How to Paint Ash Waste Nomads

Nomads are the most forgiving Necromunda gang to paint and the most rewarding to vary. Almost the whole model is wrapped cloth, so there are no flat armour panels to keep crisp and no hard edges to line. Contrast paints do most of the work, and because these are desert wanderers rather than a uniformed force, mismatched wraps are correct rather than sloppy.

The signature look

Layered, sun-bleached wraps and robes in ochre, sand and pale bone, over dark undersuits and goggled or masked faces. Against all that warmth sits the one cool note: turquoise on beads, straps, banner cloth and jewellery. The mounts - helamites, duneskuttlers and spinewyrms - are chitin, which is glossy, banded and much darker than the riders. Dust ties the whole warband to the same ground.

The temptation is to make everything one colour of sand. Resist it. A nomad's kit is scavenged, so the wraps should sit in a range of related tones rather than a single one.

The wraps and robes

Undercoat Wraithbone. The whole scheme is warm and light, so a bone undercoat saves a coat of paint everywhere.

1. Basecoat Zandri Dust, two thin coats.
2. Shade Agrax Earthshade into the folds, or Seraphim Sepia if you want the cloth to stay yellower and sunnier.
3. Layer Ushabti Bone across the raised cloth, leaving the shade in the creases.
4. Highlight the fold peaks and hems with Screaming Skull.
5. On the outermost wraps only - the ones that have taken the most sun - add a final catch of Pallid Wych Flesh.

For the variety that makes a war party look real, run the same steps with a different basecoat on roughly one wrap in three: Karak Stone for a paler bleached cloth, Tallarn Sand for a dirtier one, and Steel Legion Drab for the underlayers that never see daylight. The ramp above still finishes all three.

Vallejo covers this with Iraqi Sand, Dark Sand, Buff and Bone White. Army Painter Fanatic gives you Skeleton Bone, Pale Sand and Brainmatter Beige.

The fast route

This is the gang contrast paints were built for. Undercoat Wraithbone and put one coat of Skeleton Horde over the wraps - it shades the folds and leaves the raised cloth pale in a single pass. For the warmer, more ochre cloth that matches the studio scheme, Aggaros Dunes does the same job a shade darker. Leather straps, belts and satchels take one coat of Snakebite Leather and need nothing else.

A whole war party can be finished this way in a couple of evenings, and a Screaming Skull drybrush over the top afterwards lifts it most of the way to the layered result.

Turquoise accents

The turquoise is a small proportion of the model and it carries the entire scheme, so place it deliberately: beads and amulets, the cloth of a banner, the wrap of a rifle stock, the trim on a chieftain's robe. Two or three placements per fighter is plenty.

Basecoat Sotek Green, shade Drakenhof Nightshade, layer Temple Guard Blue, then highlight Baharroth Blue on the raised edges. Terradon Turquoise works as a single-step alternative on beads too small to layer. The contrast route is one coat of Akhelian Green over the bone undercoat, which is genuinely enough on a bead.

Metal jewellery around the turquoise wants to be warm, not silver: Balthasar Gold, shaded Agrax Earthshade, edged Sycorax Bronze.

Chitin mounts

Helamites and arthromites need to look shelled and organic, not armoured.

1. Basecoat Rhinox Hide over the whole shell.
2. Wash Agrax Earthshade, letting it pool between the plates.
3. Drybrush Mournfang Brown across the raised banding, then Balor Brown more lightly on the ridges and spines.
4. Glaze Gryph-hound Orange over claw tips, spine ends and the leading edges of the shell, which gives the translucency real chitin has.
5. Gloss varnish the shell and matt varnish everything else. That difference in finish is what sells it as an insect.

Eyes in Abaddon Black with a dot of Evil Sunz Scarlet read well and take seconds.

Dust and basing

Nomads live in the ash, so the dust should be part of the model rather than confined to the base. Stipple Karak Stone up from the feet over boots, shins and the lower hems of every wrap, then drybrush Zandri Dust lightly over the same area and fade it out about a third of the way up. On the mounts, take it higher - up the legs and onto the underside of the body. Astrogranite or Agrellan Earth on the base, drybrushed Karak Stone, ties everything together; the basing guide covers the texture paints in more detail.

Tips and common mistakes

• Vary the wraps. One sand colour across an entire war party looks like a uniform, which is exactly what these people do not have.
• Keep the turquoise rare. It is an accent. Painting every strap and pouch turquoise turns a striking scheme into a busy one.
• Take the dust up onto the model. Dusty base plus clean boots is the commonest thing that stops a desert warband looking like it walked there.
• Gloss the chitin, matt the cloth. Two finishes on one model is a five-minute job and does more than an hour of extra highlighting.
• Do not shade the wraps with black. Nuln Oil turns warm sand grey and cold. Brown and sepia only.

When the palette is right, open this scheme in the generator to swap brands or push the accent colour further towards blue.