Brotherhood Champion Hutriel

Greetings folks! I needed some variety in the painting diet and just the man for it was standing on my painting desk. Behold Grey Knight Brotherhood Champion Hutriel.

I've been very slowly building my Grey Knights force for a while now. Recently, though, I'd been musing that I wanted the option to field them as a pure Knight force rather than with the Inquisitorial contingent they currently have. As it is a small army - designed to be an allied force so restricted options - it needed a lower status commander than the captains and Grand Masters (doubt they rock up to lead a couple of dozen...) and in the Grey Knights that means Brotherhood Champion. I've also added a slightly nasty squad of Purifiers to take the place of the retinue:

As far as model options go, there really wasn't all that many on offer. Grey Knight characters are somewhat few and far between, there isn't even a Brotherhood Champion model. Instead I decided that Castellan Crowe would be an excellent stand in, with a few modifications:

left image © Games Workshop used for illustration

I fancied an old school metal Crowe for my champion so Ebay provided a preloved one. I already knew that I wanted to replace the weirdly plain - other than the flappy flag - back banner pack with one of the fancier plastic GK ones. The sword also had to go. Crowe wields a daemon sword that he keeps under lock and key with his purifier powers. My champ just needed a Nemesis Force Sword to be his Annointed Blade. I went with the one with the Inquisitorial =I= symbol carved in. Changing the sword also gave me the opportunity to "correct" his stance and the angle of the blade a little. As I didn't have to care about casting and undercuts I could have the blade at a greatsword rather than baseball stance. Small things but they matter to me.

When it came to painting Hutriel (named for one of the seven angels of punishment) I had a fairly clear image in mind. Rather than mark him out with the white helmet and so on that Crowe normally has (purifier regalia) I would paint him to be a perfectly ordinary brother. Just one who was prodigiously talented with a blade and thus nominated as Brotherhood Champion. A simple red-lined, black cloak would be his badge of office. I've changed the way I paint the blued steel armour and am much, much happier with the results. I start with a basecoat of AP Plate Mail Metal mixed with a couple of drops of blue ink. Once there is a solid colour on board I shade it with a thinned 50:50 mix of blue and black inks with a bit of Lahmian Medium thrown in. Then I start highlighting by adding more and more AP Shining Silver to the mix, 2-3 highlights do it. A final edge highlight of VMA Steel added to the last mix really makes the edges pop. Way more work has been done than can be seen in the photos of course. The rest of him is painted just the same as all the other Grey Knights!

He's turned out quite nicely I reckon. I've now got all the models to finish the Knights so they'll probably come together over the year. I can see my 40k projects being like this in the future. Small, ally style armies to merge together to form bigger armies. Can't see me doing another 5k stormer like the Blood Angels. Until next time folks.

TTFN