In what has now become a mini-series, we continue along talking about our very favourite kits to have painted. These are not necessarily our best painted models but instead are the ones that we had the most fun with!

Replacing our normal-content this Tuesday is something that falls a bit mroe in line with another mini-series we’ve been running. If you’re clicking this just out of sheer curiosity to see what kind of models we might be painting and talking about then welcome in! If you’re not familiar with Conquest it’s a 38mm(ish) scale game, meaning the models are a good deal larger than your “normal” wargames that sit between 28-32mm scales. I posed to my fellow Conquest writers what models they actually enjoyed painting the most! We often talk about tactics for the game or how to paint various models, but which ones were fun??

Sam Isaacson (not Josh)

I’ve been playing Spires since the original starter set was released, and have painted A LOT of models since. That’s entirely my fault for leaving heavily into the Pheromancer-led volume-of-flesh playstyle, but despite having painted almost 100 force grown drones models in a single week they’re not my number one pick – but not far off.

When building a list I can’t resist including Stryx as a mainstay for the Pheromancer. They’re deliciously quick, ignore terrain, don’t rely on a Defence stat, regenerate every round and deal damage when they die. I can’t think of a unit as fun in the entire game. But the models don’t seem to get much love.

The wingspan of a single model reaches across a stand intended for four, so the textbook would say they don’t fit properly. I’m sure they’ve proved a bit of a challenge for some, but my experience of them has been a joy beginning to end. When they’re slotted all together they take on the form of a single flurry of wings and claws, exactly like the fantasy horror version of The Birds they simply are.

And the reason I love to paint them is the combination of their simplicity and subtlety. Feathers are desperate for drybrushing, and the fact that from a distance that’s basically all you see of the Stryx makes a simple colour shift extremely effective. They seem to shimmer as they traverse the battlefield at great speed. They’re perhaps the best return on investment I have in a model as far as painting effort is concerned.

And it’s not just about how quickly they can look decent, it’s the impact of the details that I enjoy. The wide variety of heads and the body makeup reward just as simple as approach as the wings, but each individual model has its own collection of trinkets hanging from them that really highlight the beauty of the models and make them look just as good up close.

Robert Bass

From the start of my adventures in Conquest I have always loved the dinosaur models of the W’adrun. From the tiny Hunting Packs to the huge Apex, but out of all the kits the one that stands out the most for me (both figuratively and literally) has to be the massive Tontorr.

Produced on six sprue, it’s an intimidating kit but strangely refreshing once you get to work on it. The assembly went together surprisingly quickly and apart from a few issues it was a joy to work on. Seeing this pile of flat pack plastic turn into possible the biggest ‘miniature’ I will ever work on was extremely exciting. It was also impressive to see how little plastic sprue remained as the designers did an excellent job of using all the space they could.

The model itself comes with a good amount of features, which provided some enjoyable challenges. The dino itself painted up surprisingly fast, as it’s skin is completely covered in texture that is perfect to drybrush and build volumes on. Probably the more time consuming area was on the shell/howdah it carries on its back. This was full of detail that begged for some blending to try and achieve a natural ‘turtleshell’ look. Fun details continue to be found throughout the howdah, and as I tackled each one I never found myself bored or frustrated. Even the three W’adruhn crew was enjoyable to work on, and you can’t help but spend some extra time on them, even if one of them gets hidden in his little hut.

Overall this was one of my favorite Conquest kits to work on, and I will always find a way to include it in my lists. There is nothing more fun than seeing the towering dinosaur enter the battlefield, and proceed to stomp across the table and seeing what gets squished along the way!

Robert Cantrell

Eric Schur from the Crucible of Wills campaign pack is my personal favourite kit from a painting and hobby perspective. My Eric has seen some weapon swaps and a gentle repose, but it’s not a challenging conversion and the actual painting experience was wonderful. It’s not often that you can reasonably describe a miniature as ‘painting itself’, but Eric comes very close; the edge detailing in particular is some of the easiest and most natural I’ve found on miniature, lending itself to very easily executed gold embossing that looks good and naturally showcases the detailing on the armour.

The sculpting of the cloth also deserves note for how easily it is to manage alternating stripes – the recesses between the puffed cloth is very deep and conceals itself naturally from view, meaning the cloth is very easy to both paint in separate colours and easily blend and highlight.

Finally, Eric’s face is a rare exception to my usual rule for hating to paint faces on humanoid miniatures. He’s just extremely craggy, with expressive eyebrows and big cheekbones, making the play of light on the face and even the detailing of the eyes easy to capture.

Overall, a wonderful miniature to paint, and Eric sees considerable duty in my army lists as either a Noble Lord or Imperial Officer as circumstances require.

Bair

I’ve been umming and ahhing about this for a few days now, but the one that has to take the cake is my Ice Jotnar. I got into Conquest with Nords and they’re still my favourite faction. I just really love the mix of monsters, beasts, and humans fighting all together in a post-Ragnarok Nordic existence. The Ice Jotnar especially just encapuslates that so well, towering over the infantry in an incredibly stoic pose and painting him was just a blast.

I wasn’t really sure how to approach the model so I did my normal zenithal-corax white-over-black drybrush and tried Stormfiend contrast for the first time for the skin. Contrast paints are funny in that, until you use it, you don’t really know what kind of contrast paint it is; is it going to have really solid coverage or will it be really thin, more for recesses? Stormfiend, if you don’t know, falls into the former camp very well. I went back over the skin then with some lighter blues to layer over and highlight because it was a bit darker than I really wanted but think the final result is great. The ice is more contrast with plyar glacier which is the latter camp of contrast paints but in the best way, making those ice crystals really look like ice with very minimal effort!

Then I just needed to add in some of the army colours with the green and browns. I’ve kept my Nords in very muted, earthy, tones which I think works really well for them. I usually like painting infantry because there’s less flat-areas to worry about which suits my painting style well, but this guy was just a blast. The resin they use, too, is really nice. I didn’t need to wash or prep the model, just a bit of flash cleaning and it fit together like a charm!

Thanqol

I think it has to be the Siegebreaker Behemoth. My favourite kind of miniature is the kind where it changes the longer you look at it; ideally going from ‘hmm’ to ‘oh no’. The Siegebreaker starts off frightening enough just in terms of its sheer size and bulk, but the deeper you look into its twisting geiger pattern of veins and exposed musculature the more twisted it gets. From the bizarrely high-tech face mask that very meaningfully lacks any sort of mouth or facial features that would make this organic monster read as meaningfully alive, to realizing that those aren’t just little arms on its chest but they’re arms that are ripping open its own stomach – it’s a genuine nightmare and one of the best sculpts I’ve ever seen.

Added to that is such a wonderful canvas. It hits that wonderful note of being alien and having a good variety of different textures and structures along its length. This means it welcomes and invites any kind of painting – this thing would look just as unsettling if I switched all the golden details for bone, or the flesh sections for rusted metal, or the exposed veiny collar for high-tech glowing blue. And because of its complete dearth of tiny fiddly details the whole thing painted up shockingly quickly. Absolute hobby highlight.

General Cross

A UK Vanguard once said to me that you should put an Apex Predator on the table for any demo game, even if you’re not playing W’adrhun! And whilst it is one of Para Bellum’s most iconic models, the one I enjoyed most actually ended up being the Scion of Conquest.

The Scion of Conquest is a marked step away from the rest of the W’adrhun line, moving away from the utilitarian tribal feel towards something more shamanistic and stylised. The overlapping layers of ornate banding and ropes is rare even on the other characters in the faction. The long sweeping hair that extends out towards his reaching hand suggests a wind is rising up towards his gesture suggesting the arcane elements at will.

Plus, lets not overlook that he has three different weapons including a two-handed broadsword, a hooked carving blade and a flaming censer! This is a Wizard that’s been hitting the gym and the library.

I was speed painting my army for an event but something about this model made me stop and experiment in a way I hadn’t on the rest of the range. I tried wet blending contrast paints to get the censer effect and improvised a white facepaint with markings for a skull and warpaint symbol. The blue and burgundy patterns were trying to bring some colour and life out of all these strange trappings about him.

I don’t have many models in my W’adrhun army that I feel particularly proud of the paint job. They were speedpaints, and it shows. But the Scion of Conquest model broke that ‘three colour and base’ mindset for me. And for that reason, this is my favourite Conquest kit to paint.

That’s All in Ea

There you have it! Painting is often talked about as a “slog” or “work” by a lot of us in the hobby, something that gets passed around a little-too-often maybe that we can easily forget that this is all meant to be enjoyable! If you’re struggling through your 18th stand of Force Grown Drones then pick up something else to cleanse your palette before getting back to them; if just dreading the possibility of messing up one of your large centre-piece models then there’s nothing you can do except start! Try not to worry about the outcome, and enjoy the journey of getting there. You can always paint over!

As always if you want to get 10% off and support Goonhammer you can make your Conquest purchase by clicking here for US/Canada or here for EU/rest of world. You’ll also need to enter code “goonhammer” at checkout.

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