So, Duelling Paintbrushes is running again this year and I said I'd join in. I'm currently in a Warmachine phase (the game, not the things in Warhammer Fantasy that shoot stuff and blow up when Greg uses them), and so I enquired about painting some of that rather the 1000pt WHFB armies Greg, Owen and Drew are doing. Having got the green light (and opened the floodgates for people to paint about 5 different systems, apparently), I figured that a 15pt Warmachine force was comparable to 1000pts of WHFB, game-system-wise. Helpfully I had some stuff that'd been sitting around unpainted for quite a while which added up pretty well:

• Garryth, Blade of Retribution (warcaster, +5pts)
• Banshee (heavy myrmidon, 10pts)
• 10 Houseguard Halberdiers with Officer and Standard Bearer (unit and attachment, 9pts)

Works out to be 1pt under, but it's pretty close. I assembled, painted and undercoated it in time for the start date of November 1st:

When I started painting my Retribution, I decided I didn't want to do the standard white armour (because painting white kind of sucks unless you're excessively talented). I play Halo fairly often with some people from the club, and I'm quite fond of running people over in one of these:

I decided to go for a similar iridescent purple armour effect. This... sort of worked, and sort of made them look magical and sparkly. Oh well, at least I haven't seen anybody else do it (maybe they're all too smart). The first step was basecoating the models Liche Purple. This took far longer than it feels like it should have. I guess I did use pretty thinned-down paint and do a couple of coats, rather than one thick layer.

Next up was drybrushing everything from Liche Purple to Warlock Purple and then up to Blood Red:

At this point they kind of look like they're made of terracotta, but the next step fixes that (in theory). By combining a few ingredients:

• Purple ink
• Gloss varnish
• Iridescent medium (basically colourless metallic paint)
• Water

I make a sort of metallic purple gloss wash... stuff.

Painting this over the drybrushed armour gives it a glossy metallic finish and helps shade it. That's the theory, anyway. It doesn't come out amazingly well in these photos, but I'll claim it looks better in person.

So that's the easy bit done; now I actually have to start painting detail rather than just drybrushing or washing the whole model. I'll probably do the Halberdier unit first, since once they're done Garryth and the Banshee will seem easy by comparison.