The local Warhammer store is having their 1st Anniversary painting competition, so I'm painting up a Troglodon for the event. The theme is "hero" so the Skink Oracle on the back is the hero. So I'll be entering Skink Oracle (Suitably Aztec-sounding name), the Unflinching Gaze of Azyr.

The oracle's body is the stock model from the Troglodon. I swapped the head for an old metal Skink Priest head. The head for the stock model suffers from the injection molding process, and doesn't have a lot of character from the side. The metal one has cracked lips and a more grizzled appearance.

 As much as I love the whole "bifurcation" thing this model has going on (fate's path diverges... the skink has a split tail, the Troglodon has a split tail, the divining rod the skink holds has a split end) I wanted the model to be a little more savage than that. Maybe he tells the future by bifurcating your skull and reading your spilled brains, I dunno.

Here he is with his skink champion club. The feathers are regular paper, stuck into a small hole I drilled in the club and some very thin superglue wicked in for rigidity. 

For the base, I wanted a little drama, so I put a vignette of two skinks taking down a plaguebearer. The stones and fallen idol are sculpey, the plants and vines green stuff. The plaguebearer is a Plague Drone rider (I used the plague drone as a manticore for my nurgle sorcerer lord) cut up and reassembled to lay moderately flat. 

The  plan was to make the plants by the plaguebearer withered in response to his proximity, but I haven't found a good color scheme to portray that. The darts are also intended to glow, but the yellow I chose just blends in too well with the colors of the plaguebearer. I'll probably switch to blue to make the osl noticeable.

I decided on black eyes for the lizards with 1-2 white speculars. I think it makes them much more vicious looking than big pupil anime eye lizards.

Contest ends in two weeks, so expect some Troglodon pics soon!