We check on what the team has been up to – painting all minis great and small!
Bair
Woot woot first in this month, hell yeah. It’s been a quiet painting month once again for me with only 25 models painted in the whole month but with a lot of building new minis.
I’ve been getting back into and playing more Star Wars Legion after taking a break from it; even wrote a bit about getting back into the new edition. It was time I finally opened up and did up the Geonosians that I got when they were released a while back…they’re even packaged differently now and would be, probably, more convenient to have the newer boxes. Oh well. They were, like all Legion Separatist models, fiddly to put together and too much longer to build than they did to paint. A theme that is continually amusing. Even got to try them out in a game where they died horrifically, quickly, and I learned a lot about how to use them in the future.
After these I had the opportunity to review Warp Miniatures’ new Gremlin starter warband that’s up on Kickstarter. You can go and read that here in detail and see individual pictures of each model front and back but these were some of the most fun I’ve had painting…since the last Arcworlde minis I did a couple months ago. I really love the cartoony aesthetic that these sculpts always have and I think it goes with my painting style really well; wanted to take them a step further than I might normally with highlights and texture, and think they came out really well. I’m looking forward to getting these on the table, a fun little warband of troublemakers!
And there ends all of the painting I managed this month. For the last two weeks I’ve been building a lot of Heresy era Space Marines. I’ve been saying for a couple years that as soon as they made MKII in plastic I’d redo my Death Guard army that I had collected about a decade ago, except paint it better this time. Well, Saturnine is out and is plastic MKII. So. Here we are. Doing a little more than I used to on the modelling side by scraping off/removing some “unnecessary” decoration, as is the Death Guard way. It also means there’s less detail I have to paint, big win! That said, I am adding armour studs to the more flat areas and I tell you what, these are really annoying to apply but very much worth the effort!
I have been continually surprised how long these kits take to build and just how many pieces they all are. Takes a bit of joy from the hobby process for me, I think there could be a happy medium between posability, detail, and not being 100 pieces to build a character. With third edition there are a few “must have” characters for me, the biggest one being a Master of Signal for some Line or Vanguard where needed across the army adding some incredibly flexibility for extra scoring. Now, I used the Saturnine Centurion as a Siege Breaker replacing the maul head with a hammer head and giving him a disintegrator pistol so that he has the “right” gear. That left me needing to figure out a Master of Signal from my bitz box where I found some old, old, resin pieces for a body, heavy weapon backpack, and bits from vehicle sprues for a dataslate; overall I’m really happy with how he came out even if he is a bit shorter than…everyone else.
Just another 25 MKII marines to build of the 80 total and then I can start painting. Gonna be going through a lot of Pro Acryl Dark Ivory.
Soggy
August was wild time for me and spent focused on a slightly different kind of miniature – having just become a father. In between feeds and a mountain of nappies, I had a commitment to a new doubles army for Horus Heresy at the September Goonhammer Open. I can confirm now in hindsight this was a huge mistake and I really should have taken an existing army, but where’s the fun in that?
I don’t expect many other events in my future so will likely tone down my hobby output (famous last words) and focus on other things. Let’s see where we are next month lol.
Thundercloud
August was split between painting LI models for the big LI release, writing articles for the big LI release, and painting figures for the 500 point Middle Earth event at Warhammer World in September.
The LI tanks painted up fairly quickly, and I discuss painting them in more detail here.
The Uruk Hai took care of two thirds of my list for Middle Earth for September, and getting a whole box of any type of troop in Middle Earth gives you a solid foundation for that force. I’ll cover painting them in more detail in a Road to Nottingham article, if I get the whole army finished and I’m not panicking and taking something else.
Rockfish
Just a few things from me again, for the same collection of health issues that have been plaguing me for a few months, unfortunately.
I’m getting remarkably close to wrapping up my main battletech backlog which is super exciting given how many models were in it a year or two ago and that I’ve still been buying new releases when I can.
I also got a chance to try out painting a Zaku! Which is actually the first gundam anything I’ve done, having never built a model before. It was neat!
SRM
I’m bringing up the rear this month with a little bit of late Codex: Black Templars hype, plus the minimum possible effort required for the NOVA Open.
At the Tacoma Open (or the TacOpen if you’re not into that whole brevity thing) I got absolutely smashed in my last game by Shadow Legion Daemons dumping a couple big baddies in my backfield 6″ away from my armor park. The solution was obviously Infiltrators, and my Badcast cohost Dan had sent me a few spare Infiltrators some time ago. They were already primed and based so I didn’t do much modeling work aside from gluing antennae back on and slapping a Crusader Seal on the Sword Brother/sergeant, but painting them was appreciably straightforward. The stupid power jorts/power Crocs combo takes a minute to highlight, but otherwise these were a refreshingly simple unit to paint up after working on so much Templar and Cities of Sigmar stuff.
That said, the hype was real about the new Templar codex, and I loved the idea of running Marshals with Sword Brethren, so I converted and painted up a new Marshal. He’s a Space Marine Heroes captain with a load of Templar doodaddery, and I’m just happy I found a good use for those cool two handed sword poses. He’d go on to do an awful lot of good stuff at NOVA, and he might be my favorite dude in the army now. As I didn’t have room for a tilting plate, I gave him this sort of hourglass heraldry you can see on his hip plates, as well as on his backpack.
After a test game with the assumed “default” Templar detachment, Companions of Vehemence, I realized it absolutely depended on Chaplains and Execrators more than I had anticipated. While I already reviewed the new Execrator model, I needed a second to follow up, and absolutely had to convert up Asmodai to fill that role. A spare Sword Brethren power sword, a tilting plate from one kit or another, and a Terminator Crozius did most of the job here, and some careful cutting and filing let me remove the Dark Angels bling from his necklace and glue on an Indomitus cross in its place. I had the thought of painting some flames or something on his robe, but I was getting nervous about freehand interfering with those big, lovely blends, so I just left it red. He’s plenty flashy on his own.
Last – and also absolutely least – I needed to paint one Crusader for my NOVA list. While I have 20 Crusaders, they’re divided into squads of 10, each with their own Sword Brother on a 40mm base. For a 20-man unit, you need a regular jamoke in his place, so I converted one up from an Assault Intercessor some time ago and painted him at the same time as the Execrator. He would be one amongst many in the press of bodies and chainsword attacks in the coming battles, but he’s been the dot on the i that is that 20-man Crusader squad for a while now.
As for next month, we’ll see where my whims take me. I’ve built more Templar stuff, and the real question is if roughly 30 hours of 40k at NOVA will put me off 40k or make me dig in that much deeper. Onwards to September!
Colin Ward
August was a very productive month as I jumped on the Horus Heresy train alongside many in the hobby. At the beginning of the month I decided to batch paint the Thicc Bois from the Saturnine Box: Praetor in Saturnine armor, Saturnine Dred and 6 Terminators in Saturnine armor. I did end up having to tackle the Dred separately to save my sanity, but I couldn’t be happier with how these units turned out.
The candy red of the Thousand Sons scheme translates so well to the big chunky panels. I added a little aged verdigris on the pads to ground the scheme.
To finish the month I tackled one of my favorite big dumb models from Forgeworld: The Legion Mastodon Superheavy Assault Transport. It’s the third Mastodon I’ve painted, and each has posed their own challenges. The kit sucks to build, but painting is typically pretty straightforward. Unless your MicroSet causes discoloration underneath large transfers and that requires you to scrape multiple panels down to resin and tape off the entire model to isolate said panels and then re-do the candy red paint and hope they match the surrounding panels and also hope masking doesn’t fail or peel and affect the surrounding panels. Then painting is less straightforward. Despite the challenges, it’s done and it’s a magnificent bastard of a model.
I also got started in earnest on my Oops, All Hoplites! project (article) by assembling the pewter models that came in the box (much to my chagrin). 2 Spartan Generals, 3 Spartan command and 16 Greek Slingers. F*ck straightening pewter spears, btw. I also prepped and glued the five movement trays I’ll need for my first 160 Hoplites of the project. Felt good to get some stuff done for that!
I’m working on a trio of Hekaton Land Fortresses right now, so look for those in the September roundup! One is a commission to add to my army that I sold and two are for my reconstitution of said army to (hopefully) have ready for 11th edition next year. My wife and I have also planned to finish a bathroom remodel and repaint most of the inside of our house over the next 6 weeks, so we’ll see how all that evens out!
KyleBe
August was my month of Monsters for MCP. It seems like I should have waited until October…
The characters were definitely fun to paint, and I put less time into them than I have with many of my other models. Still, having a fully painted Midnight Suns roster seems great heading into the spooky season. (It’s basically Halloween already because summer is almost over, right? I think I saw pumpkin spice lattes already out and about.)
To shift gears, I’m getting back into Star Wars Legion, just in time to clear out my FLGS’ stock of clone wars era Legion kits. Obi-Wan is my first test model to see if I can figure out how I’m going to paint smaller models in larger quantities. It’s been a while since I’ve done any batch painting. The goal was to paint him quickly, in under an hour. I hit minute 48 and I think I’m okay with the mediocrity when applied to a large number of models.
Happy painting!
“Contemptor” Kevin Stillman
It’s been a pretty busy summer down here in NoVa, and my focus has obviously been on my Hive Fleet Behemoth Tyranid Combat Patrol I’ve been doing alongside the Combat Patrol magazine subscriptions. I finally finished the last model from the expanded Patrol: the Swarmlord.
This has thus concluded one of my three big projects for 2025, and given me my first full-fledged Xenos army in Warhammer 40K.
But in addition to painting up the Tyranids from Combat Patrol, I *also* decided to paint up the Space Marines from the Combat Patrol subscription. However, as I had already done them up as Ultramarines when I got my Leviathan box a couple of years back, I wasn’t going to paint them blue. And I didn’t feel like painting them up for my Dark Angels (who have similar options – Belilal and the Deathwing Knights). So this meant my Space Wolves. But given the Space Wolves refresh and my belief in making the Wolves look different than regular Marines, I waited until the Wolf Guard Terminator box came out.
The last Marine model I did this summer was the Great Wolf himself, Logan Grimnar and his two wolves. I painted them up as my dogs Salsa and Sophie.
Salsa is easier to see, given her distinctive coloration and copious pictures on this website. Sophie is harder, because the way GW sculpts fur does not lend the wolf model to a blue merle coloration. For my Wolves, I still need to do the Brutalis Dreadnought, a Thunderwolf Cavalry model, and a Gladiator Lancer. These will likely be October and November 2025 projects. My September 2025 is pretty busy, as I need to build a Knight for LVO. As practice, I painted up a Saturnine Dreadnought at NoVa:
The first mini I painted this summer, and one of the reasons my output was relatively low, was because I built and painted Archaeon the Everchosen, Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse.
This model is huge. The base itself is enormous, and the connection points between the model and the base are relatively tiny. It’s also a centerpiece Chaos model, so it is very spikey. This one is probably the model I’m most proud of this summer.
