Macarian's Old Iron Legion

[Macarian]

Hey everyone,

I decided to start a thread about my new Undead Legion army, The Old Iron Legion. I hope to get some feedback and give back to this great community as you guys have inspired many a conversion during my lurking days!

I started today with a mounted Wight King thrown together with random bits I had lying around. He won't be in the army but I am using him as a test model to break off the rust and try some new things.

Because I like writing random fluff for everything I will be adding a small blurb to every unit/character which will hopefully add some atmosphere and character to the army.

Sir Mance of Carcasonne fought in a crusade into the Badlands hundreds of years ago and fell to Orcs in the Black Mountains. The Old Iron King raised the knight up to enforce his rule among the Bretonnian villages that lie within the shadow of Old Iron Keep. Known amongst the Peasantry as the Skull Prince, his ire is easily raised and rightly feared.



The base of the model is a Bretonnian Knight of the Realm. I swapped his head for a Skeleton Champion head from Wargames Factory, added a von Carstein Shield and gave him a cape made from a Coven Throne's curtains. I tried to sculpt some skulls for the first time and as you can see one went better than the other :tongue:

Also, any tips on how to improve the quality of the pictures? I used my cameraphone and a sheet of paper with natural light. I could get some lamps but I have no idea what kind to get and I don't want to spend hundreds of euros on professional stuff.

Comments are very welcome and I hope you like him!

 

[Macarian]

Hey everyone,

I finished painting up the Wight King. Here are two pictures of him.


So, a lot of lessons learned here, I really like how the bronze came out, but I need a good recipe for painting black. Also, the red could be improved upon, anybody have a good recipe for that as well, I'm shooting for a deep bordeaux red.

What do you guys think, hopefully during the weekend I get some new lights and a tripod, so photoquality should increase in the next post.

And a quick picture of the first real model for the army: the standard bearer for the Grave Guard.

Thanks for looking! C&C is always welcome.

 

[Alastor]

Love the paint job on the WK but hate the model. Good job though, I'm liking it.

 

[Mad 'At]

Cool wights. The conversion work on the mounted WK is pretty solid, I like the use of the curtains as a cloak.

Regarding the black must first advise would be to try and highlight it with a blue-grey colour (space wolves grey if you have old colours, new equivalent should be Fenrisan Grey) rather than grey and white. This gives the black a more clean and shiny look, instead of dark grey look. What's important is to keep the majority of the surface still black, only highlighting the edges of it.

For red my advise would be to try and shade it a bit with a dark blue (like Kantor Blue) colour mixed with a brown wash. Use the mix to paint into the deepest cracks and shadows. The blue works well to make the darker part stand out, without running the risk of them turning brown which can be the case if you shade with black.

Looking forward to more pictures of that GG standard bearer, looks promising.

 

[Hasdrubal]

Nice work, il like the idea of the standard, impatient to see it paint !

 

[lord marcus]

I like the conversions, especially on the non-army wight king. the colors look good, but the photo needs more light exposure.

 

[lord marcus]

I like the conversions, especially on the non-army wight king. the colors look good, but the photo needs more light exposure.

 

[Macarian]

So, time to upload new pictures. I have made a new and vastly improved camera set-up (with extra lights!) so picture quality is much, much improved.

The Wight King:



And the first real unit for the army:

The Grave Guard Legion of Old Iron: (they will receive their Great Weapons after painting)


The Iron Legion is a regiment of supremely disciplined and skilled warriors serving as the guard for Iron Keep. They uphold the Law and protect the populace from the Northern barbarians. The regiment's discipline comes from the fact that they are all Undead, the regiment's strength comes from the fact they all volunteered for this service. There is, after all, a great difference between a willing spirit and a raised corpse. Nonetheless, to the outsider's eye, many of the Legion's practices are extremely brutal.
For instance, the rite of induction is known as the First Death. The aspirant, still alive, has to fight ten fully armoured Legionnaires simultaneously. It is a fight the aspirant cannot win and death is a certainty, however during the fight a ritual is enacted which will bind the aspirant's soul to a newly forged suit of armour. The ritual however, requires 5 minutes to fully take effect during which the aspirant needs to remain alive...

C&C very welcome, I expect the better quality to be a relief :tongue:

 

[Alastor]

Cool fluff and really cool models. I like them, put pics up once you have their GW attached.

Cheers

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Damn!...
Looks like that Damnsel on the Banner...
*puts on sunglasses*
Got nailed. erv:


Looking good mate, really digging the whole crusader feel of the army with the chaos warriors and knights.
Any consideration given to having a large center piece for the army as of yet?

 

[Macarian]

Hey all, thanks for the kind words and encouragement!

Work has been slow due to a family-related matters. The red on the cloaks of the Grave Guard is done and I am now moving on to the fur and boots. Will post an update on them when it's done.

Any consideration given to having a large center piece for the army as of yet?

Does this qualify?

He is going to be the Hierotitan for the amy, I'll whip up some fluff for him later.
Some more pictures on him, the bowl will be attached when the base for him gets delivered, he falls over otherwise.


C&C much appreciated, thanks for looking!

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

To be honest I'm not a huge fan of mixing figures in with models, if you can pull it off great but I have my reservations.

 

[Tjhammer]

Looking forward to see the unit finished. I love the banner. Keep up the good work.

 

[lord marcus]

I like the chaos warrior conversions.

 

[Mad 'At]

Awesome chaos warrior conversion. New I was looking at something cool when I first saw that standard bearer. Can't believe how great they look with bretonnia helmets, might have to steal that idea at some point if you don't mind. I like they way they are painted too, the red cloak works very well with that armour.

I think that Hierotitan will look great with some conversion work. Possibly a new head, maybe from the Necrosphinx, and some new weaponry.

 

[Macarian]

Thank you all for the very nice comments, honestly the idea for the Knight helmets on Chaos Warriors isn't my own so I can't take credit for it. I saw them on google images while browsing for Grave Guard conversions, couldn't find out who they belonged to. I'm glad everyone is liking the banner though, that one is an original

For tonight I'd like to share a small update, I have completed the test model for the fur on the cloaks. I wanted to go for white fur to contrast the darker bronze and red colours. Here are two pictures:



They're a bit of work since I do it all with a detail brush to not get anything on the surrounding areas but I like the result a lot! It really brightens up the model as a whole.

On to the rest! C&C is very welcome!

 

[Mad 'At]

White fur looks great. really nice choice of colour.

 

[The Sun King]

Great conversions!

 

[John Rainbow]

Nice work using the warriors. Are they on 20 mm sq bases?

 

[Macarian]

Thanks for all the kind words guys! I really appreciate it. The warriors are on 25mm bases, I tried fitting them on 20mm but they will not rank up at all that way.

Speaking of the warriors, I got a bit tired of painting the fur so while progress has been made, it's been really slow. I'll pick them back up again in the future but their next update will very likely have to wait to after the new year.

I did however cobble something new together:

It's an Arabian Casket of Souls!

I picked up the Casket from Ebay and the priest/guard are the Betrayer and the Abrakhan Guard from the Lord of the Rings series respectively. The Casket is going to get stripped and repainted. The models aren't glued yet and I will probably pin them to the Casket Base after painting.

Thanks for watching and C&C is very welcome!

 

[jediguru]

Interested to see how that Skeletor model turns out. Could be really cool but yes, will need some conversion work and a good paint job.