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

It’s just weeks since we last did one of these, but no-one gets to leave their house ever again so our contributors have been busy at their painting desks turning out their latest and greatest batch of plastic dollies.

Liam “Corrode” Royle

In our mid-month post I’d just finished some more Sisters of Battle and a couple of slam Captains, and I talked about aiming to finish the Repentia Superior and a GSC Magus, before moving on to some Intercessors and maybe my Tech-priest Manipulus.

I certainly started as I meant to go on – I painted the Superior, and then bashed through the Magus more or less in an evening. As you can see from the image below though, the rest did not go entirely to plan:

What happened instead is that I a) realised my Leadbelcher and Xereus Purple were both running critically low, which meant my plan to paint a Knight was out the window, and b) wanted to make the Backlog Number go down a bit quicker than I had been. I had the Eldar psykers sat on my shelf, and my Ulthwe scheme is quite light on the silver metals and relatively quick to do, so over the course of a couple of films I whizzed through them. Then, enter the Bloodletters. I painted these almost entirely with Contrast paints – the skin is a single layer of Blood Angels Red, the swords were Aethermatic Blue that I drybrushed with Baharroth Blue, and then it’s just a bit of bone for the horns and pink on the tongues et voila, 10 Bloodletters painted. For those keeping score at home – no, I don’t have a Chaos army (yet), I just had these lying around, and with no tournaments to paint for it was the opportune time to have some fun blasting through some models with Contrast. Finally for this month, and in a similar vein, I’ve had 9 Kabalites sat on my shelf for ages from where I needed another shredder and had no body to put it on – the obvious choice was to simply buy a whole box. My Kabalite scheme is very quick to paint, and so these 9 guys were finished as well. Much progress!

With a big block of infantry models painted, I moved on to Ahriman and his disc of Tzeentch, an exercise in painting and then repainting all the trim, and another model I could paint without resort to Leadbelcher. Sadly, the individual picture of him translated to the Warp while being cropped and I’d already broken down my photo set-up:

At the end of the month, I was continuing on the knife-ears theme with some Wraithblades. They didn’t quite make it into April, indeed their transfers are still drying right now, so they’ll have to wait until the mid-May post to appear on this esteemed website.

Soggy

The second half of this month was semi-productive, it started with basing the Knight Household Battleforce that I painted up the fortnight before so are ready to die to some template weapons when the current situation calms down.

As I am incapable of making my own decisions I put up a poll in the Discord to decide what I should paint next. To noone’s surprise the people in favour of getting my third(!) Titanicus Warlord  painted up. I will never likely field all three at the same time, however the first one I had was second hand with glued carapace mounts, so this will let me have some flexibility with a Regia or Fortidus Maniple. I was surprised with how quickly I managed to get this done, even the trim didn’t seem that painful as previous Titans. I’m either getting better at this or care less, I’ll let you decide (I think it’s both)

I’m really happy with how this came out, as the pose is loads more interesting than my other ones and the paint job came out loads better. The only thing I was a little bit eh about was the base, as I had misplaced a bunch of basing stuff and just wanted to get it out the door.In true indecisive fashion, I’ve put up another poll as to what to paint next for the month of May and it looks like Blood Bowl is on the menu.

This will be the first Lizardmen I’ve painted up since 7th edition WHFB, so I’m looking forward to it.

Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

I’ve spent the last week and a half helping my parents move – something that was planned before the pandemic but, thanks to the pandemic now no longer involves the key step of “hiring movers,” so I’ve had less time than I’d have liked to paint. That said, I did add two more Blightlord Terminators to my squad, bringing the total up to 4. Meet Buggy and Smiley, two wonderful gross bois:

Next up: More Blightlords. Gotta finish another 5-6 Terminators before I’m done with these, and then after that I’ll likely take a break with some nurglings before I move on to more Plague Marines.

Silks

As I mentioned at the start of the month, I was running low on models to paint so I panic bought a Slaves to Darkness army. In an effort to make these last for the rest of quarantine I’ve tried to teach myself some new techniques and add elements like freehand. I’ve gone for a traditional Slaves to Darkness colour scheme but I’ve added in airbrushed elements for the monster’s skin and added woad to skin and celtic symbols to the shields. My Chaos Lord has been crazy popular on Twitter and they even talked about it on Warhammer TV which made me really happy!

I’ve started work on Archaon next…

SRM

I’m continuing my streak of Necromunda weirdos for my quarantine hobby, and I’ll start with the second Squat I’ve painted this year, Ragnir Gunnstein:

I actually finished him before the mid-month hobby round up, but didn’t get around to any pictures. I tried to go for a sort of Gotrek look with the orange hair and striped blue and white pants, but I feel like that plus his lifetime supply of grenades and bullets make for a figure that’s a little too busy, even for me. Still, he was real fun to paint, and knocking three “miniatures” off my painting que with those ammo crates was satisfying. I next went a bit more grounded with my painting, moving on to the Necromunda Dome Runner:

She looks way meaner than she actually is in-game, and was fiddly as hell to put together, but I like the model a bunch. She’s wearing a rat on her belt, as is the style of the time, but I kinda wish I left it off for a very stupid plan that’s stewing in the back of my head. I painted her quickly, going for a t shirt and blue jeans sort of Mad Max look, which suits the aesthetic of the model real well. She did for a minute have green hair, which I covered up right quick as the whole look was a bit too Joker. I figure as a dome runner she’d probably want to stay unassuming and not too flashy. I kept things fairly restrained on the model she’s sold with, the Ammo Jack.

This guy rules. There’s something so straightforward about the model’s design, and I’ve been excited to paint him ever since he got revealed. I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes I made on Ragnir, so I kept his color palette much more restrained. I went for a gritty, early-mid-2000s FPS protagonist look to the model, like we were past the period in shooters where the characters just quoted action movies and instead said “shit” a lot. He painted up real quick, even if I couldn’t help myself by putting caution stripes on every flat surface. I think I knocked him out in an afternoon. Also, unlike a lot of Necromunda models, this guy might actually see regular campaign play!

Lastly, I broke my streak of “Oops! All Characters!” and I’m paying for it.

You may notice this Intercessor squad has Sergeant Jovan and 3 Intercessors in it. More astute readers will know the minimum squad size is 5. Well, it turns out I’m a clumsy idiot once in a while and I spilled half a bottle of Tamiya Extra Thin plastic glue on my desk, all over the pile of clipped parts that were to be Intercessor #5. This rendered him somewhere south of usable.

While I have reinforcements lined up to bulk out the squad, I’m pretty happy with how the surviving boys came out. I used some Ork Aeronautica Imperialis transfers to give them their checkers, and little Ultimas from the Forgeworld Ultramarines transfers to keep these guys looking distinct from the 30 Intercessors that came before them. Also, I gave them little caution stripes in their unit markings, because of course I did.

As we meander aimlessly towards May, I’m hemming and hawing on a few things. I just built up the store anniversary Primaris Captain with a power fist and plasma pistol, and if I were to paint up him, my Redemptor, and 3 Inceptors, I’d completely finish my Ultramarines backlog. I also have the Mercator Sanguis crew for Necromunda, and working on them would give me a nice middleground between painting one-off weirdos and painting a cohesive squad of something.  Then, of course, I could paint up some of the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare miniatures I have, because as some of you may know, I kinda really like Fallout. Anywhomst, we’ll see in two weeks for the next roundup!

Mike “Pvt_Snafu” Bettle-Shaffer

Sadly I didn’t get to finish off my Titan Battlegroup this month. Work was a little busier than expected and I managed to let myself get sidetracked actually finishing off other projects. I did keep to my commitment of making more terrain for my Chain of Command board, and here’s some US Paratroopers advancing through the woodland.

I also dug out some of my half finished Sylvaneth projects, which let me get the whole band back together. If the band was giant angry trees… And by that I mean I finished off a Spirit of Durthu and a Treelord. Contrast really has made getting this army table ready a breeze and while there’s the odd detail I’d like to go back and touch up it feels great to get these guys done and in the display.

Rounding out my hobby progress for this month is an Arch-Revenant and I realise at this point, all of the things I’ve actually finished painting are trees of one form or another, some more animate than others.

I’m still not totally set on what I’ll be aiming to finish in May, but my Warlord Titan is pretty high on the list! I also have a whole pile of German buildings and some Scarab Occult Terminators (I’m sorry Coda I swear I’ll finish them before Christmas) to finish.

Pendulin

I painted a few Skaven this month.

This is by far the most number of models I’ve painted in a single month, and it’s a huge relief to hit my target. I was painting every single day to complete all these by months-end, and I’m really happy with how they turned out. They are painted almost entirely with Contrast paint, which greatly sped up their painting process. Normally, each infantry-sized model takes me between 1 and 2 hours to paint, but with Contrast paints each these models were painted start to finish in about 30 minutes. That even includes the huge Rat Ogors in the back.

As fun as that picture is, it’s basically impossible to see any details. So let’s break it down by box.

I already highlighted Skaven Clanrats in my mid-month hobby round-up, but I’m going to include them again here and you can’t stop me.

This trio of types of Rat Ogors, Giant Rats, and Packmasters all come inside the same box, which was a little strange. However, each of them were an absolute blast to paint. I was dreading to paint the Giant Rats (ironically named so despite being the smallest models), but they wound up being among my favorites. Each is unique and interesting, and I look forward to painting more down the line.The Rat Ogors as well gave me some pause, as they would be the largest models I’ve yet painted with Contrast paints, and I was worried I’d have bad pooling issues. Despite those concerns, I think they turned out great.

Last for the Skaven are my Plague Monks, which will likely become the staple for my eventual Age of Sigmar army. And I’m happy about that, because I love these guys. While they mostly painted the same as the Clanrats and Packmasters, the Bringer-of-the-Word in the front right was a little challenge. I wanted to match the style of Skaven handwriting on Games Workshop’s store, but with a decent amount of time and a really steady hand, it wound up being fairly easy to get that lettering.

And I can’t let an entire month go by without painting something for 40k.

I painted up Inquisitor Coteaz for my Admech army, and I did not enjoy it at all. Being finecast, the quality of the model was extremely subpar. Additionally, the model was miscast and entirely missing the bird’s right head. I had to sculpt that one out of green stuff, and it wound up looking more like a doofy parrot than an eagle. Oh well, he can still bring a good psychic punch to my Admech army, which is sorely lacking in that department.

Beanith’s Hobby Progress April 2020

Build Total – 6 models @ 138 points
Paint Total – 2 models @ 134 points

Well shit, we here at Goonhammer love our numbers but wow, those are rookie numbers. Essentially instead of sitting around at home peacefully smooshing paint onto things during the lockdown like everyone else, I’ve been moving house and cleaning which took up almost all of my free time. Good news is all my hams made it over mostly in the same number of pieces and everything is neatly put away safe in my hobby room which should stop me from tripping over over it.

I even went on a bit of a purge and gave away a bunch of dvd which left me with a nice big empty CD/DVD tower which I’ve repurposed into my Ham tower for my current projects and it fits my Imperial knights nicely as well which is handy. I may look into attaching some perspex sheets to cut down on dust but that is future Beanith’s problem.

Sadly I’ve managed to hurt my back during all this which means I can’t sit at my painting desk for very long so I’ve been slowly chipping away at my Chaos Lord in Terminator armor that Wings told me I had to have.

I had fun painting this one, I stretched my wings a little and tried out a quasi-zenithal highlight using a quick hit of greyseer from a top angle over the Caliban green undercoat. Towards the end he was looking a little Salamandery but some washes put a stop to that.

And when my back is playing nice, I’ve been working on a squad of Plague Marines, mostly just smooshing in white in places I don’t want to remain green and I also experimented with an orange tentacle but it looks a lot like a Twistie so I may just repaint it… or buy some Twisties now because I’m feeling a tad peckish.

As you can see from my Trello, not a lot has progressed. Thanks to Warhammer Conquest, I’ve added 40 cultists to the project as well as Typhus and his twin brother Tiphus. The cultist will remain exceeding low on my ToDo list, I have a vague plan of using someone’s airbrush setup to do a quick and dirty job on them.

Games played? Nothing major to report, this month is looking better though. Our lockdown restrictions here Downunder are being loosen this month, I won’t be going too crazy but I will hopefully catch up with a mate soon for a game or three and talk rubbish all day.

Hobby plans for May? Refer back to my Trello and smoosh paint onto things.