Showcase: Kharadron Overlords Drekki Flynt (incl. painting guides)

I was lucky enough to be sent the new Kharadon Overlords Drekki Flynt model by Games Workshop to paint up and in this post, I’ll show his rules page, the stunning photo I took of him boarding an enemy vessel, why I chose the colours I did to paint him as well a painting guide showing you how I did it. So much to get through, so splice the mainbrace and let’s set sail me heartys.

Drekki Flynt is a Kharadon Overlord Sky Captain and a loveable rogue featured in Guy Haley’s novel The Arkanaut’s Oath. For the first time, this hearty Duardin is available as a plastic model kit. Included on the back of his small 4 page instruction manual are his stats. Sadly though no special rules, keywords or even points are included so I’m not actually sure how useful this is. Hopefully he’ll be added to the Age of Sigmar App in full.

I was lucky enough to be sent this model by Games Workshop’s Warhammer Community Team to paint up and submit pictures for possible inclusion in their community showcase article. Me being me, I don’t do things by half and I wanted to submit a truly special photo. I read some synopsis on Drekki and I got pirate vibes, so I came up with him boarding a plague ship to liberate some of Sigmar’s treasure chests.

The only pirate ship I have is a lego one so I can’t use that. Being the resourceful chap that I am I started putting together some terrain pieces that looked boat like. Using wooden walkways and platforms from Warcry’s Red Harvest game I was able to mock up the deck and hull. A bamboo walkway from Warcry’s Heart of Ghur made for some convincing rigging. I 3D printed some tiny discs to use as gold coins. I remembered I had the Dreadfleet game mat which is perfect for the sea. To finish the scene off I used a piece of black card and flicked silver and white paint on it with a toothbrush to make stars.

In this behind the scenes shot you can see how I pulled it altogether. To light the shot I used slaved speedlites (also know as flash guns) with coloured translucent plastic (also known as gels) in front of the lights. I’ve used a blue light for the foreground, another blue light for the background and a orangey red to light the ship ( imagine they use lanterns or something). I use the ring flash as a fill in light just to remove any heavy shadows on Drekki and make him pop a little more. I added the fallen Nurgle warrior for two reasons, first it explains who’s ship it is, because Kharadon airships aren’t made from wooden planks and secondly, I like to think the tentacle Drekki is standing on use to be the arm of the Blightking he’s standing over.

Even though Drekki is a named character, I still wanted to make my mark on him and paint him my way. I thought I’d lean into the pirate theme and gave him stripey trousers and a black beard. I can’t put my finger on it, but for some reason I associate the colour red with pirates, I think it’s Captain Hook in Disney’s Peter Pan is predominately red, so maybe it’s that ingrained into me from a child. Either way , I like the red and the black beard. I feel like this is younger more hot-headed Drekki Flynt who wouldn’t think twice about jumping onto a Plague Ship for some coins made from Aether-Gold.

Before we raise anchor and sail into the sunset, here’s my paint recipes for the colours I used to paint Drekki Flynt. He’s a pretty cool model and I’m pleased Games Workshop sent him to me. I had a blast painting and photographing him. Nice to work on a something different from time to time.