Welcome to August dear readers! Can you believe we’re nearly through the year 2025? Please ignore all flaming wreckage and the collapse of most civilizations while you answer that question. But even more importantly, can you believe we’re nearly four months into the existence of Mayday, Miss Marcy!? I can’t believe it either, and its entirely my fault! Which maybe makes me an irresponsible parent, perhaps. Well, let’s not worry about that. Last week we talked about decorating, hosting, and space, if you didn’t get a chance to read it!
Anyway, if you are new here, welcome to Mayday, Miss Marcy!, where I take reader submitted questions and queries and offer up the advice that you so readily crave, in a mostly timely* manner (questions answered in order received and once a week, so, don’t ask me anything you need to know tomorrow).
Are you interested in having your questions answered in this column? Well, have I got news for you: You can indeed do that, by following the directions below:
Marcy@goonhammer.com
With the subject “Miss Marcy: ”
You are also able to leave comments on the article, as well as use the Discord bot command if you happen to be a member, meaning you now have THREE ways to give me your questions to answer! And now, on to the questions!
Don’t Tarnish That Varnish
Dear Miss Marcy,
I have some matte varnish that is looking gloppier than whatever that horrible sandwich Greg posted contains. I know a lot of paints can be salvaged with a dollop of acrylic medium and a vigorous shaking. Can varnishes be salvaged this way, or is it skunked?
Varnished Garnish in Snohomish.
Dear Garnish,
I think sadly that your varnish is indeed skunked. I would very likely suggest that you could test this on something you do not care about at all, but just remember that varnishes are supposed to be used for either giving things a glossy shine or reducing shine and preserving the surface/paint job of what you have worked on. With that in mind, you’d need to consider the fact that the acrylic medium may cause some level of variance in the matte varnish itself. If you had something that you do not care about or have as a test piece that you could try it out on, I suggest giving the acrylic medium idea a try, but I think you will probably be better served by buying a new varnish and using something fresh, which ensures you’re getting the quality you want.
Sometimes it does seem attractive to do a ‘quick fix’, but a saying that I grew up with and have always kept close to my heart is “Pay the two dollars”. When you want something done right and you know the choice is spending a little money for a guaranteed fix versus doing it for “free” with debatable outcomes, always spend the little money, because the alternative here is you make something that ruins your model, which means you are going to spend a lot more time OR money fixing it.
Pay the two dollars.
Wrong Way Corrigan Teaches Warhammer
Hi Miss Marcy! I have a quandary – I’ve been being taught a game by someone I don’t know well, and they have a substantial amount of experience and are generally teaching well. The problem is I’ve spotted a few rules they’re getting wrong in the teaching, which I’ve picked up elsewhere, and I don’t know how to address that. Do you have any advice?
Troubled Trainee.
Dear Troubled,
Oh my god, have I been here before. I have been here so many times, in fact, that it is a place I could almost call home for how uncomfortable it is to be at. The issue that arises from this is that while you have discovered the rules are wrong and are supplanting your own knowledge on top of the wrong information, the ‘teacher’ here is not doing so, meaning that they are likely not only teaching other people incorrectly, but they seem to believe that what they are saying is correct. There is the immediate problem of ‘correcting’ your ‘teacher’, which can create discord and hurt feelings, but that problem is far, far lesser than the bigger one, which is that they are teaching you the game wrong and are thus not playing it correctly.
We’ll assume they are not doing this to cheat, at least maliciously. Sometimes mistakes happen and people just don’t realize they’ve read and interpreted something wrong, and they then go on to believe that is exactly how this thing operates. Since they are the person who likely teaches other people, those people in turn have just decided to accept that this person is correct and are also unlikely to question them, meaning the entire group is playing suboptimally, possibly “illegally” (in the sense of higher competitive play), and now you have a spreading problem.
In my history with this issue, the solution is always the same: confront the person (politely) that the rule they are teaching is incorrect, and be sure to back up how you know it is incorrect. You don’t need to be a jerk about it, but you could even tell a small white lie to make it easier, something like “I was playing and we realized this is actually how you do it”, and then show them how/where the correct information is. The LARGER problem I’ve had with this is that many people do not like to be corrected, and your mileage may vary on how this person takes it. Hopefully they will take it graciously, especially if you are able to talk to them about it one on one and not in front of a larger group. If they take it poorly, don’t sweat it too long: you did the right thing to correct an error, and if someone won’t work to correct their error, it may mean they wanted to keep making it for reasons beyond immediate pride.
Pink Goes With Everything
Hey Marcy,
I started my second 40k army just recently and one of my main goals with it was to branch out from my comfort zone a bit. The song of Slaanesh was irresistible so I went full-bore into the Emperor’s Children. I love their lore, their trashy vibe, and their relatively minimal Chaos trim so much, but I’m finding pink to be a tricky color to get right! I know basecoating is supposed to take forever already, but I find myself having to build up three or four coats of pink – sometimes five! – before the color really looks as vibrant and obnoxious as I think it should. I’m proud of the end result, but ideally I’d like to be able to paint a single battleline guy in less than four or five hours. Then again, maybe this exacting perfection is exactly what Slaanesh demands. Or maybe I’m just a paintbrush licking Crimson Fists player who’s had it way too easy for way too long.
All this is to say that if you or the rest of the team have any special techniques or tricks for getting a bright pink relatively quick, I’d be very eager to hear them.
Thanks!
Lurid on Long Island.
Dear Lurid,
I suppose you can already tell that I will link you an article, yes? But don’t worry, I have some thoughts other than that. That being said, here are a few articles we’ve put together for Emperor’s Children and Slaanesh in general over the years. You can likely find some ideas and techniques that will work for you and what you’re looking for in them, and I think Rob’s paintjob is probably one of the best to really nail what you might be looking for.
However, I think the other suggestion I’d give is that I am wondering if you are painting with the right ‘pinks’ and base coat. Pink is a very vibrant and heavy hued color in most instances of it, only tending towards being pale-r the lighter in the spectrum you go away from purple. Pink Horror, for example, should likely be the best base coat you could use to get your job going and then work to lighten it up from there, which is probably much easier than working with layering lighter and lighter pastels or other neutral pinks.
If you’re using contrasts or fast painting mediums, you will likely need to work on building up a coat or so, but there you’ll want to start at white or a neutral gray, and build the color from there with something darker. Working with pink sometimes deceives people (classic Slaanesh, right?) because the color seems softer than it actually is; start with a heavier base color and work up, rather than thinking you need to start at baby pink and working it into a darker shade.
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