Deorgard by Cult of Paint on Kickstarter (Preview)

Last Updated on November 10, 2020 by FauxHammer

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What is Deorgard? Who are Cult of Paint? and why, as someone who is most likely a Warhammer-first miniature painter, should you care? Well, come on in and check out our hands-on preview of these upcoming 54mm miniatures.

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I’ve been a follower of Cult of Paint for a while, a well-renowned UK based miniature painting studio with a great Youtube channel. Who offer commission work, painting classes, their own miniatures. And in no small feat, the guys behind the design of what are arguably, the world’s best airbrushes for miniature painters.

I was super excited to have a sideways introduction to this team and their new Kickstarter, through a contact at Artis Opus. I was simply asked which model is my favourite. It’s a hard choice because they are all excellent. But the standouts for me are Sceotend & Indryhten

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Sceotend - Richard Gray — Sceotend by Richard Gray

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Indryhten - Andy Wardle — Indryhten by Andy Wardle

Choosing between these two though was far more difficult, were I to pick a favourite, it would be Sceotend, the blind archer. This pulls together everything about fantasy that I love. But to paint, I’m feeling very inspired by Samurai style models at the moment so I said Indryhten – and look what arrived the very next day…

If you have followed the site for a while, you’ll know that I love a good parcel, and this packaging is beautiful. When you are buying a premium model like this, the out of box experience is crucial to deliver that high-quality feel. This does just that. I half wish their airbrushes came in this packaging to.

This was incredibly well packed, which is just what you would expect. Unseen is the extra layer of velvet-covered foam which lay atop the model and perfectly sandwiched the parts for shipping in the box. The sticker was just a bonus and has joined the collection on my Redgrass Games Wet Palette.

The parts came in two bags, which separated so that the body and arms were in one bag, and finer details like the swords, hair and cape were in the other.

Laid out, I realised that there are some extra parts for this model (unexpected as I did not scroll down the whole Kickstarter to see these alternate versions) allowing for a couple of configurations.

The head with the helmet plume can be swapped out for an unarmoured head with an elven crown (Tiara). The sword had two poses. Though I Could not figure out the second until after I built it.

Being a test print, this model came with no build instructions. Now I’m not too familiar with resin models of this quality (as they intimidated me) So i don’t know if it is typical for resin models to arrive without a guide. But some visual indication of where these extra parts went would have been helpful (But actually, more on this in a mo, because I’m a bit of an idiot).

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Parts Detailed

Apologies for the poor photo quality, this is the only shot I have of details like the ears before I clumsily snapped them off.

The helmeted head had the sprue gate up inside the helmet, which required a firm grasp of the head as I tried to dig the excess resin out it out.

Unfortunately, this lead to the above-mentioned breakage. Even after drilling, I could not achieve a flush fit with this head, whilst the unarmoured head (which I was avoiding so I didn’t have to paint flesh tones) snapped on like a glove.

It was a perfect fit, even now its painted it is not glued, as I intended to separate it from the model again to make the skin easier to paint. Though, when heavy-handedly trying to remove said head… I… Snapped off this ear too.

These are incredibly detailed modes and parts like the ears and crown are especially delicate. Though Cult of Paint reached out to me to note that they are reinforcing some of these finer details for general release. Honestly, though here, I blame myself. Thees are delicate and should be treated as such.

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Indryhten Sculpt - FauxHammer

The head looks rather handsome don’t you think?

The model fit together absolutely beautifully, with one minor exception I’ll go on to shortly.

There was very little clean up to do with this guys, that was a blessing because resin is a very different beast to plastic. Things like mould likes would benefit more from filing down rather than a quick scrape with a hobby knife. On finely detailed parts, this is tricky

Though with these, the limited flashing along with intelligent placement of the split in the mould meant that most parts were easy to scrape down, or even better, entirely hidden when built.

Not only did the parts fit together perfectly, things like the support pegs were excellently placed to support some of the slightly heavier parts of the model

Once built I was left with some spares.

A stone lamp to be used as part of the base. The head and plume shown in the box art model painted by Andy Wardle. And the arm with only a part of the sword. I could not figure out at first why I had a quarter of a sword. As I was painting it dawned on me that this arm and sword are there for a pose where Indryhten is drawing his sword from the scabbard.

Though this is clearly shown on the model if you look at the whole kickstarter page (so RTFM, hense why I’m an idiot).

Also, whilst several people have commented that his arms are too short to draw the sword. My response is usually “it’s fantasy and just needs to look cool”, which I think is much more polite than saying “oh shut up”. I mean come on, Sceotend is blind after all, let it go…

Below shows the damage I made to the ear and behind the head, you can see just how thin the other ear is (before I snapped this one off too)

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Indryhten Sculpt - Close Up

There’s also a load of details within the crown where support struts are used. These were delecate to remove and I was happy to have achieved this without damage. Snaps for hobby progress!

The one issue I had with the fitment was the right arm. For 2 reasons.

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Indryhten Sculpt - Fitment — Just look at the texture on that lower cape.
This remins me of Jubei from Ninja Scroll.

For one, I had carved too much material away in removing the mould gate. secondly, the hole for the peg had been filled with excess resin which pushed the arms just slightly away from the body of the model.

What I should have done here was rim down the peg, drill and pin the model. But this would have taken the time and I wanted this to be a speed paint job.

Deorgard – Painting 54mm Miniatures

This model was my first step into 54mm and I need to say something upfront… I don’t like elves.

I never have, Elves, Aelves, High-Elves, Low-Elves, Wood-Elves, Dark-Elves, Light-Elves, Snow Elves, Even Santa’s Elves can do one.

When I was a kid, I had a childminder. She knew I liked Warhammer, so one Christmas she went into a GW store and bought me a gift. How kind she was to get me a full squad of metal high-elves. And how ungrateful a brat I was when I turned my nose up at them immediately and spent the rest of that day begging the other kid she looked after to let me swap them for his barcode battler.

It’s just a race of characters I have never felt an affinity with. I’d take Gimli over Legolas any day.

But guess what, I love these and I now love 54mm.

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Indryhten Base Layers — Basic shading with Airbrush and silly-putty masking

54mm is a fantastic scale to work with. It’s not one I’ve worked with before. But i have found myself looking for more 54mm scale miniatures since.

I have lauded several times how Games Workshop’s shift from 28mm to 32mm with Primaris and Stormcast was a genius approach. That extra 6mm on their rank and file has awakened a new age of miniature painting and that extra canvas space has given us so much more room to manouver.

Well, 54mm is another leap. The fun here is that the model is still small enough to work with as a miniature, but with such incredible detail. Any larger and you may as well have an action figure. For anyone who has tried painting anything larger than a Troggoth can understand how unwieldy models become.

Since painting this, it haas changed my perspective of resin miniatures.

This size is spot on for a character quality miniatures and honestly, If Games Workshop doesn’t somehow make the Forgeworld miniatures jump to the 54mm scale, I have little interest in them going forward.

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Indryhten Edge Highlights Close Up — Added filters with airbrushed contrast paints and highlighted with various levels of drybrushing

I have had so much fun painting this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m clearly in a different league to the likes of Andy Wardle who did the box art one but this is because I personally have no interest in spending hours on one area of a model. I want to get the best results I can, as quick as i can and move on to something else. and this is the perfect scale to play with

It has been an incredibly fun and rewarding palette cleanser for me which has taken me away from (yet another load of) Space Marines and let me flex my creative muscles with something new and completely out of the box. I’ve learned so much from this about colour and contrast that I can take back to my miniatures. For example, can you tell that this was base coated in Purple, not black? There’s a reason for that and this would not pop as much as it does without that colour underneath.

The model has only been airbrushed and drybrushed, no skill; all technique. And the model just kept rewarding me with more details popping out as I progressed.

My favourite parts so far have been the robes and the loin-leathers. Parts of models where my limited skills usually prevent me from painting the necessary scratch lines and stippled dots to make smooth parts look realistically textured.

Here, I just basecoated it and drybrushed using the Series D brushes and fleshy colours to gently coax out the texture the model gave me.

Cult of Paint - Deorgard - Indryhten Final Highlights — Metallics added using Vallejo Metal Color

Essentially this thing painted itself and yet I am still super proud of the result becasue it’s mine. and to me, it looks better than any of my previously painted minis.

I’m Especially proud considering that this is less than 5 hours work so far and all I need to do is shade the metals, finish the eyes + lips and base him.

Deorgard – Final Thoughts

I’ll admit, that whilst I saw these models and I loved the look of them, I had no intention of backing the Kickstarter campaign, mainly becaue they are elves.

But that would have been a huge mistake. Painting this model has realy helped to open my eyes to miniature painting beyond Warhammer and it’s offspring.

With this, I no longer felt like I was competing with all the other Space Marine painters on Instagram. I didn’t even feel like I was competing with the incredible box art painters shown on the Kickstarter page, or any other miniature painter for that matter.

For the first time, in what feels like forever, I took a model. I had a colour scheme in mind, and I just relaxed into it whilst painting for me. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

There’s another 5 models available with Miniature and bust variants of each along with a host of backer extras available.

So if you are a Warhammer painter, as 99% of this site’s audience seem to be. Why not try something new? Cleanse your palette, take on a different challenge.

Especially whilst these are on Kickstarter, the price is so good and you get a free “Introduction to Bust Painting” video from guys with years of experience training this stuff included.

I’ve just backed the Combo tier so I can pick up The Sceotend Model and Heargeard Bust to go along with the unlocked masterclass videos (since there’s no chance of me getting to one of Cult of Paint’s live classes any time in the near future. (GO AWAY COVID!)

What do you think of Deorgard? Let me know in the comments