How to Paint House Van Saar

Van Saar are the one Necromunda house you cannot speedpaint your way out of. The bodygloves are smooth, tight-fitting and almost featureless - no folds to catch a wash, no straps to hide a mistake - so every uneven basecoat and every wobbly highlight is on display. The upside is that the scheme is only three colours: a teal-cyan suit, dark panels, and cold metal, with glowing tech as the accent. Once the ramp is decided, each fighter is quick.

They are also the gang where a little object-source lighting pays off more than anywhere else. The whole aesthetic is "dying men in radiation suits, lit from inside by their own equipment".

The signature look

A bright cyan-teal bodyglove, darkest in the recesses and almost white at the sharpest edges, with black or dark grey armour panels over it. Metal is clean and cold - these are the most technologically advanced house in the underhive and their gear works. The glow comes from lenses, power packs, rifle coils and grav-rig vents, always in the same cyan family as the suit so the model reads as one light source.

The bodyglove

Undercoat black. On a curved surface with no folds, the dark undercoat gives you the shadows for free.

1. Basecoat Stegadon Scale Green, two thin coats. Thin is not optional here; a thick coat on a smooth bodyglove is instantly obvious.
2. Shade the joins, the armpits, the backs of the knees and the panel lines with Drakenhof Nightshade for a colder result, or Coelia Greenshade for a greener one.
3. Layer Sotek Green over everything except the recesses. This is the colour the gang will be recognised by.
4. Layer Temple Guard Blue on the upper surfaces - the front of the thighs, the top of the forearms, the chest and shoulders.
5. Edge-highlight Baharroth Blue along the sharpest boundaries, and on a champion add a final fine catch of Blue Horror on two or three edges.

Vallejo Game Color painters can run Dark Turquoise into Turquoise; Army Painter Fanatic gives you Talisman Teal into Hydra Turquoise with Turquoise Siren on the edges.

The fast route

Undercoat Grey Seer, then one coat of Terradon Turquoise contrast over the bodyglove. For a bluer, colder gang use Talassar Blue instead. Edge-highlight Baharroth Blue and you are done. On a smooth surface contrast paints can dry blotchy, so work in one direction with a loaded brush and do not go back over a drying patch.

Panels, metal and cabling

Armour plates and the hard shells over shoulders and shins: Abaddon Black basecoat, Eshin Grey on the raised areas, a fine Dawnstone edge. Keeping these genuinely dark is what makes the cyan look bright.

Weapons and rig frames: Leadbelcher, wash Nuln Oil, edge Ironbreaker, then Runefang Steel on the sharpest corners and the muzzle. Van Saar guns should look machined, so keep the highlights crisp and skip the rust entirely - they are the one gang who maintain their kit.

Gold is rare and reserved: Retributor Armour shaded Agrax Earthshade on a champion's fittings only.

Cabling and hoses read best in a near-black grey - Eshin Grey basecoat, Dawnstone drybrush - so they separate from both the suit and the plates.

The glow

This is what sells the gang. Pick your emitters first - rifle coils, power packs, the vents on an Arachni-rig, lenses - and keep them all the same colour.

1. Basecoat the emitter Temple Guard Blue.
2. Layer Baharroth Blue across most of it.
3. Put pure White Scar in the very centre, where the light is brightest.
4. Glaze Aethermatic Blue contrast, thinned, outwards from the emitter onto the surrounding metal or suit for two or three millimetres. That spill is the whole trick.
5. Gloss varnish the emitter itself and leave everything around it matt.

For lenses and small crystals, a single drop of Soulstone Blue or Tesseract Glow technical paint over a light basecoat does the job in one step.

Faces are pale and drawn - Van Saar are dying of the radiation their own tech leaks. Rakarth Flesh, Reikland Fleshshade, Pallid Wych Flesh, Screaming Skull, and lean towards the grey end at every stage.

Tips and common mistakes

• Thin the basecoat, then thin it again. There is nowhere to hide on a bodyglove. Three thin coats beat two thick ones every time.
• Keep the panels black. Every step you highlight the armour plates, the cyan loses a bit of its punch. Dark plates are the frame around the colour.
• One glow colour. Cyan lenses, cyan coils, cyan vents. A green power pack and a blue lens on the same model reads as an accident.
• Do not weather them. No rust, no chips, minimal dust. Van Saar are the clean gang, and mud fights everything else in the scheme.
• Highlight the edge, not the face of the plate. On smooth surfaces a broad highlight looks like a smudge; a thin line looks like a hard edge catching the light.