Tzeentch has many Silver Towers floating through the Mortal Realms, but the one I am building is full of throwbacks to a time when metal miniatures reigned supreme. Welcome back to my Silver Tower of lead.

The initial spark that led me on a four-year quest to reconstruct the Silver Tower game with 1990s lead miniatures was two of the tiny familiar miniatures – instantly recognisable as reimaginings of Citadel classics from days of yore. I’ve painted a complete set of modern plastic versions, and a complete set composed of 1980s/1990s analogues.

The CH5 Lune Familiar is an adorable moon-headed mook who was reborn in plastic complete with his original moon on a stick, tintinabulous jester shoes and scowling moonface.

The CH5 Walking Book Familiar was a perennial favourite of Warhammer players, popping up as a wizard’s helper in Chaos and non-Chaos armies for years. I’ve not thought of anything high concept enough to paint freehand on the pages of the plastic version, so I’ve left them blank for now. Maybe I will leave it blank forever and claim it’s an unwritten journal.

The small Lord of Change (Lord of Small Change?) was probably originally sculpted as a 6mm Epic Greater Demon miniature, but rolled into the CH5 Chaos Familiar range for the 1991 Citadel Catalogue Section 2. I’ve painted mine in orange and turquoise to match my 28mm Greater Demon. The new plastic version takes the mini Greater Demon vibe even further, having been written up in the background as a mischievous sprite with the delusion he’s an actual Lord of Change.

The fourth and final Silver Tower familiar, Slop, is a subtly different kettle of fish to the others – inspired not by a CH5 Chaos Familiar miniature but by Mordheim’s leitmotif of mutant fish artwork or old Ian Miller illustrations. I’ve painted the plastic Slop’s the tail with a Rainbow fade to match Blot.

That’s another adversary group ready for Silver Tower. You can see Brimstone Horrors here, Light Wizards here, Light Acolytes here. Tzaangor here and Deathrunners here. Time to start work on the next of the nineties nasties.

Ninjabread out!

It’s Age of Sigmar time!  Here’s a nine-strong cluster of Grot Scuttlings from the modern (gasp!) Warhammer Quest Silver Tower game. There’s only eight in the box, but I painted a bonus one as PRAISE BE TO TZEENTCH.

Spider-Grots, Spider-Grots, manufactured in Notts.

Mashing together Night Goblins with sp-sp-spiders puzzles me – Forest Goblins were the spider-flavoured Goblins from Warhammer, so it’s confusing the themes.  Like mashing up High Elves with leafs.  Or Khorne Berserkers with sonic sex-weaponry.  It seems Gee-Dub haven’t continued the arachno-trend with the subsequent Night Goblin (or “Moonclan Grot” as they’re now called) releases, and these spider-hybrids (“sp-ybrids”?) are confined to Tzeentch’s Silver Tower.  Moonclan have found their feet, and it’s not eight-a-grot.

Spin a web any size, catch Orruks just like flies.

To emphasise the Tzeentchian nature of these Scuttlings I avoided the classic Night Goblin black-robes-green-skin scheme and went for pale blue flesh and vivid purple robes.  My Silver Tower 1990s project will feature Scuttlings converted from the classic Kev Adams Night Goblins, and they may borrow this scheme to reinforce how they’re not your standard Night Goblins.

Painting Tutorials

Thanks to everyone that’s backed the Ninjabread Patreon!  It’s going amazingly well and I’m thankful for all the comments and support.  Last month’s installment went in deep on how to get crisp highlights on Crimson Fists power armour.  This month’s will walk Patrons through another model, teaching you how to shape your miniatures with midtones, and it will also go into depth with tactics on line thickness.

Normal Oldhammer service will resume shortly with some charmingly vintage Bob Olley Tzaangor.  Have fun!

I’ve finished painting ALL the Shadespire Orruks! A whole plastic force, fully painted, with modern miniatures, for a current Games Workshop game. WHAT HAVE I BECOME?!?!  Gods of Oldhammer, I have forsaken thee!

Ironskull’s Ironjawz tearing up the Realm of Shadows.

Initially I planned to just copy the ‘Eavy Metal banana-yellow paint scheme, but I switched the Orruk fleshtone from green (which sits awfully with yellow) to a nicely contrasting purpley-brown.  I blocked out the basecoats, confident I could ignore Jean-Baptiste’s “never go full banana” advice.

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring banana phone orc.

Basha was the first Orruk I painted to completion – and he took bloody ages.  Yellow is notoriously translucent and takes a lot of layers to build to a strong colour.  Bright colours also show up the flaws in the shading and highlighting.  Pity anyone that’s doing an entire horde army of these buggers in yellow.  Although I was pleased with the brashness, I needed da boyz on the gaming table, and wanted to slash the time spent on them.

Basha and Gurzag Ironskull.

Gurzag and the other Orruks had their armour colours reversed.  The dark steel colour is simply drybrush, wash and a quick edge highlight in bright silver.  It takes a fraction of the time of the yellow as there’s no glazing of midtones to eat through time.

I spent a bit of the time saved putting flames on Gurzag’s cloak.

Reducing the amount of yellow makes the Orruks look far more menacing, and gives what yellow is there greater impact. Basha’s all-yellow scheme does push him towards looking like a kid’s toy, or a construction vehicle.  Which I quite like anyway.

Bonekutta and Hakka.

I had a lot of fun with Hakka, freehanding the flames onto his shoulderpads and jaw.  He’s my favourite miniature in the gang as the colour scheme draws your focus towards his head and cool mask.

I’ve really enjoyed painting these, and like that they’re instantly a finished project, ready to rumble against the likes of asslessman, Tears of Envy and Mr Saturday.

Lemme know which version of the yellow scheme you prefer in the comments!

I like to think of Light Wizards as jobbing professionals and their Acolytes as bumbling apprentices.  Here’s a bumble of Light Acolytes – one of the obscurest units in Warhammer of editions past.

Left to right: Donkor, Aswad, Llam-Cheops, Wiss Qeb, Khontar and Wankh.

Two poses of Acolyte were released in April 1993 alongside the Light Wizard on foot. Empire player could buy them in units of five at 25 points to accompany a Light Wizard.  Rules were that if you deployed the five Acolytes in a pyramid formation (Light Wizards being all Egpytian and therefore pyramid-themed) with the Light Wizard at the apex you got an extra Winds of Magic card.  Now, I read “deployed in pyramid formation” and think this:

NAILED IT.  One bonus Winds of Magic please.

But no, they didn’t mean human pyramid formation, they mean 2-D triangle formation, as you can see in the iconic Gathering of Might battle report photo below from White Dwarf 181 (1995).  This unit in this battle report puzzled child-Curis as Warhammer Armies: The Empire didn’t contain any rules for it – it’s only now in 2018 that I know they had to be conjured up from the pages of the Warhammer Battle Magic supplement.

Spot the pyramid.

The majority of my Light Acolytes had been rescued from someone that got halfway to converting them into Necromunda gangers or Warhammer 40,000 cultists – their hands and weapons had been hacked away and replaced with autopistols, stubguns and the like.  This meant there was no guilt at despoiling vintage miniatures for the sake of bringing their weaponry in line with the rules of the modern Warhammer game.

Lazuli spearheading the official and far less silly pyramid formation.

Yes!  Modern Warhammer!  (As if the 32mm rounds bases weren’t enough of a clue.)  These figures have been specifically modelled as Kairic Acolytes for Silver Tower: two with hand weapon and shield, two with double-handed weapons and two with pairs of hand weapons.

I originally restored the Acolytes back to Warhammer Fantasy with contemporaneous 1990s Citadel weaponry, but it looked bad.  There was no Egyptian weaponry (it wasn’t until 2003 that the Tomb Kings range appeared), and so I suspended my Citadel-components-only rule and bought some WarGods of Ægyptus bits from Crocodile Games.  This does annoy the Citadel purist in me, and to get back to sleep I tell myself Crocodile’s Chris Fitzpatrick did a stint sculpting for Games Workshop.

Silver Tower madness at Knavecon 2018.  Pat, Bruce, cheetor and yours truly looming over our various creations.

To get even more gaming use out of the figures I’d like to paint another three to make a full official Warscroll for Warhammer Age of Sigmar.  I’ve also got plans for them in a series of summer Mordheim games, where they’ll be fielded as Brethren in a Possessed Warband.  Watch this space!