Now that I had completed Pete’s goblins ahead of schedule I had a bit of free time before I would need to start work on the 2018 NAF GT prize team.

Over on TFF they do a Legacy team every year where members of the forum each paint a player and then one of them wins the whole team. The race, colour scheme and base design are all decided by poll. This year it was dwarfs with a grey and teal colour scheme and stone bases.

I picked Grim Ironjaw as I am still trying to paint up all the stars and he was one of those outstanding. The good thing about stars is that you have a bit more freedom to diverge from the rest of the team as they are supposed to stand out.

For Grim I used the plastic dragonslayer from GW, he’s a really cool and dynamic model that needed very little changed. I removed his weapons and the monument he was leaping from and swapped his arm with one from the plastic elite dwarfs.

For painting he was done in standard dwarf skin colours with bright orange hair. I had intended for his ponytail and beard plaits to be grey and teal, but the orange looked so good that I left it alone. His trousers were painted a cold, mid grey shade and the belts and straps a dark brown.

I wanted the gold parts to look a bit special and used the NMM technique on them. I still find it difficult to get this right, especially on smaller areas. I got it to work on his armour and belt but couldn’t get it right for the jewellery. To get round this I painted that silver, but did add grey and white for the highlights to better match the gold. I also added some tattoos for extra decoration on his skin. I wanted them to be shaded like his flesh, but used teal rather than blue and it didn’t quite work as they look a bit pale.





His base was done in the same way as the skaven team from earlier this year but I used a warm grey to represent natural stone.

I’m really happy with how he turned out especially the shading on his left arm.



His face also turned out great and I managed to paint blue eyes without it looking weird. Normally I just use a black dot with no iris as that is hard enough to get right.



Having enjoyed painting Grim I decided to use the same colour scheme on 2 other outstanding dwarfs on my list; Flint and Barik. Boomer is another Dwarf star I need to do, but he can play for Norse and so may be included in a team of them in the future.

Both models were classics from the 2nd edition range that didn’t have any conversion aside from being pinned to the bases. They were in full armour and in contrast to Grim had little skin or hair on display.

I went with teal for their tops and elbow/shoulder pads with grey trousers and helmets, boots were black, belts a dark brown and metallic parts were painted silver. As they were stars too their armour edging was painted in the same NMM gold technique.




Neither of these stars turned out as well as Grim, in particular the beard for Flint didn’t look quite right. I was pleased with how their chest armour turned out, the pattern was a pain to highlight bit did look good.




Alongside these Dwarf stars I have also been working on the outstanding stars for the skaven GT team I did. The person who won the raffle had asked me to paint up Skitter, Hakflem and Headsplitter to complete all 5 skaven stars.

Both Hakflem and Headsplitter will be conversions, but I already had a model perfect for Skitter in the shape of Deathmaster Snikch. He didn’t need any conversion aside from clipping his tab off so I could fit him on a base matching the rest of the team.

He was already a much more impressive looking model than the normal gutters and had 3 knives prominently on display, including one held in his prehensile tail. So all I had to do was paint him in the same colours as the rest of the team.

There was one change I wanted to make, I had been painting the clothing on normal players brown as a nice contrast with their orange armour and white decoration. He didn’t have any armour and with his cloak taking up so much of the model I didn’t want that to be brown too. Instead I went for black as a classic assassin choice to both make him stand out from the normal gutters and add a bit of variety to his colour scheme.

I debated giving him black knives with green highlights to simulate warptone, but instead went with rusty metal with a dirty green glaze. He also got some gold decoration in the shape of his bracelets, I added some brown, yellow and white to this for highlights as just using gold paint was a bit bland for a star. I didn’t want the gold to look too shiny as it would not be appropriate for a dirty and sneaky skaven, even a star.

His bandages and wrappings were all painted white to create areas of interest and stand out from the rest of his colour scheme. I wasn’t quite happy with the corpse on his base as it has some modelled dirt on it that I couldn’t get to match the flagstones, but I couldn’t think of a way to remove it without damaging the model so had to settle for grey to suggest dust had accumulated around it. I painted the armour of the dead human player blue as a contrast to the team colours.




I’ve got Hakflem fully built whilst Headsplitter is coming together as well. I also bought the new Glart model and may paint him up in the same scheme just because I like the model.



Once they are done it will be time to devote all my attention to the NAG GT 2018 prize team. I have a few ideas mulling over in my head and need to make a final decision soon to leave enough time to do them justice.