Watchmen of Thalui

So, after my lower part of the back has blown up reading the Deathwatch codex, I decided that I need a little break from 40k. I won't abandon the project, so I still will do paintjob, but my meta is not for someone who prefers to play pure DE or DE+H. And actually, this is more that a suitable time, since I found a copy of General's Handbook for Age of Sigmar. After a few days playing Return of Reckoning (a private Age of Reckoning server, the game that brought me to this hobby in the first place), I finally got inspired and I decided to fullfill my ancient dream - to create the army of Nagarythe, where the basic units are my most favorite Shadow Warriors.

I never really liked the High elves, nor Dark elves, but the story of Shadow Warriors will always be my favorite. To be short, when the Sundering of Elven race started, few of those who lived in Malekith (the main mean guy) province, decided to stay loyal to their homeland and started a gruesome gurellia warfare. When the Dark Elves fled from Ulthuan, the homeland of Nagarythe was destroyed and corrupted by vile magic. Those loyal to Hight Elves, who was a native of that place, became a pariahs, shunned by others. They gave an oath that they shall know no peace untill the whole Dark Elves race will die out, and they shall not stop until their vengeance is complete.
You can read about them in a few sorces, I just tease you with a little story. But fluffwise - Shadow Warriors are awesome. The only thing that was troubling in FB - they were quite bad as a unit and could not be a core of your army. And now, they can!

In Age of Sigmar, these guys of course no longer represent what they have been before. Now, the faction of so-called Swifthawk Agents are the heralds, the vanguard of Aelven forces. They are the saivors and librators, as well as a swift avengers, and that sounded not that far from their old incarnation. Apart from hatred to Dark Elves.

So now, I decided to start an army of Swifthawk Agents with a fluff, that they are indeed one of the most sinister forces of Aelves, who know no respite or mercy to forces of Chaos. They hatred and thirst for vangeance has no bounds and when unleashed, they won't stop till death of their enemies or themsevles. They come forth from their base, situated in some corrupted realm, (prehaps situated in realm of shadow or even some occupied by Chaos) they stalk and hunt to inflict pain and suffering to those, who turned the Realms to ruin.

To start this project, I took a while and decided to collect some data from my old collections. I needed to understand how the old good Shadowlands looked like. The RoR helped a lot - thanks to saved screenshots and concept art. For the Swifthawks themselves, I decided to make a quite bright color scheme (maybe not the best idea) - a red cloacks, representing the spilled blood. I decided that original GW scheme or blacks and greens are not something I wanted.

The Shadowlands:

The models:

crimson SW arount the net:

Right now, my objective is to reach the least amount of points to play Pitched Battle is 1000 points. With my calculations and adding other units to the fray, that will be
- 1 Skywarden
- 3 squads of 10 Shadow Warriors
- 2 Skycutters.

The photos will be up soon, will be pleased if you wil ltell your opinion about the colours, especially the cloaks. Stay tuned! =)

So here comes my attempts to make this crimson variation of the cloak. I have to admit - painting red is one of the most difficult tasks in my painting experience. I tried everything, starting from paintin by hand and ending with airbrush.

Firt one was made by hand, but a friend of mine who works for a Painting studio said such cloak can be painted without washes. He also suggested a recipie, but I didn't like that it was too orange-like.



Quite funny, but I started to stalk through the net and took a while, looking on Blood Angels tutuorials. And one of them looked like a charm. I took a second shot, using the airbrush, and some handwork, but when I applied filetrs and paint, the result was far from expected.



The restult was very far from what tutorial suggested, so I contacted the author of the tutorial - maybe he knows what I made wrong. But to my surprise, he made a mistake in his article, plasing a frong red tone. So I bought another bottle and this is the final result.



To be honest, the final result is a little bright, but I have to admit, the result is awesome. Maybe I can try to make it darker, but who knows, maybe in AoS it will work just fine.