Whether you’re a fan of Age of Sigmar or not, it’s hard to deny that the upcoming Warhammer Quest: Darkwater set has some of the prettiest models Games Workshop have yet released. As soon as we received our preview set, our painters were champing at their respective bits to get their hands on them and paint them. In this review we’re going to talk about the new models, the process of painting and assembling them, and what to know. Want to know about the box contents and the rules? Check out our reiview.
Before we dive in we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of the game for review purposes.
Credit: Blake Law
Sky Serpent: What an incredible set, I haven’t enjoyed opening a boxed game from Games Workshop as much as this for a long time. It’s got everything you would expect from a modern Warhammer Quest game with amazing miniatures and well crafted accessories, tokens and a fantastic book of playing boards but more on that later – I’m here to look at the miniatures and I’m still in awe of them!
Blake Law: When this set was previewed earlier this year, I knew I had to get my hands on it! It has all the stuff that made me fall in love with Games Workshop- Dwarf rangers, empire knights, wood elf creatures, and Gors. This game takes some of the AoS lines and gives them that traditional Old World feel. Once this was in my hands, I was more impressed with the set than I imagined. 10/10 across the board on the models. Is anyone from GW design team reading this? I want an AoS dwarf ranger army! Please!
Credit: Blake Law
Sky Serpent: The creativity and attention that has gone into the heroes is fantastic, taking well known and loved Warhammer Quest tropes and placing them into the Mortal Realms without alienating casual board game players or those withstanding any love for Age of Sigmar.
We have well established factions such as Cities of Sigmar represented alongside rarer or new ideas such as the Arak Klor and these all offer tremendous painting opportunities.
Sky Serpent: All of my Darkwater heroes are in various stages of painting but the model who drew my attention first was Jacobus Vyne and his familiar, Wisper.
Jade Wizards are a well established order in Warhammer and have long been part of the Empire in the world that was and can be found in the Mortal Realms and Ghyran – and what a fantastic job the Citadel miniatures team did designing them.
Here’s a quick rundown of how I painted them:
- I began with a Wraithbone undercoat, applied basecoats across the model and hit it with an Agrax Earthshade wash.
- The cloak was based in Caliban Green, highlighted up with Deathworld Forest and Dorn Yellow while the inner cape began with Kabalite Green to Sybarite Green and to Gauss Blaster.
- For the wood I used Steel Legion Drab and Gorthor Brown while painting the leaves and top of the staff like the cloak.
At time of writing I have the Forest Prince and Drasher Vorn closest to finished and after that I might need to pay attention to the followers of Nurgle…
Blake Law: When I started painting these, I realized that I committed a major folly. Every piece felt like it could be a competition paint job model. I spent a solid week prepping these guys, getting the model lines right. I had to change direction about halfway through because of this.
Sadly, the Manticore knight was the model I was most excited about. I dedicated a decent amount of time getting the molds lines to a competition level and putting him on a plinth. I want to take a minute to talk about this kind of work. If you’ve never done a paint competition before, you may not know the level of detail that goes into cleaning a model. I was DQ’d from a Golden Demon for having a seam line not puttied well. The Manticore knight is a great model for competition because the mold lines are almost nonexistent. On the right leg, you will see a line where the pieces fit together. I was able to smooth this out with water based putty (Aves or Miliput) and get it to where you wont be able to tell. The other major line is expertly designed where the cloak folds on itself. I went ahead and puttied that as well. For the plinth, I wanted to design something that created a “dark water” lake on it. For this, I sat the knight up with putty. Next, I dremel tooled out the resin plinth to create the spot where I will later resin pour water. I used Ave’s putty to mask the plinth’s top. I did not finish this, but my next step will be to create a natural looking putty sculpt that will blend the Manticore’s knight into the putty work I’ve already done. I will update photos when it is finished! Please note the spot on the left lower cloak. As I was getting ready to post this, my dog knocked this model off the desk on concrete, scuffing it!
The Dwarf ranger is so good. S tier model design. I want more. Give me an entire unit. It was an absolute joy to paint, too. I based the model with airbrush using Monument blue black, blue, sky blue, then Liquitex blue ink. I like the ink for added saturation on the final step. The gold is S75 decayed metal, to viking gold, to monument bright gold. Silver is Monument Dark silver to silver, with aluminum from vallejo finish. Red is the cool red progression from the new Fanatic Army Painter (if you haven’t checked out fanatic, you are missing out). Overall, my favorite model from the set!
Credit: Blake Law
The Nurgle sword and shield dudes (Not sure what their official name is) are neat little cultists. I could see them being used from endless conversions for every game GW makes. I am not a dirty paint painter. This was so far from my wheelhouse, so i tried to get an alt take on them. I based using pink, then did a lowlight of dark pink. I used the Demonic yellow from Fanatic Army painter to then dilute and glaze over that. What results is a kind of flesh tone almost. You get the dark pinks in the recesses, which ends up looking kind of neat. Purple is so far from Nurgle, but it was what made sense for my eyes. So please forgive me for this transgression. The purple is the Fanatic Army painter purple progression. I did the same gold as I did for the dwarf above, but I used the Green Peridot alchemy paint from S75 as a final glaze on it. It gives a cool nurgley grunge to it. These were my least favorite of the set, and I still give them a 9/10. Excellent models.
Credit: Blake Law
For the Gor, I wanted to showcase the basecoat of the yellow nurgle skin I did on the other models. You can see how I did it in the above paragraph. This model will show you how the model should end up looking before picking out the details.
The little deer nurgling dudes coming out of the ground (unsure of official name!) are so cool. Again, could see these finding their way into 40k and AoS armies as any kind of marker for units. With these, I did the yellow as above. I wanted a quick finish for something that is essentially a unit marker (maybe it isn’t in WHQ?). I used speed paints for this. I used the GW burgundy contrast paint and thin it out 50/50 water. I worked it into the tendril parts of the model and tried to create a creepy little marker.
Credit: Blake Law
There are close to no mold lines on these models. You will build this entire set in a night and be very happy with it. I can’t say enough good things about Dark Water as a model set.
Sky Serpent:Â Modelling tips and observations: There tends to be a common consensus to cut down the plugs on GW push fit models if you are gluing them but I had no such issues with Darkwater.
I found the holes on the 25mm bases just a little too tight on all of the models in the set so I had to widen these slightly with some clippers.
Mould lines, what are they? I found very few on the Darkwater miniatures which meant building them was very quick and enjoyable and they went together very easily with well hidden joins.
Fowler: I love the vast majority of the models in this box, but I did not like Gulgus Pust’s face. It seemed like a shame to build up to the fight, and run into that goofy grin. I did a relatively simple swap with a leftover face from a Death Guard Plaguecaster – the one in the Kill Team set. The new face makes him feel more like a bloated Blightking – his bulk growing, while his shriveled head stays the same size. This was a relatively simple bit of surgery, you need to cut the back half of the Plaguecaster off, and as much of Gelgus’s ugly mug as you can. Take care to leave the crown and antlers. I slowly whittled it down until it looked flush, and cut some larger holes for the antlers to stick out of. I stuck it in with a little sprue goo and plastic glue. The final resting spot is a few taps below the place you see here.
You need to do a little bit of putty work. I added a bit of mass to look like a hood in the back, gapfilled the sides, and feathered a bit in the front to add to the hood look. Next up is some spot work with matte varnish to smooth out the putty surface a little and do some gapfilling. As always, I highly recommend Vince Venturella’s video about using varnish in creative ways.
Gulgus is on a 50mm base – though he is nominally a Daemon Prince. We will know more about how Daemon Prince-y he is when the Sigmar rules drop for him!
Size Comparisons
Fowler: Blight Templars are just about the same size as the (soon to be) old Putrid Blightkings, though the armor bulks them out quite a bit.
Final Thoughts
It’s safe to say that we loved the models in this box – they look great, are easy to assemble, and have relatively few mould lines. One of the big challenges we had during the writing of this review was convincing our painters to paint more of them in time for the review – they kept pushing back saying they wanted to save them for future use in painting competitions! If you wanted to buy this box just for the models, you wouldn’t be out of line.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
