How to Paint Spyre Hunters

Spyre Hunters are the smallest gang in Necromunda and the most rewarding to paint slowly. There are only a handful of models in a crew, every one of them is a bespoke sculpt, and the whole look rests on one effect: a smooth, pale, faintly iridescent hunting rig with nothing dirty anywhere on it. Where the rest of the underhive is rust and patched leather, these are laboratory-clean.

That also means there is nowhere to hide. A pearlescent surface shows every brush mark, so thin your paints further than feels necessary and expect more coats.

The signature look

Pale, cool, almost white armour plate with a soft blue-grey shadow and a hint of shifting colour across the panels, wrapped around a matt near-black bodyglove, with two or three small hot points of red or blue light at the optics and power cells. The contrast between a satin rig and a dead-flat suit is what makes the armour look polished - a model painted entirely in pale grey just looks unfinished.

The pearlescent plate

This is the non-metallic route, and it gives the truest pearl.

1. Spray or basecoat Grey Seer and get it perfectly smooth. Everything after this depends on that surface.
2. Shade the panel lines and recesses with thinned Drakenhof Nightshade. A cold blue shadow under a pale grey is the entire pearl illusion; a black or brown wash here makes it look like dirty plastic.
3. Layer Ulthuan Grey across the upper faces of each plate.
4. Edge-highlight White Scar on the top edges and the crest of each curve.
5. The pearl step: glaze very thin Ahriman Blue into a couple of panels, Volupus Pink into one or two others, and a breath of Nurgling Green somewhere low. Each glaze should be barely visible on its own. The shifting tint across neighbouring plates is what the eye reads as iridescence.

Vallejo Ghost Grey into Dead White, or Army Painter Ash Grey into a white, cover the same ramp.

The chrome alternative

If you would rather have true metal:

1. Gloss black undercoat, then basecoat Leadbelcher. The gloss underneath is what gives metallic paint its shine.
2. Shade Nuln Oil into the recesses only - never over the whole plate, which is what turns chrome into pewter.
3. Layer Ironbreaker on the raised metal.
4. Edge-highlight Stormhost Silver.
5. Glaze thinned Drakenhof Nightshade across the flats to cool the steel, and Ahriman Blue over one or two panels for the same shifting effect as the pale route.

Vallejo Chain Mail Silver and Natural Steel, or Army Painter Plate Mail Metal into Mithral Silver, substitute directly.

The bodyglove

The suit under the plate does the structural work, and it wants to be genuinely flat.

1. Basecoat Abaddon Black.
2. Layer Eshin Grey on the raised muscle and the tops of the limbs, keeping it tight.
3. A very restrained Dawnstone edge on the sharpest folds only.
4. Knock the whole thing back with thinned Nuln Oil, then matt varnish it with Munitorum Varnish.

Resist highlighting this brightly. Every step you take the bodyglove towards grey, the rig loses shine by comparison.

Lenses and energy glows

The only warm colour on the model, so make it count.

Red optics and power cells: Khorne Red in the recess, Evil Sunz Scarlet across the middle, Wild Rider Red at the lower edge, a White Scar dot in the top corner, then gloss varnish just the lens.

Blue energy fields and blades: Kantor Blue at the base of the effect, Calgar Blue through the middle, Baharroth Blue near the edge, and a thin White Scar line along the very edge. For a toxic green instead, run Kabalite Green into Sybarite Green into Moot Green.

A faint glaze of the glow colour onto the plate immediately around the lens sells it as light rather than paint. Keep that to a couple of millimetres.

Tips and common mistakes

• Thin everything, twice as much as usual. Smooth pale armour records every ridge of paint.
• Do not wash the whole rig. Shade the panel lines with a brush. An all-over wash instantly turns a polished hunting rig into a grubby one.
• Never weather these. No chips, no rust, no mud past the base rim. The gang's whole identity is that they arrived from the spire and did not touch anything.
• Keep the glows small. Three little hot points on a cool model is striking; six is a lightshow.
• Work in sub-assemblies. These rigs have deep recesses behind limbs and cabling - painting them assembled costs you more time than the pinning saves.

When the palette is where you want it, open this scheme in the generator to swap brands or push the rig warmer towards gold.