Showcase: Night Vault Stormcast Evocators

Recently for Father’s Day I received Warhammer Underworlds Night Vault from my two year old. These are the first two models I’m painting from the set. After the jump I want to chat about shoulder pads and contrast paint. 

Do you remember the 80’s when people had inserts in their jackets to bulk out their shoulders? What ever happened to shoulder pads? Only kidding, it’s not those shoulder pads I want to talk about. It’s actually the colour of the Evocators pads below. So the way Stormhosts work is they’re made up of different chambers. This chamber is called the Sacrosanct Chamber and predominately features wizards (and some ordinance). I wanted to mark them out as different so I painted the  shoulder pads purple. My Warrior Chambers, such as Liberators have yellow shoulder cauldrons. My Dracothian Guard (Extremis Chamber) have grey shoulder pads. Vanguard Chambers have white pads. These are all colours already existing in the scheme but it’s really going to help differentiate the units and the command structure. A quick not on the command structure. I use coloured helmets to denote rank. Lord Celestants have gold helmets. Primes have silver helmets and Lord Relictors have white. These are Space Marine ideas but it really helps.

Since my initial thoughts with Contrast (you can read here) I’ve been slowly incorporating the range into my existing work flows and that’s true of this unit. The metals utilise Contrast Medium and a Nuln Oil 1:1 mix over an Iron Breaker layer. That’s it. Instant, tonal, soft shading for minimal effort. The white plumes on their helmets are the white undercoat and then one thick coat of Apothecary White Contrast. They look no different to the old way I did it but take a fraction of the time. I can see myself using Contrast to replace more fiddly detail work in the future, those grips on those weapons are next!