Tetto'Eko

Tetto'Eko is pure awesome. He's a skink priest who's been awarded a floating palanquin normally reserved for the slann mage-priests. (For the uninitiated, skinks are the small, intelligent lizardmen that run the cities and attend the slann. The slann are the ancient, powerful wizards who lead lizardman society.) How'd he get such an honor? By pulling a giant comet from the sky and slamming into a nest of rat men. From a fluff standpoint, he's the coolest character in the army book; from a modeling standpoint, he's a great challenge.



There's the Milliput frame for the body. Tetto'Eko is going to be in the lotus position -- folded legs and upturned hands on his knees.

I've never used Milliput before, but it's wonderful. It cracks when molded, making it unsuitable for detail work, but it cures quickly while staying moldable for a while. Something I'd change in the future would be to create my wire frame first -- I added pins to the different pieces as I worked. It also has more tensile strength than green stuff, meaning pieces can be made, propped up and left alone -- no constant watching!



There he is without any scale. Yes, he's rough, and yes, those are my fingerprints. (Hand made!) I'm going to sand down his chin, sand off the fingerprints and then go to town with green stuff. It'll go in all the joints, it'll make up his lower legs, his arms, his facial features and details like his crest and scales.



This is the unsanded base for the palanquin. It's quite a bit larger than Tetto'Eko is, but that's because the lizardmen can't make new palanquins. So, he gets to sit on a floating chair much, much larger than him. The fact that he'll be dwarfed by the carriage makes me laugh every time I think of it. Once sanded, lizardman glyphs will be added to the four sides and a second tier will be added, with hand-sculpted glyphs on its edge. Then large armrests and backing will be placed on the piece. The whole thing will be put on a sturdy brass pin and placed on a medium-sized square base.

These two sets of glyphs will ring the bottom of the palanquin. They're a little shorter than the sides of that piece, so I'll have to green stuff in cornices, but that's OK -- it'll give me a chance to come up with some toppers, like little snakes or skulls or something equally jungle-y.

This snake will be on the actual base of Tetto'Eko's model. Snakes are integral to Tetto'Eko's army; they're the totem animals of Sotek, the highest god of the lizardmen. This snake is very large, and will be a central attraction of the base, but several smaller snakes will dot the base and palanquin.

The first steps

I began work some weeks ago on some of my models. One I've started on -- and will doubtless continue to "improve" until, top-heavy, it crashes down, is my carnosaur.



The green is where I've modified the original piece. I added a frill of horns behind the head, two curved horns from the brow and a jeweled headpiece with leather straps between the two.

You can't see it well, but there's also a necklace around the dino's neck and ornamental straps added to the rider's saddle.

The base has been roughly coated in green stuff, and patted down; the idea was to have the carnosaur striding across rough, stony terrain. It really doesn't read very well, and I may have to remove the base entirely to get the effect I want.

Here you can see some of the filler I had to put in to the arms. (It's worse on the legs -- for such a hearty animal, he's got quite a few gaps in his body!) There's also the little stump on the base. It's out of focus, but it's a decent first attempt; if I end up ripping out the base and starting over, I'll definitely add a new one to the next attempt.

Things I still have to do: Some more filing, some more green stuff. Maybe a new base?

And that's the necklace. I like it, even though it looks like a necktie. Sharp-dressed dino! Sharp-dressed!

The sacred host

A huge portion of the Warhammer hobby is modelling and painting an army. It's such a central part of the game that a typical tournament includes scores for an army's appearance. (There's a legitimate argument that the composition score -- which encompasses an army's appearance -- and the sportsmanship score exist to make up for an atrocious ruleset, but that's something we don't need to delve into right now.)

I've got several Warhammer Fantasy miniatures, including enough to field a small Lizardman army and the beginnings of a Demons of Chaos army. Both forces are eminently customizable and both fill a niche I don't normally indulge in gaming -- the "I did it because it was cool" style of play. While I plan on taking sensible, synergistic choices, my primary goal in this endeavor is to make awesome-looking armies. The power of the army will take a backseat to the cool factor of the models. (Fortunately, both the Lizardman and Demons of Chaos armies are short on lame and long on cool -- Games Workshop has produced some truly lovely plastic models!)

Because I have more lizardmen and because I can already field an army with what I have, I'm going to start my modeling and painting with them. My goals are this:
1) Model and paint a legal 1,000-point Lizardman army.
2) Model and paint a 1,000-point Tetto'Eko Lizardman army.
3) Model and paint a legal 2,250-point Lizardman army led by a Saurus Oldblood riding a carnosaur.
4) Model and paint a legal 2,250-point Lizardman army led by a Slann Mage-Priest.

A legal army is one that includes all Games Workshop models (i.e., no making your own). However, legal armies can include extensively converted models. Obviously, there's a lot of overlap in these lists; I imagine that I'll be able to meet all four goals and still own less than 3,500 points worth of lizardmen.

When I say "model and paint," I mean just that -- I plan on modifying every character, unit leader and model on a medium-sized or larger square base in my army. Some changes will be simple, such as additional jewelry. Others will be more significant, including modeling dinosaur-skull helmets, extra weapons and mystical implements.

I'll also have to build a Tetto'Eko miniature. In fact, that's one of my first projects, and I chose to do it from scratch. I'm starting with a more-complicated project both to see what I can do and to set a bar for myself -- I'll come back to recreate him later, I'm sure, and it'll be useful to have a record of where my abilities were before I started all this!

Once all four goals are met, I'll move on to one of these two projects, depending on how much I'm willing to spend:
1) A legal 1,000-point Demons of Chaos army.
2) A 1,000-point Chupayotl Lizardman army.

The first interests me because the themes I'd use -- of Khorne, the god of battle and bloodlust, and Slaanesh, the god of debauchery and regular lust -- intersect in ways that can really be used to make some cool models. Additionally, Khorne and Slaanesh hate each other, so there will be some interesting model choices to represent such an unusual alliance.

The second, while it's more lizardmen, is rich with modeling possibilities. Chupayotl is a city claimed by a tsunami and is now inhabited by some form of unknown sea entities -- the Lizardman army book isn't clear if there's even an organized force there. I thought it would be excellent to model a lizardman force spawned in the city's pools after it had been claimed by some primeval, marine force. The saurus warriors would sport vicious shark heads, their leaders having a hammerhead's jaws; skinks would have tentacles. The whole army would use underwater weapons -- tridents and javelins -- and be led by a giant lobster or crab model that would count as a skink priest.