Battlelore painting guide First of all, a brief but important thank you to DoW for making an awesome game,

the designers who have made the figures so they were easy to paint, the Battlelore community for being so active, and sites like Dan Becker's Battlelore painting guide which inspired me to have a go at painting the set. Materials I use Games Workshop (GW) materials for everything except the shield decals, which are from Veni Vidi Vici. GW stuff is expensive but very good, and the shield decals gave the figures a great finish. Preparing the figures for painting. Where necessary, I straightened figures by softening them in very hot water, then plunging them into cold water. With the exception of a handful of figures that were glued into the base at a steep angle, this works. When dry, all figures were sprayed with GW black undercoat. Some people have suggested washing their figures with soap to clean off any oil residue from the plastic moulds. I did not do this, and the figures came out absolutely fine. General comments on colour schemes Most people are painting their figures with the majority colour being the same as the unit type i.e. green/blue/red. I did this and it does not look too boring. It does mean you can play the game without banners if you keep units facing in a common direction when in close combat e.g. towards the opponent. General comments on brushes I used GW fine detail brushes to all the painting, and a larger brush size on bases for speed. If your brushes dont have a good tip, then put a bit of paint on it and rotate the end of the brush on tissue paper. You should now have a tip. If the brush still does not have a good tip, buy another brush. Good brushes are important investments. I have used a 5 O ultrafine brush on the dwarves. This is because I am rubbish at detail painting with bigger brushes, and the ultrafine brush makes it easier. Time I ran production lines so I might be working on all a figure type at once. For example, Ill do all the human archers together e.g. all their faces, then all their leather etc. This is an efficient way of doing things. The figures do vary in time but most single figures took 15 minutes each in total, the dwarves were 20 minutes due to the stripes on their tartan, and mounted units were probably 30 minutes each. In total, from buying the game I had everything painted in just under two months. Bases All bases are painted with two coats of camo green, then dry brushed across the top with a mixture of sunburst yellow that has been mixed with a bit of white. For dry brushing on the bases, I was fairly heavy handed. Human archers and light infantry I painted these snot green, leather, bestial brown on the bows, boltgun on metal surfaces. My standard face colour is elf flesh, with flesh wash applied to eyes and mouth. Id normally go for a better finish on faces but this looks OK. Hair is graveyard earth. I did the archers first. With hindsight, I should have used flesh on the archer legs rather than do them all leather.

By the way, wash paints have lots of pigment and are water consistency. A small amount of wash causes it to stay in cracks such as eye sockets and mouth, and the pigment is deposited as

the wash dries. Painting order is important. I tend to do faces and flesh first, then the majority colours, and finally come back and add remaining details. Human medium infantry These are pretty straightforward. I used enchanted blue and its come out nicely. The remaining figure is face, drybrushed boltgun, and leather. If youre not familiar with dry brushing, put some paint on a brush, rotate the brush across tissue paper so a lot of the paint comes off and what is left is nearly drying, then wipe the brush across the surface to be painted. This has the effect of painting the contours that stick out and leaving lower relief black. The effect is easy to do and looks great see the helmets and the chainmail.

Human heavy infantry My red is blood red. I apply the red quite thickly as black can show through a thin coat, and touch it up with more red if the black stills shows through too much when dry. I chose to do white shields so I could use red shield decals.

Human cavalry

This was the first time I have painted horses so I kept it simple. The horses are drybrushed codex grey, and when this had dried I drybrushed again only more lightly with elf grey. This gives you some highlights as elf is much lighter than codex. The remaining figures are painted as described.

The dwarves OK, Scots may not like me at this point! I went for the tartan and orange hair colour scheme. The hair and beard is undercoated using macarius solar orange. This is one of GWs new foundation paints. Standard orange paints do not normally cover black well, and the foundation paint gets around that problem. I then highlighted the hair and beard with fiery orange. The faces are done with dwarf flesh and then flesh washed. The archer is snot green, with blood red stripes across his clothes. The bow and quiver are bestial brown, all other brown colours are leather. The feather is drybrushed elf grey. The medium infantry is the usual enchanted blue, with snot green stripes across the clothes. Shield is bestial brown. The heavy infantry is the usual blood red with snot green stripes.

The goblins My standard face colour is goblin green. This does not contrast very well with snot green, but I always uses goblin for gobbos so I did the same on these figures. I use orc flesh as the wash for eyes and mouth. The lizards are painted khaki. This paint does not cover black well, so I did two coats that are drybrushed heavily. The effect is better than Id expected. The rest of the goblins is usual colours, such as bestial brown for the shield. The claws are painted with bone.

The archer is standard colours i.e. bestial brown for the bow, etc. I carefully drybrushed the shield on his back and theyve come out very nicely.

The light, medium infantry and heavy are the usual colours. The shield is bestial brown with boltgun on the shield knobs for the light/medium guys. I painted half of the light/medium figures in each of the green and blue colour schemes.

The spider I used the foundation orange then fiery orange on the body. Catachan green is painted around this, and drybrushed on the legs. The eyes are scarlet, the fangs are putrid green.

Other figures Ive working on the ogre at the moment and I am yet to do the fire element. No comments about colours yet! Varnishing Varnishing is a matter of personal preference. I like to varnish my figures lightly with matt as it makes them more durable, and you are less paranoid if another gamer is a bit heavy handed with them. Shield decals I bought 15mm decals from Veni Vidi Vici for the humans, and 10mm decals for the dwarves and the goblins. I varnished the figure, then applied the decal, then when dry I painted a coat of matt varnish from a GW pot across the shield to make the decal durable. Disclaimer

Painting is at your risk and I accept no responsibility for you messing yourself or anything else up. If you are new to painting, I suggest asking a GW shop for some lessons (their staff tend to be brilliant painters) and also practice on metal figures. You can always strip down metal figures and try again if you make mistakes. With plastic you only have once chance. Any questions, contact me through the geek website. Andrew battlepuppy