Reevaluating Silver Tower Painting Effort

Reevaluating Silver Tower Painting Effort

OK, so I may have underestimated the painting difficulty of the Silver Tower minis.

  • It turns out that the Chaos Familiars were lots of fun to paint so I didn’t try to rush through them
  • The Grot Scuttlings have a TON more surface area than I anticipated along with some soft facial details and spindly little stuff. And there’s eight of them.
  • The Karic Acolytes were indeed time consuming (I nailed that “3” prediction)
  • The Tzaangors had tons of little details and more colors that pretty much any other model
  • My Blue Horror scheme was easy
  • The Brimstone Horrors were also easy. 80% airbrushing.
  • The Pink Horrors looked easy, but they’re covered in bracelets (with gems), bangles (with gems), and rings! (with gems!!!).
  • The Skaven Deathrunners were surprisingly fun, after I figured out what the heck all their details were. Had a hard time reading that one at first.
  • I haven’t tackled any heroes yet
  • The Gaunt Summoner was easier than I expected, though I didn’t touch his robes with a brush. Airbrush saved lots of time there.
  • Ogroid looks like a mountain to paint, but should be fun.

Long story short: Having fun, but taking longer than expected.

Rigor Ranking explained

The number of miniatures tells you something, but not the whole story. So I went through and graded the miniatures based on the perceived rigor necessary to paint. Here’s my grading scheme:


  1. Quick and easy to paint
  2. A moderate amount of work
  3. Is detailed, difficult, time consuming, or hero level paint job

The updated table below shows Silver Tower jumping from a weighted average of 2.0 to 2.5. Quite a leap. Right up there with Blackstone Fortress.

Here’s the updated details:

DescriptionQuantityOriginal RigorAdjusted Rigor
Chaos Familiar812
Grot Scuttling813
Kairic Acolyte833
Tzaangor633
Blue Horror422
Brimstone Horror411
Pink Horror223
Skaven Deathrunner223
Darkoath Chieftain133
Excelsior Warpriest133
Fyreslayer Doomseeker133
Gaunt Summoner of Tzeentch132
Gryph-Hound111
Knight-Questor122
Mistweaver Saih133
Ogroid Thaumaturge133
Tenebrael Shard133
Total:51Weighted Avg: 2.0Weighted Avg: 2.5

Update on the other villains:

Lots of blue. I regret gluing the models down to bases because I saw an amazing basing scheme here: https://www.tga.community/forums/topic/1108-silver-tower-bases/

All of the bases on that page look great, but I especially like the scanned/photo printed bases. Those look so sharp. Maybe I’ll just do mordant earth with a layer of turquoise or gold over top.

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