Necromunda Goliath Gang
Bryan’s step by step painting guide
Welcome to the Underhive for a step by step painting guide for the gangs of House Goliath. I loved the original Necromunda back in the 90’s, so to continue the nostalgia trip I will be painting these new miniatures in the classic colour scheme red and black with distinctive green mohawks. Read on for a comprehensive guide on how to paint the miniatures pictured above.
Step 1 - Bases
All the new Necromunda plastic miniatures come with sculpted underhive details already modeled on. I decided to paint all the bases for the gang at once before attaching them to the miniatures as it would be way easier to paint and weather the bases separately and save a lot of time.If you would like to paint your Necromunda Underhive style bases like mine, follow the following steps. To save time I strongly recommend painting all the bases in a single batch. There are 12 steps but it’s very quick to do.
1) Coloured spray primer of Necrotic Flesh (Army Painter)
2) Drybrush of Pallid Wych Flesh (Citadel)
3) Paint any area of hazard stripes with Cassandora Yellow wash (Citadel)
4) Highlight any area of hazard stripes with Dorn Yellow (Citadel)
5) Paint on diagonal lines of Black (Citadel or Army Painter). Use a fine detail brush and watered down paint to keep it smooth. Do two coats.
6) Using a torn up sponge (or blister pack foam), dab on a tiny amount of Skavenblight Dinge (Citadel) to make the chipping effect.
7) Paint on any areas of brass with of Warplock Bronze (Citadel)
8) Highlight any areas of brass by painting streaks of Balthasar Gold and then Sycorax Bronze (Citadel)
9) Coat the entire base in gloss varnish. This will protect the acrylic paints from the enamel wash in the next step.
10) Wash the base with Winter Streaking Grime (AK Interactive). Leave to dry for 30-40 minutes. Note this is an enamel product so you will need to wash out your brush in white spirit, water won’t do.
11) Use a rag dampened in white spirit to gently wipe off the wash from the raised areas of the base.
12) Dab some watered down Nihlakh Oxide (Citadel) into the recesses of the brass areas. Paint the base rim to your taste, I used a 90/10 mix of Steel Legion Drab and Black (Citadel)
Step 1 - Coloured spray primer
As the heading says, I sprayed my miniatures with a coloured primer; Army Painter Desert Yellow. This spray is rather thick compared to the rest of the range, so be careful to use short sweeping bursts. I chose this yellow colour as a decent mid tione to start with, but a bone or grey would work equally as well I think. I primed my miniatures separate to the bases which I painted previously in the preceding step. Once the primer was dry on the miniatures I glued them to their bases with super glue.
Step 2 - Base colours
Right, it’s time to start laying down the basic colours for your Goliath gangers. I used a medium sized brush with a good point for this, specifically a Windsor Newton Series 7 size 1 brush.I paint these colours in this specific order so that you can touch up any mistakes with the colours that come afterward, rather than having a specific clean-up step.
Flesh: Bugmans Glow (Citadel)
Iron/Steel areas: Leadbelcher (Citadel)
Bronze areas: Warplock Bronze (Citadel)
Step 3 - Base colours (continued)
Black trousers, boots, straps and gasmask: Matt Black (Army Painter)
Dark blue trousers: Dark blue Grey (Vallejo)
Red armour plates, gas mask lenses and trouser piping: Mephiston Red (Citadel)
Yellow armour plates: Cassandora Yellow (Citadel)
Mohawk: 50/50 Caliban Green and Scorpion Green (Citadel)
Tubes, skulls and stim cells: Ulthuan Grey (Citadel)
Leather straps: Rhinox Hide (Citadel)
Step 4 - Highlights
With the hard work of painting the base colours done, it’s time to start bringing these brutes to life with some highlights. Use a fine detail brush and take your time to be precise with your brushstrokes in this stage. I used a size 00 brush from Windsor Newton Series 7 for painting highlights. I highlight most the the colours before doing washes as I find the washes will help blend the strong highlights together quickly and easily, rather than try for smooth transitions through the successive highlights.
Bronze areas: Balthasar Gold and then Sycorax Bronze (Citadel)
Black trousers, boots, straps and gasmask: German Grey (Vallejo)
Dark blue trousers: Thunderhawk Blue (Citadel) and then Russ Grey (Citadel)
Red armour plates, gas mask lenses and trouser piping: Evil Sunz Scarlet (Citadel) and then Wild Rider Red (Citadel)
Yellow armour plates: Dorn Yellow (Citadel)
Leather straps: Rhinox Hide (Citadel)
I do the flesh last to avoid having to do touch ups from mistakes on the other highlights. As you can see in the steps below I reduce the area I paint with every successive highlight.
Flesh base: Bugman’s Glow (Citadel). You have already painted this.
Flesh highlight 1: Cadian Fleshtone (Citadel)
Flesh highlight 2:: Kislev Flesh (Citadel)
Flesh highlight 3: Flayed One Flesh (Citadel)
Step 5 - Washes & finishing touches
The final stage consists of some washes, final highlights on a handful of colours not done yet and some weathering effects to give the gritty Underhive feel.
Washes
Flesh: Riekland Fleshshade (Citadel)
Red armour plates, gas mask lenses and trouser piping: Carroburg Crimson (Citadel)
Tubes, skulls and stim cells: Stormcloud blue (Secret Weapon Miniatures)
Iron/Steel areas: Nuln Oil (Citadel)
Mohawk: Coelia Greenshade (Citadel)
Dark blue trousers: Nuln Oil (Citadel)
Highlights
Iron/Steel areas: Ironbreaker (Citadel) and then Runefang Steel (Citadel)
Mohawk: Scorpion Green (Citadel)
Tubes, skulls and stim cells: Ceramite White (Citadel)
Weathering
Hazard stripes: Carefully paint on diagonal stripes of black over the yellow armour plates as shown. I used a fine detail brush and slightly watered down paint, doing two to three layers to get a solid but smooth effect.
Paint chipping on the chest plate: Using a chunk of torn blister pack foam I sponged on some Leadbelcher (Citadel) to create random paint chips on the armour.
Verdigris: Using a slightly watered down Nihilakh Oxide (Citadel) and a fine detail brush paint streaks down the chest plates. Also paint as a wash over the bronze stim pack on the gangers backs, and into any reccesses on the bronze armoured areas that you like the look of. You can do as much or little as you like to your own taste.
After giving the miniatures a final matt varnish spray to protect all that hard work, your Goliath gangers are complete! Below are images of the rest of my Goliath gang, so you can see more examples of these techniques applied to the different miniatures.
