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!

Back into Tzeentch’s Silver Tower! But this is not just any Silver Tower, this is a Silver Tower stuck in the past – when metal miniatures reigned supreme. I’ve painted six Citadel Tzaangor from 1990 – the greatest of all times. (Ha! Sly goat reference!)

These are all wonderful Bob Olley sculpts that are packed with weird and flamboyant details like the exotic head-dresses, ornate armour, and bizarre codpieces. Two of the Tzaangor in the range didn’t see release as their obscene helmets were spotted in time. (You can see the notorious unreleased versions at CCM.)

Tzaangor have “brightly colured or exotically patterned fur” according to Realms of Chaos, so I went for an unnatural turquoise colour. I’m unsure if the combination of bright colours and smiling anthropomorphic animal fuzz pushes them into My Little Pony territory, but hey ho! Their armour is blue and gold to give off an Egyptian-cum-Tzeentch vibe, and two have horns in alternating stripes like a pharoah’s head dress. There’s some minor weapon swaps to bring them in line with the Silver Tower game requirements, and one has a Light Acolyte sword to show they’re part of the same force. The Marauder shield with the serpent motif (thanks to Mr. Saturday for sending me them) further echoes the Light Acolytes whose staffs and belts feature a snake motif. Chaos Snakemen will have to be part of this force in the future!

That’s twenty-six of the vintage Silver Tower denizens now painted (Skaven here, Acolytes here, Light Wizards here and Horrors here). Now I can convert a classic Ogre into the Ogroid Thaumathurge – watch this space!

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!

A child-aged Curis attempted to paint the single Skaven Clanrat from 3rd edition Talisman.  The paintjob went so badly it’s taken over twenty years before an adult-aged Curis returned to painting Skaven miniatures.

Double Dragon Rat.

This is classic Jes Goodwin Deathmaster Snikch.  Twice.  The left-hand one is painted as a straight copy of the 1993 ‘Eavy Metal scheme; the right-hand one is painted in the 2009 ‘Eavy Metal scheme used on Seb Perbert’s redesigned Deathmaster.  Seb followed Jes’ original sculpt so closely that porting the new scheme onto the old miniature felt like being on auto-pilot.

‘Eavy Metal Deathmasters.

But why paint two of a unique special character?  Well, Snikch and Snikch are standing in as the Deathrunner and his illusory double in my Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower project where every model is replaced with a 1990s equivalent.  Snikch kept his exact location a secret to spread maximum fear – I’m imagining an illusory double as a manifestation of this Snikchitsu.  The rules for the Deathrunner mean he’s an absolute fiend, so it’s apt to represent him with this Herohammer icon rather than a standard 1990s Skaven Assassin miniature.

Ninja Skavens put the “rat” in karate.

The Snikchs took less than an evening each to paint, which I found surprising as they’re super-chunky miniatures and packed full of detail.  I think the damage and wear on the second-hand castings (particularly noticeable on the triangular shuriken) stopped me being overly fussy with highlights.  And the bulk of the miniature is a big black cloak – black being one of the quickest colours to paint.

The Ninja Chaos Thug trying to work out which of the Ninja Rats is real.

There’s twenty retro miniatures so far in the Silver Tower project!  Check out the 1990s Pink, Blue and Brimstone Horrors here.   Check out the 1990s Kairic Adepts here.  And check out the 1990s Kairic Acolytes here.  Coming soon – fur and gold.

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!

Brimstone Horrors!  The cheeky pairs of scampering bastards you get when you kill a Blue Horror.  I’ve painted four sets of these quarter-daemons, but with an Oldhammer twist.

And it’s all in how you mix the two.
And it starts just where the light exists.

Ever since 1989, Pink Horrors split into a pair of Blue Horrors when killed – it was the Tzeentch lesser daemon gimmick.  But when Silver Tower arrived in 2016, the GIMMICK ALSO SPLIT IN TWO as Blue Horrors started to split into pairs of Brimstone (or Yellow) Horrors.  This troubled me for a little while, as there are several generations of vintage Pink and Blue Horror miniatures with no corresponding Brimstone Horrors if you want to use them with modern Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000 rules.  But then I remembered the tiny Epic-scale Pink Horrors from 1992.

Do your demons, do they ever let you go?

Epic was nominally a 6mm game, but these Horrors were hilariously overscaled and make great 28mm familiars – as I discovered way way back in 2010 when I painted Inconstantine Bowie, Champion of Tzeentch.

Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes

It has taken me a while to work out why yellow was chosen as the colour for the new tiny Horrors.  The answer is in this passage from White Dwarf 113 (May 1989), which highlights the importance of colours in the early Warhammer lore.

Tzeentch is the Changer of Ways and, true to his nature, he has more than a single colour. The Pink and Blue Horrors, Daemons of Tzeentch, use magic of their own actual colour, reflecting the changing forces of their master as they turn from pink to blue. However, aside from the Pink Horrors who are associated with the Amethyst College, Tzeentch’s colours are very bright shades of blue and yellow. These colours are often dominant, though by no means exclusive, in the worship of Tzeentch. The two colours are particularly significant because they are the province of the Golden and Celestial Colleges which lie either side of the green magic of Tzeentch’s adversary Nurgle. A follower of Tzeentch could therefore be inferior or superior to Nurgle depending on his colour.

I really like how daemons align to the Colleges of Magic, and will use it as an excuse to model some Golden and Celestial Wizards to be corrupted by Tzeentch.

Wave your hands in the air like you don’t care.

These newly painted Horrors join my existing 1980s Kev Adams Horror force I started 9 years ago. I’ve rebased these minis onto 32mm round bases which means they don’t have any of their toes poking over the edge.  They’ve seen plenty of gaming action down the years so there were a fair few chips to repaint.  I really enjoyed the restoration; it was like catching up with old friends, or wearing an old t-shirt from back when you were 14.

New and old paintjobs together mean I’ve got all 10 of the various daemon incarnations needed to play Silver Tower.

Coming soon, more vintage lead substitutes for the modern plastic pieces in Silver Tower – some of which you may’ve already spotted on the Ninjabread Workbench.