We are now halfway through 2020! The day of 9th edition’s release draws ever closer and our team are doing their best to clear out their backlogs before it hits. Let’s see how they’re getting on.
Jack
I spent the last month just painting a single model. It wasn’t all that big, and didn’t really take all that long to do – only a few hours almost every day. All this time without games has been fantastic for working through my backlog of models that will never be used in games, but after this I’m very ready to go back to painting Space Marines – and to find somewhere other than my kitchen table to store this.
Corrode
Overall June’s been a slow month for me, though as noted in the last roundup I took the chance to paint some terrain as well as other models. I didn’t do any more this month, but it’s still on my desk glaring at me. For things I did get around to, I painted my Delaque gang for Necromunda, which was a pretty straightforward process – the nice thing about the big coats on the Delaques is that they’re nice and easy to Contrast and then drybrush and get a lot of the work done quickly.
Besides the Underhive scum, I also painted up my Sisters of Battle Imagifier, which I bought as a one-off a little while ago. I really like this model and I enjoyed painting it a lot – the Order is slowly coming together although I mostly anticipate painting the characters as fun one-offs for the foreseeable future!
There’s also an Impulsor:
Finally there’s the drill – which I just reviewed earlier today.
At this mid-way point in the year, it’s worth having a look back over the past six months. Since January 1 I’ve painted 159 models, plus the terrain pieces from the Sector Imperialis, from a whole bunch of different factions:
| Faction | # |
| Adeptus Mechanicus | 7 |
| Blood Angels | 4 |
| Chaos Daemons | 11 |
| Craftworld Eldar | 8 |
| Delaques | 10 |
| Drukhari | 9 |
| Genestealer Cults | 12 |
| Harlequins | 13 |
| Sisters of Battle | 21 |
| Space Marines | 62 |
| Thousand Sons | 1 |
| Warp Runners (AT) | 1 |
As you can see, the bulk of it is Space Marines, and that’s only going to grow with the arrival of the Indomitus box soon and the mashing new pile of Space Marines models in there. I also have just bought a Relic Contemptor and two more Impulsors. I’ll probably end up painting easily 100+ Crimson Fists this year! I’m on track to beat my 2018 total of 280 models, and hopefully top at least 300 – which sounds like a lot, but the backlog still weighs heavily.
Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones
Still on my Death Guard bullshit, at least for now. The latest addition to the army is Typhus! I’m really happy with how he turned out, in part because the ‘Eavy Metal version looks so cartoonish, with the mishmash of bright colors and shades. Next up after Typhus is the new Fabius Bile, then back to some more Death Guard.
Greg
After bailing on hobby progress for a bit, I got back into the swing of things by painting up the old metal Asmodai and about ten more Ravenwing bikers. Why am I doing this, when a new Chaplain and new Primaris Outriders are coming in Indomitus? Well, I had the models, and I’m running out of things to paint. I still don’t love painting bikes, but they do look quite a bit better this time than last, and when I finish the last couple in the queue I’ll be able to run 3 squads of 6, which seems like enough.
Oh, I bought an Astraeus too, probably because of an article on this very website. I hated the build until I got it to the state you see there, but when I was able to whoooosh it around my desk I kind of fell in love with this bit resin idiot son of mine.
And I built – but didn’t paint – the bases for my Titanicus Maniple. They’ll mostly be drybrushed and have Martian Ironearth slathered around before gluing the Titans down, but that’s a story for a different Roundup.
Boon
This month I’ve been continuing to clear my backlog of models and finished up a Starweaver, second Troupe Master, Farseer Skyweaver (replacement) and my second Wraithseer. I am happy to report that as of the end of this month I only have the 15 models remaining in my backlog: 1x Night Spinner, 1x Wraithlord, 3x Talos, 5x Wraithguard, 3x Vibrocannon, and finish a half-completed Crimson Hunter and Hemlock. I’m hoping to finish the Night Spinner, Talos, and Wraithlord in July.
I probably could have pushed through the Night Spinner this month, but instead I went on a terrain kick which turned out to be a real nice change of pace. As a result I’ve nearly completed terrain for an entirely new 9th edition table – just need to complete a center piece which I’m planning to do early in July. I have yet to put the canopy on the Starweaver, so I’ll hold that until July’s roundup.
I have to say – I have never used contrast paints before and probably won’t on my mans, but they are fantastic on terrain. Really speeds up the process.
Charlie B
My output for the last two weeks consists of one entire miniature. It’s been sat in the Pile of Shame Cairn of Opportunity for a while, and I wanted a break from painting blue power armour, so instead I painted… someone in power armour. With a blue cloak. There are times when I think my other hobby is trolling myself.
This mini is for one of my Inq28 roleplay characters. It’s rare we use minis, but it’s nice to have them to hand when needed, and besides, making a miniature can sometimes create some unexpected details. Moreover, a recent mission to a horrendously trashed Sororitas convent led to us acquiring… well, some epic levels of trauma mostly. But ALSO, some broken suits of power armour. I immediately got the idea that it’d be cool to celebrate Agent Zelenko’s promotion to Interrogator by converting one of those suits, restored to working order and given a few Inquisitorial flourishes (i.e. moar skullz).
Inquisitor Greyfax seemed like the ideal mini for this. She has a nice relaxed pose, and her armour looks pretty similar to Sororitas armour. There were just a few details that I couldn’t abide. I respect that kit is going for unadulterated Blanche-inspired silliness, but stiletto heels? On a heavy-ass suit of power armour?! Ain’t no floor in the ‘verse going to support that. The crossbow on her boltgun doesn’t really work for me given how unwieldy it looks, so that had to go too. Oh, and there’s a f—ing lit candle on her hat. As is often the case, I find my hobby often consists of trying to dial GW’s output down from eleven to ten. Here’s how that turned out:
Yeah… the volume’s still at eleven. Ah well. The basing is ultra-basic; it needed to fit with my other Inquisition stuff, the bases of which are mostly designed to fade into the tables they generally get used on. In case you’re curious, there’s a photo of the conversion work below. Bonus points if you can spot the two rivets I sculpted. The head is from Statuesque Miniatures. I tried sculpting boots more like sabatons initially, but my mediocre sculpting skills couldn’t get those hard edges to be even remotely symmetrical across the two feet, so I had to go way more plain, sculpting them more like rubberised boots that’d have steel toecaps under the flexible outer layer. After some debate I went for wedge heels over flats – definitely an impractical move – because the character is an extremely snooty noble who would 100% jump on the chance to look down on someone via mechanical advantage. At least now she won’t be stabbing the floor.
Silks
More Sons of the Phoenix for me! Considering this is a brand new army for me and 9th is coming soon I really want to have a nicely painted playable force for when it comes out so I can focus on adding cool new things to it rather than painting Intercessors resentfully.
These Hellblasters actually took the majority of my time, there’s not really any improvements in efficiency when you’re edge highlighting in batches so it was just a case of gritting my teeth and getting on with it. On the plus side, I added in a Librarian to the batch of 10 models so I painted him for free!
I also got very overexcited by Forgeworld reopening and ordered myself an Astraeus. It arrived the next day, I built it over a weekend and I’m almost at the point where it’s done now! Just got to add some decals when the layers of varnish (varnish your Forgeworld people!) have dried properly
Soggy
This second half of this month was pretty productive.I managed to get the rest of my infiltrators finished, except for the shouldpad icons which I realised I ran out of right when I needed them.
As with other things I’ve painted recently, I put it to a public vote to decide on what to paint in the remaining time this month. The people voted for my second redemptor dreadnought and I’m glad they did as I’m very happy with the results. My first Redemptor never saw the table, so I wasn’t particularly in a rush with this one from the Tooth and Claw boxset.
This model was converted to have the weapons on different arms, which involved a little bit of bodging but isn’t immediately noticeable. I did this back day in case GW ever ended up offering mortis variant, which never came. I’m a wee bit proud of the freehanded logo on the shoulder, which only happened because I couldn’t get my 3d printed logos to bend properly 😀
SRM
It’s hard to believe we’re already thirty five years into 2020, and roughly at the halfway point. I’ve been fighting off the no-game doldrums by completing my Primaris Ultramarines backlog, and picking a few models out of left field for funsies. First off, it’s the fated Intercessor #35, replacement for the battle brother lost to a plastic glue spill:
I only realized after painting his squadmates in April that their heraldry was on the wrong knee. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume this is why they were cursed to sacrifice one of their number to Tamiya the Dissolver. With the last model out of the way, it was time to do some housekeeping and see what else was left. With the new 9th edition Blast rules, it sounded like the plasma cannons on Redemptors would be worth taking, so I picked that big honkin gun up out of my bitz box and lo and behold, it became another canvas for hot rod flames:
I had finished the base model months ago, drawn to the gatling gun’s clarion call of BRRRRTTTT, but any opportunity for more stupid freehand designs is one I’m happy to take. From here I pivoted hard into my love of Warhammer Fantasy. The dark thirst I had to paint some halflings had to be sated, so I bought and painted Lumpin Croop’s Fighting Cocks, an old Regiment of Renown:
These old sculpts are so damn characterful, even if their poses are a little repetitive and flat as a result of being single piece metal models from the 2000s. I found that by varying their skintones I was able to get a lot of visual interest in the squad, even painting their clothing in uniform colors. I think my favorite details are the frying pans, tankards, bottles and snacks they have in their bags. Unfortunately they were missing Lumpin Croop’s dartboard shield, but I improvised with the smallest Empire shield I could find, wherein I painted, what else, some heraldry:
Last, but certainly not least, I turned back to my Ultramarines one more time before Indomitus comes out. I follow an incredibly talented hobbyist who goes by develain over on Instagram, and they had posted a beautiful recreation of the Dawn of War armory in plasticard and putty. They were selling a few resin casts and I had to have one! I reached out, and a few weeks later one showed up at my door. My buddy Dylan cut me a masonite base for it, and I (eventually) got to work!
To the surprise of nobody, I got caution striping. It was big enough that I could use masking tape for a lot of it, and it even matches how it looks in-game!
I didn’t go quite as gaudy as it appears in Dawn of War, and I made sure it was suitably weathered without looking derelict.
With that, I’m done for June! Next up are probably some more Chaos Warriors for my Daves to Darkness and some Swordsmen for my Empire. I’m playing a lot of Total Warhammer 2 and it’s got me itching for some old school Warhammer Fantasy before this next smattering of Space Marines comes out.
Skails
My progress this month consisted of finishing up a figure I started in January, following along with Darren Latham’s Lord of Blights Masterclass.
Beanith’s Hobby Progress June 2020
|
Models |
Points |
|
|
BUILT TOTALS |
3 |
363 |
|
PAINT TOTALS |
19 |
511 |
The great works continue. The pile of shame grows ever larger but June has been a lot more productive this month now that my new hobby space is up and running.
Building
I finished assembling all the hobby cabinetry for my new hobby area mostly. Lots of fun with wood glue and painters tape was had. I also built Typhus, a Plague drone and magnetized a bunch of weapon options for my contemptor dreadnoughts.
Painting
Painting this month was solely focused on models for the five How to Paint Everything articles I contributed for this month – Adeptus Mechanicus, Daemons of Khorne, Daemons of Slaanesh, Daemons of Nurgle, Daemons of Tzeentch and Assassins. I am particularly proud of the Horrors of Beanith.
As Rob “TheChsomething” wossname has said, the Contrast range of paints works very well with the Daemon range and you can knock out a decent looking army pretty quickly… which is handy because I still need to paint the rest of the daemon stuff I borrowed for the articles as a thank you and as a birthday present.
Games
I’ve slammed hams three times this month with Coda and I can confirm he is both cool and good in person as he is online and totally not some weird liver harvesting serial killer I used to get told about by my mum when I would tell her I was meeting with someone I met online.
The record currently stands at two wins for Coda and one slightly debatable win for me. We’ve been using the Goonhammer Mission Generator each time because it’s a great way of getting a game started quickly without fuss and you tend to end up with some fun victory conditions. We always include a Twist and we always forget about using it until the end of the game. Plus we get to nag at Greg for extra features afterwards too.
In the first game, my Death Guard training wheels were still firmly attached as evidenced by the fact my Contemptors were rocking Disgusting Resilience before it was cool/the launch of Psychic Awakened Spiderman. Lost 3 to 12 at the end of the game, my last minute grab for the objective would have swung the game my way but it wasn’t meant to be.
In the second game I made sure to hammer the stratagem button to field four of my Disgusting Resilience robit friends, a Levi, the speedboat and the two contemptors along with the fun new rules for the Plagueburst Crawlers. Extremely closely fought, I had the early lead but Coda managed to fight back towards the end catching up with my score and with his last second grab of the primary objective cementing his win.
I won the third game by taking Deathwatch and Coda handicapped himself by taking his Emperors Children. MVP went to my Repulsor for deleting his Havocs and another squad of Marines before getting torn apart by his Chaos Lord, at which point I rolled a 6 and my Repulsor blew up and took the Lord and some of his Terminators with him. My boys somehow escaped mostly intact.
We’ve had a blast and we’re both looking forward to more games together in July.
Hobby
My hobby room currently smells of burnt mdf and I love it. I picked up a bunch of terrain from TTCombat which is mostly the Municipium Sector Board Bundle and a few other pieces. I’m looking forward to getting that built, painted and on the table in July.
With my Death Guard project, slightly embarrassing to say but almost no progress this month beyond the Contemptors and Typhus being built/stripped and repaired. On the other hand, because of delays to Warhammer Conquest here downunder, I didn’t add anything else to the list so swings and roundabouts.
Plans for July
More hams slammed, build and paint the terrain, progress more with the Death Guard project and get back to work in the Content mines. I also want to get the Daemons painted before 9th drops as well. And also try not to go crazy and buy multiple copies of 9th Edition for my beloved Primaris biker boys.
Mike Bettle-Shaffer
The latter half of June saw me get distracted by not only new models but also a new game system but boy howdy was it a welcome change of pace. Using a combination of Contrast paints and some bright highlights, I knocked out the majority of the Yu Jing half of the Operation: Kaldstrom box. Realising I was running out of time, I had to make the decision between pushing to finish my Warlord and pushing to finish a converted Slaves to Darkness warband I’ve been noodling with for a while.
But what did I decide to finish in the end I hear you ask? The Warlord Titan! I really wanted to push myself a bit with this one, taking extra care over the stencils and adding some extra detail to all of the cables, pipes and metal work on the chassis. The Warlord Titan Stormbring of Legio Tempestus strides forth!
“Primaris” Kevin Genson
I’m back! After a several month hiatus featuring little (actually no) hobby progress, the onset of 9th Edition has inspired me to get back into painting. I decided to put up a Twitter account and join in on the #HobbyStreak where you do a little bit of hobby work every day. Some days that’s spending hours writing a Hammer of Math article, but other days it’s painting models little by little. I decided to start with my Regal Skulls and paint the two Repulsor Executioners I had started near the end of last summer. That meant figuring out how I had done a color scheme months ago on tanks (which I haven’t painted in years). Unfortunately that took a lot longer than I anticipated… right until both of my airbrushes broke. Fortunately Badger has really nice customer service and they’ll service them and return them eventually.
Next up I decided to work on a Culexus Assassin for How to Paint Everything and get together an execution force. I really like using unusual color schemes so the grayish-blue bodysuits and bone pieces have been something I’ve been really proud of. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly this one painted up and how things worked out in the end. Details like the eyeball in the helmet and the odd lightning glow effect make this one really creepy.
With my Assassin done and my airbrushes still MIA, I decided to back and finish up the month putting some more work into the Hive Tyrant. With my goal of making daily progress in mind I was able to get some work done on the claws… and discover that months of being held together by magnets had also stuck the arms to the model. As a result some paint came off when I disassembled it and I had to fix that. Before 9th rolls around my goal is to get this guy done; the biggest challenge is going to be figuring out what color to do the wings. I’m thinking purple or red.
Evan “Felime” Siefring
So, I, uh, painted some models too. A small squad of repentia, an armsman out of kill team: rogue trader for fun, and an inquisitor, which I had a blast painting. The old witch hunter models are a little janky by modern standards, but they ooze character.
Pendulin
Coming it hot right at the end, I managed to finish up these models in the wee hours before the end of June. First off was a box of Serberys Raiders. These were some of the most fun I’ve had painting Admech. The sculpts are fantastic. The rules are fantastic. The pricetag is staggering but absolutely worth it.
Next up is Skritch Spiteclaw’s Swarm, a Warhammer Underworlds warband. I don’t really plan on using these models, but I love Skaven and happened to own them. So why not paint ’em up!
And finishing off my painting for the month was an Ironstrider Ballistarii. An already good model made so much better with buffs from Engine War, 9th Edition cannot come soon enough because I’ve already got plans for this guy.
