Monday, October 24, 2016

Shadow Empire - Terracotta Warriors Complete


After a lengthy delay, my final unit of terracotta warriors is done. The crossbowmen give the army a little ranged ability, and fit nicely with finds made in the warrior pits. The Chinese crossbow of the time was incredibly advanced, mass produced, simple and reliable, so it would be remiss to omit them from the army.

With this unit my clay painting technique has moved on again. I've stippled more colours over the basecoat before washing and drybrushing to give the impression of the remains of paint. The original warriors would have been very brightly coloured, gaudy even. I added some flowers to the bases to give them a little more colour. After some discussion with the Scale Creeps, I went back and added some to my other units too, the colour varying for each unit.


With the crossbowmen done, that give me three infantry units, the halberdiers, swordsmen and crossbowmen, the guts of the army. It was a bit of a slog near the end, but I'm delighted they are done, and I'm very happy with them.

Here they all are, emerging from a hidden tomb entrance at LoPan's foul bidding, ragged pennants blowing in the wind as they await their new master.






Speaking of their new master, then next unit up is LoPan's retinue, which consists of LoPan himself, a jade mummy, 3 Yaoguai (demons) and a Yeren (beast). After painting so much pottery, I'm dying to paint something colourful!

8 comments:

  1. They look great! I was just watching a program onb the terracotta warriors last night: http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/tv/chinas-megatomb-revealed/

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    1. Thanks Andrew. There's a huge documentary on Netflix if you're keen. I managed to pick up the companion book for the London Exhibition of warriors from a few years back, it's reference heaven.

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  2. Such an awesome project! Absolutely wonderful!!!

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    1. Thanks a lot! It's a bucket list project, so it's extra satisfying to see it come together.

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  3. I suspect that having a few splashes of colour with the mummy / demons will reinforce the manufactured / mass produced nature of your walking flower pots. Which are of course fantastic. I'm envious of your output and perseverance - they look great all massed together. I suspect I'd have given up after the first couple!

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    1. Thank you my dear! I hope LoPan's lads and the vampires will jazz things up some, they should offer a nice contrast.

      It wasn't easy toward the end to get them done, but having a finite army list to work through helped, and the reward of working on some of the more unusual models once the horde was done kept mojo up too. A quick break to work on Khorne gladiators etc offered a good pit stop as well.

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  4. I can feel the sense of achievement from here, well done.

    The occasional bit of smashed terracotta warriors debris on the other models bases might be a good way to tie the colourful elements in.

    I'm looking forward to seeing Lo Pan etc :)

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    1. Thanks a lot. Nice idea on the smashed bits, I'll have to give that a whirl.

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