Warhammer 40,000 - Azrakh the Annihilator
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
Mr. The Annihilator has sat on my shelf for quite a while now as I wasn’t sure how to paint him. I wasn’t much a fan of the bright red and gold that Games Workshop uses as the default for World Eaters. I felt that it was a bit too clean, I wanted something a little grimmer and darker. More to the point I have this unspoken rule for my Warhammer 40,000 models; the more gold you have on you the higher up the Imperial chain of command you are. Case in point, aside from the basket hilt on the Sergeant’s power sword my Death Korp of Krieg don’t have any gold on them. My Inquisitorial Agents, including my Inquisition Stormtroopers, have a fair amount of gold trim on them as they’re considerably higher up the food chain. By contrast none of my Nurgle cultists have any gold on them whatsoever. Which presented a conundrum for Khornate followers with a love of gold-coloured brass. And so Azrakh the Annihilator sat on the shelf while I pondered a colour scheme. Plus I didn’t feel I could do justice to the artwork by Mark Gibbons that the model was inspired by.
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
And then the Blood and Zeal box was released. As mentioned in their own article I had intended to sell the Goremonger’s contained in the box, but I was compelled to keep them and give them a paint scheme befitting the Blood God. In preparation for painting said Goremongers I had picked up a couple of new paints. I had recently been impressed with the new Army Painter Fanatic range when I picked out some paints for the Kingdom Death Monster Mountain Armour figure, so I started looking through the range for something suitable for my forces of Khorne. Two colours stood out to me, Basilisk Red the darkest tone in the Cool Reds Flexible Colour Triad, and Tainted Gold a greenish gold colour. The latter I had tested out on the Goremongers and was impressed with how it looked, especially with a Taargor Rageshade wash. I also tested out Basilisk Red on the Skullclaimer’s axe and was a little less impressed. Nevertheless, I felt confident enough to finally break Azrakh out of his box and get him assembled.
Being encased in bulky terminator armour, assembly was fairly simple. I left the head separate and the body separate from the base. Speaking of the base, I knew I was going to use the same Krautcover Ruins of Persistence Basecover that I had used on the Goremongers but I wanted to elevate his base a little more. Quite literally in fact as I ripped up some cork tile and stuck it down to the base. No Khorne base would be complete without some skulls either, so I picked out a couple from the Citadel Skulls box and stuck them down as well. Lastly before priming, I used my pin vice drill to a hole up both of Azrakh’s legs and inserted some brass rod so that he would be easier to attach to his base later. Likewise, to facilitate painting I drilled a small hole in the neck of the head and inserted a length of brass rod. With all that done, each subassembly was then primed with Colour Forge Matt Black.
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
The first step would be to paint all the armour; I broke out the Army Painter Basilisk Red and quickly discovered it was not the paint I needed. I had envisioned a deep and dark red, but this was more purple than anything else. It’s not a bad colour by any means but it was not what I was looking for. I briefly considered base coating the model with Basilisk Red then giving it a zenithal highlight with a brighter red. In lieu of that, I fell back to an old standby that, honestly, was starting me in the face: Vallejo Scarlet Red. In order to get a smooth and even coat I used the airbrush, although if I have to paint any more World Eaters then I’ll look into getting an appropriate colour from Colour Forge. Next was the tedious step of painting in all the trim with Army Painter Tainted Gold. In truth this didn’t take all that long to be honest, Tainted Gold is a decent colour and most areas got a solid coat in a couple of layers.
With the trim done the lion’s share of the armour was done and I could move onto the remaining details. All of the skulls, for the skull throne, I painted with a couple thin coats of Army Paint Skeleton Bone. There are a couple of tubes coming out of the chest plate, the segmented ones I painted with Two Thin Coats Death Reaper and the smooth tubes I painted with Caliban Green. Lastly, I picked out any silver details like the chain across the chest and the teeth on the chainfist with Scale75 Thrash Metal.
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
Usually for armour I tend to do a recess shade rather than an all over wash as it avoids any pooling issues. However, the new formulation of Games Workshop washes are thin enough, or otherwise have been reworked, to avoid this. With that in mind, I slathered the armour from hunched shoulders to armoured boots in Targor Rageshade. The silver details I felt needed a bit more contrast to them to make the texture stand out so I gave them a quick wash with Sonic Sledgehammer’s Marine Juice wash.
The washes had done a great job of bringing out the various textures on the armour but to really help them stand out I needed to do a bit of highlighting. I had decided from the outset that I wasn’t going to edge highlight all that trim, I really would see red if I had subjected myself to that. Instead, I highlighted the edges of a few parts of the armour, mainly on the gauntlet, with Archive-X Caboose Red. For the bone details, the wash hadn’t darkened them too much, so I didn’t want to push the highlights too far. With that in mind I gave the skull some quick highlights across the brows and ridges with Skeleton Bone. By contrast, the base colours for the pipes in the chest were quite dark already so I chose some brighter colours for their highlights. For the green pipe I used Warpstone Glow, it’s a fairly transparent paint so it took a few layers to build up the highlight. For the black segmented pipe, I carefully highlighted the edges of each segment with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone to make them stand out a little more.
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
I was with how the armour turned out so with that in mind I turned my attention to Azrakh’s head. Before I started this blog I had painted up the various enemies for the Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress game, including the Black Legion Heretic Astartes and Traitor Guard. Much like the gold “rule” earlier I had decided that my traitor forces would be painted with sallow greenish skin as they would be unlikely to see much sunlight being trapped in the labyrinthine halls of the Blackstone Fortress. This was also before I started collecting Death Guard and pivoted to their pallid zombie skin. Plus as Azrakh is a standalone character I could afford to spend a little more time on his face.
With that in mind I basecoated the head with a couple thin coats of Ionrach Skin. This was the colour that I had used back when painting the Blackstone Fortress miniatures all those years ago and I saw no reason not to use it today as my starting point. The only other basecoat I needed to do at this point was to carefully paint his clenched teeth with Army Painter Skeleton Bone. From there the next step was to mix Ionrach Skin with some Vallejo Frozen Flesh and use that to shade in the recesses on the face. I then used pure Frozen Flesh in the deepest recesses for the shadows. With the recesses done I moved onto the highlights. I started by mixing Ionrach Skin with Vallejo Pale Flesh for my first layer then mixed Ionrach Skin with Vallejo White Flesh for the second layer of highlights. The result of a little lacklustre in my opinion, there wasn’t enough contrast between the deepest shadows and the brightest highlights. Keeping on theme, I then gave the head a coat of Targor Rageshade to deepen the shadows, I then reapplied the highlights to push the contrast a little further. Happier with the result I then carefully picked out the eyes with Vallejo White Flesh.
Before I could slot the head into place, I wanted to emulate the object source lighting (OSL) effects that Mark Gibbons had put in his artwork. To do this I carefully sprayed some Liquitex Titanium White acrylic ink into the area that the head will slot. I then sprayed over this with some Warp Lightening contrast paint to give it a glowing effect. It turned out okay, I guess. It's hard to shake the feeling I may have just ruined all my good work. Either way, I didn’t want to make things worse by messing with it more. So, I clipped the head off it’s brass rod and slotted it into place. Once I had done so I carefully painted in the pupils with a dot of Army Painter Matt Black.
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
Moving onto the base, I don’t normally like to build things up too high. I have a dislike of the tactical rocks that Games Workshop likes to use. However, the Krautcover basing scatter that I was planning to use is quite chunky. I wanted to elevate Azrakh so his feet didn’t get lost in the rubble. With that in mind, I ripped up and stuck down some 5mm cork tile for him to stand on. I also stuck down a couple of skulls for good measure. The base was then primed with Colour Forge Matt Black. And whilst the spray did have good coverage, I used some Army Painter Matt Black to fill in any areas that had been missed. As the scatter is quite a light grey I painted the cork with Two Thin Coats Carcharodon Grey so that it matched a little better. The skulls meanwhile I painted with Army Painter Skeleton Bone and the remaining flat areas of the base with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone. The skulls and cork were then given a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone to bring out their textures. I then did a little bit of layering on the skulls like I had with the skulls on the armour, just to reestablish the lights and shadows. I then dabbed on some PVA glue onto the flat areas and sprinkled on some Krautcover Ruins of Persistence scatter. It can be quite dusty, so I cleaned up any that had gotten anyway I didn’t want with a dry brush. For example, I didn’t want the feet to be completely obscured by dust, although I bit of dust in the recesses is fine. Once I was happy with it, I sealed the scatter down with Geek Gaming Scenics Matt Sealant and painted the rim with a matt black.
The very last bit, of course, was to first drill some holes in the cork and base so that Azrakh could be glued in place. Once he was in place the next step was to break out the one thing that every Khorne model needs: blood spatters. Using a small chunk of sponge I dabbed some Blood for the Blood God technical paint on the teeth of the chainfist. I then used a paint brush and a short length of brass rod to flick globs of Blood for the Blood God over the miniature and base. The key really, is to not go overboard with this. We’re not looking to drown the miniature in blood. On this occasion anyway.