The avatar of the bloody-handed god, Kaela Mensha Khaine, daemon ally of the Aeldari, received a long awaited new miniature this year, and being such a great sculpt, I had to pick one up.

The spear-wielding Forge World version of the avatar always took my fancy, so I chose to arm it with the spear, along with choosing the retro-style head with its long, flowing plume for a solid serving of nostalgia.

Armour

I went through a few iterations on the armour before settling on black. The crimson from the box art didn’t inspire me, and I felt the flame effects might not work so well with the white of the Biel-tan armour (where the rest of my Aeldari are from). I felt black could be from any Craftworld, and I built a picture of a finished product in my mind before making the switch. After repainting a few armour plates, it seemed to pop more than the crimson so I applied it to the rest of the miniature. There’s no fancy shading on the Vallejo black armour, and there’s only a single line highlight of GW Dark Reaper.

Trim

The trim does most of the work in highlighting the black. This is a simple covering of Vallejo Gunmetal Grey, recess shaded with GW Nuln Oil, and edge highlighted with Vallejo Silver. To get the effect of fire showing through the holes in the trim, I used layers of reds, oranges, and yellows as with the molten effect below.

The molten effect probably looks the most difficult part to do, but it was quite simple and just takes some patience. The recesses follow the same process I used on my Sylvaneth some time ago which have their own how-to blog. The body has two very thin coats of GW Khorne Red which still let through a little of the black primer, but looked cool, so I left it. I then drybrushed Vallejo Model Colour Black on top for a matt finish.

Spear

While I’d primed the model black, the spearhead needed to be bright, so I covered it with a few coats of Vallejo White before applying thin coats of GW Yriel Yellow working from the inside out – just one coat in the middle, two coats further out, three further out still, so the yellow is more pronounced the further from the middle. Just like with the molten recesses, I blended through GW Fire Dragon Bright, GW Troll Slayer Orange, and GW Evil Sunz Scarlet, moving towards red closer to the edge. The edge itself is just a series of untidy blobs of GW Rhinox Hide all around, followed by a thin line of Vallejo Game Color Black at the extreme edge. The dark line down the middle of the blade is exactly the same. The runes on the flat of the blade are just Vallejo White.

The shaft is a GW Khorne Red base with GW Fire Dragon Bright in the runic recesses, and a thin coat of GW Troll Slayer Orange around the runes to make them glow.

Cloth

The cloth hanging from the waist turned out much better than I expected. I covered the black primer with a very thin layer of GW Khorne Red before directly shading the recesses with Vallejo Game Color Black. I then picked out the edges with thin lines of GW Khorne Red.

The Finished Product

I’m pleased with this one. After some experimentation and repainting, I think it’s turned into a very molten, angry shard of a god!

Do feel free to share links to your avatars and be sure to let me know if you’ve used anything in this process (or have an alternative).

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