I haven’t played any Games Workshop games in a good long while, but many of the miniatures they have been putting out in recent years really appeal to me. When the Corvus Cabal miniatures for Warcry were released, they definitely caught my eye with their cool fantasy post-apocalyptic vibe and bird skull helmets. However, I had zero use for them, so I refrained from adding them to my long, long backlog of unpainted miniatures. Our Ghost Archipelago project thankfully rectified this!
I’m currently painting up the Cabal to use as “Tribals” in the game – a catch-all that includes all sorts of tribal cultures living on the mysterious islands of the archipelago. This not only gives me a nice reason to paint them, but also allows me to construct a tribal faction that isn’t simply a fantasy repaint of an actual current or historical ethnic group such as the Zulu people or one of the many American indigenous peoples.
For these minis, I wanted a bold colour scheme echoing early Mesoamerican cultures, especially the Aztecs, although definitely through a pop culture filter. What this meant was bright colours and metallics. Instead of painting the bird skulls as actual bone, I painted them as golden metal masks, which I think is a nice effect. The Corvus Cabal’s feathered cloaks were painted in all the colours of the rainbow to suggest tropical birds. The words “murder parrot” came up, and this became my design guideline.
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Painting was mostly Citadel Contrast paints, and I like how the models turned out. I went for a jungle look with the bases, as I imagine these fine people just erupting out of the jungle like a murderous flock pandemonium (I kid you not) of parrots. Here’s a couple more shots with some scenery for added measure.
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Click for a larger version
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As the crouching mini is apparently a woman, as surprisingly a fair few of the minis in the set are, she is my entry to the Fembruary 2021 painting challenge.
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Dawn of the Lead 