Painting my Cauldron Warband

I’m excited to be working on my Cauldron war band. Cauldron is a game I’ve played once and I’m looking forward to playing many more games in the future. I prefer to have a war band for each unique game that I play so that my characters and their stories fit within that setting. It’s hard for me to see the characters in multiple settings in a kind of Multiverse type concept because I like to work on a project by project basis. 

With all the models kit bashed, it was time to get some paint on them. I took all the models outside and gave them a generous coat of black spray paint. For some reason the can said matte black spray paint, but the models had a slight sheen, which kind of annoyed me. After the models dried, I brought all the figures back to the studio and thought about the color palette I wanted to use.

I often fall into using the same color palette for multiple projects. Mostly because I’m attracted to those colors in conjunction with each other. I do want to branch out and try new color palletes and triads. I knew this project needed a pallete to fit the swampy dark setting of Cauldron so I went with my classic colors that I’ve used for a number of war bands, but tried using different color paint this time. 

To get started, I dry brushed all the miniatures with a dark purple. When I dry brush, I usually work in two layers to build up color, saturation, and transitions. In this case I found that the dark purple did not contrast enough with the black to make much of an impact or a difference in the final product, but it was worth giving it a try to see if I liked it. 

 Since I was not satisfied with the contrast between the black and the purple, I decided to dry brush a second purple onto the miniature. This time I used blue violet, which is one of my favorite colors to use. Its a great way to represent shadow, but with color. I gave the miniature a quick dry brush all over covering much of the dark purple that was laid down previously. 

 

With the shadows completed, it was time to add the mid tone. I pulled out my favorite green and at this point I’ve used two pots of green between all of my war bands and my large Skaven army.. Luckily, I had enough for this war band as well. With a large dry brush. I did two layers of green on selected points of the model. I use the mid tone to show where light is hitting the model as well as accentuating points of interest. 

Yellow is a tough color when it comes to miniature paints. Often I find that the yellows are never as saturated as I want them to be pigment wise and most struggle to have good coverage, requiring  many more paint layers for saturation. Multiple paint layers can result in thick paint on the model and loss of details. I’m still searching for the perfect yellow paint, if you have any recommendations, please let me know. I’m desperate for a good yellow. The yellow I did have does a good job complementing the green.I did three coats of dry brushing to build up the transition and saturation of yellow 

With the majority of the painting done, it was time to do the fine details. For me, that usually means painting the eyes to draw attention to the face. For this war band, I wanted their eyes to be piercing. I dotted each eye with a bright red paint. After I cleaned up the base rim with a matte black paint and the project is complete completed.

 I have more models than I need to build one war band. I’ll have options for different builds as well as the different characters available to use. In the end. I have two troll, two orcs, one beast and three goblins. I’ll definitely be creating more denizens for Cauldron in the future but for now I’m ready to play some games.