Questing for the Hidden Vault - Blackstone Fortress Part 1

As it's rapidly closing in on the end of year I wanted to try and sneak one last hobby post in before the end of the year. One of the more recent additions to Games Workshops' line of boxed games is Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress, a dungeon explorer style RPG where you take on the role of 4 daring adventurers venturing into the fortress in search of ancient technology, hidden knowledge and potentially control over the awesome power at the heart of the Blackstone.

It's a wonderful game that's extremely easy to pick up and play and the designers have managed to weave a good deal of the background narrative of the location into the game and the mechanics involved. There's a variety of scenario's to play through involving firefights through tight winding corridors into vast open chambers, as well as challenges that involve the explorers trying to defuse booby trapped treasure chests or dodging through laser field traps. I've been sitting on the game since release and have only recently managed to start playing it properly. Myself, Medge and another friend have begun a full playthrough of the Quest for the Hidden Vault and that gave me all the motivation I needed to get round to painting the set. It's something I've been working on for the past month and I figured it'd be a good series to write about. So what have I managed to get painted?..

I figured the best place to start with the set was the hostiles. There's a great variety of models available from Xenos beasts, to fallen Guardsman all the way up to the Chaos Lord Obsidius Mallex. My main goal with the hostiles was to keep the painting simple and speedy. As most of these enemies are removed very routinely it didn't seem worth it to spend a great deal of time on each and every model. A simple paint scheme still helps to improve immersion in the game and it allows me to get more of the set painted in a smaller time frame.

To begin with I kept it simple and elected to paint the Ur-Ghuls first. These are gruesome Xenos that stalk the darker halls of the Blackstone in search of any prey with a pulse, at which point they'll descend on their victims and tear them into pieces in a maddened feeding frenzy. The models themselves are very basic, with little real detail on them and mostly just flesh to layer. The scheme itself was based on slowly building up a colour transition from Russ Grey to Fenrisian Grey (fortunately this set of paints are amazing and work together seamlessly so it was a relatively easy job). You can see the end results below.

I tried to transition the hands from blue into a pale purple just to try and give them some extra details to draw the eye. Next up was the Spindle Drones, the esoteric wardens of the fortress. First I have to say I love the aesthetic of these models and if Games Workshop ever release a full army I will buy all of it. The sleek, alien curves look so distinct from anything else in the 40k range and really help to distinguish the idea of the Blackstone Fortress being something completely distinct and unknowable. The models are, much like the Ur-Ghuls, relatively simple with the major detail on them being the large cyclopean eye that sits in the centre of their 'body'. Painting white over a black basecoat however was a real pain, but many many layers later the models are done. You can see them here.

The final models I've completed from the set so far are the Negavolt Cultists, the twisted followers of the Dark Mechanicum. As the first of the more vaguely humanoid models in the set they were a nice change of pace from the foul Xenos. They have a different colour palette to the previous models as they're the first of the Servants of the Abyss, the followers of Chaos that have found their way into the halls of the Fortress. I wanted to tie all of the models together in some way to represent the fact they're a single faction, so I've made sure to add a spot colour of bright red on every model. 

The final squad I'm looking to get done this year are the Chaos Beastmen and they're most of the way done so it'll be an easy task to finish them off.

So that's the beginning of my adventures into the Blackstone Fortress. I'm hoping to use this as a project I can jump onto as a bit of a palette cleanser between the larger projects we'll all be doing this year for AoS and 40k, so stay tuned for (at least what I'm hoping will be) monthly updates.

Until next time,

James