Hobby Table: Plague Monks and way, way too Much Brown

Get your brushes and clippers, and welcome to the Space Dinosaur Hobby Table, where I cover what I've completed recently in the Age of Sigmar hobby, along with a mini-review of the sculpts, how easy they're to paint, and any tips or tricks I can pass on to make your life easier. Today I have some Plague Monks for Skaven, and boy did I get tired of brown with this project. 

I already have 20 Plague Monks painted for my Skaven army, but they are all painted with the same, green cloaks, and I wanted to introduce some variety into the force. I thought to myself, why not brown like the robes of actual monks? And that's what I went for, and oh my gosh was it too much brown with the fur color that I usually go for with Skaven.

Contrast colors were a huge help here, as I just slathered it all over the models, picked out the fur and other details, and called it good. The amount of brown really pushed me to use other colors as accents, such as green to tie them into the other Plague Monks I have. 

The gong got some nice weathering effects, similar to what I used recently for my Murknob with Belcha-banna. Unfortunately, and I'm going to keep mentioning this as it drove me nuts, it also has a brown hue to it.

The banner was also kept plain, with a very easy free hand Skaven symbol painted on. The book on the other hand was very fun, as I always love adding those tiny little details to the pages. 

Now for my overall thoughts on the models, I will judge it based on two categories. Firstly, the sculpt itself will be scored on a scale of 0 to 10, with 5 being average, 0 horrendous, and 10 a marvel. For a reference point, I consider the Stormcast Liberator to be a 5, neither great nor bad. Just a passable, average model. Then I will score on Ease of Painting, between 1 and 5, 1 being a slog to paint and 5 being a breeze.

 

My Plague Monks review:

Sculpt: 3/10

These are very old sculpts, chunky and with muddled detail that blends into other part of the sculpt. They do lend themselves to painting very easily though, but the "modern" clan rat sculpt is far superior. 

Ease of Painting: 5/5

Despite my choice of colors, these guys painted up quickly for a unit of 10. Even a beginner shouldn't have issues with these, and the messy lore of these guys makes it easy to hide mistakes under grime and filth. 

Final tips: Batch painting is your friend when painting these types of models. 

-The Space Dinosaur