In the World That Was, I was involved in a Necromunda campaign where I unlocked the Slave Guild as allies to my gang. Aside from a few perks and pitfalls, the Guild and Criminal Organisation alliances also grant you a small mini-gang to deploy along with your regular gang. You get 3-5 extra characters (using pre-built statlines and equipment) and only take the place of a single ganger, so they’re something you want to convert up and get to the tabletop quickly!
At the time, there were no miniatures announced or released for any of the ~10 different Guilds and Criminal Organisations. Inevitably, the only thing that has ever been released since then has been the “official” Slaver Guild Entourage on Forgeworld, so my enthusiasm for painting them after I’d assembled them diminished.
I got involved in a painting competition earlier this year with my local FLGS Asgard Wargames and it was a good excuse to bust out the old minis and slap a coat of paint on them.
Bits box only
When I decided to build the Entourage, I wanted to only use bits from the bits box. It’s getting dangerously full and I didn’t want to spend any (more) money on something that might never see the tabletop, so this little creative exercise was perfect.
There are four characters in an Entourage – the Chain Lord, the Shakleman, and two Pit Fighters. Their equipment was set apart from the Chain Lord, who had the option of chain glaive or whip and chain axe. I can’t resist a good sword-on-a-stick, so chain glaive it was.
I’ll try to identify all the bits as we go, but some are so eclectic even I can’t place them!
Chain lord WIP
The big boss man, described as bloated and hedonistic, but also juiced up to the eyeballs on combat drugs. The head from Neferata had this wonderful Pharoah vibe that I couldn’t turn down, and the little pointy goatee had to come with it. The head is from Anvil’s Bionic Heads collection, shaved down a bit to fit the new headress.
The body is from three generations of Chaos Warriors – the breastplate from a Khorne Knight, the cloak from a previous generation Chaos Warrior, and the legs from the classic plastic Chaos Warriors from the 20th century.
The arms and staff came from a Nurgle plague lord(?) left over from my Jackal Mask conversion with the chainsword blade from a Khorne Berserker. I wanted to pick a kind of chainsword I had three of so I could duplicate the look across the whole Entourage. The pommel(?) of the chain glaive came from a Tau Battlesuit, some kind of radar gubbins or something.
The rest of him was adorned with various chains from the Empire Flagellant kit and my personal favourite bits, some vials from a Dark Eldar Talos Engine to represent his combat drugs.
Everything was blended together with green stuff, there were some gaps where the body halfs met each other and some damage around the fur on the cloak. Nothing fancy, just rough and ready.
Pit Fighters
I had a lot of classic plastic Marauders in my box from an old ebay lot I acquired a million years ago, and with their hilariously buff physique, scant clothing and two-handed weapon grip, they were the perfect base for some chain glaive-wielding pit fighters.
The heads are from the plastic Blood Angels Honour Guard, a set of heads I’d kept for a while for their creepy cult death-mask vibe, and they’re a perfect fit for this! They needed something to represent all their combat drug injectors, but I didn’t want to use all my good Talos vials for these scrubs.
Super-conveniently I had a bunch of smoke launchers from various tank kits I’d owned over the years, and angled correctly (and with the right paintjob) they could look like a little peacock fan of injectors, and make the models’ silhuoettes more interesting.
Shakleman
I’m a dummy and didn’t get a closeup of the Shakleman’s WIP but you can scroll down for the finished photos and piece it together with the power of imagination.
This guy was the hardest to figure out – he had a lot of weird equipment and seemingly not enough hands – a cult icon, a shock stave and a harpoon gun. Two of those have been modelled as two-handed weapons, so unless I could come up with a very convincing argument why this five-armed guy wasn’t a genestealer cultist, I’d have to get pretty creative.
I went for a hunched Ork body to make him more distinct from the other ‘fighters’ – he’s described as a weasly character who preys on the weak, and I couldn’t shake the image of the cackling jailer from Life of Brian.
I found an old skaven back banner that would work for the cult icon (I had no idea what I’d paint on it, but that was a problem for Future Me) and a cool Ork Nob arm with a built-in harpoon gun thing, so that was a definite. The head came from a classic plastic cultist who’d been decapitated for another project.
I take umbrage with weapons that are described as having a 2″ reach and then being the same size as the regular zap-stick on the official models, so I wanted something long and archaic-looking. Something you could really stick between the bars of a jail cell or use to keep the Talent at a safe distance.
I had loads of Khorne Knight lances lying around, and I’d sequestered the blade on another project, so this was begging for some kind of zappy bit on the end. A skitarii electro-prod fit the bill, and it was finished off with some chain heraldry from the Bretonnian Men At Arms kit.
A small pauldren crest helped hide the join between the knight arm and ork body and I can punish myself with more freehand later. More skulls and chains and the Shakleman was finished!
Painting the entourage
As part of the competition I was in these guys needed to be painted in under a week, so naturally I decided to try a new painting technique and a colour palette I rarely use. Why not make things harder for myself?
I wanted a dark purple/scarlet colour scheme, and wanted to experiment with coloured washes over metallics. I went through a different variations, but settled on Ironbreaker silver with Carroburg Crimson splashed over the top. This was then weathered with chips done in Rhinox Hide and Ironbreaker and a healthy dollop of Blood for the Blood God.
I’ve got an enthusiasm for banners and heraldry (directly in contradiction with my disdain for painting banners and heraldry) so I wanted to tie these guys into my larger universe. Some chrono-gladiators have appeared in other games I’ve run, including Inquisitor, so I wanted to build on that.
In that warband, ‘Aries’ is a callsign for an old Chrono-gladiator, and I picked Leo (or ‘Lio’ to High Gothicify it a bit) as the symbol for this group, with a two-tone banner and the Deathclocks guild logo appears on the Shakleman’s banner.
Chain Lord
Everything was done with a base colour with a wash, very little was highlighted afterwards – quick ‘n’ dirty. There are a few exceptions here – the fur lining on the cloak was picked out and the flesh was blended up from its original colour, but I didn’t waste any time trying to highlight the metal or armour.
The themes of purple and dark grey were the unifying colours across the Entourage, represented in his armour and both sides of his cloak. His ‘Lio’ symbol was painted a few times on his shoulderpads and kneepad, although they didn’t come out very well and just look like dicks, but the one on his cloak I’m quite proud of.
The vials were painted with this classic Duncan tutorial, and the green is a good spot colour that contrasts nicely with the dark red/purple of the rest of the model.
Shakleman
This fella took the most re-working out of the four. It took me several attempts before I was happy with the exact combination of light grey/dark grey/purple for his various straps, belts, and bits of clothing.
I tried not to go overboard with the freehand, as despite hating it, I can get very carried away once I start.
He has the most heraldry, and is the only one sporting Deathclocks colours too, rather than just the purple and grey Lio colours. I figure he’s Geoff from Corporate, here to keep an eye on things down in Lio branch.
Pit fighters
My favourite boys! I enjoyed painting these guys the most, I think because they were the most dynamic of the four and the ones I’m most likely to get use of outside of Necromunda.
Similar techniques were used as above, except there was a lot more flesh on show, which gave me an opportunity to do some Bane-like green veins pulging through the skin to help integrate the combat drug design a bit more.
Side note, these guys had their trousers repainted three times, and they’re back at the colour I originally decided for them. It was a surprisingly hard colour scheme to work with, Ikept changing my mind on how to implement the limited palette. I only mention this as I forgot to wash one of their trousers after painting them back to original purple, which I’m not only noticing in editing… It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in Dreadquill Towers!
Conclusion
All in all I’m very happy with how they came out. I could easily have spent more time on them and had them on my bench for a month, but getting them finished in under a week was a very satisfying experience. I’d got to experiment with some new techniques and generate some content for the ol’ blogaroo too.
I’m so happy with them in fact, I’ve been eyeing up other sidelined projects due for a lick of paint…