New Year - New Army Part II - Seraphon!

I'd played a little Warhammer Fantasy Battle back in the day, but never really got a full force painted and eventually all of the miniatures found their way to ebay or other resale organizations. For several years I'd toyed with the idea of revisiting the system, but it wasn't until our visit to Warhammer World in 2019, that I was truly inspired. In the exhibition, the full painted Seraphon range for Warhammer - Age of Sigmar was on display in all its glory. I was drawn to the Seraphon because, well, dinosaurs! Last year I ended up buying a few miniatures (the two "Start Collecting" boxes), but I never made any significant progress on getting them together or painted. Fast forward to Christmas 2020, and my son gets a box of Stormcast Eternals (the Easy to Build Sequitors) as a present and is jazzed enough to start painting them. I had a box of Liberators I'd picked up for another project (watch this space) that I contributed to the cause, so he's now well on his way to creating a small Stormcast army. With him taking the plunge, I figured it was time to get my own army and all of its reptilian goodness going!

The Seraphon are a fairly old army dating back to the original Warhammer Fantasy Battle game, where they were simply known as Lizardmen. Of course, as with many of the early faction names in both Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, "Lizardmen" couldn't be copyrighted, so by the time our favorite dino-riding Mesoamerican themed reptiles made it to Age of Sigmar, they'd been renamed Seraphon. As the Age of Sigmar game system doesn't focus on the massed close ranked unit battles simulated by the original Fantasy Battle game, some of original options (like Skink archers) are gone, but allowed forces remain relatively rich with a variety of unit types representing a wide range reptilian (and amphibian) species. 

I'd initially tried painting my Skink warriors in an emerald green, but I didn't like the result for the rank and file (though I think it will work amazingly well for Chameleon Skinks - watch this space). Once I picked up the Battletome: Seraphon, I found a paint scheme I liked a lot for my skinks on page 47 - the Skink of Loxibitl's Spine. I couldn't find any online guides for how to paint them, so I worked up something that looked right to my eye based on my range of available paints. The full recipe is below.

I'm trying something a little different for the bases, a pre-mixed blend from Geek Gaming Scenics - the Base Ready Taiga Hillside. I think it looks pretty good on these smaller bases, but I wonder whether it will translate to any larger base. I'll likely have to supplement with some tufts going forward (and I may go back and add a few tufts on these as well to break them up a bit). I have several other Seraphon models I still need to build up, but these guys are a fun little start to the army.