Order of the Rose Stone Druids

I have been eager to play a new HORDES army lately, but I only want to play with painted models. Of course, that meant I needed to make time to paint an army. What better opportunity than participating in a Staff Holiday Bundle Painting Challenge!

I really like the Circle Orboros bundle because I really enjoy the constructs, and I find that painting stone goes relatively quickly. Painting up 25 points all at once can be a bit daunting, but I felt the number of models and the large amount of them being stone would be a boon for getting painting done quickly while still looking great.

I needed to think of a paint scheme for them, and recently I’ve been on a kick of painting things pink to show people it can be done well. Too often have I heard people say that pink armies just can’t be done and look good. I was out to prove them wrong! Lots of stones are pink and very pretty. The first that popped into my head was rose quartz. I love it and think it’s gorgeous! Plus, in a lot of monarchical governments there is usually reference to an Order of the Rose. So, there I had it! Order of the Rose Stone Druids!

A bunch of us in the office talked about our plans for our bundles. I was super stoked! But when I told everyone I was painting my army pink, my coworkers were dubious. I explained my vision and what technique I was using, but still I was met with knitted eyebrows and the common question, “Are you sure that’s gonna work?”

The first day, I sat down to paint my humans in the bunch. They were all going to have the same colors on them and they were going to be more complicated than the constructs. I decided a nice olive green would go well with the somewhat peachy-pink I had chosen for the stones. I also used Sanguine Highlight for a darker pink on their clothing. Here’s a picture of just the dudes.

Then it was onto the constructs! I used a sponging technique outlined in No Quarter 43 on the Jade Siege Animantarax. I recommend looking through that article. I did it a little quicker and dirtier than the article instructs, but it was my inspiration.

Once the stone was done, I basecoated the wood and then did a couple of washes over it and highlighted the twigs really quickly. I wanted just enough depth that you could see the limbs were made out of bundles of twigs. The stone is the focal point though, so I didn’t want the twigs to take away from that.

Then it was onto the glowing runes, and I hadn’t figured out how I wanted to paint them yet. I thought of trying green, but it was too light in value to show up against the pink. I needed a color that was visually cooler than pink, so I went with Arcane Blue for the glowing runes. The technique I used is outlined in Forces of WARMACHINE: Cygnar.

Once the minis were painted I knew I wanted to create some really nice bases that would convey the idea of forests. So I broke out just about every type of flower, bush, grass, and other ground cover currently in my stash and went nuts. I think they came out pretty darned well!

Here’s my finished army. I had fun painting my pink Circle army. I hope this encourages you to try a bold new color scheme!