Games Workshop is back with a Horus Heresy Painting Guide. Get your Traitor Legions tabletop ready!
We already got the Loyalist version so it was just a matter of time before the Traitor Legions got a showcase. I really like this painting guide for a few reasons. Let’s check them out!
“The third entry of the Grotmas Calendar was a detailed painting guide for the Loyalist Legions of the Horus Heresy, providing comprehensive recipes for nine of the eighteen Space Marine Legions. Da Red Gobbo loves to make naughty boys and girls wait, which is why the Traitor Legions are coming in second.”
Traitor Legion Painting Guide
Below I’m only including a trio of schemes to talk about them as examples. If you want all of them go read the full WarCom article (and maybe bookmark it for later reference). I picked out a few schemes that tend to give folks a headache for a few reasons. Let’s kick things off with the Night Lords.
As I mentioned in the Loyalist article, I like that GW included the “Simplified Scheme” base colors. It’s great for anyone looking to just get to the “tabletop ready” look. One of the reasons I picked the Night Lords is because the really tricky part isn’t the blue armor — it’s the lightning. Unfortunately, there’s not much of a tutorial here on how to do it well. It does take a bit of a “painter’s eye” to get it to look good without overdoing it. But if you’re looking for a video tutorial there’s dozens on YouTube. GW even has one:
Personally, I think the real trick to the Lightning is to try and keep it subtle. It’s really easy to go overboard or “too thick” on the look. That said, the video tutorial does lay out the colors used and honestly has some good tips on how to practice. So give it a whirl if you’re a Night Lords fan!
Next up: World Eaters!
This is my Legion so I’m adding it here because, well, I’m biased. But more importantly, I’m adding it here because it’s got one of the trickiest colors to paint: White. While it doesn’t look complicated on paper, I think their color recommendations are really spot on here.
Corax White with the shades gives you that slight off-white that you can then layer up with White Scar as the highlight. I like this brighter white armor as opposed to the Death Guard’s more brown toned white. If you want to see the paint recommendations for that, go read the WarCom article!
And finally the Alpha Legion!
Why did I chose the Alpha Legion? Well mostly because I found the recommended paints curious! One of the coolest parts of their scheme is that metallic/iridescent blueish armor. How did they do that!? Well by starting with a metallic base coat!
What interesting is they have “Airbrush filter” as a step in the paint process. I’m curious to know if they actually DID airbrush those or if they just hand painted them on. I do know that if you add enough Contrast Medium to the regular GW paints, you end up with a really nice glaze mix. That appears to be what they did here. It’s basically mixing your own Contrast color — and the results look great. I might have to give that a try…
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What’s your favorite colors scheme from the Traitor Legions? Let us know in the comments!
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Writer, Editor, Texas Native, and now Tex-Pat, Adam covers all things Tabletop Gaming. Which includes Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar, D&D, Board Games and everything else that involves dice, boards, cards and a table.
A hobbyist, player, and collector of miniatures and games, Adam’s current obsession are his Death and Chaos Armies for Age of Sigmar, his Blood Angels and Tyranids for 40k, an expanding collection of Marvel: Crisis Protocol minis, and his ever growing Arkham Horror: The Card Game Collection.
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