Warhammer’s Old World setting is coming back, and you had better like painting textiles
Since the launch of Warhammer 40,000’s 8th edition, I’ve gotten back into the hobby of painting miniatures. Seven years in and I’ve painted plenty of Space Marines, all hard edges and shining armor, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it if I do say so myself. Muscled orks? No sweat. Ancient Necrons? Got it in the bag. Fleshy, tortured agents of Chaos? I can handle it. But the latest release for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, the highly anticipated Cities of Sigmar boxed set? It’s got me absolutely terrified.
Why am I so scared of these miniatures? Because many of the tiny little soldiers are wearing a lot of capes, cloaks, and other cloth accessories — big, smooth sections of a model that the painter is expected to fill in with texture, shadow, and volume. Painting textiles is a skill that I have yet to master, and one that I’ll need to start practicing for quite a while to get just right — especially with Warhammer Fantasy’s Old World setting primed to make a comeback.
What makes textiles so hard to paint? Well, with many of the other types of materials in miniatures there are specialized products and techniques that you can use as a kind of cheat. Got a big section of chainmail? Hit it with a metallic paint, full of mica flakes, to bring it to a gleaming luster. Then dull it down with a wash, which settles into the nooks and crannies and gives it depth. Then drybrush on another coat of paint to bring back a little of that shine. You can do similar things with armor, weapons, vehicles and more — really anything with a modeled texture or a sharp edge has a cheat or a hack associated with it, and often more than one.
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Textiles, on the other hand, are often just big blank spaces left on the model. There may be folds and
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