Die Shard

I thought this title was a great pun on everyone's favourite Christmas bullet-buffet, Die Hard.

Now I'm thinking it will just bring in confused German readers looking for 'The Shard'.

Skippee ki yay!

But to the point: my first roll on the Nice List has arrived! The Tenebreal Shard from Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower.

So it's a single model, which is a welcome change of pace, but quite a fiddly one nonetheless.

A mix of naughty and nice, much like the Dark Aelves, who I imagine are still less than chuffed to find themselves on the side of Age of Sigmar's nominal good-guys.

I'm not crazy about this model (which was the reason he was still prancing around the to-do pile). He was a bugger to glue together (lots of sliding long delicate pieces between each other) and looked like a confusing tangle to paint.

He also continues the GW fashion for 'characters in mid-leap', which I generally don't care for. I'm all for a bit of dynamic posing, but it can too easily look flat (not unlike his fellow Aelf, the Mistweaver Saih) and while the 'standing square' pose may not be as exciting, when done properly, it really looks the business (such as the Darkoath Chieftain).

But I'll stop complaining about the model and pick out something I do like: the hair!

I didn't fancy the black-and-white paint scheme of the model (there I go complaining again), so I thought I'd give him some really Slaanesh-inspired locks. All that hair also afforded me the chance to improve my layering technique (with not a drop of wash!)

• Hair: Screamer Pink base, Pink Horror layer, Emperor's Children layer
• Skin: Grey undercoat, Reikland Flesh wash, Pallid Wych Flesh layer, White Scar layer
• Armour: Stormhost Silver and Ironbreaker layer, Drakenhof Nightshade wash
• Leggings: Skavenblight Dinge & Chaos Black base, Nuln Oil wash
• Kilt: XV-88 base, Reikland Flesh wash, Cadian Fleshtone drybrush

I took the opportunity to push myself into pale flesh, since I normally chicken out and just drybrushing Kislev Flesh over and over. I went straight with a Reikland wash as a base (which may have turned out too dark) and then layered with Pallid Wych Flesh, and touch of White Scar.

The contrasts look too stark to me, and could have done with a subtler base and some better blending, but I like the idea of the super-pale elves, so I'll persevere.

The rest of the pieces were simple enough: I assumed the half-cloak/kilt he's wearing was the flayed skin of his victims (he may be Order Allegiance, but he's not a boy scout), so I touched up the brown with some pink skin tone.

Strange how, two years into Age of Sigmar, we still only have two 'new elf' sculpts to represent them (when we've already had two whole factions of dwarf). Maybe the GW design team are getting their heads around what can be done with them. Interestingly, the Tenebreal Shard was the only character not to feature in the Silver Tower novella - so maybe no-one knows how to approach them.

And that's my challenge done. It really was nice to be working on a single model (but I guess that's why they call it the Nice List) - and as a Christmas treat, I get another Nice List to paint! I've been looking forward to this one too.