Changey, Changey Contrast

 Better late than never ... the Tzeentch Daemons!

I've been delaying on this fourth instalment of my adventures in Contrast for almost a year. Most of the Start Collecting! box was painted up, but I was waiting until I'd finished the last few pieces before posting.

Clearly I hadn't being paying attention to my predilection for leaving projects at 90% completion, so I thought I'd better post what I have while I still remember what I used for them!

To begin with the bad news: the Pink Horrors weren't so much fun to do in Contrast. Primed in Grey Seer, they were covered in Volpus Pink, which was too dark for my tastes, and had that unfortunate habit of pulling together when it dried, leaving bare patches to be covered again.

My recommendation for Contrast on daemon rank-and-file is Plaguebearers - they came out just right. With the other ones, I think I'll stick to the acrylic paint.

But pressing ahead, I drybrushed with Pink Horror (naturally) and picked out all the metallics in Ironbreaker, washed in Drakenhof Nightshade. Another reason why Horrors don't lend themselves to speed-production - there's a lot more details to pick out here.

Final details were feathers (repainted in Grey Seer, then Talassar Blue) and magical fire (repainted in Grey Seer, then Aethermatic Blue), and teeth in Ushabti Bone.

I don't want to be too down on Horrors - they're ironically Tzeentch and I do like the narrative of them. They're just a bit hard to love in the game at the moment, since they pop to a stiff breeze and the 'splitting' mechanic (which should be the best part about them) is prohibitively expensive.

It was a similar process for the Fluxmaster, except I thinned the Contrast at the extremes, then drybrushed with Ulthuan Grey to give a 'fade to white'.

If you think his Disc of Tzeentch is on the compact size, it's because this kit comes with a Burning Chariot and Tzeentch Herald, two disc centres, but only one rim. So I would be able to do the Chariot (that's coming later), I took the spare centre and fluffed it out with spare blades and magical fire.

It seems to work, and I'm sure Discs come with an economy model in Tzeentch's showroom.

Now for the fun part - Flamers! These are much more fun, on and off the table. I sloshed around the Contrast paint (let me know if I'm getting too technical) to get a blending effect: Talassar Blue into Leviadon Blue. I didn't have any suitable yellow contrast for the flames, so had to fall back on good old Averland Sunset and Cassandora Yellow wash.

And now the Exalted Flamers. These are so good on the table, I feel I could have given them some more effort in painting - but they're also a bit weird-looking (even for Tzeentch daemons) and have an insanely flat profile.

Same blending idea as the regular Flamers: Leviadon Blue blended into Shyish Purple.

The Exalted Flamers have two 'settings' for their flame, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to distinguish them. The 'blue' flames were Grey Seer, then Aethermatic Blue. The 'pink' flames took more fussing: Grey Seer base, then a wash of thinned Red Ink and drybrushes of Emperor's Children. I think it could be better - in fact it took me a year later to achieve a pink flame I'm happy with,

Now for some real happy accidents: the Screamers!

I painted one batch of Screamers Terradon Turquoise (which is blue) and, a week later, got confused and painted the second batch in Akhelian Blue (which is green). Or it may be the other way around - I'm still a bit lost, to be honest!

Anyway, I managed to recover it - the blue ones were drybrushed Warpstone Glow and the green ones drybrushed Lothern Blue. They all got Screamer Pink spikes, drybrushed Emperor's Children and it almost looks like I knew what I was doing.

Which is a good thing too - because I love Screamers and picked up a whole bundle of them! Some are from Start Collecting, some are from the Age of Sigmar Aether War box where they fight the Kharadron Overlords, and some were salvaged from the Burning chariot (there are spare tails in the regular set, so it's easy to unshackle them).

That's about half of it for Tzeentch - I will try and crack on to finish the rest, because this army has been severely underused on the table!