Well, the Age of Sigmar is upon us. If you read my review of last week’s White Dwarf, then you already know that each copy netted you a free Liberator figure for the Stormcast Eternal army. There are still issues available here and there, so if you’re lucky, you can still get a Liberator of your own. Otherwise you’ll have to wait until Saturday and get it in the Age of Sigmar start set…which costs $125. BIG Difference. Now I know some of you are still on the fence for Age of Sigmar so I decided to do a review (and paint job) of the Liberator to let you get a better feel for his the newest version of Warhammer Fantasy is for you. Remember, you can click on each picture for a MUCH larger view. Let’s begin, shall we?
First up, here’s how your Stormcast Eternal Liberator comes – bundled in with White Dwarf #75. It’s nicely sealed in a plastic box
here is the front and back view of the sprue. Notice the Liberator has a lot less parts than most Games Workshop miniatures. This tends to be the case with pieces in their boxed sets. Dark Vengeance, Space Hulk Assassinorium: Execution Force and so on. This also means if you’re new to the hobby, the Liberator is a great piece to learn with. It’s big, has very few parts and is super easily to assemble. It might not be aesthetically appealing to some of you, but you have to start somewhere right? Better to screw up on or learn from something you are emotionally attached to.
All the pieces cut from the sprue. As you can see, there are only four pieces and a base. Even one of my basic skeletons has five pieces and a base. Again, the Stormcast Eternal Liberator is designed for newcomers in terms of pieces and ease of putting together.
Here is the front and back of the assembled Liberator. He looks interesting. I feel he looks like a big bulky robot. What about you?
Here is the Liberator primed in black. Now the problem is what color to paint him? The official Stormcast Eternal color scheme looks nice but there are two problems. The first is that three of the paints used to make the GW paint job aren’t out until Saturday and it would suck to end a review here. The second is that the current GW gold paints are REALLY RUNNY and drive me nuts when I have to use them in large quantities. What to do, what to do?
While I could just create my own paint scheme for this single figure, I decided to go with one of the other five official paint schemes for Sigmar’s army. I’ve chosen the one in the bottom right of this picture because I liked the description. I almost went with the Heldenhammer scheme though. Basically I decided good guys should be brightly coloured. Especially these ones.
The paint job begins. I decided to do the core body first. I chose Leadbelcher (Citadel names their paints rather than give them descriptions like metal or brown) as my main paint. I could have gone with Runefang steel as it is shinier, but that’s what I use for my Guardians of the Covenant for Wahammer 40,000 and I also thought it would look better as a highlight on this guy. You can really see how Leadbelcher brings out the detail as well as how shiny it makes the plastic look.
Here I’ve added the first coat of blue paint to the figure. I used Macragge Blue and applied it to the shiled and shoulder pads ala the diagram.
Next, I have added the gold. I used Auric Armor gold, but it’s super runny. It’s a layer paint and so I should have gone with a base paint, but I also knew that if I had done that, the eventual gold wouldn’t be as shiny. Using Auric Armor as a base gold means you generally have to do two to three coats of it to make it look even and not ratty. This picture shows just one coat and you can see how it doesn’t look smooth. It looks rough. I’ll be adding other coats later one, but first, I’m basecoating the figure ad will go back and do the other coats of Auric Armor as I do highlights and details.
With this picture I’ve added two new colors. Mephiston Red for the tunic and Ceramic White for the Sigmar logos. The primary basecoating is nearly done.
Here we go the last of the basecoat colors in Abaddon Black for the belt, sword sheath and hilt. I’ve also added gold trim to all three and also included a second coat of Auric Armor Gold to the areas it needed to be. This is essentially is how the Stormcast Eternal Liberator will end up. We just have touch ups, highlights and washes to do.
Here we are with the last layer of Auric Armor and also a new white added to the mix. I did some White Scar on top of the Ceramic White to make it pop…and also bring out some detail.
Behold the finished product. I’ve done some touch-ups, used Nuln Oil on most of the character to bring out the crevices and create shadows, Runefang steel to highlight bits of the armor and to make it look like light it hitting parts of hit. I did some Caledor Sky (a bright blue) and some more White Scar on the shield and shoulderpads to again create the effect that light is reflecting on bits of the Liberator. I really liked how he turned out. The Stormcast Eternals are not the type of army I usually go for, but I do like the colour scheme on this guy. If my review copy of Age of Sigmar ever comes in, I’ll have to decide if I go with this scheme or paint them in the gold version Games Workshop keeps showing them in. I’m far from being a great (or even good) painter, but I like how this turned out. There are some places that will be quite tricky for new gamers to paint properly, like the inside of the halo or parts of the back of the shield, but it only took me a few hours to do this Liberator. That means I could get the whole boxed set done in like…three months. Oof.
So what do you think. Now that you’ve seen the Liberator close are, are you more interested in Age of Sigmar? Did my paint job scare you away from the game? Let me know!
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