Our contributors have been hard at work on their hobby, let’s see what they got done!
Jack
Somehow I’ve painted a rather astounding amount of stuff in the last month, though none of it was working towards my goals (bigger 30k army, things for the Grand Narrative, Aeronautica Imperialis). Instead, I continued painting battlemechs. Lots of them. Despite the somewhat ugly mold lines they’re incredibly fun to paint.
I’ve decided on using this grey/tan scheme for the vast majority of my mechs, as it’ll let me mostly build lances out of any combination of mechs, but I’ve also done a few lances specific to the various different houses and clans. Combined with what I did last month I’ve got almost every house represented.
And last (and shortest), I dove into the Votann army box to get some of it painted up for our review. They’re wonderful sculpts, small but full of character and easy to build/paint.
SRM
This has been a really low month for me, model count-wise. The NOVA Open, while a wonderful return home for me, absolutely kicked my butt. That came right off a trip to see my family and right before a bunch of travel with my wife, so my painting time has been fairly limited. However, I still knocked out some cool stuff so I’ll quit my grousing and show you my spacemans.
I was fortunate enough to collaborate with my buddy Dylan on a review of the new Goliath Maulers for Necromunda. I have no idea when I’ll actually be able to use the damn thing as I’m only now starting to grow my local Necromunda scene, but painting it was an absolute blast. It was an easy pair of subassemblies and a fairly quick paintjob that I was able to wrap up in like 3 days. It’s a pretty easy scheme to repeat, fortunately, and one I was happy to paint again.
I had actually started this fella before going to NOVA, and had been working on him in fits and starts between Goonhammer projects. One of my podcast listeners had been so kind as to send me this limited edition Sergeant Castus model, but I didn’t really know what to do with him. What’s another jamoke with a chainsword going to do in my Ultramarines army, let alone my Templars? Even still, where is he going with that 60mm base? I had flirted with the idea of Blood Ravens back in the day and decided now was finally the time I’d paint a big bird boi. I liked the idea of the Blood Raven vs. Necron narrative from Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, so I gave him a Mk. VII helmet that I dinged up to match his armor, and have been referring to it as “Return to Kronus” to nobody in particular.
The Necrons were easy to work through, and his red armor was a ton of fun. I even pushed my highlights a smidge further than normal, since this was going to be more of a display piece than a gaming one. The real challenge was the Blood Ravens icon on his pauldron, which came out merely okay. It looks kinda chubby, but I was starting to get a bit fed up and it was looking good enough for me. It was simple to leave him off the base and stick him on at the end, and I am happy to say I finally got painting a Primaris Blood Raven out of my system. Maybe it’s because I made that dumb cartoon half a lifetime ago.
Lastly, I was also fortunate enough to review a pair of Forgeworld Goliath models who I painted up in a similarly brief amount of time. It had been a couple of years since I painted Goliaths in this particular scheme (retro schemes notwithstanding) and it kinda shocked me how quick it was to get them painted. If you want to read my more in-depth thoughts on these models, I wrote a review, but I’m happy to have them as options to flesh out my gang.
Dawn of War is rearing its low-poly head once again in my hobby roundup this month, as I painted this Chapel-Barracks by Develain over on Instagram. He’s been making these absolutely dope resin garage kits inspired by the buildings in Dawn of War, and I’ve still got a couple more to get around to. Thanks also to Dylan for cutting out the Masonite bases I need for these structures. I won’t say I love the process of painting any terrain, but I’m happy I’ve got one more structure in my Ultramarines base finished. Someday I’ll run a game where my Ultras need to defend a base from Orks or whatever, but until then, I’ll keep scattering these around my tables.
Next up, I think I’ll go into my 32nd year of life in this planet with a mix of models as eclectic as all the rest. See you next month with some terrain, a Kill Team of weirdos, and hopefully more besides!
Pendulin
In bowling, you know when you flub the first ball of the frame and knock 6 pins down but leave up all 4 pins on the front-left, standing in a perfect line? That’s apparently called a clothesline or “picket fence split”, and it’s hard to clean up because you have to toss the perfect ball and hit everything in a straight line. Well, that was my September. I had four pins lined up (models almost finished), and with one single throw (month of hobbying), I managed to pick up a spare (I painted the models).
First, let’s look at the grimdarkness of the Death Guard.
I previously painted some Death Guard making heavy use of washing and rust effects. And while I still think they turned out great, I was unhappy with relying on washes to get the look I wanted. Instead, I wanted a scheme that was almost entirely brush-on, and this is the scheme I settled on.
A big part of the struggle was also figuring out the basing. I put together about 50 different prototype bases with about a dozen different texture paints and/or basing materials. And after all that I settled on “My normal marbled cobblestone base, but with Streaking Grime slapped on it”.
Really happy with how this turned out, and am looking forward to chipping away at my massive Death Guard backlog. But for now, let’s switch over to the Imperium and look at the religious zealots: the Black Templar.
These fine lads have been sitting on my hobby table for too long, and I finally was able to finished them this month.
I’m especially happy with the pauldrons. That’s some mighty fine grimdarkness creeping in along the edges, if I do say so myself.
And finally is a dabble into another yet another faction, Blood Angels.
I’ve never really used transfers before. The first time, years and years ago, I didn’t know what I was doing, it was a disaster, and I swore them off. I decided to give them another shot with Blood Angels and I couldn’t be happier. These rule.
Your standard micro set followed by micro set got them applied perfectly, and when finished with some weathering they’re great. Absolutely going to be using them on more projects in the future.
And that’s it for me this month. Only 4 models, but I settled on schemes I want to three entire armies. The only part I’m not certain of is the boltgun on the Blood Angel. Red botlgun on red marine kind of washes out, so I might go back and repaint it to be a black, rusty boltgun. Like how my Plague Marine’s meltagun looks. But that’s a problem for Future Me to solve!
Chucat
I collect Clan Skryre, but I hate metal and rat ogors, which leaves me in quite a pickle. To fix this problem, I have to kitbash everything that isn’t an oversized gun.
While my first set of Stormfiends were kitbashes with Kastelan Robots, these ones use mostly Killa Kan bodies with Stormfiend weaponry and iconography. The model in the middle is my Arch Warlock, which uses parts from a Chaos Sorcerer, Warpsmith, Electropriest, then a whole bunch of Stormfiend parts. Later on I found out that the weapon I gave him is actually a poleaxe rather than a halberd. I’ll be sure to get fired for that one.
Next up are 20 Clanrats and an Endless Spell or two. I will have a lot of fun.
Soggy
This month with the NoVA Open and general hobby burnout resulted in only one completed model, but I think by weight along it makes up for it.
I completed the Warbreaker Titan from Battlebling, which was received as part of our review. As someone who has batch painted normal AT titans or squads of 20 marines, this thing crushed my hobby motivation for some time. After some bloody perseverance, I got there in the end and was able to replicate the cover from The Burden of Loyalty – which I was quite chuffed about.
Next month I’ll be looking for a palate cleanser before digging back into some Heresy.
Skails
I’ve been back to zombies this month. These are a lot of fun to paint, the kit has so much character and fun detail. Some of these have reposed or replaced arms from other parts of the kit to add some extra variety. The skin tones are inspired by moorleichen or bog bodies. Just four more to do and I’ll have this unit finished out.
Togepi
I haven’t been getting as much painting done as I would like, but this summer I was able to get away from work for a week to go to a lake house in rural Connecticut, of all places. I brought all my paints and a big chunk of my pile of shame, and in seven glorious days I made a huge dent in it.
I put the most effort into my Explorer’s Society, completing the Intrepid Emissary, Jedza, Everlasting, the Kurgan, Yannic Waller, a Catalan Rifleman, a Botanist, and the entire Cadmus keyword.
I also got some great group shots showing everyone I worked on.
Finally, I 3D printed a boat (design from Rocket Pig Studios) and painted it to be the Superior, Maxine Agassiz’s research vessel. This serves as my display board and I think put me over the top to win Best Painted at the Malifaux Masters’ Invitational at NoVa this year.
Vrekais
This month is my hobby round up debut so be gentle, my style could most favourably be described as “efficient” and “good from 3ft” but I did achieve a milestone this month finally getting my 2k army list to fully painted and based, final strength that actually started in May when I embarked on replacing the 30 Fire Warriors I’ve been using since I was a teenager, back when I thought my pot of Vomit Brown was defective because it wasn’t getting an even coverage. An issue I solved with THICCER coats. I’ll save you from images of those though with a bit of a story on getting those 30 replacements together.
I’m a big fan of sub assembly techniques so my Fire Warriors were painted in parts before final assembly.
Another facet of these fire warriors I wanted to improve on is that fatigues, not with any particular effort above picking a base coat colour that doesn’t swallow all the shadows that add detail and depth to their legs. Previous I’ve based in black which just makes these parts look like a featureless void without significant effort… which I’m not about. These models are using Greyseer Contrast Primer Spray which I think has worked great and also provides a better foundation what I wanted to do with their weapons. Which at this point looked like this.
Some spray priming with grey seer, liberal application of Basilicanum Grey contrast and attaching to some Fire Warriors later though and this was the end result (some steps omitted).
With all that done… this was May 2022, obviously it was then time to pack up all my painting supplies and not making any more progress til September 2022. Spurned on by having bought a ticket for GHO UK I needed to get things finished.
One more day of painting later and I’d gotten to this point.
Just 3 Crisis, 2 Fireblades, and some Drones between me and fully painted. Then just a bunch of basing to do. The Crisis caught up quickly, as well as some detailing on my Crisis Commander.
Before one of my favourite hobbying tasks; basing, because it involves PVA, which is just fun to use.
Add some magnets to bases for transport and finally… all ready for GHO. Plus a few extra models that were already in there, the Remora tend to stay in there just due to how adorable they look all tucked in.
Looking forward to getting some use of these in a few weeks time!
Rocco Gest
Wow look at everyone’s beautiful completed models. Anyway here’s my current progress on the Astraeus that I impulse purchased at NOVA Open 2022.
It’s been a month and I’ve successfully cleaned the resin, glued large pieces together, filled many gaps, and sliced an old Phobos Captain at the waist so he can command from the turret. Consider this the first step in my road to the GW Narrative Finale in Albuquerque.
Rockfish
I have been beyond busy the last few weeks, so I am going pretty light this month. You probably will have seen some of my models recently, as I painted some dorfs.
Including their only named character, which I ended up doing in the ‘official’ scheme.
I’ve also been working away at my Battletech backlog!
I also did some of my another historical tank!
