Flayed Ones, Part III

 Wanted to post some of these ages back but with the holidays and other stuff, I’ve just been swamped.

Speaking of which—new book comes out next week from Broadway Paperbacks.  Ex-Purgatory, fourth in the Ex-Heroes series.  Check it out in whatever format you like from your preferred bookseller.  It’s a (hopefully) fun read and you can passively support this page at the same time.

Anyway, Flayed Ones.  Now in color.

As I’ve said before, I’m not the greatest painter, but here’s what worked for me.  I primed them black and then hit them with an aluminum chrome spray paint I’ve used on all my Necrons.  It’s quick and fast and I like the shine white-silver shine it gives them.  I’ll probably take these guys down a bit with a drybrush of Boltgun a.k.a. Leadbelcher.

These are just base colors, mind you but hopefully they’ll give you a sense of how the whole thing will turn out.  I added Abbadon Black on the thighs, upper arms, and spine.  The skin’s all Kislev Flesh, but I’ll be making some distinctions with my next pass.  I dabbed the last of my red gore on the mouths and also under the ribcage, as if all the blood and flesh is leaking down through.  I also ran a bit of it along the edges of the skin flaps and on some of the blades.  All the assorted skulls and bones got a base of dark flesh.  I also realized most of my browns have dried up...  Good thing I'm going to the store tomorrow.

Skin is like a beer label.  The goal
is to get it all off in one piece...

With my next pass I want to add some brighter blood.  I’ll drybrush the bones, too, and bring the bases in line with the rest of my Necrons.

Next... I’m going to try to push my plastic models over to the Relictors page I set up, so here I can focus on the Paperhammer Destroyer I want to try.  Mostly because I’ve wanted to do it for ages and (if rumors are true) I might get it done just as GW releases a plastic model for it.

Flayed Ones, Part II

Papa Nurgle’s been kicking my ass.  And to think... I’m one of his more devoted followers...

So, I’d used some scrap warriors from the bins and a lot of leftover blades to make some passable Flayed Ones.  But they still needed a bit more to really sell it.  Not much, but a few touches.

I’d used some of the blades and old Dark Eldar helmet crests to make spikes along the spines of these guys, but I also wanted the trophies that show up in all the art.  At first I was just going to put some extra skulls on their shoulders, but then I happened to stumble across a few of the skulls-on-spikes that are on the new Dark Eldar Raider.  They worked perfectly, so I scattered about half a dozen of them through the squad.  One guy ended up with two, just to make him stand out as an unofficial sergeant/ champion of the squad.

I also added a few skulls and bones to the base.  I’d found a bunch of Dire Wolf ribs in the bits bins, and they looked nice and creepy.  The Kroot sprue is great for stuff like this, too, and the bins always have tons of Kroot accessories.  There’s severed thigh, part of a ribcage with meat on it, and a cloak lined with bones which makes a great bit of flayed flesh and meat. 

I also used some of these pieces on the base here and there to reinforce and support some of my patched-together feet. 

Then came the big part.  Long pieces of flesh.  I knew the model needed these, but I wanted this to be a simple green stuff project.  Because I know my limits.

I just went for simple strips.  I’d make a very small ball of green stuff (maybe half the size of a pea), roll it into a snake, and then carefully flatten it and stretch it.  I needed this to be thin so it looked like skin and/or hides, but nor so thin it would fall apart if something brushed against it.

For most of the figures I just draped a long piece over the shoulders.  I’d let it hang over an arm on some, and on others it would just sit like a scarf.  On three or four of them, I tried to make loops to help hide some of the scratch-built arms.  They didn’t turn out horrible, but not all that great, either.  Overall, I’m happy with the results.

Helpful Hint—Keep your fingers damp.  Not full-on wet, but damp.  The more complicated the work you’re doing is, the more important it is to keep your fingers damp.  The moment they get dry the green stuff will cling, and when it’s this thin it’ll just tear apart when you try to peel it away (he said from experience).

A few of the dangling bits looked a little too... well, round.  They looked more blobby and melted than sliced and skinned.  So I went back with my clippers and cut a few of the ends to sharper points, and added splits in a few.  It’s a little thing, but I think it helped a lot.

As I’ve said before, I’m not the greatest painter, but here’s what worked for me.  I primed them black and then hit them with an aluminum chrome spray paint I’ve used on all my Necrons.  A drybrush of Leadbelcher actually knocks it down a bit, and then some Abaddon Black on the thighs, upper arms, and spine.  Granted, this means all of my Flayed ones came from the same dynasty, but I like having that bit of unity on the tabletop (maybe I’ll dab in other colors to hint at other dynasties).  I did a few of the thighs in Khorne Red to give the sense of lots and lots of blood that’s dripped down and dried.

Then I did the flesh in different... well, flesh tones, but drybrushed all of them with rotting flesh. Then I splashed on some blood red and red ink (yes, I still have some red ink).  I made a point of painting the hands red, and also the mouths.  The models in the codex just looked a little too neat and clean to me.  The whole idea of the flayer curse is these things are eating their victims, even if they can’t digest them.

And there you have it.  I got the bodies from the bitz bins, so I think this whole project cost me maybe ten bucks total, but it’d be a cheap conversion even if I had to buy a box of Warriors to start with.  In retrospect, I would’ve liked to add in one or two Deathmark heads, just to show some of the different Necrons who’ve fallen to the curse.  Ahhh, well.  Maybe if I find some more bits.  I may even paint up a Necron Lord in gore-colors to be Varghul of the Bone Kingdoms of Drazakh.

Flayed Ones

I have to admit, the original Flayed Ones never did it for me.  They felt like a unit that was missing something, both in their rules and their backstory.  I still think their rules are a little off (they’re a bit pricey, I think, and Rage or Furious Charge would’ve given them more flavor) but I think their fluff is fantastic now.  They’re essentially mechanical zombies, mindless eating machines that get nothing from what they eat.

And zombies have a special appeal to me.

Alas, nine dollars per model is a bit too steep for my taste, especially for the points cost.  Considering you need to use at least ten Flayed Ones to make a decent unit, they’re just too expensive.  And, I have to admit, it does grate on me a bit that Games Workshop theoretically created Finecast as a money-saving move, then refused to pass those savings on to the customers.

So... cheap Flayed Ones.

 

Some of you may remember from a while back, I’d lucked out and found a bunch of Necron Warriors in my local gaming store’s bits bins.  A lot of them were broken or poorly assembled.  Some had thick, gloppy paint jobs.  A few were missing arms or heads.  But I realized they’d make a good base to start from.  Heck, even if I had to buy a box of brand new Warriors for this project, it’d still make them less than half the price of the same number of Flayed Ones models.

First step was to cut off the weapons (assuming they hadn’t been broken off already).  I tried to save as much of the hand as possible, but didn’t worry about it too much if the arms ended at the wrist.  This gave me a basic Necron figure.

Some of these guys needed feet, too.  I think the thin ankles are tough for some younger Overlords to work with.  Since the Flayed Ones are supposed to be a bit deformed, I just built new feet from a few pieces of card and some small bits of sprue.  I added in some plastic rod in places where the break made them too short.

Helpful Hint – The easiest thing to do was just cut a pair of triangle This gave me a foot that looked a bit like a mechanical claw, and that works great for Flayed Ones.

Next was repositioning.  By nature of holding a rifle, all the Warriors are in more or less the same stance.  I cut some arms in the center of the upper arm and rotated them a bit.  This gave them wider and more dynamic poses.  I also cut a few Warriors across the thin part of the back, filed them a bit, and then re-attached them to give the figures a bit more of a hunch.  This helped with some of the models that had been assembled looking up at the sky.

Helpful Hint – Don’t worry too much about things lining up when you reposition them.  You want it to be solid, yes, but any odd seams can either be written off as part of the Flayed Ones mutated forms or it’ll get hidden by folds of skin (as explained in a bit).

A few of them needed arms, too.  I had a few spares that I’d picked up here and there, and in one or two places I found arms from Lychguard or Immortals that fit fine (if they looked a little oversized or distorted... all the better).  Some are Fantasy skeleton arms.  I even made one set from a zombie scythe handle and another from a skeleton spear.  I know they look really crude like this, but they’re going to be fine by the end of this.

The hands were the next part.  They are kind of the defining feature of a Flayed One.  On the old models they had very Freddy Kruger-ish fingers, but these new ones are a bit more random.  It fits their twisted, mutated nature and it makes for easy scratch-builds.  

Two or three of these guys have elaborate hands made out of blades.  Some just have a scissors-like arrangement.  A few just have one big cutting blade, set up either like a sword or a scythe.  I tried to space these out between models so the different arrangements felt a bit random.

Helpful Hint – There are tons of knives and blades kicking about the GW lines.  Tons.  Space Marines of all flavors and allegiances, new and old, come with knives.  Kroot come with extra rifles that are covered with blades.  Dark Eldar have some nice ones.  Heck, if you saved any old Dark Eldar figures, there were blades on everything (even their pistols and helmets).  This doesn’t even count the number of things you can find in the Fantasy line--swords, daggers, spears--all sorts of nastiness.

I also really like the art in the new codex that shows a Flayed One with a small forest of spikes or blades growing out of its back.  I used a few more blades for those.  These helped reinforce the spine where I’d cut it, too.

Next week I’ll add some details to the base, some skin to the spikes, and some paint to the whole model.