As July ends, it’s time for a look back at the last couple of weeks to check out all the fantastic hobby our contributors have been doing. Expect to see lots and lots of projects which have been hastily abandoned in favour of painting Indomitus Marines and Necrons.
TheChirurgeon
July absolutely upended all of my hobby plans for the Death Guard by throwing other releases at me. First there was Bile, then there were the Indomitus Necrons. I’m going back to the Death Guard in August, starting with Mortarion himself. Anyways, you’ve probably seen these already but to recap, here’s what I painted in July:
Kevin
July was a relatively productive month for me. Ever since the global pandemic hit, it has been more….how shall we say, appropriate, safe, and efficient to stay home. Thanks to a last week in June with below-average temperatures and humidity, I was able to prime a bunch of models and then paint them as July progressed. This actually lasted for almost three weeks, then came a stroke of inspiration and then came Indomitus and its releases.
SPACE WOLVES
I finished four units of Wolves: A squad of Infiltrators that came with “Prophecy of the Wolf”, a Rune Priest, a Squad of Aggressors, and an Impulsor. I also decided to try practicing various OSL techniques with these Wolves. Let’s review:
They’re good old fashioned Space Wolves infantry, that paint up quickly. Being one of the more recent GW kits, they came off the sprue and fit together like a dream. I am happy with hem, and will be getting to the other five in this box in the next few months.
Space Wolves Aggressors. Similar to the Infiltrators, except being a slightly older kit it didn’t *quite* fit together as well as I would have liked. The leads between the arms and the backpack are, to put it mildly, finicky. I replaced the auto-reliquary crotch ornament on the Sergeant with one from the Space Wolves Primaris upgrade kit, because I’m not keen on the “regular” honor symbols that the rest of the Marines use for the Space Wolves. It’s more Byzantine and less Viking. Freehanding the pack symbols was a bit of a challenge, but it looks…well, I’ll probably clean it up one of these days.
Now we are getting into interesting kits. For the Rune Priest, I wanted to make it look like he was about to cast (Smite or some other spell. But probably Smite). So after painting the model, I painted the hand and the tips of his fingers with a circle of Caledor Sky, before gradually whitening the center of the circle. The result, in my view, is magic.
I painted the Impulsor soon after I finished the Rune Priest, and started with the interior. After all, the hull is going to be varying degrees of gray – so why not have some fun with the colorful rear compartment? I tried an OSL with the bare bulb on the ceiling of the overhang. It’s limited and yellow, because I figure the Space Wolves aren’t quite as good as replacing dying lightbulbs as, say, the Ultramarines would be.
I scraped the Aquila off of the front plate of the Impulsor, because it would be partially hidden by the Blizzard Shield.
With those models finished, I wanted to get away from painting various shades of grey. So I reached into the backlog, and decided to paint up a Callidus Grav Tank I picked up at NoVa 2019.
BANANAMEN
While I’m still waiting for an appropriate base (there’s a delay because, well, uncontrolled pandemic in North America), the model itself is done. When painting this kit, I had a few things in mind:
- I did not want to paint it mostly gold (why will be explained below)
- I wanted to paint it mostly purple, because I love Shyish Purple
- I wanted the nacelles to look kind of like a Star Trek Starfleet ship’s nacelles, except if they were purple.
To that end, I painted the interior of the nacelles a nice, luxurious red and the coils of the nacelles using Talassar Blue. It was then I realized that Shyish Purple, as wonderful as it was, was a *mite* too dark and tended to get drowned out by the red, gold, and blue on the nacelles. Don’t get me wrong, I *love* how this kit came out. But I need to figure out a way, if I’m going to paint something Shyish Purple, to make sure that the main color isn’t drowned out by others.
ULTRAMARINES
While painting the Callidus, I was talking with Macthau and CrabStuffedMushrooms, and both of them recommended the use of a makeup brush for their drybrushing. Joey also shared with me a few videos regarding how drybrushing with the right brush could really make a model pop. So I decided to test this out by painting a Repulsor Executioner.
After priming this model black, I then gradually drybrushed my way up the model and from dark to light. I initially painted the model with Valejo Game Color Stormy Blue, before using a blend of Stormy Blue with the Citadel Air version of Macragge Blue. The air version is much, much thinner than the regular version, and thus when blending it with a makeup brush, the blend will be much smoother. I eventually drybrushed my way up through Fenrisian Grey. The Stormy Blue basecoat gives the blue of the rest of the model a bit more of a deeper bite than the Citadel Ultramarine Armor gives, in my opinion. Of note are the Repulsor plates, which were….challenging to assemble. They don’t stay on very well, they’re time consuming to build, and overall annoy me. I’m glad that the next series of hovertanks released by GW had better methods for doing the hover plates. After I finished my Repulsor, it was time to start on Indomitus
I base my Ultramarines on Sector Mechanicus bases. This was fine when it was a small force, but has become something of a problem now that it has units that aren’t on 32, 40, or 60 mm bases. Luckily, the Sector Imperialis range is kind of compatible/shares design cues with Sector Mechanicus, so a unifying paint job means they’ll fit into the army.
I painted these guys much as I did the Repulsor tank: varying degrees of blue, building my way upwards. I added the Raptor decals from the Horus Heresy Ultramarines transfer sheet because for some reason, GW decided that the Indomitus Crusade seal would have that Raptor. So who am I to judge for design aesthetics? When I finished these guys, it was 9:30 pm on a Friday night. A productive month…but I think August will have its own twists and turns!
Boon
This month I managed to finish up the terrain for an all new board – next month I’ll post the full set. However, with the drop of 9th and a new list to be made, I’ve begun putting together some of the new units that will be needed. Technically, I haven’t finished these as I still need to add some rose designs or do a couple touch-ups/gloss gems, but since I was running out of light I snapped some pics and you’ll just have to trust me that I finished them before the stroke of midnight, July 31st. Anyway, next month I’ll take the full set and maybe add a Wraithlord to the gang.
Silks
July has been a rush to clear the deck for Indomitus arriving. I really wanted to get my Lumineth box painted so I powered through the two units. I also got my Dawnriders features on the Warhammer TV hobby roundup, which is always nice! I must say, I am really in love with these models and kind of wish the rest of the range was arriving this weekend instead of a box of marines. Ahh well, September will be exciting at least!
SRM
Oh is Indomitus out? Sorry I couldn’t hear you over the sound of La Marseillaise booming from my speakers
That’s right, I’m a Historicals Guy now. Painting these Voltiguers from Perry Miniatures was a lot of things. At first it was a refreshing change of pace – I haven’t painted historicals in any real capacity since I was a kid, and even then it was mostly me fumbling with Testors enamels over whatever my dad had left over. I was happy to paint a period I hadn’t really explored in my own hobby, and a manufacturer I hadn’t worked with before. Doing homework on how to paint the uniforms was daunting, but the information is readily available with a little searching. Painting them got to be a bit of a headache once I started batch painting though, and I’d find myself easily missing a button here, a cufflink there, or the band around one dude or another’s musket. I also just noticed I missed the gold banding on that lead guy’s epaulettes and I’m already sighing at the thought of touching it up. I don’t know how many more of these bois I’ll get to, as I have quite a few from the Elite Companies box set, but I can see myself returning to the Napoleonics well for palette cleansers as time goes on. There’s something comforting to me about painting rank and file troops as opposed to centerpiece models or vehicles. Speaking of rank and file:
I fleshed out my Demigryph Knights! I had painted the first three with white sashes and did up the second three with red sashes to really tie into that Talabheim theme. Turns out I’d painted just a regular jobber instead of the musician in the first batch, so got around to him so I could flesh out the command section. I didn’t really like the single helmeted barefaced head in there, so I gave him a head from the classic Empire Knights that I still have like 20 of. His moustache just looks so jaunty!
Between models from the deep backlog and official business for Goonhammer, I did get my hands on an Indomitus set. I traded the Necron half for a second Marine half, and got to work building some models:
I’ve found the detail is slightly softer than on the previous plastics, but still extremely good, and everything went together beautifully. My only real complaint is the massive seam on the bikers, which is not the detail I was hoping they’d reproduce from the old 90s ones. You’ll also notice I converted the sergeant – I figure since regular Intercessors get the cool melee weapons, assault ones probably will eventually too. If not, my group is chill enough that if I pay the points I’ll be fine. I gave him a spare Reiver heavy bolt pistol, a headswap, and a backbanner (as all sergeants should have) and he was ready to go. These boys have been primed blue at time of writing, so expect to see them coming up soon!
Beanith’s Hobby Progress July 2020
|
Models |
Points |
|
|
BUILT TOTALS |
44 |
999 |
|
PAINT TOTALS |
18 |
279 |
The Pile of Shame Cairn of Opportunity (thanks Charlie B for that term) has grown larger thanks to Indomitus and a few bits from Warhammer Conquest.
Building
There’s been a fair amount of assembly going on in my hobby room. I’ve put together the rest of the Nurgle stuff from their Start Collecting box, slapped together some Cultists for my Death Guard Crusade Force and the big project, assembling the Municipium sector terrain bundle (the London GT set) from TTcombat. Oh and as soon as I read Liam’s review of the Veermyn Tunneller I immediately brought one and built it, ready to drill holes into Coda’s Butter Knives of Derpy-sons
Painting
I’ve almost finished all of the Daemons now, just the Bloodcrushers and Drones to finish up and then I can get back to ignoring my Death Guard and painting the Indomitus bikers or something? I’ve also just finished laying down a base coat on the terrain.
I’m going for a Red vs Blue Team Fortress vibe with some Goonhammer art to personalize it a bit more.
Games
Just two games this month, both with Coda, we would have had more but apparently he’d rather laze about sleeping in instead of playing 40k with me on my birthday.
Coda: You didn’t tell me it was your birthday.
Beanith: Why let facts ruin a fun grudge with which I can hold over you and needle you with?
Coda: Point
We played a couple of Crusade games which Coda might have actually written about here… but if he hasn’t, the Terrax-Pattern Assault Drill goes BRRRRTTT and Marines get minced. I now want a second one, and maybe some stuff to put inside of them too I suppose.
Hobby
I burbled some words again for Building Our Crusade Armies and reviewed my new Hobby setup. I also had a fun weekend away with the fam hooning about on golf carts and occasionally swinging my golf bat at a ball in the vague direction of a flag. Thankfully we were using Ambrose rules or I might still be there now trying to finish the 18th hole. This is my excuse for not progressing my Death Guard project…
I tell a lie, there was one small change. A unit of Cultists was built and had its priority changed to green as it was part of my Crusade Force. Hurray for Progress!
Plans for August
Finish the last of the Daemons and hand them back. Fingers crossed the Kickstarter Daemon prince arrives this month. Finish painting the terrain and make a dent in the Death Guard Project… or accidentally build a biker army. Oh and slam more hams.
PierreTheMime
Following along with Psychic Awakening I finished off my knife-y unit of Plague Marines to round out my Death Guard options:
And finishing off 8th edition with Pariah and one of my favorite units: Illuminor Szeras. I’ve been using this guy since 5th edition when it didn’t have a model, so to get such a snazzy new model was quite a treat. I’m not a fan of having other factions on my bases, mostly because it would look odd killing an Inquisitor while fighting Orks or something, so I opted to replace it was a fancy orb taken from the spherical drum mallet of a Skaven musician which fit perfectly.
With piles of Indomitus miniatures arriving any day now, I suspect my new few weeks will be filled with scraping and assembling many more robots to do Szeras’ bidding.
Mugginns
I received my Terrain Crate in the mail from Mantic a few weeks ago and I’ve been slowly plodding away at painting stuff. These are 28mm scatter terrain pieces mostly for shopping malls, offices, and camping sites. I’m about halfway through of the pieces I bought in the Kickstarter.
I gave them all gray bases so that they can be used in a lot of different environments, but I imagine mostly they’ll be inside buildings. Without bases they’d topple over a lot.
I’ve also wanted to write some specific scenarios for wagons in The Walking Dead. They use wagons all the time to transport goods between the communities – an escort mission would be perfect. I picked up a Knuckleduster wild west wagon, converted the driver with an upper half from a Hasslefree model, and then added some boxes and stowage from all kinds of sources.
I’m really happy with how this came out – I based it up as well even though all of my TWD guys are on clear bases, I wasn’t sure if I could find one to fit this wagon. For August I’ll be finishing up the rest of my Terrain Crate and working on Sisters of Battle!
Bair
I’ve been trudging my way through painting up a Death Guard army for 9th edition and have gotten a lot done the past few weeks, upwards of nearly 1750 points (new points, that is,it sounds more impressive). Had to get THE Lord of Contagion done of course, and I definitely used a rock because it looks way more badass…I didn’t lose the piece…
This army really is chock full of support characters, and I wanted to make sure to get the ones I thought I’d be using the most finished up first.
The Helbrutes were especially fun to put together and paint up, using pieces from Plague Marine kits on them to help tie them into the army that much more.
And of course I needed troops too, Plague Marines are the cornerstone of any Death Guard army to me so I wanted 3 unique units, a close-quarters unit with 2 plague sprayers and a mess of combat weapons, a triple plasma squad, and a mid-field double blight launcher unit with a back-up power fist just in case. And of course the units just HAD to be in 7’s; anything else is sacrilege to Papa Nurgle.
Ryolnir
INDOMITUS CAME OUT. After finishing up my Astraeus earlier this month, I went straight into another huge project. I decided like a crazy person to batch paint the basecoats on an entire Space Marines half of Indomitus because god dammit, my Crimson Fists need them RIGHT NOW (only for them to inevitably sit on a shelf unplayed due to the way of the world). I managed to get everything basecoated to a good standard and forgot to take a photo of it, so here’s a photo from last week before everything was actually done. Oh, and I also started randomly painting two Primaris Lts, a few spare Intercessors, and my conversion of Primaris Pedro Kantor… it’s been a busy month!
From there, I’ve started doing shade + highlights + transfers + varnish on a select few. So far I’m finished with the Primaris Captain, and mostly finished with the Outrider Sgt. July was awesome for hobbying, and I hope to finish all of this in August so that I can start on box #2 in preparation for the new Space Marines Codex!
Mike Bettle-Shaffer
My motivation has continued to drag a bit this month, being further distracted by a group of us still playing Destiny 2 however! I still found time to finish out my Yu Jing from Operation Kaldstrom, along with the Kunai Solutions Ninja, who I’m counting as honorary Yu Jing for the purpose of this update. From left to right, the Jujak, Daofei and Ninja from the Operation Kaldstrom box.
But that’s not the only thing I managed to finish up! I was actually feeling really down with how these were coming along, right up until I painted the base rims. This is rare, as the pit of self despair is usually over by that point but they just didn’t pop for me until those rims were done. I learned a bunch and I’d definitely approaching the basing differently for my next set of conversions in this collection. Keep an eye out for my write up! Without further ado, my converted Slaves to Darkness Chaos Warriors, lovingly nicknamed the Bog Boys.
I’m now genuinely excited to see what’s next for this project, no doubt more rummaging through my various bits boxes for some cool pieces to convert up the mounted lord and the knights. I haven’t forgotten about the World War 2 terrain either, which had all of it’s base coats airbrushed on and I’m in the process of painting on the windows. I’m hopeful to have this done for our next hobby round up.
James “One_Wing” Grover
As you may have noticed we’ve published just a few little articles about 9th Edition this month so my hobby time has been eaten up by the website, but in spare moments I’ve continued working on the rest of the Indomitus Necrons (you can see the ones I finished earlier in the HTPE article), and have finished up a few of the centrepieces. In some ways the delay turned out to be handy – it meant that I had access to the new paints (specifically Runelord Brass, Canoptek Alloy and Tesseract Glow) and that was fantastic for both of these:
Runelord Brass does something very helpful – it gives you another “neutral” metal alongside silvers that you can use on large areas without it being too eye catching or gaudy. I’ve always used either Warplock Bronze or Balthazar Gold for spot colours like the joins (and still have here) but using them on big areas doesn’t tend to work. The new brass solves this problem (and also goes on very smoothly). On both of these, the larger brass areas are just Runelord > Wash Agrax > Drybrush lightly with Canoptek Alloy.
Tesseract Glow is also magic. I have been trying for literal years to find a recipe for glowing green orbs and cabling on Necrons, and never been quite happy with it. The best I’d managed previously was the yellow > green contrast method from the HTPE. Well forget that, because now you can just use Tesseract Glow straight from the pot over Stormhost Silver and it just works. Neat. I tended to apply a recess wash of Biel Tan green as well to give some defininition, but it really didn’t take much more than that to get it looking good.
The only place I tried something more ambitious was on the Destroyer’s sword. I’ve never quite dared try the light/dark glazing method for Necron energy weapons, but decided to take the plunge here. The method was:
- Leadbelcher
- Stormhost Silver
- Tesseract Glow, straight from the pot
- All over coat of thinned Ork Flesh contrast.
- Add more ork flesh contrast to create the darker spots.
- Add more Tesseract Glow to bring up some of the lighter spots.
- Edge highlight and trace around the lines on the blade with a mix of Gauss Blaster Green and Moot Green.
The result is OK – I think I was too nervous on the stage where I added the dark patches, and with another go would improve it. However, it looks fine at least, and better than the old versions where I painstakingly did layers of different greens, so I guess this is how I do Necron blades now.
For the next month – complete the box by painting up the new Overlord and the Warriors/Scarabs, and then maybe paint a few elves, as a treat.
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