THE BROS ARE BACK much to everyone’s surprise. Battle Bros is an ongoing bi-weekly column where Drew (PantsOptional) taught his brother Chris (head58) how to play Warhammer 40,000 and now, well you’ll see the gimmick this time shortly. Catch up on their past adventures here.
Meet the Battle Bros
Chris
The older of the two brothers, unsure of the road ahead.
Drew
The younger brother, overconfident in his “knowledge” of what is to come.
CHRIS: Hello again gentle (?) readers, we are regretfully back. Just when we thought we were out they dragged us back in. As you may remember from last time (assuming you haven’t suffered a traumatic and merciful head injury), Drew and I have entered a blind buy Combat Patrol tournament at our local, Off the Wall Games. The store had twenty ComPat boxes, we rolled a die, and we got what we got. Short Kings vs Good Bois. Not our first choices but at least it’s not elfs.
Now we have about a month to ready these models up before the Big Game, in which we will no doubt be matched into each other on round one and then somehow both take the bye for rounds two and three, the store quickly and quietly relocating while we’re at lunch and leaving no forwarding address.
That leaves us a month to assemble and (because all evidence to the contrary we are not monsters) paint up a ComPat box – and for me anyway, learn how to play 40K again. It’s been a while, I’ve only had one game of tenth, and I’ve played a lot of other game systems since then. On top of that, some kind of weird non-Space Marine faction. As a reminder, I’m old as fuck and my brain doesn’t work so good anymore. At least you have the crutch of “just another Space Marine faction,” albeit the most annoying one.
DREW: That opens up a whole other can of worms. Why exactly are they annoying? If Space Wolves players howled like Ork players I could see that taking the cake, especially because once one starts you now it sets off the whole rest of the room. Is it because of their gimmick of slapping wolf-themed tchotchkes/greebles onto everything to the point that Slaanesh thinks it’s a little much? I think most competitive players at this point are clutching their keyboards and grinding their teeth into dust to try to keep from screaming “Wolf Jail.” You’d love that one, Chris: it’s an army whose entire focus is on boxing the enemy in their deployment zone on turn one and keeping them from doing anything while you run around scoring. I can feel your blood pressure rising as you read that so I’m gonna go with that as the reason for “Most Annoying.”
CHRIS: I just… what the hell do you do against that? And why is it fun for anyone? I guess for the Space Wolves player it might be really funny the first time you pull that off, but then you’re That Player and your army bag has an unfortunate accident with a cement mixer. But you know that I’m just playing into the schtick about Wolves being the most annoying marines. We all know it’s really [THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK].
Anyway, I cracked open my ComPat box and for some reason decided to start with the Beserks. These are hateful models with so many wires and cables coming off their backpacks that need to be glued into little nubbins on their skin. Five of them took me forever and I hope I never have to assemble another. The Hearthkyn were easy enough once I figured out which special backpack went with which special model (scanner, comms, medic). The Pioneers were sort of in-between – way too many parts and pieces including the tiniest bit this side of a Goliath’s cigar, but once I figured the first one the others were fairly quick. Good details, the bits fit together nicely, 7/10 would dorf again.
DREW: In comparison the Wolves box was pretty easy to assemble mostly because the majority of the box is Intercessors and those are dirt simple to put together. I do miss the old days of flat joins at the shoulders and waists, both because I’m lazy and also because I really did enjoy not worrying about which arm goes with which other arm and just slapping whatever worked on to whatever body. Sure, the new method means that you have more dynamic poses for some of the models but the rest are still Brother Rifle Stance.
Special mention does need to be made of the Invictor’s instructions in the ComPat box. Yes, one part of my trouble with it was due to my inability to process certain information, but I would love to “have words with” the person who managed to give every piece of the cockpit roll cage the same part number. They managed to get it right in the standalone instructions so how it got messed up here is beyond me.
CHRIS: You kept sending me pictures of the instructions as your rage blossomed. It was delicious.
Next, I needed to come up with a color scheme for my space dwarfs. This unfortunately requires making decisions on things,which is my greatest weakness. Looking over the official schemes I sort of like the look of the Kronos Hegemony, but doing orange and black in October risks being too Halloweeny. While we were at the store you did say I needed to do safety orange, as approved by the Intergalactic Bureau of Mining. That stuck with me, bright colors would make sense to be easily visible in mines or wrecked space hulks. I didn’t want to go full neon like I had on my Goliaths, obviously. Your camera and photo editing software can only take so much stress. I have a scheme in the back of my head for an orange and deep blue Imperial Knight House which I will never end up painting so I didn’t want to go there, but orange and teal would be different enough while also giving me some practice with oranges.
Of course I quickly found I don’t own the oranges and teal Contrast paints which I thought I did. Magnaroth Flame and Aethermatic Blue were close but not exactly what I wanted, and I’d be damned if I’m going to drive fifteen minutes to the store to buy more paints (note: two days later I would drive to that store to buy other paints, but by then it was Too Late). I needed to do some experimentation. I grabbed a primed model and sat down to work, painting each arm/leg a different combo of oranges and each shoulder pad/foot a different blue.
In an uncharacteristic burst of smarts I actually wrote down what went where, so I could replicate it later.
Right arm Mephiston Red -> thinned Troll Slayer Orange
Left arm Magmadroth Flame -> thinned Troll Slayer Orange
Right leg Averland Sunset -> Magmadroth Flame
Left leg Averland Sunset -> thinned Troll Slayer Orange
Right foot Baharoth blue -> Nihilakh Oxide
Right cheek Baharoth Blue -> Aethermatic Blue
Right shoulder Vallejo Electric Blue-> Aethermatic Blue
Backpack Teclis Blue -> Aethermatic Blue
Left shoulder straight up Lothern Blue
The winner was Averland under Magmadroth and Electric Blue under Aethermatic which gave both a satisfying visual pop. For belts, gloves, and elbow/knee pads I went with Dark Reaper, the blueish tint tying to the teal and maybe reading as rubber.
For skin tones I’ve decided to paint the kin like they’re made from rock itself. Not 100% faithful to the lore but hey, maybe they’ve found adding a little cement into the cloning schmutz tanks works out nicely, whatever.
And yeah, I know those are supposed to be boots but the lines looked enough like toes that I decided to make them “flesh” colored piggies. You’re welcome sickos. This kind of content is usually locked behind the elite Goonhammer After Dark patron level.
DREW: When you said “stone flesh” I was really hoping to see some ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Ben Grimm material here. Once again my disappointment knows no bounds.
CHRIS: I hadn’t yet but I will now.
Painting these wee bairns was rudely interrupted by the fact that I was going to the Nova Open and needed to paint up a bunch of Marvel Crisis Protocol models at the last minute, and then actually travel to the nation’s capital I threw my Hearthkyn and some of the base paints into my bag to get some work in during my downtime. Metallics and highlights on everything but the armor would need to wait until I got home.
I highlighted the armor with Lothern and Barry Blue, and the orange with Troll Slayer and Fire Dragon Bright. The guns and axe handles ended up Mephiston Red, washed with Carroburg Crimson and then highlighted up with Evil Sunz Scarlet and Vallejo Model Color Scarlet. Some kind of light grey on the pleathers, I don’t remember what, then various earth tones for hair and Vallejo Pale Grey Blue to highlight the “flesh,” at least for the non-orange rock ones.
DREW: The army with which I ended up kind of limits me in terms of paint schemes. The Space Wolves don’t really have Successor Chapters for the most part, instead being organized into Great Companies which all share the same basic paint scheme with some minor heraldic variations. It’s like the old adage about the Ford Model T: you can paint them any color, as long as it’s pointlessly gendered baby nursery powder blue.
There is notably one Successor Chapter composed entirely of Primaris Marines, and that’s the Wolfspear. Unfortunately the paint scheme for them is white armor with black and red accents. We all know the standard complaints about painting white but honestly that doesn’t bother me quite as much as the feeling like it would come out boring. I have no problem breaking my back on a paint scheme but if at the end of the day it just feels dull then I might as well have done literally anything else shy of crushing my sack with a ball peen hammer.
CHRIS: I’ve painted more stormtroopers than you’ve had hot meals, and I name you coward.
DREW: Okay, but you call me that at least twice a week. After some thought I realized I have a bottle of Turbo Dork’s Pearly Gates paint, which (as the name suggests) is supposed to provide a pearly finish when painted over white. I decided to try this on a test model because contrary to popular belief and evidence to the contrary I am capable of learning a lesson and thinking critically.
Once again I say: ah, beans. It came out more glittery than pearlescent. It would be perfect if I took up Mrs. Optional’s suggestion of adding glitter to the Hive Fleet Snagglepuss paint scheme. As it stood I decided to fall back on my other option: Heresy-era Wolves. Who doesn’t love to paint your models back to the gray of the sprue?
After obsessively checking the Vlka Fenryka heraldry and cross-comparing it to modern heraldry I settled on a combination which thankfully didn’t necessitate me buying a whole new set of transfers. At its core it’s a gray scheme with red wolf insignias, red and black pack markings for the Intercessors and Lieutenant, and gray and black markings for the Invictor and Reivers. I settled on bronze as a secondary color for everyone but the Lieutenant since I didn’t want the brightness of a gold to pop too much, and black for the weapons since both eras of Woofs use that.
CHRIS: I’m going to tell the TO that you didn’t even prime your bare-ass sprue models and try to get you thrown out for not meeting three color minimum.
DREW: After priming with black Rustoleum from the hardware store (do not @ me) I coated everything with Mechanicus Standard Gray, picking out the metal bits with Two Thin Coats Sir Coates Silver and the weapons in Vallejo Black Grey (70.862). The Intercessors got a splash of Khorne Red on the right pauldrons, right knees, and wolf insignia, while the Lieutenant got the red on the left shoulder pad as well. He also had his chest semi-aquila, wolf insignia, and knife sheath metal bits done in Retributor Gold. At this point I coated any furs and bone parts with Zandri Dust and any bits that would end up Contrasted, such as pouches or holsters, with Celestra Gray.
I also had to consider basing at this time as I knew I would need to do that in stages as well. I prepared the bases by covering them with Macragge Blue, then painted random jags and crags with Lothern Blue. Those random Lothern areas received increasingly smaller layers of first Baharroth Blue and then Two Thin Coats White Star. The end result looks a lot like lightning strikes, but when I apply the next steps they will just be random bits of blue peeking out from under a coating of ice. Or, you know, they’ll look like lightning striking under ice. Whatever.
Once all that was done, the gray areas got layered with Dawnstone and the bone areas, unsurprisingly, with Ushabti Bone. Contrast was the next order of the day, with a little Skeleton Horde put over those bone areas as well as the fur. I did a lot of layering on that fur, actually, blending successively darker Contrast colors closer to the center of the fur areas (Gore-Grunta Fur and Garaghak’s Sewer, respectively) before blending it all together with a drybrush of Tyrant Skull. Bits that were supposed to be cords or ropes got a blast of Snakebite Leather, and the actual leather parts got hit with Wyrmwood. Finally, the recesses of the armor got a lining of Agrax Earthshade and the metal parts and weapons were doused in Two Thin Coats Oblivion Wash.
The next part was pretty simple but taxing. As anyone can tell you, edging for hours on end takes its toll on both body and mind. I highlighted the gray areas with Administratum Gray, bone and parchment with Screaming Skull, metal and gold/bronze parts with Vallejo Model Air Metallic Silver (71.063), red with Wazdakka, and the black parts (after much experimentation and frustration) with Skavenblight Dinge.
Finally there’s the base and we’re done. As I said I painted this weird lightning-y pattern on the base in the hope that it would make a weird pattern. I covered this with a coat of gloss varnish and then PVA glue; the varnish adds some sheen to that icy effect and the glue makes any sort of crackle texture paint spread more. Speaking of texture paint, GW doesn’t make any white crackle paint so I covered the base with Agrellan Earth. Once that dried and cracked I carefully painted it with Two Thin Coats White Star, because if I slipped and got white all over a finished model I would probably still be crying while I write this. Over all of that I put down a layer of the Briar Queen Chill Contrast paint and then drybrushed back again with White Star. Varnish it all and call it a day, let me go take a nap and at some point I’ll throw decals on.
Oh, and I forget what I did for flesh and hair (a truly appalling sentence which is also the story of my life). There was a layer of Pro Acryl Beige Red but past that point it was all jazz.
CHRIS: That actually sounds like you put a lot of effort into these. Also oh crap I have no idea what I’m doing for basing, Goblin Green it is, I guess! Or maybe I’ll do a rocky-snowy theme like I did way back in the day with my first Warmachine army. I think I still have some Woodland Scenic snow kicking around.
Next Time: It Will Not Be Enough
The Bros test out their Combat Patrol skills by playing their first game. Approximately zero percent of the rules will be correct. You knew this.
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