This article is part of a sponsored series of articles exploring Freecompany’s Eldfall Chronicles tabletop miniatures game. 

The Empire of Soga is an interesting faction with a heavily pseudo Sengoku-Japanese inspired design, their colour palette is an interestingly limited one, centering around blue-greys and whites that contrast against the faction’s key colour, red.

In this article, we’ll look at how to paint these chilly samurai warriors and their fox-maiden friend. If you missed our article on playing the faction, you can find that here.

Note: I used a bunch of different branded paints during painting, some a little more esoteric than others, but I’ll try to provide a Citadel or Vallejo equivalent where I can find one.

Red Armour

Since Japanese armour typically doesn’t involve much in the way of bare metal plates, I did a little research and settled on the brilliant vermillion armour of Toyotomi Hidetsugu. Here we can see the contrast between the red of the lacquered helmet and cloth and the blue-grey threads woven between the stiff sections.

• To start, basecoat the red with two thin coats of Scalecolor Blood Red (Citadel Khorne Red)
• Shade the red with Nuln Oil.
• Go back over the middle 3/4 of each band with the Blood Red (Khorne Red).
• Now go over the middle 3/4 of the layer you just painted with a 1:1 mix of Blood Red and Antares Red (Evil Sunz Scarlet)
• Now do the same with pure Antares Red.
• Move up the red values scale, getting brighter with each colour, moving towards orange, and covering a smaller area each time. (Fig. 1)
• Once you’re satisfied with the contrast and brightness, thin down some pure black paint and carefully paint it into the gaps between plates, try not to get any on the armour bands, but if you do, quickly wipe it away with a fingertip. This is called Blacklining.
• Paint the ornamental trim with Dwarf Gold (Retributor Armour) and highlight with silver

Grey Cloth

• Basecoat all the cloth with Dark Reaper
• Mix some Fenrisian Grey into the Dark Reaper and apply a soft highlight on the raised areas
• Pure Fenrisian Grey for a fine edge highlight
• Glaze in shadow with any black paint you like.

Pale Face

• Basecoat the face with Flayed One Flesh
• Soft shade Guilliman Flesh thinned down heavily with Contrast Medium (1:3)
• Paint in the eye sockets with Rhinox Hide
• Paint the eye whites with any off-white you like, taking care that it’s not too yellow.
• Dot the eyes with a fineliner pen.
• Highlight the skin by mixing progressively more Pallid Wych Flesh into the Flayed One Flesh, layering up in smaller and smaller areas.
• Fine edge highlight of Pallid Wych Flesh on eyebrows and bridge of the nose.

White Fur

• Basecoat the entire area with Grey Seer
• Wash the fur with Dark Reaper, focussing towards the base of the tails.
• Very lightly drybrush the area with Grey Seer
• Mix white into the Grey Seer and drybrush very softly on the most raised areas.
• Finish with some fine edge highlights of pure white.

For White Cloth, simply follow the same instructions as the fur, but layer instead of drybrushing.

Wrapping Up

That wraps up our look at how to paint the Empire of Soga. If you’re interested in picking up Eldfall Chronicles yourself, you can find it on Freecompany’s store page.

And as always, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.