Re: The Rise of Xaxlachaq - A Blog (Image Intensive)
All right! The Rise of Xaxlachaq is back on!
I was a little discouraged by the release of 8th edition, but after playing and tinkering and restructuring and whatnot, I believe Xaxlachaq can continue to rise! Disregard the earlier army list; I am moving in a slightly different direction.
But here's how the unit I was working on when I went on haitus played out:
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.
Then, I worked on 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.
