about the metal models, they freak me out too, I hate that damned metal, PLATIC MODELS 4 LIVE!!

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

The musician is holding a horn. I happened to have an extra from the metal skink command I used for the "Kroxigor" in the unit.

I got everything ranked up and glued down, and I officially have a single unit of skinks!









Here are a couple of shots of the "Kroxigor" piece of the unit:





Next up, I think I'm going to do a unit of blowpipers. I'd be lying if I said that the rumored changes to the game in 8th edition weren't killing my enthusiasm for building this army (and for playing the game as a whole), but soldiering on for now, with the idea in mind that even if I hate 8th edition, I can probably sell the army off for a pretty penny. So back to the paint rigs it is!

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

WOW Those skinks look amazing I love how you substituted Kroxigors for the cold one-ish riding skinks.

 

Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)

Wow


Awesome Idea
Excellently done.