The Warhydra

Limited / Unreleased Dark Elves Warhydra

In the beginning of April a contest was launched in the Oldhammer Facebook Community. #makeatrish asks for painting a Miniature of the queen of monsters herself Trish Carden. As Trish was responsible for all of the Dark Elves Monsters from 4th Edition it would have been a pleasure to participate this contest with one of these creatures. I checked my collection and aske myself what is possible to realize in such a short time of a month. Definitly something without a rider and quickly my decision fell for the Warhaydra. Luckily I have already one lying around already prepared and with black undercoat. This miniature was abandoned when the 6th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy was released and the Dark Elves get their update. Since 18 years this miniatures sits on my shelve of shame and waits for its comeback. Here we go!





The miniature:
As initially already described the Warhydra was designe by Trish Carden as part of the initial Dark Elves Release for the 4th Edition. Unfortunately, this miniature was for a long time unreleased and later in limited sales on US Games Day 1999 and for a short period in Italy. Consequently, this miniature is quite rare. The initial Design included also a Dark Elves Sorcerer Lord riding this beast on a howdah. This Sorcerer itself on foot can be seen in a lot of armyshots in the armybook and in White Dwarf articles. In contrast the warhydra or in combination with the sorcerer as rider never find its way into one of the Games Workshop publications. Therefore, no offical reference picture from the catalogue can be shown but Trish released some pictures of her greens on her facebook site:

                              Original Greens of the Warhydra from Trish Carden
                       

and some references from the Stuff of Legends website and the collecting citadel miniatures site exist:

Assembled Warhydra

 

                              Warhydra Blister pack                                               Right front leg variants


Preparing the miniature and Basing
I bought the miniature a long time ago and it was already prepared and coated black for painting. Then, 6th Edition of WFB was released and with it the new and fantastic miniatures sculpted by Chris Firtzpatrick. The Warhydra was abandoned and moved from the shelves of shame into the box of oblivion. When I freed it from this precence I did not changed much. I removed some more moldlines I forgot and added the second dusty white coat to it, making it ready for painting. I saw later during the painting that I forgot some more moldlines. This is something I definitely have to check, when I will paint the other hydras from my collection.

Warhydra base and the used unit reference base

Because the Warhydra came on a big 50 x 100 mm Base it was clear that this time I will have the chance to play a lot more with the high elves ruins. Therefore, I planned to create a big debris field which should still include some larger fragments, recognizable as high elf architecture. One year ago I already did some experiments when creating a unit base for my 6th Edition Black Guard. I used their look as a blue print for the Warhydra Base. The window arcs were already casted and the gate arcs were left from an older project. Fortunately, the brick size of this bit was identical with my juweela bricks. I decided to put everything on a sloped ground. This required a cork armature. I did two test, one with a lot of 2 mm sheets an one with two layers of a cm of a rougher cork plate. The latter resulted in smooth surface with a good side structure hiding the different layers. The other one resulted in more flexible surface but with a partly visible layers side structure. However, I decided for the latter as the the different thicknesses of my gypsum elements required a more flexible surface. I arranged the armature and the elements in way that these create one fallen building front. With additional Juweela bricks I created additional broken walls as well as the transition between the gate and the window parts. Randomly distributed bricks give the base a more scattered look. For the fine details I used bird sand which I glued with PVA glue on between the larger and smaller elements. Some plates I normt used for my floor designs I used as surface in the lower end of the base. This element displayed the original floor and build a bridge to the other base designs of the army. The base was painted in my typical colors for the high elf ruins.

I was very unhappy about how the shattered plaster turned out. It looked unnatural on one hand and the light white pulled to much attention. Therefore I decided to cover the whole are with additional debris. To give this larger area an eyecatcher I added an element from the High Elf Sorcerer sprue. I masked the painted areas with tape and coated the new elements. The result looks very promising and should help to fill the back side of the base where only the raised tail dominated the scene.


Painting the Beast

First color test using the light green scheme from the Cold One

Already very early I wanted to paint this beat in the light greens I used on some of the Cold Ones. On one hand beacuse I wanted to reproduce my beloved light green variant on a bigger surface and also because this colour scheme is very similiar but a more conetmporary version of the one I used on my warhydras I painted 20 years ago. I started painting on one of the flanks and did the same as already described on my Cold ones. One additional element of the hydras are the pustules and holes. The pustules mark some transitions between scales and skin. The holes aspread randomly all over the skin. I decided to paint the pustules in purple as the Cold One already have shown that this color matches perfectly with the light greens. I used Liche Purple as basic color and shaded with the shading mix. The highlights were painted with Warlok Purple. Finaly I put some small white spots on each pustle as a reflection point. The holes were painted in the skin color and shaded first with Incubi Darkness and then with the shading mix to the top. The edge around each hole I highlighted with Bleached Bone. Using these color for the different elements I worked around large surface of the hydra in smaller spots. Finishing smaller clusters helps you to stay motivated as the finished parts will give you an idea about the final result. After weeks of painting skin and scales it became clear that an eyecatcher is missing. There was need add something draw

Warhydra before adding additional colors on the heads

your eyes to the interessting parts of the miniatures, the heads. I had a longer discussion with my community on Tabletopwelt where I show my progress in an Army Project. I learned from the discussion that some variation and some warm colors on the heads would help. I also developed with some of the people the idea to use one of the open mouths for an fire OSL effect. I made some first tests on one head and the first results looked promising. However, I stoped here and decided to move on with the rest of the skin and scales. After spending more time on the skin and scales of the other flank, necks and heads only the details of the heads and claws were left. The latter were already primed in Bleached Bone. I shaded the first with Geaveyard Earth, then with Scorched Brown anf finally with the shading mix. Some highlights using white and the claws made a good appearance. Now only the challenge with 4 of the 5 heads stand in my way to finish this beast.


The Head Challenge

Warhydra after adding warm colors on the heads as eyecatcher

I painted the mounths with Dwarf Flesh and used this color also as a glaze on the areas of the lower and upper jaws. This color already added some warmth on the heads. I shaded everything useing Liche Purple and highlighted with using Dwarf Flesh again as well as with Bleached Bone. For the darker shades as well as for the black linings to seperate teeth from jaw I used my shading mix. The teeth were painted similiar as the horns and claws described earlier. To get a smoother transition between the warmth colors I blended the skin tone into as well as in regions close to the scales some Hawk Turquoise into the Dwarf Flesh. In the rear part of the head sometimes darker shades were necessary where I used Incubi Darkness. It was a very complex and chaotic blending action to get all these colours into each other. But, in the end the result works very good and I had the eyecatcher I needed. An additional eyecatcher was the object source lighning (OSL) effect on one ofe the open mouths. Here I painted a transition from white to yellow to organge to red from insode to outside of the mouth and tongue. This effect add some firery glowing to the mouth. Unfortunately, the effect only works when you look directly into the mouth. However, it was a nice try.


The union
After everything was painted it was time to bring miniature and base together. As I prepared and painted both individually results in a miniature which does not fit properly on the base. There was need fill some gaps and to cover parts between the claws. Therefore, I add some additional basing material after glueing the miniature on the base. I primed everything with a mix of neutral gray and Valejo matt medium. The latter helps to give the paint some more texture allowing a better blending on it. Then, I painted it as all other ruins on the base. Finally I added some grass and more details to give the scenery a more natural look.

Finally, painting this miniature comes to an end. There are a lot of things I dislike on it like the missing of an overall light situation, a basing fitting better the color scheme as well as a color scheme which works better on this miniature. However the goal was to realize the light greens on a bigger surface and this goal was reached. I learned a lot and I have a couple of hydras left to do better. But beside all this critic, it is a lovely miniature and a great addition to my growing 4th Edition Dark Elves Force. I would be hapyy to read what you think, so please leave some comments.

Kind Regards,
GeOrc