Haha, they're actually way smaller than Saurus Warriors. Here they are next to a (very old) Temple Guard.
Nakai the Wanderer Today I am excited to present to you the world’s-first “official” model of Nakai the Wanderer. I say official because this model is straight from Total War Warhammer, 3D printed, and Creative Assembly (producers of TWW) have stated that Games Workshop approves every model they make, sending them back to iterations if they don’t agree with the artistic decisions made. The ancient Kroxigor known as Nakai the Wanderer is a revered creature, regarded by Skink Priests as a powerful jungle-spirit made manifest. Though he has travelled all over the world, he is a mighty protector of the Lizardmen, appearing anywhere out of the jungle during times of need, before disappearing once more. He famously appeared at the Defence of Itza, wreaked havoc at the Red Fields and was recently reported at the Great Reckoning. His presence is a tangible portent that a battle of great import is about to take place. In the aftermath of such major events, the Skink Priests treat Nakai with deference, adorning his massive, battle-scarred body with ceremonial tokens. Over the millennia of victories, Nakai has become quite festooned with such golden tributes. I chose to make Nakai an albino like Gor-Rok because of these old rules. “Nakai is an albino, touched by the Old Ones.” “Nakai’s albinism marks his greatness and makes him easily recognisable to his allies and enemies alike.” This is the only time his colouration has been mentioned and it has never been retconned since, so I consider it canon. I wrote a short story for the Legendary Lore mod where the two legendary albino warriors, Nakai and Gor-Rok fight in Itza during the End Times, which draws from semi-canonical musings by Josh Reynolds during a Q&A, who left Black Library in May 2020: Nakai & Gor-Rok Nakai coughed up blood. His scales cracked and oozed. Death was surely close for the legendary fighter. He had slain one of the hated Arch-Plaguelords of Clan Pestilens, Morbus Sanguis, though at great cost. The Yellow Death was upon him. But Nakai could not – would not die, not now, not here. The fate of Itza – no, the world – was at stake. In the distance, barely visible through the densely packed trees, Nakai could see Gor-Rok fighting desperately against the vermintide. Two Stormfiends were steadily advancing towards the Great White Lizard. With a guttural roar that shook the leaves from the trees Nakai burst from the jungle, bounding across the bridge on all fours. Before the Stormfiends could bring their weapons around Nakai was upon them, slicing the arm off one while ripping the mewling Skaven Controller from the other. Gor-Rok joined his brother in combat, and the two stood back to back against the Skaven horde. The reptilian warriors were soon buried in a mountain of Skaven corpses. Nakai's gore-slicked body burst from the corpse pile, raging up at the sky as a Warpstone meteor hurtled towards Itza. There the two legendary warriors finally met their end as Itza was wiped from the face of the earth in a massive Warpstone explosion. Please enjoy some more photos of Nakai and short stories I wrote for him: Nakai & Tehenhauin at the Red Fields During the Emergence of Sotek the hated ratmen had at last been put to rout. Nakai and Tehenhauin encircled a great number of the fleeing Skaven at what came to be known as the Red Fields, due to how much blood was spilled there that day. Tehenhauin scaled the great Kroxigor's back and lept up onto his shoulder, thrusting his sacrificial blade high into the sky, inciting much chirping and chittering amongst his red-crested Skink brothers. "Skink has climbed high. Must be careful. The fall would hurt," Nakai grumbled in his ancient tongue. "Fear not, great one," Tehenhauin chirped, "We have surely received Sotek's blessing this day!" The two gazed across the bloodied fields. Skaven bodies were everywhere. Great columns of defeated Skaven were being led to the sacrificial altars. The Prophet surely spoke the truth. "Come, little one," Nakai rumbled. "Work still to be done. The Great Plan must continue." The Battle of the Eclipse The rotting ogre swung its oversized claw clumsily. Nakai effortlessly side-stepped the blow, then struck the dead-thing with his blade, lopping its misshapen head clean off. Nakai roared in triumph. All around him was the din of battle, as the Lizardmen cohort engaged the vast Undead host in a deadly ambush under cover of darkness, a darkness brought about by the solar eclipse that was predicted, or, perhaps, orchestrated by the Slann Mage-Priest of Itza, Lord Xltep. A massive, bloated creature dove into the ranks of the Lizardmen and exploded, an entire regiment of Saurus Warriors disappearing in a shower of gore. An intense, white-hot shaft of light burst from a Bastiladon's Solar Engine, arcing across the blackened sky, slamming into a Rotting Leviathan and igniting the hellish monstrosity. Yet still the thing fought on, scything down Skinks and Saurus alike with its massive pincers. Lord Xltep's voice filled Nakai's mind. "There is a vampire among them, the one called Luthor Harkon. He is your prey. Slay him, and the rest will fall." Nakai went down on all fours and charged across the battlefield, knocking over the shambling hordes of zombies effortlessly as he forged a path straight to the vampire. Luthor pointed his pistol at the charging Kroxigor and fired. Nakai didn't even feel the shot. In moments he was upon him. Luthor, with his vampiric swiftness, was able to dodge some of Nakai's blows, but then made the mistake of trying to parry Nakai's blade with his own. The force of Nakai's strike ripped the blade from his grasp, and Nakai's follow up swipe with his clawed fist launched Luthor bodily across the field. And then Luthor's countenance changed. Gone was the cocky vampire. Now, he reeked of fear. Nakai slowly advanced. The Great Plan left no room for mercy. Zombie Deckhands swarmed him, but Nakai hacked them apart with little effort. Yet as Nakai raised his arm for the killing blow a Fell Bat swooped down and plucked Luthor from the battlefield, carrying him high into the air. Nakai roared in frustration. The battle would be won, but Luthor Harkon had cheated death yet again. The Hunter & The Beast The blue and silver scaled warmblood ran at Nakai with his sword raised, yelling incoherently in man-speech. Nakai raised his spiked maul as if to strike predictably, but at the last second swung his thick tail forward, tripping the warmblood and sending him sprawling to the ground. Nakai's maul came down, and the intruder was no more. The Saurus legions moved forward in orderly fashion beside him, cutting down the onrushing warmbloods. The ambush had been successful. The warmblood's leader had been drawn out of his spike-walled city, thinking they had caught a wounded Carnosaur out in the open. But the beast was merely bait. The Slann Mage Priests had decreed that Carnosaur was too tainted by Chaos to be worth healing, and so the trap was laid. It was when the warmbloods were returning home from their kill that the Lizardmen had struck. Nakai grunted in pain as an arrow thudded into his shoulder. There, high in the trees, a horned warmblood with a bow. The creature moved to fire again, but was struck with a barrage of flaming bolas as a trio of Terradons flew overhead. She fell screaming from the canopy, engulfed in flames, before falling silent as she crashed into the undergrowth. Markus let another arrow fly from his Amber Bow, shooting a charging Bastiladon straight through its eye. He witnessed his stalwart companion fall from the trees. “Kalara!” His knuckles whitened as he gripped his bow tightly, shaking with rage. “Send in the War Wagons!” He nodded grimly to Jorek and Hertwig, who charged forward on their horse-drawn wagon, long rifles at the ready. Nakai witnessed the rickety carts heading towards him. He grumbled an order in his ancient tongue, and Skinks and Sacred Kroxigors formed up alongside him, their metal gauntlets shimmering with the ancient magic of the Old Ones. He went down on all fours and charged forward, the rest of his kin following close behind. The two forces collided in an explosion of splinters, blood and bone. Skinks fell to the ground like marionettes with their strings cut as they were torn down in a hail of gunfire. Horses scattered as wagons were shattered into wooden shards by the pulverising blows of the Sacred Kroxigors. Nakai smashed another War Wagon, its two occupants finding a swift death at the end of the Ancient Kroxigor's spiked maul. Markus cried out. That cursed banebeast had taken everything from him! He raised his Amber Bow for the final time, string pulled taught, the arrow glowing with amber light. He let go. Nakai looked down at the Skink before him, an arrow piercing its heart. It had dived in front of him, sacrificing its life for his. Nakai followed the thin line of amber light back to its source. The warmblood leader. The one they called the Huntsmarshal. He roared at his prey and charged forward. Markus fired again, but this time Nakai saw it coming, and deflected the arrow with a swipe of his club, moving with a speed that belied his impressive stature. Markus lowered his bow; it was over. “Do your worst, beast.” Nakai's jaws snapped shut over Markus' head, ripping it off in a spray of gore. The Great Plan left no room for mercy. THE JOURNEY I had actually been sitting on this for a while (early 2021), but didn’t have a 3D printer and the one person I did attempt to pay for it to be done gave me my money back as he couldn’t get it to come out right. I tabled it and one day I was attending a LAN with my mate and he had a 3D printer and we got to talking and eventually decided to give it a go. First one came out too small, second one is what you see today! Honestly, I think it’s now too big, but it was “good enough” for me. I aimed for him to be a bit higher than his Kroxigor kin, since he’s a hero unit version of them, but I didn’t realise how WIDE he was too. He’s easily the biggest Legendary Lord in my collection! If I was to ever attempt to print him again, I’d make him a couple cm smaller so he was only slightly taller than his Kroxigor buddies. LOST IN TRANSLATION You can see in the below screenshots of Nakai in-game that some things were lost in translation. 3D printing still has a ways to go, but in saying that, I am a complete beginner and someone with more skill could one day pull off a much better Nakai. Things like the triangles on his arm band, the details of jewellery, even his scaly flesh is all lost. They are textures applied to a flat surface. Additionally, he was very polygonal going into the slicing software, and so I did a quick and dirty smoothing effect to make him look not so blocky. Unfortunately, this smoothed everything across the board, all the sharp corners became closer to rounded curves, and this actually drastically affected the painting process as well... GAMES WORKSHOP MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE A PAINTING GOD All that sharp definition in Games Workshop models actually makes your job as a painter so much easier. It helps so much to just make painting like a colouring in book, where all you have to do is “stay within the lines”. It also allows their shades to work really well. And, well, hard to edge highlight when you don’t have an edge! They really know what they’re doing when they’re designing their models, trust me! With my poor smoothed Nakai, I suddenly found myself confronted with the realisation that I was basically having to freehand and wet-blend everything. His “eyes” were sunken hollow pits in his face, his jewellery was featureless, his muscled skin had minimal definition, his green ropes sometimes melded into his flesh. On top of this, I had foolishly decided to make him an albino – whites are notoriously difficult paints to work with and I was only able to salvage this thanks to Vince Venturella’s video! He looked so damn nasty when I just smacked down some chalky white paint and a Nuln Oil shade! Thank you Vince! So to future printers, I offer this painfully learned advice: If you are going to smooth out your character, use it minimally, and isolate it to the areas you want smoothed rather than the entire model. Try and add in defined lines back into the model (like the armband triangles which are present across many Lizardmen models) so you can paint within the lines and shade and edge highlight, instead of having to freehand it. If you have a cheap printer like I did, it will struggle to get these details for minis. Instead, go for bigger models like Nakai, where the cheap printers are able to still get great detail (ironically, I think my Nakai looks best from the back or top down, not the front!). Measure your model’s dimensions, not just height but width and length as well, and try to really mentally visualise what he is going to look like next to other models. There is an old saying in carpentry, “measure twice, cut once” – that saying can definitely apply to 3D printing and will save you time and resin. F**k white paint! Nakai, having emerged from the resin spawning pool, bathes in concentrated light in order to fully materialise into the mortal realm... IS THIS THE FUTURE OF GAMES WORKSHOP? I was honestly amazed with how easy this was to do. I’m kind of worried I’ll get sued or something, because really if the technology keeps improving and the price keeps coming down Games Workshop will be out of business unless they adapt. Think about it. Why choose from a selection of models from Games Workshop when you can choose your own model and your own pose and print it yourself? The way I see it, this is just a natural evolution of miniatures. First we had mono-pose “Attack of the Clones”, then we started getting options to swap heads, weapons, different variety in the models. Now even their huge monster-sized models have multiple options to choose from. This is just the final iteration of evolution: being able to pose the model in any way you want. Technically, it is not “any” way. Though I could have posed Nakai from his t-pose position into any position I wanted, the way animation skeletons work, it is very difficult to get this to look natural, and very easy to make it look unnatural (limbs not bending correctly). What I did was use the animations already in the game, paused them at a specific moment in time I liked, and then printed that frozen animation. So although it’s not “infinite” options to choose from, it is a huge variety of options to choose from. I imagine in the future, if 3D printing becomes superior to injection moulding, Games Workshop will adapt to be a 3D printing business that makes the models for you, gives you a set of animations to choose from, and then you choose what you want in their digital store. Then it gets printed by them and you pick it up. It’ll be pretty similar to now, but instead of choosing between model X or Y it’ll be choosing model X and Y and then choosing the stance you want them in as well. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this essay, and Games Workshop/Creative Assembly please don’t sue me lol.
Thank you! I would like to post and just have the image there instead of adding the file and then having it as a thumbnail if you get what I mean. Couldn't ask you to possibly just explain it real quick? Thanks
When you upload the image, under your post (before posting) there should be an option to add the image as full sized. Select that. You can edit, go to more options, and you shpuld be able to change feom thumbnail to full size, or re-add the picture and select that option.