Warmaster

UPDATE: the fellas over at the very cool gaming site TheMiniaturesPage.com pointed out a slight bit of confusion in this post concerning the "scale" of Warmaster. I referred to Warmaster as "epic-scale Warhammer". This is in terms of the type of large-scale formation/battalion warfare that Epic 40K rules depict, not the exact same scale of miniature size as epic 40K (although i did point this out in the 2nd paragraph of the original post, expecting a potential misunderstanding). But hey, i'll blame that on GW since none of their figs are actually the size of the scale they're supposed to be!
:endUpdate

These are two armies from the release of the Warmaster game, back around 2000. Warmaster was epic-scale Warhammer using the basic rules of Epic 40K. High Elves and Undead were the armies that came with the boxed set.

After my not-so-satisfying speed-painting of the Space Marine and Ork armies that came with the Epic 40K boxed set, I was determined to do a better job with Warmaster. These figs were not quite 6mm; they're probably closer to 10mm (which is typically the case with GW figs: just a little bigger than the scale they're supposed to be).



This meant there was a higher-level of detail and I needed to come up with a better method to paint two entire armies in under 3 weeks, but with enough detail to do the model some justice.

I undercoated everything with black spray paint and for the High Elves, I let that do most of the work. I picked out the major details with color, being careful to leave black as a trim-line. This was much easier with the Warmaster figs than with Epic40K figs (although I got much better at it with practice, and when I returned to Epic figs was able to use the technique successfully).



The Warmaster demo release was much more time compressed than Epic 40K (and that was no picnic). I really only had time for one level of detail, which was why I tried the black trim-line approach. Paint the main colors, pick out the small details, move onto the next stand. There wasn't enough time to apply any further shading for the Elves. But looking back at the figs, and the pics, it really wasn't necessary. Looking at small-scale figs bunched very close together on stands allllll the way down on a gaming table, the black/major-color technique works just fine. And it's definitely "good enough to play".



As usual, The Undead were another matter altogether. Skeletons are the easiest figures to paint. Period. And for Warmaster scale, easy is the name of the game. Again, I spray painted the fig with a black undercoat. Then I rapidly dry-brushed some sort of bone-color right over the entire fig.



After the first dry-brush, I repeated it again with white, trying to focus on the edges of the model. I don't even remember the specific colors used on the bones for these figs, I just remember cranking 'em out in about 2 days.



I picked out the other details when the bones were finished. The Warmaster armies were also the first figs that I employed the sandy-dirt color and green flock basing technique. I was very pleased with how it turned out.



Below is a zoom in on the skeleton archers.



After I took these pictures I found the two "leader" models for the High Elves and Undead in the back of my miniature display case. I was never really happy with how they turned out, so I'll spare The Internets from their bandwidth.