Stormsire and skills

  Shadespire is the first 'edition' of Warhammer Underworlds, and the second is known as Nightvault.  This came out a year ago and, by the time you're reading this post, will be out of print and setting up for the third 'edition' called Beastgrave.  Thank the Emprah that I've kept up with everything and have purchased every warband as it gets released.  I need all those cards! 

  Anyway, the starter box for Nightvault came with two warbands.  Last November, my buddy came down and we planned a trip to the Warhammer Citadel.  We were under the impression that we could only use fully-painted models (it turns out we were wrong), so the three of us (my wife, my buddy, and myself) all pulled out the paints and got to work the night before.  I spent all my time finishing my Reaver warband while my wife finished both her undead bands (more on her ghosts next post).  My buddy, on the other hand, started completely fresh and painted up the entire Stormcast warband from this kit. 

  Let's talk about my buddy's skills for second.  He's as skilled as I am at painting, working for the Emprah for a while and being trained by Golden Daemon winners as well.  But he's more experienced than me- he paints all the time and has a few more finished armies than I do (but not by much- he likes gaming more than painting).  The reason this matters is because I had a very poor time with the primer on these models and couldn't find my proper colors (like the expensive Retributor Gold spraypaint I had bought not long before the visit).  So my buddy was saddled with some poorly primed models and hand-painting method that he likes to avoid.  As you can see in the pics below (black background), the fuzzy primer still showed through and could have really damaged the professional appearance we both appreciate. 

When primer goes wrong

   As you can see, he did an absolutely FANTASTIC job painting these models despite the obstacles.  He wasn't happy with them, but a single night's work and terrible primer still led to models that would look good on any tabletop. 

  I decided to give the models another series of pics with a white background to see if that would improve the appearance.  This is where the darkness shows through.  My buddy likes to paint in darker tones (it's called "grimdark" for a reason!), but it was also the quality of my phone camera.  While not bad (every pic you see on this blog is taken with that Galaxy S6 that's been dropped enough times that the camera now vibrates), the white background really mitigates the color-strength (there's a word for that but I can't remember it right now). 

Stormsire's Cursebreakers

 

 

  I'm always learning and trying to get better and the lesson for this post is that I need to choose which is better- white background to mute the texture or dark background to pop the color.  Hmmm...  Otherwise, this shows how amazing my buddy's skills are when it comes to painting.  Oh, and we didn't even use them at the Citadel the next day as we reverted to our former careers and got into hobby conversation and sales mode.  Plus, the Citadel makes great coffee and that may have distracted me from pulling out the game.  Whoops!

  Let me know what you think is better- the black background showing the fuzzy primer or the white background losing the color.  Your advise is always appreciated.  And of course-

Happy Hobbying!