The team’s had a wide variety of hobby going on in April, let’s check out what they’ve been up to.
Bair
Hell yeah, first in this month! It was Salute right near the start of the month and I finally picked up some Arcworlde minis from Wap Miniatures. I got the rulebook last year and toyed with the idea of getting a couple warbands since but no one local was playing…so my friend Rob (Pointyone) who was with me strong armed me into starting with him. It took a lot of convincing as I’m sure you can imagine…with a starter-warband plus a blister to add at the convention. I decided on the Wizards because I’ve been reading a lot of Discworld recently and they give off very strong Unseen University vibes.
So, I’ve been painting them up since and even got a few more as well to keep adding to the warband. In-game you get to pick a a college for your wizards to be from which gives you the spell lore. I wanted to theme them around nature magic, maybe not quite druids by aesthetic, but studying the wilds of the Milldark Forest (the setting of Arcworlde) and went for nice bright greens and earthy tones.
Naturally I had to add the giant magical beast to the mix! These minis really are lovely and have just been so much fun to paint, too. I love the cartoony, whimsical, sort of aesthetic and the non-super-serious expressions on a lot of the faces.
The whole warband all together! That’s a lot of gold pieces to field, but man, do they look great all together.
And then started on the second warband, Halflings! With a chef (the warband’s way of casting magic) mounted on a walking cauldron, naturally, and a TrollHound painted up like everyone’s favourite Saturday morning cartoon dog; as soon as I got a brown coat of paint on him I just knew how he needed to be painted.
Lastly, though not really in order, before the whole-warband we have Jerry of Rivershire, a halfling monster hunter that a friend very kindly 3D printed from me; Warp Minis do a series of printable models in the same style bt that don’t really cross over much with their cast models, I’m just making this one work cause it’s cool.
I didn’t actually think I’d have all of these done before the end of the month to include them but accidentally painted the lot in one evening, finishing them up the next morning. Oops?
Keep your eyes open for more from me about this game, it’s really really wonderful! Even got to play it a few times already, too, and loving it.
CYRAC
I’ve actually been doing a lot of Kill Team hobby for April! I was mid-way on completing my 15 operative Black Templars Angels of Death but then switched to finish off my Alpha Legion Plague Marines instead. They’re all built from the new Mk3 power armour HH kit with the Sorcerer being a Sons of Horus miniature. Very fun overall, just waiting for the Mk3 Traitor Consul to come back in stock!
Thundercloud
Second. Well this has been a bit of a bitty month. With me away for the first two weeks and starting a special secret project in May this has been something of a clean up month.
I painted the Halo terrain for Halo: Flashpoint. I picked up the game, preordered the first quarter of releases bundle and now have to start getting things painted. I logically only have to paint up like 8 figures to play the game, but I now have 25 (21 Spartans and 4 Elites) to get through, and I need to think up good schemes to put them in. Halo is starting to have events going on, so I need to paint up at least 16 Spartans to have all the unique minis so far painted up. I’m also looking forward to the Brutes supplement, and that’s another 13 figures.
NotThatHenryC
This month for me has been a bit dominated by getting models ready for a review of Legions Imperialis Tanks and Knights. Read all about them.
I did manage to find a bit of time to do some stuff for my own armies. I had this box of Indomitus Terminators for a while and decided my 30k Raven Guard could use them. I cut off a lot of detail, without losing any fingers, and replaced a few bits with heresy-era weapons and gubbins.
Initially they were all pretty much identical, as my idea was this was a set of guys who’ve just been given their new suits to wear. That was a bit boring though so I gave them a few details. The Sergeant has a chainfist and one of the other guys a red arm and a big XIX instead of a Raven, marking him as a grumpy old former Deliverer. I think they’ll work pretty well with my Mk6 marines, though they’re almost as big as my Boxnaught.
TheArmorOfContempt
Hey guys, I don’t get to contribute often to Hobby Round-Up, and even when I do have something I completed I simply often forget to submit it. That being said Adepticon just wrapped up at the end of March and I walked away with a pretty big hobby accomplishment.
Back at the Grand Narrative 2022 my Ultramarines won best painted army, alongside friend and fellow contributor Craig’s Rainbow Warriors, and honestly I didn’t know if I would ever top that in terms of recognition for my efforts. Well, for the first time Adepticon decided to run a convention-wide painting competition separate from The Golden Demons and Crystal Brushes of the past. Armies from every hobby that ran a team event were eligible for this award. Now, I did not know this would be a thing when I began working on my display for my two Genestealer Cult Kill Teams, one of which has been done for several years, and the other I completed in the fall of 2024. I had simply wanted to win the Kill Team Doubles event, and had come up with a fun Team Theme and Display idea, along with recruiting one of the best players in the world as my partner in an attempt to compete in every possible award category for that event.
The idea to use an old Union Lunchbox as a sort of base of operations for my Genestealer Cult had been swimming around in my head ever since I started them for Necromunda and I finally took steps to complete this project. This was performed by a considerable amount of sawing, cut, and filing of the Necromunda base tiles and walls. I did my best to measure out the dimensions of the box that you see and planned out what sections I wanted to glue together and paint, repeatedly doing dry fits to see how things would go. Nothing really fit perfectly but once I had a 99% solution I sprayed and painted everything up using a combination of the Studio Scheme and Duncan Rhodes’s Painting Academy Guide.
Lastly, I add a string of LED lights to each level and put a thin coat of contrast red over them to give them a Emergency Lighting feel. The whole project took me about three months, which comes close to a year if you factor in the time I spent on all my GSC models that populated it. In addition, I cut up pieces of paper clip and littered the floors with them to act as footholds for magnets I added to every model’s base. While I wouldn’t trust them over a bumpy road the display can technically be closed and transported with all the models inside and affixed to their “assigned” positions.
Anyway, in the middle of my matches during the Kill Team event my teammate and I were approached by the celebrity judges painting team consisting of some of the more well known names in the hobby and invited to the Saturday showcase and award ceremony. I was pumped!
Author’s Note: I am on the right.
Saturday night a whole range of displays from almost every game system participating in the event were present, a first for Adepticon, which has traditionally focused on GW systems.
Photos provided by Green Banner Event Company.
Not to draw things out, but my attention to detail on each individual model was apparently enough to impress the judges, and I won Best in Show for the Skirmish Game category.
See you at the next round-up! (This is a lie!)
JellyMuppet
I’m BACK baby and so is the Thief of Reason. I took this big freak to Greetings from the Warp and this big chunk of daemonbound muscle only died once in 4 games. I painted him entirely using the new Blanche paints and they were pretty nice. Highlighting up to bone and shading down to super dark blue leads to an incredible array of contrast.
This month I’ve been getting back into AT with the intent of doubling the size of my various Maniple of the Legio Kydonion “The Death Cry”. My first two new Titans are built out of milliput, bones, florist wire, seashells and spare bits of plastic.
Pequod is a grafted cow’s vertebrae, grafted together with green stuff, and lil’ plastic hemispheres from hobbycraft for eyes. He is going to use his melta lance and ursus claws to kill warlords, like how Melville’s Pequod hunts whales I guess? I just wanted a chad with a harpoon.
Meanwhile, Salvatae Saggitae (Hail of Arrows) is simply every available rocket, missile or self-propelled weapon in my collection pushed together with super-glue and baking soda. His arse is made of a seashell from somewhere in Bequia that looks like an intestine. It was a gift from Toby Wrong, and I’ve spent the last 6 months using it as a sculpting tool when I was something to be yucky. I’ve replaced it in my sculpting kit with a broken shard (what I think????) is pig-bone.
[PIC INCOMING]
Next up is my clawlord Quinpedes (Five-Legged), a sequel to Tripedes (Three-Legged), who I am making out of a Ravening Gnarloak. No pictures yet, she’s still early in the gestating phrase. The milliput is still wet and his mouth is too big.
McWhat
Going to Adepticon for the first time in a few years definitely recharged my batteries for gaming and hobbying. Nothing like being surrounded by thousands of like minded nerds to validate your poor life choices!
That being said, this is a particularly busy time of year for me so my painting took a backseat for a bit. I wound up rallying and doing a good bit more than I expected, including several different games.
First, I owed a favor to Goonhammer historical contributor Muggins, so I painted…uhh…whatever these guys are. (Edit I am told these are called landsknecht.)Â Admittedly quick and dirty but that’s how I roll with historicals. I used these to test out some of the many new Pro Acryl products I bought, and may I say their stuff continues to rule.
I then started working on the We Don’t Need Their Scum box for Star Wars: Shatterpoint. It’s a box of fan favorite bounty hunters from ESB, with a frankly egregious absence of Zuckuss and 4-LOM. Anyway. I started with Bossk for no particular reason than I thought he’d be fun. He was but wow did it take longer than expected. There’s more fiddly detail on that guy than you’d think, and a number of different colors to work on. That being said I actually really like how he came out:
After that slog, I wanted something a little more quick and simple. That was a good excuse to keep slowly plugging away at my own historical stuff, namely my Dark Age Welsh for SAGA. I’d yet to paint a warlord, so I went with this mounted warlord (also courtesy Muggins).
Two more bounty hunters quickly followed- specifically IG-88 and Dengar. I think Dengar is fine, but I should not have used metallic paints on IG-88. I don’t necessarily care to learn or use actual NMM techniques, but had I used non metallic dark grays and blacks, I think the model would look less muddy and fit in my style more. Maybe I’ll redo him at some point. (Probably not.)
Next was a quick side trip to Marvel: Crisis Protocol featuring the newest form of Loki, ironically representing a much older version of him. I tried some new techniques I learned about at Adepticon when painting his face. Obviously I need to work on it more. But I do think his costume came out pretty solid. Really helps having a solid recipe for yellow!
Next I rounded out the bounty hunter box with Boba Fett. He was more fun to paint than I anticipated. I think I could have done a better job with the weathering, but the rest I think looks pretty solid.
Finally, a last minute addition of bonus Shatterpoint model, Ki-Adi Mundi. I’m told he’s pretty good in game, but never get to actually play. So who can say? I continued experimenting with new techniques for flesh, and was a little happier with the result here.
In the immediate future I am going all in on the various Rogue One boxes that are slowly coming out for Star Wars: Shatterpoint. As a bona-fide crazy person for Rogue One and Andor, I am really looking forward to it!
SRM
I’ll spare you the details of my Adepticon adventures, but if you want to read my comprehensive travelogue, I wrote that up in its own article. All you need to know for this roundup is that I came back from Adepticon trench-pilled and crusademaxing, and spent most of April painting up a warband of trenchy bois.
Special thanks to my buddy Barkin for printing these out for me. It was my first time working with this much 3D printed resin, and while I missed the flexibility and durability of plastic, the detail was crisp as hell. I don’t want to take up too much of this round-up with my words about painting these hellworld Irish, so I went ahead and wrote a Warband Showcase article for you to read instead!
As for next month, I’m moving, but we’ll see if I can squeeze out a little time to paint some Kriegers, Trench weirdos, or something altogether different.
BuffaloChicken
Recently there’s been a lot of talk about Warhammer 40,000 terrain, in particular the move toward standardized tournament setups and the decline of classic narrative battlefields. With discussions on the topic in recent episodes of Goonhammer affiliate podcasts The 40k Badcast and The Independent Characters, thought it might be relevant to share some of my recent thematic terrain pieces here!
Goal was to capture an industrial mining terrain set that would work with both my Squat and Genestealer Cult armies, as well as my existing jungle terrain and Imperial Catachan pieces. In addition to the terrain, a set of 20 servitors serve as thematic “scenario NPCs” for Necromunda or narrative 40k scenarios.
Hope this inspires some readers to give narrative terrain a go. It’s lots of fun, both to make and to play on! Currently on my painting desk are themed objectives to match, made from leftover bits on 40mm bases.
Saffgor
This has been a big month for me, with my completed 2k showing up to its first RTT, a ton of new friends met in my local scene, and the patient wait for rules previews regarding the Servitor Battleclade. Cawl in particular is a stand-out, being one of my better paintjobs I’ve done, coupled with the agonizing kitbash between resin, plastic, metal, and green stuff.
With a solid 2k of Haloscreed under my belt though, it’s high time to expand the army, starting with Onager Dunecrawlers, still a work-in-progress, but by far my most exciting conversion. Finding a Knights player who only wanted the crab legs off of an Onager made this a breeze to put together…barring the sawing and rough work getting the canopy to comfortably sit on the Carnelian Greatspite.
I’ve also got ~45 Electro-Priests on the assembly line, also WiP, for the day when Datapsalm becomes playable. I love being able to make the OOP Tarantulos Brood workable, and once the entire swath of volt-crazed cultists are ready, it’ll be a sight to behold.
Michael O “Mugginns”
With AdeptiCon in the rear view mirror, I had a ton of enthusiasm and impetus to get a bunch of stuff done. Right now I’m focused on my Middle Ages stuff for SAGA. I have this probable pipe dream of having an entire Middle Age town that we can fight over and I’m still buying and painting buildings for that.
I also completed a few minis this month. I rolled a Warlord for our SAGA campaign that is wealthy, and the current guy I have doesn’t look wealthy at all. I painted a new Warlord and my current Warlord is his large adult son.
I also painted Fish Lass Maria from Bad Squiddo Games for my daughter as her Warlord for her shieldmaiden army. Love this mini. Each cat is painted as a cat we have currently or have had in the past, as my daughter’s hobby is cats.
I also painted a 3d printed Thorfinn for my son. Thorfinn is the main character of the manga/anime Vinland Saga, a series that we’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
The last set of dudes I painted because I realized I needed more Levy for my Norse Gaels and wanted them to be shieldless so they’d look more like the thralls they are. Most are Gripping Beast minis, with a few Foundry and Footsore mixed in.
Liam_Jordan
Most of this last month has been spent deciding what list I was going to take to a Warhammer: The Old World Team event, getting a few practice games in, changing the list and with around a week left deciding I needed to commit and just paint the last few models to make the list complete.
With this in mind the Chaos Dragon and 2nd Giant Chaos Spawn (The Jabberslythe) got added to my army ready for the event. This takes me to around 4500pts of painted Chaos ready to go (even if 1500+pts of it are Characters). I’ll be trying to make this a nice round 5000 before long I expect then maybe work out on the next project.
Event did go well though. Personally went 4-1 only losing out in the last round to a Bretonnian Pegasus Deathstar with the team winning the event overall with the highest score in the 20-0 system and going undefeated over the 5 rounds.
Cronch
April ended up being much quieter than March for me, but that’s not hugely surprising. Motivation tends to come in waves, and I ended up indulging my video game habit much more than my miniatures one.
I did finish a couple of things though. I dug into the box of random miniatures and pulled out the Grave Golem from North Star, for use in The Silver Bayonet. I was excited to grab this mini when it came out, and it was great fun to spend an evening painting him. I’d recently picked up the Army Painter John Blanche sets, and decided to try and paint the model using only those. It was fun to work with a more limited palette and think carefully about colours and mixing.
To really grime it up at the end, I also gave the model a wash with Villainy Inks’ “Goon’s Grime” (how appropriate). It’s a kind of gunky green-brown enamel, that added a nice layer of grot to the whole thing.
My other main interest this month has been Warmachine! I’ve always been into the game locally, but have shied away from the printed MkIV miniatures. The recent Cygnar Gravediggers release put paid to that though, I couldn’t resist. I’m pleased to report that the prints are mostly very nice, and much stronger than I had hoped. To get my eye in I painted some landmines, which are tokens placed down by the Warcaster, Buck Hasker.
And then I promptly started painting a different ‘caster, Cynthia Rosko. I’m super thrilled with how she came out – I think I’ve built up a bit too much texture on the face by going back and forth trying to get it right, but ultimately I’m happy with how she looks. I’m really trying to just enjoy the journey with this stuff and not worry about how long it takes, and I think the results are really showing that. Honestly it’s been incredibly nostalgic – Warmachine was my first step back into the hobby after the X-Wing Miniatures Game, and I really don’t think I’ve felt this excited about just doing some hobby in a long while.
No doubt there will be more Warmachine from me in the future – I’ve got older Menoth and Grymkin armies sat waiting in the wings for some renewed attention.
“Contemptor” Kevin Stillman
It’s been a busy few months for me. I meant to add some stuff into the hobby roundup for March 2025, but got busy because of Adepticon and various other pressures. So quite a few things here. If you want to see my Tyranid models from Combat Patrol,
First up are a couple of my newer Space Wolves miniatures. With the (then) rumored Space Wolves refresh waiting in the wings, I figured it would be a good time to revive my older SW miniatures. I started off with a new Ballistus Dreadnought and Land Raider Redeemer:
My Space Wolves have a more neutral grey, because when I started this army back in 2020 there was a much stronger Horus Heresy theme amongst my Marines. And I suppose that Heresy influence has never left – even if I did eventually refine it for my Dark Angels.
My next Space Wolves model was the Adepticon exclusive Grey Hunter miniature. This was handed out for free after the Adepticon GW preview at a table outside the ballroom, and I think I was the only GH author who found out about this in time to get one:
Then I finished up my Combat Patrol Issue #3 and #5 Infernus Marines. For these guys, I used a “Nail Art” kit sold by Goblin Hobbies at Adepticon to create the Space Wolves logos on their shoulder pads. I was quite pleased with how they guys came out, and hope to try more of the nail art stuff soon.
But it’s not all Space Marines and Space Wolves here in Contemptor Kevin land. I’ve also painted up more than a few Tyranid models for Combat Patrol:
I also painted up some classic Tomb Kings models. First, I painted up the amazingly goofy and loveable Casket of Souls. This was a lucky find from the Los Angeles Warhammer Cafe when I went during Pokemon GoFest: Unova Tour in February.
Having loads of fun painting that, I decided to again visit the world of silly Tomb Kings miniatures by getting another Settra the Imperishable and putting him on a Khymerian Warsphinx:
Lastly, I painted up a dream model from my childhood. It’s a model I always saw on the back of old Starlog magazines and would gaze at longingly: the FASA Constitution-II Class USS Enterprise, the greatest love of James T. Kirk and Montgomery Scott.
This model is *old*, and the pewter pylons are unable to hold up the weight of the warp nacelles without sagging. But still, it was and is a dream model and I’m happy to have been able to add this to my collection.
Scott Ferguson – Brushwizard
This month, I’ve been hooked on cracking up vibrancy in my painting. I had gone to Adepticon with one goal in mind, and that was to buy a bunch of neon paint colors. Last year, I had purchased a neon paint set from AK Interactive and it has done a lot of work for the spell effects in my Marvel: Crisis Protocol miniatures, but I wanted more. So I did some searching and not only picked up another neon set from AK, but also their fluorescent inks and a bunch of fluorescent colors from Lethal Shadows.
Once I got home, it was time to start testing things out. I was very interested in what the inks were all about, and it was mentioned that you can use them straight or mixed into standard paints for additional vibrancy. I decided to test out the inks on their own first and used them on Mephisto and Ultron, Metal Tyrant.
This was cool, but I wanted more and felt that the flames needed to be shiny too. So I did some more tests with that and found something that I’m really happy with. More on that later. But in the mean time I wanted to try them out with a mix of regular paint and other fluorescent paints. So I started working on Supergiant and began painting her spell effect in pinks and blues. I was having a hard time seeing what I was working on though, and opted to buy a black light desk lamp for my hobby space. Now I can see what’s happening as I do things, while still having my normal lamps on as well.
There’s still a lot to do, but I’m very much enjoying where this is going. But also, the temptation for a black light gaming table is very real.
Soggy
This month the only hobby for myself I managed was unit of Thallax and Magos for a Heresy doubles event. As Magi are very customisable with their loadouts, this model was a prime opportunity to unleash my inner magnet pervert – two of the arms and their weapons are interchangeable, with a removable servo-skull/cyber-familiar with the option to change the tip of main weapon between various options.
Outside of this the majority of every spare moment was spent working on terrain for the upcoming May Goonhammer Open, which is looking phenomenal. That said, I’m looking very forward to being able to slow down a little and work on something a bit smaller once it’s done.
Loxi
I finished up one of my dream models this month, which I wrote more in detail about in our Favorite Warhammer Models series on the site, so I won’t get too gushy about it here. It wrapped up me getting to ~2200 fully painted points of Flesh Eaters, which I’m pretty hyped about. Still a bit more to do to wrap up some lists I like for the army, but it’s been a fun project since I’ve only started them in January. I’ll likely take a break and check out some other projects for a bit, besides finishing up some Morbheg Knights I already started.
Aside from that, I’ve been getting back into Necromunda and enjoying the kitbashing freedom the game has. I’m playing Orlocks for a coming campaign locally and working on another project for a coming event…Malstrain Delaque!
These are a few of my batch of Orlocks I’ve done so far, which has been a great way to practice with some pitch black enamel washes.
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