Painting Sylvaneth Endless Spells - Spiteswarm Hive

Today I've finished painting The Spiteswarm Hive endless spell. It's a small model, that can be painted quickly and still look very good on the table (which is great if you're short on time). In case that you like this colour scheme, you can check out the guide below. Of course, the colour scheme is consistent with the rest of my army.
 
Painting process:

• The model was primed using Vallejo white primer
• Stone was painted with Vallejo Blue Gey Pale
• Roots were painted with Vallejo Khaki
• Both the stone and the roots were washed with GW Agrax Earthshade
• Roots were highlighted with Vallejo Kkaki (mostly edge highlights)
• Stone was drybrushed with Vallejo Off White
• Hive was washed with few coats of GW Cassandora Yellow (over the white base)
• Leaves and vines were painted with GW Moot Green, washed with GW Biel-Tan Green then highlighted with Vallejo Livery Green 
• Very light wash of GW Hexwraith Flame was applied to insects/spites, and then they were lightly drybrushed with Vallejo Livery Green
• The base wash finished using static grass and Gale Force 9 basing kit (Summer)

New army - Beasts of Chaos!

Ever since I first learned about Warhammer back in the 90s, Chaos was my favourite army (followed by Wood Elves). I really liked diversity of Chaos armies, but Beastmen were probably the most interesting. However, for some reason I never started collecting Beastmen and my two primary Age of Sigmar armies are Sylvaneth and Khorne. But recently I have finally decided to collect a small Beastmen army. In one of the buy/sell Facebook groups I follow, there was a deal that was too good to miss. So, few weeks ago, the mailman delivered all of the things on the picture below:

Besides Start Collecting set for Bests of Chaos and the latest Battletome, the deal included army dice, Morghur and Khazrak One-Eye! Since Warhammer Legends are a thing now, I will be able to play Morghur and Khazrak using AoS rules with friends who also have old(er) models.

Besides this, I have also ordered Beastmen Endless Spells and Herdstone. My plan for the Beastmen army is to keep it relatively small - I would probaby add one more Start Collecting set in the future and that's it (so I can effectively play 750 to 1000 point games). However, keeping things on a small scale would help me focus on converting and painting. Actually, one of the things that inspired me to finally start collecting Bestmen was J-P Miniatures page on Facebook: this guy has some fantastic Beastmen conversions and be sure to check his work! His Bestigors are great and I'll try to do something similar with my models. Also, since I love mixed Chaos warbands, I am planning to include some Chaos Marauder horsemen as allies. I know some may not agree, but I love the idea of corrupted humans working together with bestial mutants from the woods. 

New Sylvaneth models

Recently new Sylvaneth Battletome was published, along with new Wyldwood model and Sylvaneth Endless spells, so I got both of these last week.

Good thing about the Wyldwood is that you can still use the old model - this was covered by errata/designers commentery. I am very happy with the new battletome, because it gives a lot of options for the Sylvaneth army and you can easily find somethig interesting to play. Not only that, it also opens up some really cool painting and modelling possibilities (especially if you decide to paint your army using one of the Glades as the central theme).

Of course, one of the main things that interested me in the new book were the new Endless spells. I like the rules for all of them (and they are also very thematic) and I will be playing them on a regular basis in my Sylvaneth lists. However, when it comes to how the models look, I think that Vengeful Skullroot could be much better. The model just looks... funny? At least that's the vibe that I'm getting. This model is a great fit for Outcast/Dreadwood theme, but I would like this tree to look much more menacing. Luckily, that is something that can be easily fixed with some green stuff and a few parts from Citadel Wood kit.

Here's how the assembled models look like:

Mordheim warband update #1: The Minotaur

Recently I decided to start collecting Beastmen for Age of Sigmar. This is something that I have considered for some time, but now I finally decided to do it. I am aimig for a smaller army (between 500 and 1000 points), because I don't have plans for expanding it as much as my Sylvaneth and Khorne armies.

However, this was also a perfect opportunity to create Beastmen warband for Mordheim. We were discussing that it would be cool to finally get some Mordheim games and I knew right from the start that I would play Beastmen. I already had some spare models lying around (Beastlord, Shaman, some Gors and Warhounds) but what I was lacking was - a Minotaur. I wanted a nice centerpiece model for my warband, but GW Minotaurs were simply... ugly. No really, they look funny and their poses are not so great. I did not like the old Mordheim Minotaur model as well, so I started looking for suitable replacement.

I found the perfect model at Zealot Miniatures - this company has a nice range of fantastic minotaur models. I ordered the one called "Berserk Minotaur" an it has arrived today:

The miniature is made from resin and is of very high quality. It was also very easy to assemble. The pose is great and the model is big - almost as high as the Kurnoth Hunter, but bulkier. Here you can see how this big bad guy looks like - I don't think I need to mention that painting this miniature is going to be so much fun!

Ylthari's Guardians

Today I have finished painting the last miniature from the Ylthari's Guardians warband. Now the warband is complete and I'm looking forward to my first WHU game (but I'll have to wait for it for some time, since my son was just born few days ago :) ).

I really like the look of Ylthari's Guardians - actually, they and Farstriders were the reason why I started looking at Shadespire/Nightvault sets. However, what I'm planing to do in the future is use these guys much more in our skirmish games, because they really have a lot of character (and if you add them a single Kurnoth Hunter, you get a sweet 250 point skirmish warband).

Here's how my Ylthari's Guardians look like: