Mini-Swap – Magmadroth

A few months back, Heretic_Deb asked over on twitter if anyone was interested in joining in a community mini-swap, sort of like a secret santa with painted minis. I love the idea, so against my better judgement I joined in and on the 1 of July it was added to my substantial to-do list. I drew @Guymulloy as a recipient… and the adventure began!

All those people participating were told to list a faction/product they were interested in receiving and also that the suggested value for the project was £20, but we were welcome to spend more or to even take from our own collections. on the 1st of July, @Heretic_Deb posted the match ups…

I contacted @Guymulloy to see if I could narrow down the scope of what he would be happy to receive from all things in the universe, down to something a bit more manageable. After some probing he said suggested Custodes or Fyreslayers. I asked him for some pictures of his armies with the goal of learning about his colour schemes. Boy was I in for a treat, I think his reply was something along the lines of “Well i’m trying out this purple/silver scheme with my custodes (with a picture), and… I don’t have any Fyreslayers yet. Maybe I’ll just go with what ever you do!…”.

…

…no pressure then, I just have to predetermine the scheme for his whole army. I did a little research to see what was available in the suggested price range from Games Workshop, which with my newfound restrictions narrowed things down considerably.

The Custodian is a named Character, which I thought might be a cool addition to an army, but I had no way of knowing if he already had this model and to be honest, I’m not really keen on it… I think its the blade of the halberd I don’t like. I spent a bit of time trying to research and ask around for which of the Fyreslayer characters was the most useful or the “best” in terms of its rules, as they all seemed like decent models to me and I would like them to actually get used on the table.

When I finally Made a choice I started looking at alternative to see if I could save a little bit of money on the cost of the mini (usually 10-20%), I very nearly made purchase, before I had the idea of checking eBay. Although I was quite satisfied having narrowed down my choices, I thought if I could find something decent on eBay for up to £20 maybe that would be a nice surprise for him. I didn’t have to scour, or even vaguely delve into the listings, I just typed in “Fyre Slayers” and to my surprise I see 2 listings that are Magmadroths, from the same seller, starting bid… £19.99. Not SUPER surprising… I mean these things always rocket in price, except that these listings only had about 14 hours left on them. Still, that’s plenty of time for people to join in for the last 4 hours or so in a spontaneous bidding war. I put a Maximum bid of about £23, without any real hope of winning.

No one else bid on it. I won the Magmadroth for £20! a third of what its worth, I was obviously pretty excited by this… this surprise was going to be AWESOME.

So now I just had to paint it, which was a little daunting. I had already agreed to some other things like the Tale of 4 Warlords, I had a Twitter giveaway I was running and a few other projects to get on with… suddenly my Angry Ginger War-dwarf was now an Angry Ginger War-dwarf on Big Fire Lizard. It was already built which saved me a bit of time so I just had to decide on a scheme. I nearly went with a few alternative ideas, I’ve seen people to Ice style dwarves, I considered painting a black dwarf (African/Caribbean… not 40k Vulcan)… In the end though I thought, since there was no set scheme I should maybe go with quite a generic feel to it, but with some subtle, unique touches.

I like the Black/Red scales of the GW Magmadroth, but I thought it would be nice if the black had some colour to it, so I went with Rhinox hide. Then the only other real design choice I made ahead of time at this stage was that I wanted the chest/throat to look hot. I didn’t know how I would achieve this, I would just wing it. I undercoated with GW Wraithbone spray (I intended on using contrast paints as the backbone of the colour scheme), then painted the areas I wanted to look bright using shades of yellow through orange.

Once I got that down, I decided get the majority of the red on, and I also made the decision to make the throne thing look like jade.

I was pretty happy with how it was looking at this stage. The contrast (Blood Angles Red) certainly took lot of the pressure off painting the red scales and the green (Creed Camo Green) came out great too. Now I wanted to get some of those dark scales in. In order to decide which ones to make dark I like a bit of a system… often to my detriment, but it helps me make decisions on the fly if I have defined parameters. I though, what if like lava, the cooler/darker bits were harder than the red bits? So maybe the dark scales would be used for defence and offence? I picked out anything that looked spiky or like larger armoured scales and made them darker.

Then… the project stalled while I worked on my first month for Tale of 4 Warlords. The deadline was end of September though, so once our first To4W deadline was up (11th of August) I figured I would try to carry on and get it done as the second month was lot less painting and would give me more time… I hoped.

So roll on to mid August and the Genestealer cult went away for a week while I finished this beast. I picked out the metal parts on the skin of the Magmadroth, Edge highlighted the dark scales and obviously had to paint the chappy on top. Then I was done!

Oh did I not mention that the £20 Magmadroth also came with a resin feature base? yes… it was an awesome find.

I never really do colour lists for minis but I wanted to keep a record of this one just in case @Guymulloy wanted to know what kinds of colours I used. so I split this into two groups… a basic Tabletop list, and then the comprehensive display one. Not that I would consider myself a particularly good painter, but I have to remind myself there are so many different people out there of so many different skill levels, maybe these lists will be useful to someone!

So these are the basic different colours I used all over, the Contrast to start most of the work, like red for the Magmadroth, Green for the Chair and the flesh for the dwarf. Then the colours for details like the dark scales, leather straps, dwarf hair, stone and the two metallics around the model. I haven’t put the two undercoats in there (wraithbone and black for the base) but most people have those already.

I THINK that this is everything I use, washes/shades that I applied to various parts of the model for lowlights and then a bunch of stuff for highlighting. I’ve grouped them together in their colours in this one so its easier to see which ones were used together. I know its not the best photo for seeing the names of the colours, but I don’t really like listing the specific colour names anyway because not everyone has access to the same brands of paints.

If someone does want to know exactly what paints I used and you cant see the name in the picture just comment and I can let you know.

Anyway so that’s it! Very pleased with how the mini came out, and between starting and finishing this blog-post, its been received and I’m really glad to know that @Guymulloy is really happy with it!

I got the #twitterminiswap from @pandorasbitzbox today. This is an amazing beast and is a great addition to my collection. Thank you for this miniature. Now I need to finish my miniswap for @AveDecimus. pic.twitter.com/JFh56ZSg6R

— ΩMechanicum (@Guymulloy) August 24, 2019

Oh and this should also qualify for Jewelknightjess’s #Painthammer2019 and also Azazel’s Awsome August. yey!
~Pandora’s Bitz Box