Forge World Chaos Warpfire Dragon

Huffing and panting the small ragged group of survivors tumbled filth covered and exhausted into the dusk shrouded ruin. Wordlessly they hunkered down, kicking aside rocks for what little comfort the bare ground would provide in this paltry shelter before their flight would continue on once more.

They huddled together to share body warmth and despite the terror and adrenaline, they fell into restless sleep in mere moments...

“Shriiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeekk!!!”

Sigen's eyes snapped open and he gasped aloud. It was full dark now, but he could hear the others fitfully whispering to each other. That was no nightmare.

He caught sight of one of the others by the edge of the ruin looking out into the night and cautiously crept alongside.

“What is it Brogg? Is it the Dark Kin, the Reavers?” he whispered urgently trying to look out on the horizon.

“No...” Brogg answered hoarsely, “I have spied all around, there is no movement out there in the wastes this night...We lost them leagues ago!”

“Shriiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkk!!!”

The pair flinched in terror. “Then what is that? Some hunting beast? Have they found us!?!”

Brogg opened his mouth to respond, but before a word got out they were knocked tumbling back into the rest of the group by a ground shaking impact and a forceful wall of wind. Sigen heard the others begin to cry and panic, clawing at the wall behind them that once offered a measure of safety, but now formed the trap that held them.

As his head cleared from the dizzying impact, Sigen could see a looming shape through the settling dust, something monstrous and covered in horny spines and hear the beating of huge leathery wings. A sinuously serpentine neck twisted around the broken pillar at the edge of the ruin, the hideous creature eyed them all hungrily.

The light of the unnaturally coloured flames that were licking and dripping from the open maw of the beast was amplified by the its strangely iridescent scales lighting up the whole space between them. The creature began to make a loud sound akin to a sucking yawn, like the intake of air into a great bellows.

Sigen's eyes darted around the cracked floor of the ruin, at what the group had first taken to be small rocks and boulders, dozens of dark sockets staring back at them mockingly.

He kicked his legs in a panic trying to get to his feet screaming “By the Gods! We're in it's nest! Everybody get ou....”

In a great roaring woosh of multi-hued flame Sigen was instantly silenced just like the cries of his companions.

Their lives had been snuffed out like candles in the wind and the dragon threw back it's horned head, shrieking its victory into the skies.

Hi folks, I wanted to share this little project I completed a little while ago. The Forge World Warpfire Dragon.

Believe it or not this was actually a rescue miniature. A friend gave it to me for free if I was able to fix it up because when he received it from somebody else it was in a little bit of a sorry state. Really thick layers of paint, a little damage and what looked to be a few missing parts.

And me being a great numpty I forgot to take a "before" picture before I commenced my rescue operation. Frankly it's just because I was excited at getting a free dragon and one that I'd had my eye on for quite some time.

I also used this as an excuse to try out the Chameleon Colour-Shift Metallic paints from Greenstuff World. A strange twisted magical chaos beast seemed to be ideal.

I may not have a "before" image, but I did manage to take several during my repair/rescue of this amazing miniature after I had managed to clean away the really thick previous paint-job:

 The Repair/Rebuild:

I was actually surprised that the main body section was plastic. I thought Forge World just made all their kits out of resin. You can see some of the damage and gaps I had to contend with in that shoulder joint.

The gap in this hip joint was even bigger, but I knew I could hide all this with a bit of sculpting work.

This area that I marked on the other hand, posed a problem at first and had me scratching my head. I had to look at the images of the model on the Forge World site to check this bit out. Turns out there is a whole component missing, a ridged boney plate... Well... More sculpting to do I suppose.

There were what seemed to be a few casting problems with the miniature. Bubbles in the resin parts. Some quite bad like the ones above that meant the horns had their entire tips missing. I decided to work on them and make them a feature rather than a bug in the process.

It became apparent that the spines that were supposed to run down the tail were missing too. I didn't notice until I stripped it because there was a lot of paint filling them holes up like.. Well... Filler! Completely flat, didn't know there were sockets until the paint came off.

A spare Chaos Spawn kit came to the rescue. Lots and lots of boney growths and spines on those sprues. I Just chose a few good ones, trimmed and glued them in place then blended them in with a bit of Greenstuff work.

The same was done on the empty sockets on the tail of the dragon with a choice of spines that reduced in size as they went further down.

 You see those wings? You see how they are leathery and tattered? Yeah... I didn't realise they were until the paint came off. The paint was thick enough to fill all the holes in the wings...

I wanted the base to look like the Dragons favoured feeding/nesting ground so decided to litter it with previous trophies/meals.

I cut up a bottle cork to make a second fallen pillar to imply that there was more to the area than just the single standing pillar the dragon is sitting on.

Then with a bit of ripped up cork strips for broken flagstones and a mix of different textured paints for interest, the detailing of the base was done, as was the whole construction/rescue of the model.

The Painting:

This was a deceptively simple paint-job, thanks in part to using the Chameleon paints. I just wanted to get this done quickly to a nice tabletop standard. I'll just give bullets of the process:

• Undercoat black, then gloss varnish (this step is needed for the chameleon paints to do their thing).
• Then the base and all the stonework was zenithal primed in a dark grey, followed by a lighter grey, making sure to be careful and avoid the glossy black dragon.
• I only used two of the chameleon paints. I followed the instructions building them up in light layers until I was happy with the result. This time being careful not to spray them on to anywhere but the gloss black.
• The flat colour of bone and skin details were just painted by hand carefully to not mess up the finished metallic skin.
• The bone was layered up to white, then an oil wash used and removed to make the gradient. The skulls on the base were done the same way, but the wash was heavier and I removed less.
• The skin flaps of the wings were just carefully drybrushed several skin colours, then washed with a mix of sepia and purple wash to blend it all together and to sort of colour match the purple tones in the metallic skin.
• The stone was pretty much just the same oil wash from the bone areas over the grey priming, rubbed off a little, drybrushed with a little bone/white.
• Then I finished my base the same way as I have on my Nurgle army. Heavy Orange/Sepia/Yellow wash, let it dry. dust with various shades of orange weathering powder.
• I think I may have used just a light dusting of grey powder on the stone elements too just to tie it with the rest of the base.

And that is that.

I didn't want to take a terribly long time with it, but I was really pleased with how it turned out. My first experience with the Chameleon paints, they're alright... I think they could be really overused though, but for some projects they'll be a nice accent.

So that's the story of how I got a free Forge World Warpfire Dragon....

I'm looking forward to getting the chance to field it with my Chaos army sometime.

Hope you enjoyed the narrative I wrote and explanation of how this project came about and was completed.

Take care.