Beginning the Sisters of Battle

The madness of school teaching in Covid-riddled England has given me little time for hobbying (and writing about said hobbying) recently, but with the half-term break finally here I’ve managed to make some progress on a new project.

A highlight of the gaming calendar at my local GW store is its annual narrative-driven, 40k-themed, skirmish-type tournament, based this year on a unique hybrid ruleset that combines the core mechanics of 9th edition 40k with the list-building of the 2021 kill team re-work and a handful of house rules for balance and flavour. 

The small-scale forces work perfectly for large multi-player games and keep the hobby demands quite low compared with the typical slow-grow tournament. And with my relaunch box for the Sisters of Battle sitting unused since 2019, it was a good opportunity to cross some more units off the pile of shame. I’m running my sisters as the Order of the Wounded Heart—one of the successor orders minoris of the Valorous Heart.

Enough context—here is my starting fire team:

And its warlord:

This conversion uses the cannonness sculpt from the Sisters of Battle launch/patrol box (with some careful slicing/scraping to remove the plasma pistol from the inside of her vestment), a head, condemnor boltgun, and power sword from a battle sisters squad, and a greenstuff wimple (the draped collar worn under the chin that covers the neck).

As I knew this would only need to be a small force to start with, I wanted to use the project as an opportunity to spend a little more time focusing on bases and faces than I normally do. I started each base using torn-off pieces of cork sheet, sized up against each mini’s feet, around which I then built up a rough texture using Crayola model magic (a light-weight, air-drying clay). 

After drying, I applied a thin layer of wall filler to the flat surface of the cork to create a plaster/concrete effect and glued modelling sand and some smaller offcuts of cork onto the clay (not the same base shown below but you get the idea!). They were then primed, basecoated, and drybrushed up in greys and browns.

For faces, I start with the eyes, using Ulthuan Grey for the whites and thin lines of Abaddon Black for the pupils and “eyeliner” just around the upper inside edge of the eye socket to help accentuate it. After neatening up the edges with a mid-skintone, I then start blending a deep pink (Screamer Pink) into the skintone to add some warmth to the cheeks and lips. It’s then just a matter of highlighting the nose, chin, and brow/forehead with progressively lighter skintones. 

I've started basecoating the next fire team of another five sisters so should have some more progress to show soon and maybe a few breakdowns of the rounds that they've fought so far.