How To Paint The Silent King

In our How to Paint Everything series, we take a wait at dissimilar armies of the Warhammer universe, examine their history and heraldry, and look at several different methods for painting them. Today we are working on the Szarekh, The Silent Rex – a cute model that has emerged from the void to repossess the milky way.

We've already covered Necrons in depth in our expect at How to Pigment Necrons, merely today Rockfish is tackling the Silent King specifically, an intimidating model that requires a lot of work in terms of associates and panting and can be a existent challenge (read: Hurting in the ass) for even experienced hobbyists.

Who is Szarekh, The Silent Rex?

Millions of years ago while the Necrons were still a mortal species called the Necrontyr they held sway over a massive galaxy spanning empire that despite their overwhelming power and advanced technologies suffered from infighting and an obsession with death. While officially nether the ultimate command of the Silent Male monarch, the leader of the triarch that was supposed to impose their will upon the empire and direct it to a mutual purpose, the empire was slipping abroad as each overlord wanted their own piece of the galactic pie. The empire was able to reunite in the classic way, by rallying the warring factions to fight confronting a common foe. To this cease Necrontyr sought to pillage the secrets of the the Old Ones, a fifty-fifty older race that had long since achieved immortality and were the creators of the enigmatic webway. While the war served its purpose in uniting the previously warring lords, information technology turns out fighting a enemy with immortality and advanced tech is pretty hard and the Necrontyr were doomed to neglect.

As the war in heaven proceeded and the Necrontyr were being existence whittled away, Szarekh the final of the Silent Kings made a deal with the enigmatic C'Tan that would grant the Necrontyr the power needed to crush the Old Ones and their creations, and it would only take the minor toll of their souls and sense of self. With the entirety of the Necrontyr willingly or unwillingly converted into unyielding bodies of living metal shackled to the Silent Rex'due south will combined with the C'Tan unleashing their terrifying ability, the Necrons were able bring the war to a close. After which the Necrons turned on the C'Tan that stole their selves, shattering them at their weakest moment while fifty-fifty their might was exhausted. Having conquered the Erstwhile Ones but without the power to claim the milky way from the remaining creations of the One-time Ones, Szarekh sent his citizens into a sleep that would concluding millions of years with the hope of awaking to a universe ripe for reclamation and possibly a way to return that which which had been lost in the transition to their new forms. His task consummate, the Silent Rex broke the command protocols that bound the Necrons to him and left the galaxy to its own devices while he contemplated the fate of his race.

At present, untold millions of years subsequently Szarekh has returned from his cocky imposed exile and has begun to unleash a mysterious program that will render the Necrons to their rightful place in the galaxy and possibly to their flesh and bones too…

Where to Read More

Due to beingness a Xenos leader with previously little direct presence in the galaxy, outside of the codex the Silent King is in but a single book, The Word of the Silent King by Fifty J Goulding. While the author has non personally read this volume, it is old plenty that his portrayal and office have inverse in the intervening years, so it most likely has been retconned out of relevance.

Playing with Szarekh, The Silent King

We're current working on an update of our Start Competing: Necrons article that will cover Szarekh – Spoiler: He's an accentedmonsteron the tabletop and worth fielding – just in the meantime, bank check out these resource:

Our Competitive Necrons Roundtable word
Competitive Innovations in 9th covering top Necrons lists

How to Pigment Szarekh: Rockfish's Method

Szarekh, The Silent King. Credit: Rockfish — Szarekh, The Silent Rex. Credit: Rockfish

I am not going to be going into quite as much detail as some of my HTPE articles because my colour scheme has already been covered in the articles for Szeras and Necrons in general. Instead I am mostly going to be covering unique stuff, particularly where I messed up while building the model, along with some full general in progress shots.

How not to build the Silent Male monarch

So I screwed it upwardly in a bunch of ways just I am pretty happy with my sub assemblies and so I will start in that location then become into detail on my mistakes and how to avoid them. (Having a brain non similar a cue ball is the outset recommendation)

I personally congenital the dais as i piece considering I have concerns nigh durability otherwise, that thing has a lot of spindly connections that I would want a solid plastic cement join on. The triarch along with the cloak each being on their own bases worked pretty well, they are individually quite simple models then I would probably not separate them any farther. Now on to where I screwed up, I am sure the acute amid you will have already noticed.

I swear I somehow graduated university, I must have left my brain at the ceremony

This area is simply a concentration of dumbass free energy. The most obvious beingness the two circled symbols are reversed from when that structure exploded into a million pieces while trying to put them in identify, as it turns out in that location is a simple solution to avoid this – look at the instructions after it explodes. ?

Y'all tin can also encounter the middle did not quite go together right either after the explosion, y'all cannot run into this in the final model, so whatever. What you lot tin see is that the ii uh… endowments under the lacky platforms are not consistent, the mode to avoid this is rubbing some neurons together and checking that they match when you are building it.

I can also offering some suggestions on areas that I went against the instructions internationally, the first being to build the stairs in left and right halves rather than past level as they are difficult to align with all the pocket-sized pieces and seperate parts. The other matter is I would recommend building the characters from the lesser up, otherwise you volition take difficulty in having the correct posture as they have a bunch of big heavy pieces with small connection points that can sag during structure.

Painting Overview

As usual for Necrons I started past airbrushing iron hand steel on before washing the crap out of the main stuff with both agrax and basilicanum and then drybrushing with ironbreaker. I too picked out some details with gore-grunta to become some other metal colour on the characters.

The cloak got a flake of a separate treatment, the two phase wash was replaced with a unmarried coat of gryph-hound orangish before the same ironbreaker was used. For how fiddling endeavour this is it gives a really slap-up result, merely I would suggest beingness careful every bit the dissimilarity will try to pool similar crazy effectually the lower sections so I would keep a eye on it for a fleck.

Adjacent up I threw the basecoats of mournfang, stegadon, lupercal and corvus onto where I thought it appropriate.

Later on washing those colours with wyldwood, terradon, coelia and basilicanum respectively I then base coated the regal with naggaroth, I usually do this to prevent any of the washes potentially getting on the purple and tinting it.

I and so worked the purples through daemonette hide and dechala lilac.

I then spent the next 10 thousand years picking out edges on the black stone with sotek and baharroth blue, which while cool looking is a bit exhausting.

I and then went running around with other highlights: the black got dark reaper and russ, green got sons of horus and sybarite, and the brown got skrag and tau calorie-free ochre.

Then it was time for the last highlights of flayed i on all the not metallic colours and storm host for the metallics. I then did the concluding associates because I was impatient, some fourth dimension between admiring it and this flick I too threw the vallejo grey sand basing paste on.

I finished the bases off with baneblade and darkoath flesh drybrushed rakarth, before topping with gamers grass beige, dry greenish and light green tufts.

More than Details

If any of these steps were a bit unclear, I have way more details on specific colours and techniques combined with step past step pictures in my part of the HTPE: Szeras commodity. For more on painting Necrons, including my dynasty, cheque out How to Paint Everything: Necrons. And equally ever, if you take whatsoever questions or feedback, driblet usa a notation in the comments below or electronic mail us atcontact@goonhammer.com.