In today’s blog post I document painting and photographing my finished Abraxia astride the monstrous Thanatorg. There’s a stunning photo I’ve taken in the style of Frank Frazetta’s art and a complete painting guide with some top tips.

Models were kindly supplied to me by Games Workshop. My thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Could this be the model of the year? Of course not, it’s not a Space Marine, but to me this sculpt is serious contender. It’s one of the those models that when you’ve finished painting it, you keep going back to the shelf and picking it up and looking at it. The pose is so commanding and confident. It instantly reminded me of Frank Frazetta’s art with his powerful characters dominating a scene and I knew exactly how I wanted to showcase this model. The cold foreground leading into a warm central image with heavy vignetting gives the piece atmosphere. The composition has the protagonist in a position of power, commanding the centre of the image with the camera looking up at her (so she’s looking down on us).

Abraxia is a beast in combat with 5 attacks, hitting and wounding on 3s, doing 2 damage (potentially 3 damage if you roll 4 or 5 for her weapons special rule) and -2 to enemy armour saves. Every time she wounds a unit, for each wound Varanite splashes everywhere and causes 1 mortal wound on 4+. If you roll a 6 for her weapons special rule, then an enemy unit within 6″ suffers D3 mortal wounds. If that wasn’t enough, her mount Tanatorg has 6 attacks dealing D3 damage.

With a move 10″, she’s no slouch and shouldn’t have any trouble hunting down specific enemy targets. She is pricey though at 260pts. You can check out her Warscroll using this link.

At the time of writing this, you can only purchase Abraxia as part of the Dawnbringers boxset Abraxia’s Varanspear which consists of her and 3 Varanguard for £95. It’s almost guaranteed that she’ll get an individual release based on the previous Dawnbringers sets.

How to Paint Abraxia, Spear of the Everchosen

The best way to paint Abraxia is in sub-assemblies. Leave Thanatorg unglued from the base to make it easier to paint his underneath. Leave Abraxia off the saddle, she’s a tight fit, to get back on the saddle but it’s doable. I also left her shield and cape off and painted those separately. Pinning the parts to corks using straightened paper clips is a must. If you just hold the parts, you just get oils from your skin on the model and you rub off delicate edge highlights.

Above are my paint recipes for each area. I used an airbrush on Thanatorg’s torso and limbs to get the base coats down, but you can do it by brush if you’d prefer. The blending comes from the wash layers. The edge highlights on the scales are fiddly and time-consuming but I feel like it helps define the scales and looks neat and I like a neat and tidy paint job.

Thanks for checking out another one of my posts. This model took a couple of weeks to paint but I’m so happy with the the finished results, I think it’s totally worth it. What do you think?