Prince Duvalle claims descent from the von Carstein lineage, and few are foolish enough to gainsay him to his face. The charismatic lord is adept at conjuring glamours and illusions, rendering his prey disoriented and vulnerable before the final blow. His personal coterie are known as the Crimson Court, a clique of vampires obsessed with the hunt – his right-hand man, Gorath the Enforcer, the savage and twisted Ennias Curse-born, and the proud duellist Vellas von Faine.
*****
The other day I suggested to Chris about painting up a small project to completion as a sort of end of month challenge type deal.
We both had recently built up the Vampire warband for Warhammer Underworlds, The Crimson Court, so this seemed the logical go-to as we could paint them together for a fixed deadline and compare the two units once done.
I really like the Warhammer Underworlds game in general, but the individual warbands are fantastic self contained projects, the models of which also double really well as commander or character models for a larger massed army battle.
For my part the models were built, I wished later that I'd some them in sub-assemblies.
I added some scattered pools of sand to the bases for some extra detail, rather then just the cracked flagstones.
I then undercoated them with Dark Grey and attempted to zenithal undercoat with some lighter grey and white, intending for these models to be a testbed for new techniques.
The undercoating worked... somewhat to plan...
At this point the models stayed for a couple of days whilst I went off and played Dragon Rampant for the day and dealt with household stuff before getting chance to hobby again.
During this time I looked into the story of the characters for inspiration for painting and apart from the above passage there really isn't anything to go on.
Into the Von Carstein lore I looked, starting with the surviving member of the old world family, Manfred Von Carstein, now one of the three Mortarch's of Nagash and riding the big Dread Abyssal, he's a cool miniature even if by his character traits he's a dick really.
He has so much potential which GW/BL squandered simply by making him one of the "I'll always betray you because I'm power hungry" archetypes, but one which doesn't actually use any intelligence to do so.
The original Von Carstein, Vlad was infinitely more likable as a genocidal, power hungry, sociopathic undead blood drinker because he was relatable to a character which we already know in Dracula.
Vlad Von Carstein being Warhammer's Dracula analogue.
His story with his wife Isabella added to that characterisation and even though they were trying to usurp the throne of The Empire, they had a great story because it wasn't just a one-trick thing of the same actions in every story.
They even made the Ring of Resurrection magic item which Vlad used to stay alive through various "certain death" scenarios and when it was stolen he met his final end, as did Isabella.
They both had fantastic miniatures which I wish I could get my hands on without paying a fortune for, just like Bretonnians, but oh well...
Back to the Crimson Court, with Prince Duvalle claiming lineage with this bloodline, and his armour being the same style, I originally thought about doing the armour a deep purple, but felt that was off the mark.
Mengle Miniatures put a great "Masterclass" type tutorial/blogpost up when the Crimson Court were released and I decided to follow that after reading it through.
But with the caveat of only Duvalle would be in full Crimson armour, and von Faine would have her chest plate Crimson and leg armour black to match the other lower standing members of the warband.
This I felt would tie them to the name of the warband and the bloodline from their backstory.
So the plan was to get these models fully finished by midnight on November 30th (tonight as of writing this), and put up a blogpost detailing them.
I started the painting on Sunday 27th and by the end of the day had ended up here:
All of the basecoats are down apart from the metallics, and the armour has started to be highlighted.
Another couple of nights work saw the major sections completed and finally at around 21.20 Tuesday 29th the warband was fully finished and read for photos:
I followed a lot of the steps in the Mengle Miniatures tutorial, highlighting the red up with Wild Rider Red and spot highlighting the corners with orange, something I've never pushed that far before for highlights.
I'll add different bits about each model as we go through a series of rather cruel close-ups:
Starting with Prince Duvalle:
As mentioned before I pushed his armour highlights up to the orange on the raised corners.
The base was also an experiment following the tutorial starting with Incubi Darkness (lovely colour) and shading with Nuln Oil. Then highlighting with Incubi Darkness and a further highlight with Thunderhawk Blue.
Given how cold and stony the base is, I didn't drybrush over the skull or Duvalle's feet with dust as I normally do on a battlefield base, this adds a little warmth and colour into the dark base.
Gorath the Enforcer:
Gorath the Enforcer is the "Unit" as I nicknamed him. A hulking slab of cold undead muscle, but which has all the speed and power that comes with vampirism, terrifying.
For his armour I went with the traditional Von Carstein black, highlighting with Mechanicus Standard Grey and spotting the corners with Ulthuan Grey.
Easier to see on this model is the skintone, which is a cool, dead flesh appearance, this is Grey Seer and glazed over with severely watered down Thunderhawk blue, before being highlighted up through Grey Seer and Ulthuan Grey again.
His cloak shows off the wet blending technique I attempted on the various cloaks the vampire wear. Barak-Nar Burgundy and Abaddon Black then with a clean wet brush I mixed them together, treating the miniature like a 3D palette.
Ennias Curse-Born:
The most monochrome miniature in the warband. In an effort to add some colour, I glazed the wings with watered down Druchii Violet to try and get some purple in there and he has a couple of red jewels to tie to Duvalle's armour.
His mace is Grey Knights Steel washed with Agrax Earthshade and layered back up to Steel again.
Vellas von Faine:
The duelist Vellas von Faine is probably my favourite miniature from the set, interestingly Curse-Born above is Chris' favourite but my least favourite from the group.
Von Faine got all of the techniques listed above, with her armour being split black and red she had both sets of highlights, her cloak has some wet blending on it, but it was hard to do because of all the hair...
Hair which was painted Grey Seer and given a heavy coat of Apothecary White. The coloured sections were rebased with Grey Seer and then got a coat of Blood Angels Red, contrast paints made the hair relatively easy overall.
Incidentally her face does look better in real life, as I said these were some cruel close-ups of the models.
I'm really pleased with how these.models have turned out for just a few hours work, maybe oe-two per night for about three nights.
As I have several of these warbands to do still, I may use one after each big project is finished as a palette cleanser type arrangement.
Until next time, have nice day...
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