Paint it Black – Heretic Naval Raiders
by Tyler Mengel
Ahoy, mateys! As someone who already has a sizeable Heretic Legion collection, as soon as I saw the new Heretic Naval Raiders I knew they were going to be one of my next warbands. With zero ambiguity about whether or not to collect them, the chief question became – how would I paint them?
I was lucky enough to get some resin prints of the models ahead of time to work on for The Army Painter Arena Challenge (check out the latest article HERE), so I’ve had a bit of a head start. Once I had the models in hand there were two obvious choices. The wonderful studio color scheme of teal and off-white, or my existing Heretic color scheme of dark teal and bronze. I toyed with the idea of having this warband be the “naval branch” of my existing force, the Brazen Idolators, but decided to do something new instead, and while I really like the studio scheme, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do a second Heretic force that also featured teal as the main color.
With those two options out of the way I decided to tackle a bit of a white whale of mine. An all-black scheme. That may not sound too hard. I mean, black is black, right? The challenge comes in making it read as “all-black” but still have slightly different shades of black as well as different textures. Otherwise, you run the risk of them just being a three-dimensional shadow.
After a bit of a ponder I settled on three main colors. A warm black for the cloth, a cold black for the leather, and a neutral black for the armor. This is a trick I’ve seen other painters use when translating some famous on-screen characters to the tabletop. In a movie, it looks cool to have your character all in black, since the movement, lighting, and different materials of the costume will help it all read legibly. On a mini you have to emphasize it a bit more by shifting some of the colors.
For my cloth I started with a coat of Speedpaint Grim Black over a zenithal prime. From here I highlighted up by mixing in Warpaints Fanatic Grey Castle, as it’s a rather warm grey. I also made sure to work in a bit of texture with my highlights, so it reads as a bit of a rougher, woven surface. In contrast, the armor was painted flat Matt Black, and then “highlighted” with Warpaints Fanatic Plate Mail Metal by chipping the edges. This is an old trick to paint black armor super-fast. To add a bit more interest and reinforce the weathered nature of Trench Crusade in general and the Heretics lack of personal cleanliness, I added some rust into the recesses with one of my favorite colors, Warpaints Historical Camo Brown. This also helps separate the various plates of armor and adds a nice pop of color to the mini.
The leather was highlighted up through a blueish grey, Warpaints Historical Tanker Grey in this case, and left a little cleaner than the cloth. From there it was a matter of choosing the other colors. I feel like brass is an iconic color for diving suits, and would also let me work in some verdigris, so it became my spot color across the warband.
The Chorister is a fun mini to branch out a bit from the rest of the force. Not only is he the only one with skin showing, but he also has almost no armor. A pale skin tone was an obvious choice, to make it look like he’s a drowned corpse, and it also contrasts well with all the black. He reminds me a bit of Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid.
A fun surprise for me was the bases. I had no idea what to do, and in my first pictures of the models I actually hid the bases because they were blank. Funnily enough, it was that very photo that helped nudge me in the direction I ended up going, because the background had a nice yellow-brown hue to it and I thought it worked well with all the black. After looking at some inspiration and a bit of help from friends, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. I had a bunch of the paints from the new Warpaints Historical Imperial Japanese set on my desk and noticed they had a lot of wonderful yellows, browns, and yellow browns. So, I grabbed a few from there and one or two other Historical colours and ended up with my final palette that all gels together very well since they mostly come from the same set!
I’m really looking forward to adding more to this warband in the future, and once I have the actual plastics in hand, I’ll likely be making an alternate version of my Anointed and Warpriest to mix in. Some of the Warband Variants in the Carcass Front book also have me formulating ideas. Happy raiding, fellow Heretics!
Tyler Mengel
Tyler Mengel is a lifelong hobby aficionado, having discovered the joys of painting minis and rolling dice 25+ years ago and never looking back. His claim to fame arose with his own site, Mengel Miniatures, a repository of hobby knowledge from reviews to tutorials and everything in-between. He’s now working for The Army Painter as one of their Studio Painters, creating numerous written and video tutorials, and he’s their one and only Social Media Specialist. You can follow him on Instagram @mengel_miniatures.