Blog Lord Agragax's Making and Painting Blog - The Asur are reinforced...

At the very first moment I was searching for the cannon in the picture of the necromanceress as thought there was a caption on it... should concentrate more...

Nice stuff you made there!

 

Cannon? Necromanceress?

Cheers! As do I @Crowsfoot - I’m always trying to see how I can use each spare part I get in a kit on a potential scratch-built model. I’ve even been able to use bits of sprue to make a model, as evidenced by my Plagueclaw. I’m gradually gathering intel on how I can make a custom In Her Majesty’s Name company out of various parts of various kits all across the houses (which can be seen in the relevant thread in the General Hobby section).

 

Sorry eldar bounty hunteress... was confused by the necromunda... cannon comes from the Canon logo on the background which I confused with a caption for the picture... that results from checking out the forum in the five minutes you have between doing a week's shopping and picking up the little one from Tuesday sports...

 

Hello there Lizards - been a long time since I last posted here (damned University getting on my wick), but now that I’ve only got a single exam to revise for, I’ve had some time to get back to my favourite hobby, and I’m proud to present some actual Lizardmen on my blog on a Lizardman forum!


This is the unit of Saurus with Spears that I’ve been touching up and have added two extra members (the ones with the spare Saurus Cavalry spears - those were already painted for some reason so I decided to use those to save some additional time).

As usual, any comments would be much appreciated!

 

Very nice - it’s great to see your take on them at last!

 

It was about time you did some lizards. They look pretty good, please keep them coming!

 

Your wish is my command, as I have some more Saurus with clubs up next!

The main reason that there haven’t been many lizards in my blog is because the majority of my Lizardmen were built and painted long before I joined this forum, and with this last unit of Saurus I feel that it might be a good idea to keep my Lizardmen army as it is and not get any more of them, as I have four other Fantasy armies and three 40K armies to provide for as well.

However, that does not excuse me from putting pics of my minis in the completed minis threads - I really need to do that at some point.

 

Remember if you need motivation just think of how wrathful the lizards will be if you fail them. Still those guys look awesome and I am pretty excited to see what is coming next

 

Hey, hey, hey, I’m back again lizards!

Without further ado, here are the 20 club Saurus I promised you all:


This unit is slightly different from the previous one because I gave some of the models Temple Guard Shields, as I wanted to save some of the separate left-hand Saurus Warrior arms to use as part of the Saurus-Melusai-Kroxigor conversion idea that I planned ages ago and will eventually get round to attempting at some point, as well as using a Saurus Cavalry head and weapon for the champion this time around to really set him out from the other club Saurus (the spear unit champion just has a club to denote him, so additional embellishment wasn’t required for him as that change was already pretty obvious). I’ve also given posed the shields for this unit such that they are facing forwards, as I wanted to recreate the front-facing shields of the ‘Eavy Metal painted unit on the box as opposed to the easier side facing used by my spear unit:


I did this by only gluing the clenched fist to the shield attachment bits rather than the whole arm, and I think I’ve been able to capture the effect well.

The unit also has 6 of the old 5th Edition models in it, except that their heads, weapons and shields have been swapped for current ones to tie them in with the 6th Edition-present models. They represent younger Saurus who have been more recently spawned to reinforce the original band of spawn-brothers after they lost some of their number.

As always, hope you like them and any comments would be highly appreciated!

 

Looks excellent! In particular the way the weapons and shields in the ways they are clenched looks awesome, it looks kinda like a phalanx with swords. I would totally love to see you do this again with Spears. It would say you did an awesome job with them. Now onto improvements; while it looks good, the colors are a little drab and could use some layers. Other than that looks excellent.

 

Thank you very much!

I did already try doing a phalanx posture with spears (see my previous unit) based upon how phalanxes look in Rome Total War with the way they are holding their spears, although I made most of those many years ago now as they were my first ever Lizardmen, and I stuck the shields to the sides. I don't have plans to get anymore Saurus at the moment (apart from some more Temple Guard as I only have 10 at the moment) because I had originally envisioned just having 2 Saurus units in my army to save points room for my Carnosaur, Stegadon and Bastiladon, and also because GW have stopped selling square bases it's a lot more difficult for me now to get square bases to replace the round ones that come in the AoS boxes, but I might think about rearranging my spear unit's shields so that they are facing forwards like my club unit to get the same effect.

Again, thanks for both the complements and advice! I think the 'drabness' of my Saurus units is principally because of my colour scheme - I prefer to give my models more muted tones to reflect the grimdarkness of Warhammer Fantasy (this isn't 4th/5th Edition where everyone goes round in brightly-coloured clothes that make them stick out like sore thumbs for miles ), but perhaps they could do with a wash of Drakenhof Nightshade to help the scales stand out better. I imagine it's also due in part to shadow over the photos - I apologise for this and will try to sort out my photography skills in time for the next minis I paint!

I tend to not use highlights because I think they're excessive and I don't really know if a layer would be worth it - they're dark blue, I've painted them dark blue, what more does anyone want? I don't know. In any case, when painting I am pretty meticulous in that I have to go over any unintended blots of a colour in the wrong place or otherwise my perfectionist gene gets annoyed, so I spend quite a lot of time painting a unit already, without adding layers and highlights to the mix. I like to try and get a balance between spending a good amount of time and effort on painting my minis to do as good a job as possible and also painting them in a period of time that isn't too long so that they're in a battle-ready state in good time - I think that what I've done fulfils this, and if I feel that they need improvement in the form of a layer as you say or a wash, I can always come back to them later.

 

Well if the drabness is part of the army’s theme, then I say keep it! It already looks awesome as it is and if the layering triggers perfectionism (I think a lot of us can relate) then it probably is not worth the additional stress as painting should be fun. If you feel up for it later than it’s totally cool to come back later. In terms of washes, your plan does sound pretty cool to add washes. And finally for photography: here is an idea, try using natural lighting or very bright artificial light as most light from a bulb will usually be colored. Either way they still look excellent and keep up the awesome work

 

Fantastic looking saurus! That picture you used of the old 'Eavy Metal saurus is the reason I picked up Lizardmen in the first place. Great place to draw inspiration from.

Well done!

 

A quick update - been working on some High Elf Spearmen and Orc Big 'Uns at the moment, but in between waiting for models to dry, I've been working on these little chaps:

 

They also don't need any kitbashing to fit in with the newer stuff really - they aren't much smaller than the newer Skinks and their bows could be treated as javelins in that their range is slightly shorter even than Short Bows and the Skinks' natural reflexes make the bows quick to fire.

Old Saurus on the other hand at the very least require a head swap, and would fit in best with a weapon swap as well, as I have done in amongst my club Saurus.

 

Awesome paint job, but I have a serious question: are those guys the old lead models?
One thing that is new to me is seeing skinks with bows. I heard of it but I have never seen it until now, so the legends are true!

 

Yes, they are old models, but no they are not made of lead, not these ones at least - these are made of plastic, despite dating back to the late 90s. These Skinks and the old Saurus in my club Saurus unit hail from the old Warhammer Fantasy 5th Edition boxed game, which featured the Lizardmen and the similarly-awesome Bretonnians (I just got these from a box of assorted Warhammer minis, along with 3 other old Saurus and several more of the old Skinks who I got from a good friend of mine who actually had most of the contents of the 5th Edition box despite being only a year older than me). At the time plastic miniatures were as new then as Contrast Paint is to us now, and generally only featured in boxed games to attract new players, as they were generally either single-piece models or had simple add-ons like a weapon and a head in the case of the Saurus (some armies such as Dwarfs also had a separate box of monopose plastic Core Troops that were generally used to fill out units). The rest of the Lizardmen range at the time was lead, but these chaps were plastic.