It is indeed that season once again, so if you are looking for gift inspiration, hearty recommendations, or just don’t know what to buy the miniature or gaming hobbyist in your life (including yourself; buy yourself something nice), Merry Matron Marcy is here to help with a selection of curated guides for all of your gift giving needs. I’ve assembled a team of elves (the Santa kind, not the Blood Bowl kind) to help me fill out these gift guides for your use!
Here at Goonhammer, we do occasionally receive products early to review on our site. For these gift guides, any authors speaking about items they have received promotionally will say so in their recommendation, but please keep in mind that these are not reviews: if we recommend something on this list, it is because we think you (or the special person in your life you are gifting this to!) will really appreciate it.
The Experienced Hobbyist
Perhaps the hardest group to shop for on our list outside of the Beginner, the Experienced Hobbyist, or Hobby Veteran if you like, often seems to be the person that already has everything you could possibly buy them, leading to a lot of mediocre gift ideas or the New Gadget of the Year type of purchase. While those new gadgets can sometimes be fun (remember when everyone thought paint handles weren’t going to last?), they don’t often read as a meaningful or useful gift. Our gift guide is broken into three categories: Budget, Investment, and Extravagant. Going to a Holiday Party, Secret Santa, or just have a budget you need to keep track of? Then our Budget gifts are a great selection of items that an Experienced hobbyist will appreciate adding to their kit. Investment gifts are great bang for your buck, focused on providing long-lasting impact on the hobbyist in your life for a little bit more money out of your pocket. And finally, the Extravagant list are things that may cost the most or take up the most room, but may also have a huge impact on the hobbying life of your experienced gift receiving target.
Budget Gifts
Jake: If someone has been around in this hobby for even a short amount of time, they’re going to have more paints than they know what to do with. They’re also likely to have them piled up in shoeboxes or chaotic piles on the painting desk. I tried a few different solutions over the years, but the one I’ve been happiest with also wound up being the cheapest – clear acrylic nailpolish racks. There are dozens of listing on Amazon, but this is the model I purchased ($13 USD). They’re particularly good for the fatter bottles of paint, like what Citadel or Pro Acryl use but you can also stagger the smaller dropper bottle style paints to fit quite a few in each row.
Cronch: Merchandise. Hopefully if your recipient has been into the hobby for a long time, you will have an idea of if they’re a big fan of a particular faction. Grabbing them a keychain or t-shirt of their favourite is a nice way of showing you’re aware of what they like, without risking doubling up on buying them models they already have. The Warhammer Merch store has a good selection of items for the Games Workshop lover, or most Warhammer stores also stock a smaller range of items like keychains in store. At this time of year the official Games Workshop store also features festive merch like Ultramarines scarves, Red Gobbo blankets, and more! Maybe shy away from anything with a contextless Imperium eagle on it, we wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.
Cronch: Interesting miniatures. The experienced hobbyist is probably all set for units for their main army – lord knows most of us have a chunky backlog. But how about getting them a handful of interesting minis from a smaller indie producer that they might not be familiar with? These could make for a nice palate cleanser in between projects, and a few models plus shipping might not set you back more than £20. Bad Squiddo Games, Fenris Games, and North Star all make great models, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
Cronch: Colour and Light, by James Gurney. For the real art sicko in your life. If your loved one is really getting into their painting, and especially if they’re pushing themselves towards competition-level painting, then this book should be a great investment for them at a pretty affordable price. It’s not directly applicable to miniature painting, and as such not every page will be relevant, but the sections on colour theory and light placement in particular will prove invaluable.
VH Eric: A gift certificate to Ulta. Yes, that Ulta. If your friend or loved one is at all into weathering, Ulta is a fantastic source of makeup and eyeliner sponges, emery boards, etc. that come in very handy when working with oils and enamels.
SRM: Backing up Eric here: Your friend or loved one could probably use some moisturizer. The gamer in your life is, more likely than not, dry as hell.
Investment Gifts
Cronch: A Vortex Mixer. I’ve linked one such example on Amazon here, but these are available at a variety of places. Look for items that reference things like paint and tattoo ink and you should find something suitable in your price range. If you’re near a university, check their surplus stores – biology labs buy a lot of these. These handy little devices will save your oomfie hours of manual shaking of paints, instead vigorously vibrating rogue pigments back into line in next to no time. Be warned, they can make quite a bit of noise if put in the wrong place on a desk, which is worth considering if your friend has particularly irate downstairs neighbours. But that stumbling block aside, this is a super-useful tool that very few people seem to think to buy for themselves, even as a veteran hobbyist.
Lenoon: If you know how you paint and you want to do something a little different, Ammo by Mig has a huge range of weathering and detailing material that will legitimately push your painting (particularly vehicles) up to another level. You might have mastered acrylics and fake chipping, but the range on offer here allows you to add in realistic oil staining, dust, rust, grime and wear and tear. They’re accompanied by simple guides and use cases, and virtually anything in the range is a good shout to pick up – getting everything pushes this up into extravagant gifts, but picking up a few paints and weathering pens for someone who knows how to paint but does so in a factory fresh style is a good shout.
Cronch: The Colour Cube. Does your loved one get stuck looking for colour scheme inspiration? Then the Colour Cube might be the answer they need. A box full of cards, each containing a reference image and the constituent colours it breaks down into. Great for outsourcing the mental load of nailing that killer scheme for a BloodBowl team, Underworlds gang, or really just any project where colour creativity is needed.
VH Eric: An Ammo of Mig “Solution Box” (https://www.migjimenez.com/en/365-solution-box). Admittedly aimed at scale modelers, these boxes are all in one kits for a particular type of weathering. They include primer, varnish, weathering products, and a guide book for how to use them. Admittedly a little dependent on an airbrush, these boxes are great for someone just getting started in weathering, and likely to find applicability for treadheads of all sorts, including Imperial Guard and Heresy players.
Primaris Kevin: Supplies. If you can take some time to learn about your recipient and figure out what they use, you can use that information to get them something that might help them. Getting supplies that help with their hobby shows you understand them at a level that goes beyond the superficial. Maybe it’s getting more of the glue they use, a roll of Green Stuff, or a box of latex gloves that fit them. If they do 3D printing, getting them some spools of their favorite filament or a bottle of their favorite resin is a wonderful option. Every resin printer needs another bottle or 12 of isopropyl alcohol.
Extravagant Gifts
Cronch: A tournament voucher. Now, you’ll struggle to buy an actual gift voucher for many if not all wargaming tournaments, but the handmade IOU voucher is a time-honoured Christmas gift tradition. Offer to cover a tournament entry of your recipient’s choice, including travel and hotel costs if you’re feeling generous. Hobbyists that like to attend events are more often limited by the cost of travel than they are by available time, so enabling their continued campaign of glorious battle is a sure-fire route to their heart.
Lenoon: A Home Tanning Kit. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say your experienced hobbyist might have completely mastered resin, metal and plastic. Might even have got incredibly bored with them. Might be looking for new materials to incorporate into builds. Why not encourage them to replace crap looking plastic sculpted as leather with actual leather? Home tanning kits can let you bring in actual real-life leather, skin and fur into your builds, because we’ve been doing this GW plastic thing our whole lives and I’m done with it. Depending on where you are in the world, getting the skins might be trickier – head to a game butcher in the UK, maybe in the US just go shoot a moose or something.
Mike BS: A painting class – now this gift could potentially sit in the Investment category, but I’ve put it here to capture what could be the top end of cost. These classes can vary from a couple of hours to several days, and could involve travel to foreign countries for some painters. Full day classes tend to start at around the £60 mark, and weekend or longer courses will likely surpass £250. This doesn’t include any travel expenses, so it’s worth taking that in to account too! In the UK folks like Rising Ape Minis, and Siege Studio organise classes throughout the year, that often require booking well in advance as they can sell out quickly.
I’ve attended a couple of painting classes now, and it’s helped me as a hobbyist enormously. Most days tend to be a mixture of lectures and demonstrations, with lots of free painting time to practice under supervision. It can also be a chance for the hobbyist in your life to meet one of their painting idols, with many painting YouTubers running classes at conventions and venues around the world. If you’re based in the US, keep an eye on class listings at events like Adepticon and NoVA.
Cronch: JoyToy action figures. Forgive the somewhat eyebrow-raising name. JoyToy make detailed and well-painted action figures of a lot of Warhammer 40,000 and Horus Heresy characters, and they could be a great addition to the desk/display shelf/cabinet of the Space Marine lover who has everything. Prices start around £50 and raise to fairly eye-watering heights, but they’re high-quality pieces. Figures are available from the Warhammer Merch store, Merchoid, and others.
Cronch: Warhammer pin advent calendars. Available in both 40k and Age of Sigmar flavours, these advent calendars deliver an enamel pin badge for every day of the festive season, usually themed around the various factions in their respective settings. They’re not cheap at £60 and they’re the very definition of frivolous (who needs an influx of 24 new pins all at once?) but it’s a nice festive injection of hobby joy. Obviously this gift would be best delivered at the start of December so your beloved can open it on the right days!
VH Eric: A Geekend. You, your friend, other friends, and a cabin on a nice lake/the ocean/the mountains/whatever your jam is. Peace and quiet, save for the clatter of dice, and the occasional “Waaagh!” if you must.
Primaris Kevin: The Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra. Of all of the resin printers that I have reviewed, this one is by far the best in terms of balancing functionality, price, and capability. If your focus is on miniature printing then this model will be able to manufacture pretty much everything you could want. While the Jupiter SE is larger, the Saturn 4 Ultra is more than enough volume to meet most miniature needs and has a lot of utility features that I really like. Please note that resin printing is messy, and you should consider if your recipient has the space for such a printer and the associated clean-up. If you’re looking for a filament printer then I highly recommend Prusa; I own the MK3S+ and they’ve only made things better since then. Full disclosure; Elegoo provided us with the Saturn 4 Ultra and the Jupiter SE to review for free.
DYLON: Let’s talk about the darling of the scrapbooking world that can be used for so many hobby things; Cricut die cutters. If you have any skill with making a vector file, the world is your oyster and you can make nearly anything in 2D. Want custom stencils, cut vinyl, or want to get hectic and make your own terrain? Wildly, these things can do it. I maintain that the Explore Air series is just as capable as the high-end Maker they offer, and for hobby-only uses, it’ll do damn-near anything you want. Consumables are blades and mats, and if you’re cutting plastic, you’ll go through blades. I cut .020” (.5mm) sheet styrene and use 60º blades.
Jack: Your experienced giftee is probably already well set on all the stuff they need to actually build, paint, and play with their models. That’s their thing. They’ve got their preferred brand of brushes and paint and sure, you could get them some more of that, show how you pay attention to them and what they like, but you’re here because you want to go above and beyond. Most of these experienced hobbyists are proud of what they’re doing and want to show it off, whether that be on an Instagram account, Reddit, or even just their FLGS discord. The key to enabling this is lighting. You can take a picture with some parchment paper thrown over simple Ikea swing arm lights, but what I’ve always found helps me take more pictures is to make the setup as simple as possible, which is where a dedicated set of lights comes in. This is certainly something you can spend a nearly infinite amount on, but you don’t really need to – a couple hundred dollars will set you up incredibly well. My recommendation is to pick up a set of LED panel lights (like these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJV3MTZY), a set of a set of softboxes that mount on them (these are the ones that match the lights I linked: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TJWJ9YX), and some sort of tripod – pretty much any of the ones made for phones work fine for this. Last but not least, include a link to our handy photography guide – https://www.goonhammer.com/how-to-photograph-everything-a-guide-to-miniature-photography/
This article is part of a larger series of our 2024 Gift Guides! For more guides, click this link. Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
