Warhammer Community showcases painted Spearhead: City of Ash miniatures, inspiring army schemes

Warhammer turns a box set into a painter’s reference sheet

Warhammer Community’s painted gallery for Spearhead: City of Ash does something every miniature painter recognizes instantly: it takes the same sprues and proves they are not one scheme, but many. The feature is built around community-painted Skaven and Cities of Sigmar miniatures, and that alone makes it more useful than a simple product parade. Instead of telling you what the box is, it shows you what the box can become.

That matters because City of Ash is the kind of release painters actually plan around. Independent coverage puts the box at 42 models, with all but one being brand-new sculpts, and that kind of density means there is a lot of surface area to experiment with, from cloth and armor to fur, weaponry, and basing. When a boxed set arrives with this much fresh plastic, the painting choices stop being secondary and start shaping how the whole army will feel on the table.

Why this gallery lands with painters

The strongest part of the Warhammer Community showcase is the range of visual identities on display. The featured painters did not treat the Skaven and Cities of Sigmar models as a single locked-in army; they used the same miniatures to explore different color stories, levels of contrast, and tabletop presentation styles. One painter’s version may feel smoky and martial, while another pushes brighter faction colors or earthier tones that make the models read as a cohesive force in a completely different way.

That variety is exactly what gives a gallery like this its value. A painter looking at City of Ash can immediately start making practical decisions: do the Cities of Sigmar models lean into clean heraldry or weathered crusaders, and do the Skaven become grimy tunnel raiders or a more theatrical underhive swarm? The gallery does not answer those questions for you. It gives you proof that the box supports them.

The palette choices to steal

Because the same miniatures are shown in multiple hands, the gallery works like a quick-start guide to army identity. You can lift the ideas without copying any single model outright:

• Push contrast hard on the Skaven side. Their forms reward dirty cloth, rusty metal, pale fur, and aggressive spot colors that keep the mass readable on a 22-inch by 30-inch Spearhead board.

• Keep the Cities of Sigmar side disciplined. The armored humans and rank-and-file defenders look strongest when one or two accent colors carry the army, while the rest stays restrained and unified.

• Let the basing do some of the storytelling. Ash, cracked stone, soot, and scorched earth are obvious fits for the City of Ash name, but the gallery’s real lesson is that basing can either tie both forces together or separate them by mood.

• Use the box’s brand-new sculpts as contrast pieces. With almost the entire set newly sculpted, you can assign a brighter, cleaner treatment to officers and focal units, then keep the rest gritty and fast for speed without losing impact.

That last point is especially useful. A box with this many fresh models can feel intimidating, but it also gives you permission to build around a few strong visual anchors and repeat them across the force.

Adrian Phillips adds the tactical layer

The painting feature lands even harder because it is connected to prior tactical guidance from Adrian Phillips of Tabletop Titans. Warhammer Community had already sat down with him for top tips on the two new Spearhead forces, and that crossover matters. It tells you these models are being presented not only as display pieces, but as units meant to perform in the game as well.

That connection between gameplay advice and painterly presentation is one of the smartest things Games Workshop has done with City of Ash. When a recognizable player like Adrian Phillips is part of the conversation, the box starts to feel like a complete hobby project rather than a single purchase. You are not just assembling lists or collecting another release. You are learning how the army works, then seeing how it can look on the board once it is finished.

The box itself is built for hobby momentum

City of Ash is more than a pile of miniatures. Coverage of the box says it includes two complete Spearhead forces, a modular terrain set, a double-sided board, and mission and game-rule materials. That makes it one of those releases that can move from sprue to painted table fast, which is part of why the gallery feels timely rather than decorative.

The broader context matters too. Review coverage describes City of Ash as part of the ongoing refresh of both the Skaven range and the Cities of Sigmar range, with the Skaven force tied to Clan Eshin and the Cities side continuing that newer Embergaard-style identity. In other words, the painting gallery is not floating in isolation. It is helping frame a major product push on both sides of the box.

There is also the Spearhead format itself. With games played on a 22-inch by 30-inch board, presentation becomes visible very quickly. There is nowhere for a half-finished army to hide. That makes painted examples especially persuasive, because the format rewards armies that look finished, coherent, and immediately legible from arm’s length.

What this means for your next army scheme

If you are deciding how to tackle City of Ash, the gallery offers a simple but useful lesson: start with mood, not just color. Decide whether your force should feel smothered, regal, industrial, scorched, or subterranean, then let that decision drive your palette and basing. The same box can support a dozen different outcomes because the sculpts are clear enough to survive bold interpretation and detailed enough to reward restraint.

The smartest painters will use the gallery as a prompt, not a template. Steal the idea of a unified ash base, borrow a high-contrast Skaven treatment, or adopt a disciplined Cities of Sigmar palette with one sharp accent color running through banners, shields, and cloth. With 42 models and almost all of them new sculpts, City of Ash gives you plenty of room to build a force that feels personal without straying from the Warhammer look that makes the range instantly recognizable.

That is the real appeal of the feature. Warhammer Community is not just showing finished miniatures. It is showing how a shared starting point can become several different armies, each one rooted in the same box and each one ready to reshape how the next painter approaches the set.