Working on the Tomb Guard

This week I put in some time on the Tomb Guard– Finished converting the banner and painted the captain.

 

 

As with my other Tomb Kings standards, I designed this one with a large icon atop a hanging banner. The parts I used to kitbash this were pulled from a variety of sources. The banner itself might be my favorite component– It's an Ogre Kingdoms banner with the hanging stones cut away, and I used Aves Apoxie Sculpt to fill in the gap in the bottom of the flag and smooth it over, creating more flat surface area to paint the unit icon. 

 

 

For the top, I trimmed the arch off of the large banner from the Khemrian Warsphinx crew, and fit that around the headdress from the liche priest's mount on the bone dragon. (It was a perfect fit!) I cut away the plastic face and replaced it with a skull from the old Inquisitor range. Because Inquisitor was 54mm scale, the skulls were larger, making it ideal for a banner top. I sculpted the jaw and bottom teeth, and added the belt buckle from the Royal Heralds kit to cover the join. 

 

 

I had saved the hanging plaques from the herald's battle standard, and added these to the ends of the crossbar. To do this, I cut notched into the ring at the top so it could slot over the end cap and look like the ring was passing through the metal cap.

 

 

I scraped the detail off of a spare Tomb Guard banner top so it could sit flush on the back of the banner icon. I used a piece of a skeleton spear shaft to add the top of the banner pole, and inserted a length of paperclip so the top could be pinned securely into the top of the banner. (You'll notice that I also had to clip off the back of the metal skull so it could sit in front of the banner. 

 

 

The final bit was to attach the smaller plaques, which were taken from the Royal Herald's horse. They fit in nicely, and match the aesthetic of the larger plaques. Here's the completed banner assembly:

 

 

I also finished up the sculpting on the last of the shields, completing the full 20 for the regiment.

 

 

I'm painting the troopers on painting sticks, arranged by body pose. The early painting steps went pretty quickly– Drybrushing the bases and applying the bone wash to everyone:

 

 

Then I drybrushed up the bone color and painted the bandages and leather straps and bags. You can see my full step-by-step tutorial in the post: Painting Tomb Kings Skeletons. The process is the same here; the Tomb Guard just have more bandages and more intricate armor.

 

 

When it comes to painting the bits of red and black armor, and then the metal, that's where things start to slow down, so I work on the figures one by one. But it's still satisfying, because at the end of those steps I have a completed miniature, each one bringing me closer to finishing the unit. Here's the unit champion, with his shield on his back:

 

 

I have three more models from his "pose stick" awaiting their gold and silver.

 

 

The shields were stuck to thin dowels with double-sided tape for priming and painting. It took me a while to settle on their process because I was trying to edge highlight all the black stripes. In the end, I opted for a flat basecoat of GW Stegadon Scale Green (actually a dark blue-black), then a drybrush at the outer edges with a mix of GW The Fang and Screaming Skull, and a bit of highlight around the outermost edge. I finished it off with a heavy wash of Nuln Oil which really helped blacken the recesses. The shields in this photo have been sprayed with Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear and are ready for their gold trim.

 

 

I've got about 12 of the 20 Tomb Guard painted up to the armor steps, so I should have a decent chunk of the unit finished soon, and that will be over halfway done!
 

'Til next time!