Goonhammer Hobby Round-up: May 2020 (end of month)

May is over and we are nearly halfway through 2020, so of course we should all be nearly done with our backlogs, right? That’s definitely the case and we haven’t all just added a dozen more kits? Well, even if we somehow bought more than we painted, again, there’s some great hobby in our end of month round-up. Check it out!

Corrode

The end of the month has been a little bit slower for me than the start, though it helped last time that I had the five Wraithblades 99% ready as May 1st rolled around. This time, it was the new Harlequins rules in White Dwarf that were exciting me, and I’ve had a Harlequins army mostly still in the shrink-wrap for ages, so that’s what I worked on. After a bit of building I had a melee Troupe of 12, and then three Troupes with fusion pistols ready to fly around in Starweavers and blow things up.

I started with the melee Troupe since I had a clear idea of the scheme I wanted to go for – stark red and black with a minimum of other colours. I also painted a Troupe Master this way to match them.

Taking a short break from the Harlequins, I tackled a Primaris Librarian for my Blood Angels and also the Arco-flagellants from the Sisters of Battle box, which were heavy on the Contrast. I also snuck a Tech-priest Manipulus in on the weekend, which was cool. Next up I’m gonna paint some Sanguinary Guard I have sitting around in order to clear out the last of the Blood Angels models sat in my backlog, and then it’s back to Harlies with one of the fusion Troupes. Or alternatively I might get distracted by this Invictor Warsuit I just built. Focus is the enemy.

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Greg

Remember when I said two weeks ago that I was done painting Tau and I was going to start painting tiny Titans?

I wasn’t fucking kidding.

 

Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Work continues on my Death Guard! I finally finished the full squad of Blightlord Terminators and the Lord Felthius character. Let’s review!

First there was this guy with the plague flail:

 

 

Then there was this guy, with the blightspewer:

 

And then Lord Felthius himself:

 

And here’s the whole squad, ready to kick some ass. Admittedly, this is still two models short of completion (and really it’s more like 4) – it still needs another two bubotic axe Blightlords, a blight launcher, and a plague flail. But I’ll get there!

 

Also, I had some extra time so I painted up this Foul Blightspawn, one of the most useful models in the army. He’s ready to shoot some plains out the sky with his sewage fire hose!

 

 

What’s Next: More Death Guard! I’m gonna be working on the Deathshroud Terminators and Typhus.

 

Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

As of the end of May, I’ve officially completed every model in the base set of Blackstone Fortress and all of the first year expansions! Here’s a photo of my overstuffed Detolf shelf – click to see it all blown up!

I’m not sure how I’m going to fit Year 2 on there!. All I had left to finish this month were a few of the explorers – all 4 from Blackstone Fortress: Escalation, and Pious Vorne from the main box set, and a few of the retinue characters from the Blackstone Fortress Annual.

Daedalosus was the first one I painted, as I was very nervous about his red robes. Almost all of my armies are based with martian-style badlands ground, so I generally try to avoid majority red paintjobs to prevent the models from blending in too much. For Pious Vorne, I wanted to try out Darren Latham’s flame tutorial before it got scrubbed from YouTube. I definitely did not get it as easily as he showed in the video, but I think they are my best flames I’ve painted yet. On X-101, I tried the new trend in painting yellow – zenithally airbrushing it over a pink basecoat. I liked it a lot, but unfortunately the servitor isn’t as yellow as I first thought I think I lost most of the pink.

I was excited to paint Gotfret so I could test out an eventual Grey Knights scheme on him. There’s something a little off with his armor but I can’t quite figure out what it is. I’ll have to try another test model before I settle on my blue-steel recipe. Murad and Aradia were both great fun to paint. I didn’t really want to go too much in the official scheme with them, as I felt the original was too close to Janus Draik and Locarno from the main box set

I’ve not yet gotten to play with retinue characters yet. For those who aren’t up to date on Blackstone, after you complete their mission, you can pick one of these semi-AI controlled models to pal around with your band of explorers. They look interesting to use and the missions to unlock them all look like fun ways to spice up the Blackstone experience. I never get enough opportunities to paint Ogryns, so when I saw there were two in last year’s Annual, I went out and bought a box immediately. For Penitent 707, I once again followed on of Darren Latham’s great Youtube tutorials for all that skin. It’s made me learn that I need to be pushing my constast a lot more.

For June, I have a bunch of Rainbow Warriors on my plate. I’ve about half-way done with my Primaris Chaplain, and following him I want to get an Impulsor, a combat squad of Infiltrators, and a set of Eliminators done. It’s a lofty amount of models for me, but I want to get most of this backlog done before 9th edition hits.

SRM

Hey remember how I said I was almost done with my Marine backlog two weeks ago?

lol

At this rate I should be done with what I have for my Ultras by the time GW drops this new wave of Marines with swords. Unfortunately, I didn’t put a massive dent in that backlog over the past few weeks, and I really only knocked out this one unit of Inceptors:

 

These bumblebois weren’t so bad, although I’m probably blocking out the marathon 6 hour painting session where all I did was edge highlight blue. Subassemblies helped, as did mounting them on proper bases as opposed to the doodlebopper flying stands. Their gun shields, of course, were rife for opportunity to paint some heraldry, my favorite part of any paintjob. This leaves just 10 Incursors and a single Intercessor in my Primaris Ultramarines backlog, and I’m done for now! The first 5 Incursors are well on their way to being finished, and the second 5 are primed and ready for paint. I’m a little behind where I hoped to be but I’ve still got some time.

Otherwise, I assembled a few models for my Empire and Daves to Darkness armies, as I’ve been spending a lot of time away from my painting desk. I finally got around to organizing my Empire army and taking inventory, which hugely reduced my anxiety on painting anything. I’d forgotten if my units had enough dudes, how much cavalry I had, etc. and that kind of paralyzed the thought of any further progress. I even color coded my spreadsheet, which I’m sure won’t instill any terror in me, right? Oh god why is there so much red

Hopefully I’ll have some time to indulge my dark thirst to paint poofy sleeves and codpieces before all these new Marines roll around!

Pendulin

You’re welcome MasterSlowPoke, happy to print that Iron Halo! And I love the Chapter Master you put it on, looks great! As for me, it’s been a busy month. Before I talk about what I painted, you might notice that the quality of my pictures has improved. I got a new macro lens for my camera and got some great lighting advice from Booley. I’ll continue messing with my camera and lighting setup, but expect to see continual improvements.

As for hobby progress, I painted four more Skaven Plague Monks to finish off the box from last month. More of the same, but Skaven are an absolute joy to paint.

The real meat of my hobby progress is the Gellerpox Infected Kill Team I painted. I picked these models up way back in the day, and they’ve been taunted me from my backlog ever since. I finally got around to assembling and painting them this month, and love how they turned out.

I’ll only post a handful of highlight pictures, as individual shots of 23 highly unique models will absolutely flood this article. So here are some highlights.

This Nightmare Hulk is probably my favorite of the lot. It’s got a little bit of all the funnest elements. Bugs, organs, beard, bones, veins, beard, claws, and beard. Plus he’s got a pretty sick beard.

This one stressed me out a bit. The skin on his belly is extremely smooth, broken by patches of blisters and stitching. Contrast paints, which I used to paint the whole team, tend to not do well on smooth surfaced. Additionally, I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to do the tentacle arm, but I went with putting down Guilliman Flesh, letting it dry, coating it in Contrast Medium and blending in some Volupus Pink. It gave a pretty great pink skin tone and the model turned out great.

And finally some Gellerpox Mutants. When assembling the team, I thought these would be among my least favorite. They’re smaller than the Nightmare Hulks, and have weird metallic heads. However, despite them being smaller, they are packed with just as much fantastic detail as the rest of the models, and the metals were super easy to paint with Black Templar, then drybrushing some Leadbelcher with a bit of drybrushed Brass Scorpion on the faces.

My plans for next month of fairly dependent on Games Workshop’s release schedule. I am absolutely champing at the bit to get my hands on the new Admech models, but if I don’t get my hands on them until late next month, then I’ll probably spend next month working on some Imperial Knights. I’ve had them assembled and sitting in tupperware for an embarrassingly long time.

Silks

I started off the last half of the month thinking I’d just be finishing my Titanicus models and got my Warlord done.

Then the announcement of 9th edition happened and I decided I really wanted a Marine army so I spent a while painting up different colour schemes until I found the one I liked the most – the Sons of the Phoenix, a full Primaris Force who definitely aren’t descended from the Emperor’s Children, promise…

 

 

Charlie A

May was a cool month for me, in terms of hobby progress. The first thing I did was wrap up the basing for April’s Alpha Legion extravaganza. 

After this was completed, I had my fully-painted ITC list all dressed up with nowhere to go. As soon as there’s an event to go to safely, I’ll be taking this list (assuming 9th edition doesn’t completely negate it, which seems like a real possibility).

Since troops are always useful, I wanted to have the option to slot in cultists for the marines in the above list, in case I wanted to save some points for a disk, another Possessed or two, etc. I already had the 3rd party cultist models printed and assembled (models from Reptilian Overlord’s Patreon). The idea of knocking out 30 dudes at once was a little intimidating, but I went in with a plan and it paid off. Using zenithal highlights and almost exclusively contrast and effect paints, I was about to get the 30 cultists completely done in under 8 hours.

 

I had been putting off painting my board’s terrain for literal years, so at this point (about the second week in May), I decided to bite the bullet. Speed and efficiency was the name of the game (as always). I started with using PVA and sand to give the bases some texture before using a rattle can and zenithal highlights to establish the overall colors. Next, a few coats of various colors of watered-down cheap craft paint, help quickly build up some earth tones to roughly match my mat. Lastly, a few details of shrub and blood splatter help add contrast and the implication of a story. 

The last thing I did for May was to paint a Contorted Epitome. Several variants of the current Possessed list utilize Slaanesh marks instead of Nurgle ones, and I wanted increased flexibility. This was an intimidating model to start and I definitely took my time. I used this model as an exercise in practicing my glazing and blending techniques. I was much poorer in these skills than I would have guessed. Everything was blended by hand, which is probably obvious from some of the patchiness. I also used this model to test out some new Scale75 metallics, which came highly recommended – for good reason. They are great and very easy to use. I would recommend them as well. Lastly, this was also my first attempt at freehand, and boy was that scary. I ended up referencing the GoonHammer Freehand guide (turns out those guys make useful content) and it helped a lot.

 

Skails

This month has been divided up with painting a couple of Necron warriors and working towards the end of Darren Latham’s Lord of Blights Masterclass.

First up was this Necron warrior painted up in a Thokt Dynasty scheme. In the background they are describes as glowing with blue energy. This guy is part of the How to Paint Everything: Necrons article. I took the opportunity to try something a little different than the rest of my Necron force painted years ago.

Next was finishing up part 8 of the Lord of Blights Masterclass- Horns, Leather, and Maggots. I started this project at the beginning of January and followed along off and on since then. It’s been a great way to sharpen skills and try out some new things. 

Then was painted this old metal Necron warrior to try out the Thokt scheme on one of these guys. I have a squad of them and this is the third layer of painting on this one. They started out primed black and dry brushed silver with jade shoulder pads and some blue accents. Then they got a coat of black a few years later and painted blue with gold metal bits. Now, fifteen years later, I just airbrushed over the previous layer and went with this. Added some hazard stripes to give it a little pop of contrast.

 

 

Boon

Worked a bit on my backlog (down to <20 models!). Finished up some work on the Avatar (roses) and finished by first of three Wraithlords. Also picked up some Phoenix Lords for fun – photos are bit washed out from white light glare, but in person I really love how these turned out. Next month looking at a couple more Wraithlords, Wraithseer, Nightspinner, and a couple of Harlequin models. You’ll notice a lot of basing needs to be completed yet – will batch do that once I have a critical mass of otherwise completed models.

 

Beanith’s Hobby Progress May 2020

 

	Models	Points
BUILT TOTALS	3	323
PAINT TOTALS	7	311

Just finished a fourteen hour road trip, my caffeine buzz is fading fast and the deadline is fast approaching. Lets crank this out and apologise to the editors later.

Building

In terms of models, not a great deal. Finally built the Myphitic Blight-hauler I received for Christmas and I’m looking forward to smooshing paint on him and his two friends soon.

I’m also in the middle of constructing hobby cabinetry for my hobby room. Lots of shelves, drawers, racks and other useful things and with any luck I will have a table to put these things on and take pretty pictures and possibly even paint more minis at.

Painting

I finished five more Death Guard for my army and started smooshing the final five I needed for my battalion… which I may not even need in the 9th but we’re doing it anyway!

 

Smooshed five Necron Triarch Praetorians for the HTPE: Necrons which was a fun exercise and palette cleanser from power armor and I also knocked over a Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy for a mate’s birthday which will neatly segue into

Games

Social Distancing Restrictions have eased up here in the Land Downunder to the point where I was able to visit a friend at his house, roll some dice and talk absolute rubbish for a day (as opposed to just typing it). We just played a quick 1k point game using the Goonhammer Mission Generator, a Meteor mission showing up in turn three worth 5VP and 1VP scored for every failed moral test. I was fielding my Death Guard versus his Evil Sunz Orks with his new Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy taking to the field for the first time… which as per the rules of all new models, was promptly blown off the table before it could even move.

Easiest thing to pack - Beanith's 1k Death Guard list.

 

After that lovely warm feeling it was all downhill from there with a ton of Orks Bikers and Dethkoptas suddenly in my lines bad touching my two Plague Burst Crawlers and Contemptor Dreadie… words can not express just how happy I was when I heard that Tanks will be able to ignore bad touch in 9th, so very very happy. Lots of falling back and then dealing with very intelligent pile in/consolidates moves left me watching them getting tagged again and again with no threat of overwatch. 9th can’t come soon enough, I’m going to enjoy hosing down ork vehicles with plaguespitters and blasting ork boys into teeny tiny pieces. My time will come!

I was able to tank a lot of damage thanks to Disgusting Resilience but I struggled to do much damage in return against T5. In hindsight I should have buffed the troops with Blades of Putrefaction/Putrescent Vitality instead of throwing on the Zombies. The rest of the game played out in that fashion, all my stuff was tied up giving him the win 9VP to 4VP… stupid Meteors and lousy Crackin Skulls stealing my VP.

After that, we had a 4 way game using our home brew version of Triumph and Treachery making sure to both back and front stab the birthday boy at every opportunity whilst announcing secret alliances with the other players. Secret Alliances being code for “You’re next”. There are no real winners in T&T but I’ll claim the win anyway. A great time was had by all and I can’t wait to do it again soon. Perhaps Coda and I can soon compete for Worst Goonhammer Downunder Player and maybe one day, one of us will challenge Greg for his crown.

Hobby

I wrote words and smooshed paint on some Necron Triarch Praetorians for HTPE: Necrons. The latest update to my Hobby Project: Beanith’s Road to… NoVA? is as pictured.

I’ve sorted out some second hand contemptors which will need a fair amount of tlc, stripping and dodgy greenstuff etc and I’ve backed a Kickstarter project called AstroDemons VS R.A.S., for a model called Alkaid that will be my count as Daemon Prince of Nurgle that will hopefully arrive some time in August.

Plans for June

Hopefully a few more games plus I hope to be slamming hams soon with Coda. Warhammer Conquest should have some more Pox Walkers for my zombie hoard and continuing work on getting my hobby room sorted out. Oh and sweet sweet sleep. Can’t forget that.

Mike “Pvt_Snafu” Bettle-Shaffer

Contributing on the regular to these round-ups has really kept me motivated, and lit a fire under me at the end of this week to finish up some support options and tanks for Chain of Command and What a Tank!. I made a little progress on the Warlord Titan too, and I’m hoping to have that finished for the next end of month hobby round up.

For my US Chain of Command force, I completed an Engineering team, Flamethrower team, Bazooka team, HMG team and an adorable little M5A1 Stuart.

For What a Tanker! I finished up one of my favourite tanks from the era, a Soviet T34-85.

That rounds up my hobby progress for this month, I didn’t meet my goal of painting at least one piece of scenery for my Chain of Command board but I did at least get some stuff primed! Hopefully next month I have some more Tiny Titan related content.

Soggy

 

The second half of this month wasn’t that productive, only managing to get out a pair of Grotbombers and their ordinance. Next up on the menu is 20 Infiltrators that have been on sprue since the release of shadowspear. Unfortunately I’ve managed to bugger up my last airbrush nozzle, so I’m waiting on some spares before I can work on these for the next round up.