The Feralgeist is the easiest and quickest Hordes or Warmachine miniature I’ve ever painted. It took less than an hour in total. Here’s a step-by-step guide to assembling and painting it.
ASSEMBLING
Assembling the Feralgeist is straightforward enough, but you will need to apply a couple of advanced assembly skills – pinning and using green stuff. Don’t fret, this is a good miniature to try these out on. Clean off all of the pieces with a craft knife, file and Dremel. The body comes in two pieces, with the join happening at two narrow points. This is what needs to be pinned. I took out my pin vice to drill starter guide holes. This isn’t so important in the recessed fitting, but is needed for the corresponding raised bump. For these recessed/raised type joints I use my blade to take the top off the raised part (only partially) so I have a small flat surface to drill into. Once the guide holes were drilled I got out the Dremel and drilled holes that were about 3-4mm deep on each side. I use snipped paper clips as my pins and glued the pieces together (with pin in place!) using super glue. I then glued the jawbone in place and then the miniature to it’s base.
The join between the two parts of the body needs some putty (often called green stuff or brown stuff). These are two part puttys that you blend together and then let air dry. I rolled very thin sausages and laid them across the joins, then with a wet sculpting tool I smoothed the putty across the join and removed the excess. Once it is air dried (I usually leave it 24 hours) I grabbed the Dremel again, but this time with a filing attachment and smoothed over the putty work. The miniature is now ready to prime.
PAINTING AND BASING
- Priming: As I was going for an ethereal look I primed the miniature using a white spray and then a watered down coat of Skull White.
- Blue: I washed the whole of the Feralgeist with a slightly watered down Asurmen Blue wash. I then drybrushed all raised areas with Skull White with a small amount of Asurmen Blue.
- Skeleton and Rubble: This whole area was coated with a heavily watered down Graveyard Earth. The skeleton was then drybrushed with Bestial Brown, Snakebite Leather, 1:1 Snakebite Leather / Bleached Bone and finally pure Bleached Bone. I then painted the flat skeletal surfaces with a heavily watered down Bleached Bone.
- Base: I glued (using watered down PVA glue) Builder’s Sand to the base. Once dry it was painted with a heavily watered down Graveyard Earth. One or two larger stones were dotted with Codex Grey. I applied a small amount of flock using PVA glue and then painted the base edge Chaos Black.
That’s it! It’s such a useful addition to any Hordes force and so easy to paint that there is really no excuse for not fielding one. Thraka Green or Baal Red, or any wash for that matter, could be used in place of Asurmen Blue, so producing a Feralgeist that fits the theme of your army is pretty simple.
Owen