Hobby Update: The Otherworld

 Hey folks, welcome back to another thrilling blog update. Today, I'll be posting about my new SAGA Age of Magic warband, The Otherworld.

 I'd decided long ago to collect every warband available in the Age of Magic universe, since I'm fairly enamored with the rules set and love the open-endedness of miniatures required to play (any minis will do, provided they are representative of the rules being used).

Here's a quick breakdown of the forces I currently have and those that are planned:

The Great Kingdoms

• Order of The Ebon Cross - complete
  (Doubles as Ordenstaat for SAGA Age of Crusades)
  
  
• High Elves -planning
  (Because I never was able to collect them in 28mm for Warhammer Fantasy Battles)
  
  
• The Empire - planning
  (Because I love the Landsknecht aesthetic of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles aesthetic and am a sucker for nostalgia).

The Lords of the Wild

• Wood Elves -complete
  

The Horde

• Orcs - awaiting hobbying
  

The Undead Legions

• Tomb Kings of Khemri - complete
  
• Vampire counts - planning
  (This is hard to justify, as my Khemri force is so expansive, but you only live once)

The Otherworld

• Disciples of Tzeentch - work in progress

Masters of the Underearth

• Chaos Dwarves - work in progress
  (Another "never had the chance" army from my childhood)
  
  
• Skaven -planning
  (I have great nostalgia for Skaven, as they were my main Warhammer Fantasy Battles army growing up and could play entirely differently from my Chaos Dwarves)

As you can see, there's a lot to do! So, without further ado, let's dive in.

For the warriors in my force, I decided to use some Copplestone Castings barbarians left over from my Jomsvikings warband. However, the force felt incomplete without some demons, so I nabbed a box of Blue and Brimstone Horrors from Games Workshop to help round the force out. Because of their smaller stature, the blue horrors make excellent 15mm pink horrors, the human-sized demons in the 28mm miniature line.

These were airbrushed with zenithal sprays of pink before inking.

A shot of my humble airbrush station.

When I commit to something, I tend to give 110%; this case was no different. I also grabbed a box set of Screamers of Tzeentch from Games Workshop which will act as the flying, monstrous Scourges of my warband.

As you can see, each set of minis was given a separate base coat in their respective colors, then washed.

For scale comparison, I threw the horrors among some other 15mm minis from my collection. Although a little taller than a man, I think they are clearly smaller than creatures (the dryad on the left).

Rather than dive headfirst into all ten pink horrors, I decided to do a test strip of three. This would give me a good idea of how to paint the entire unit, as well as give me some room to make mistakes and experiment.

Happy with the results of the initial three, I then completed the remaining seven. Normally these guys are portrayed with traditionally yellow flames, but I decided to opt for a more sorcerous blue hue instead. This will help me tie my brimstone horrors to the pink horrors visually.

The brimstone/blue horrors were a bit of a challenge to paint. Since they are supposed to be luminescent, they need to be painted a bit "inside out," with brighter shades in the recesses and darker shades on the extremities. This is an extremely unnatural way to paint, so it took a bit of getting used to. 

Overall, I'm happy with how the came out, even if they feel a bit like blue raspberry slushies to me.

The screamers presented challengers in their own ways. Each screamer is quite large (thus perfect for a 15mm monster) and I wanted to achieve a nice, smooth fade from blue to pink across their bodies. While easy in principle, the execution takes a lot of wet blending and time. I'm quite chuffed with the result, however, so I feel like they were definitely worth the added effort.

Currently, I'm working on the next few units in the warband, including a Lord of Change (archdemon), several warlords, disc riders of Tzeentch, and some foot hearthguard. Stay tuned for more updates!

Best,
Nick