The Night Swatch

I'm difficult to buy presents for (what can you get the man who already has a cupboard full of unpainted lead?), but Mrs Stylus hit upon the perfect gift: a whole day to myself for painting.

Not knowing where to begin, I decided I'd like to finish a whole unit in one go, and the best way of doing that was to repaint an old Night Goblin unit.

So here are some before-and-after shots:

Aside from the Steel Legion Drab bases, to bring them in line with my other greenskins, the most obvious change is the skin: Elysian Green base, Drakenhof Nightshade wash and Snotling Green highlights.

It turns out, the process wasn't quite as speedy as I anticipated. Painting new skin, while avoiding the eyes, teeth and other painted areas, was a tricky one (plus I am very staunchly in the Slow Painters' Club).

That said, I was also taking care to leave the dark green skin in the deepest recesses, so these gobbos now have six layers of shading and highlighting on them, making them my most meticulous miniatures.

Not content with just reskinning and rebasing the unit, I went ahead and fixed all the bits I'd rushed over the first time: bones, fingernails, arrows, laces.

What began as a cosmetic change pretty much ended with me repainting the whole unit from scratch.

The Scab Red hoods were washed with either Agrax Earthshade, or thinned-down Chestnut Ink (I didn't want them to look too uniform), and the bows got a wash of Brown Ink. It did a nice job of bringing down the bright redness to a colour more similar to the Squig Herd.

The command group got a tidy-up (or dressing-down, considering I made their weapons rusty with Typhus Corrosion and Reza Rust), with the evil eye outlined in red.

Five goblins were intentionally left out of the repaint - I've got a unit filler in mind.

It took about twice as long as I thought (I had reckoned on doing the other unit of Night Goblins - which I quickly revised when it came to midday and I was still painting skin), but I'm glad of the effort. I'm much happier with the look of this unit now.

A few birthdays more, and I may even get this goblin army finished!