Age of Sigmar - Azyrite Ruined Chapel
The trees are not part of the set FYI
Once upon a time I had some sneaky plans to steal the bell from Azyrite chapel for Nurgley reasons. I also had grand designs to make these ruins look decayed and rotting. However, these are some really nice models so I didn’t want to practice my terrible greenstuff sculpting skills on them. I might slap something together with foamcore to practice on instead. Or see if I can get some second hand terrain off eBay. In any case, these Azyrite ruins were assembled “au natural”. As far as subassemblies went I left as much of the woodwork separate as I could and left the ruins themselves in single stories for ease of painting. The only real issue was the bell, which was a complete son of a Space Wolf to put together. I just could not get the two halves to sit flush and I had to take the clippers to where it joins to the building to get it looking presentable. And even then, I’m still not one hundred percent sold on how it looks.
I also noticed that the bricks that make up the roof/first-story floor are hollow underneath which meant that they didn’t quite sit right as the gaps in the bricks didn’t match up with the pillars on the building. Additionally, there was some overhang that would haunt my dreams unless I did something about it. Using milliput or greenstuff to fill the gaps would quickly get expensive, so it was fortunate that I had some pollyfiller (also known as spackle) lying around from the time the missus was knocking holes in the wall. It also had the added benefit of having a textured finish. With the brick work spackle and cured, I primed the whole model in Army Painter Uniform Grey.
I had planned to paint the whole model with a couple of thin coats of Citadel Wraithbone. But, I hear you ask if you were going to basecoat them Wraithbone why didn’t you just use a spray can? For two reasons. Firstly, the finish of a coat of paint can be very smooth to the point that washes (spoiler alert for a later step) can have trouble adhering to it, and will just end up beading together. Secondly, I didn’t want to buy a rattle can of Wraithbone just for this model. I still have a can of Retributor Armour from the very small force of Adeptus Custodes I painted a couple of years ago. No idea what I’m going to do with it unless I get some Custodes or start collecting Stormcast Eternals perhaps. Maybe some Thousand Sons?
In any case, my plan to use Wraithbone came to a screeching halt however when my little pot of it ran out. This left me with a bit of a conundrum as to whether or not I wanted to buy another pot, afterall I am slowly moving away from Citadel paints. Or trying to at any rate. Thankfully I hadn’t gotten very far with the Wraithbone; I had completed a test piece and put the first layer on a couple of other bits of ruins. As such, I decided to go with an alternative rather than buy more Wraithbone. As it’s fairly similar and a certain Youtube painters bang on about it I decided to get some Vallejo Model Colour Pale Sand. It’s slightly more yellow than Wraithbone but it’ll do the job.
Anyway, once I had a solid coat of Pale Sand I could start on the few details these ruins have. I wanted the plaster between the bricks to stand out from the rest of the model, like the building had been hastily bricked up before they became ruins. With that in mind, I painted a line of Snakebite Leather contrast paint in between the bricks. The bricks themselves I painted with Vallejo Game Colour Terracotta. Finally, I picked out the twin-tailed comets and lettering with Scale 75 Metal ‘n’ Alchemy Dwarven Gold. For the shading, I decided to mix my own rather than going through several pots of Agrax Earthshade or Strong Tone. This gave me the added benefit of being able to tweak the colour as necessary. There’s a few tutorials out there on how to make your own washes but in general what you will need is:
Matt Medium, this is essentially paint without pigment in it.
The colours you want to mix, typically either pigment powder or artist inks.
Some water to thin it down to the consistency that you want.
A surfactant to reduce the surface tension and help your wash flow better. Washing up liquid is a great substitute if you don’t want to buy a dedicated flower improver.
Specifically for my wash I used three drops of Daler Rowney Burnt Umber, one drop of Liquitex Carbon Black, one drop of Flow Improver and enough matt medium and water that it was about the consistency of a wash. This gave me a wash that had a nice brown colour but wasn’t nearly as dark as Agrax Earthshade. Then it was a simple case to apply the wash to all the stonework on the ruins and let it dry, as always keeping an eye out for any pooling. Once the wash was dry, I then drybrushed the stonework with a pure white to bring out the raised areas. Fortunately, my pot of Ceramite White had solidified into a gel so it was ideal for this process.
For the wood areas I wanted to keep it simple and let all that wonderful detail in the sculpt do the work for me. Seriously, I’m always impressed with how much more detailed miniatures are these days. When I first started way back in the day (circa 2002) the idea that the sculpt itself would have wood grain would have been unthinkable. In any case, I started by base coating all the wood with Steel Legion Drab . To bring out all that lovely wood grain I used a nice even coat of Wyldwood contrast paint. Contrast paints can be pretty hit or miss but Games Workshop forking nailed it with Wyldwood. Then to really bring out the wood grain, I drybrushed all the wooden parts across the grain with Zandri Dust.
I hit a bit of a snag when it came to the skeletons as I had unwittingly painted the stone work in a bone colour, so my usual scheme of Army Painter Skeleton Bone and wash with Strong Tone probably wasn’t going to cut it. Then someone gave me the idea to paint them in gold, like the bones had been dipped in, well, gold. With that in mind, I gave them and the bell a couple of thin coats of Scale 75 Dwarven Gold before washing them with Army Painter Strong Tone. I then followed that up with a drybrush of Auric Armour Gold. Some of the skeletons have their arms and legs bound, so I painted them with Mourfang Brown before washing them with Gore-Grunta Fur contrast paint. For the silver metallics like the chains and cages, I basecoated them with Leadbelcher before washing them with Basilicanum Grey contrast paint to give them a dark and aged appearance.
At that point I thought I was done, but it turns out I had forgotten about the small piece of scatter terrain with the broken pillar and pottery on it! The broken pillar I painted in the same way as the rest of the stonework, although I was a little annoyed at having to mix up a small amount of my wash again. The dirt I painted with Dryad Bark and picked out the rocks with Mechanicus Standard Grey. In hindsight I probably should have used Pale Sand as the rocks would no doubt be part of the broken pillar. The broken pottery I painted with a couple of thin coats of terracotta, which felt appropriate. I washed the non-pillar parts I washed with Strong Tone and gave it a very light drybrush with Tyrant Skull.
All that was left to do was a bit of assembly for the bell tower and I was done, although I did leave the skeletons in cages off as I can see those flimsy chains snapping really easily. Really pleased with how these turned out, they definitely look better in an off white colour than the usual grey that everyone uses for ruins. And the wood turned out absolutely fantastic, I may have to get more models with wood grain because brushing on Wyldwood contrast is just so dang satisfying. First of all, I should probably get my Blightkings painted so that I have some Age of Sigmar miniatures to go with my Age of Sigmar terrain...