Goonhammer Hobby Round-up: February 2020

Following on from last month’s inaugural Goonhammer hobby round-up, here’s February’s edition. This month features more Space Marines, tiny planes, Chaos of all shapes, sizes, and gaming systems, tokens galore, Necromunda… a whole swathe of hobby progress!

Corrode

This month has been a little slower than January – I’ve had less time available, and also I didn’t have 10 models already 60% painted to boost my numbers (thanks, auto bolt rifle Intercessors). I’ve still gotten a fair bit done, though. First up I finished off my Centurion Devastators, with the final two models completed to finish the squad of 6, and also 3 Suppressors from the Shadowspear box. With those done, I have just 4 Infiltrators to do and I’ve finally finished the models from a box which came out in March 2019 – this is rapid in my terms. I also put squad markings on my Intercessors, to finally separate the squads out on the table.

As well as the Centurions and Suppressors I was grinding through to finish for the Echoes of War tournament, I’ve also completed some Eliminators – which means I have 9 painted now – and two new characters. I’ve had a Primaris Apothecary sitting around for a while, and he seemed too good of a pick not to sit in with the Centurions to keep them on their feet. I am not totally wild about how the paint job went on this one – I’m not a good enough painter to pull off a consistent white, so don’t look too closely – but he’s good enough and once he’s in his natural place on the table, sat behind a wall somewhere and only emerging to push a syringe into a downed Centurion, no one will notice. I’ve also painted Tor Garadon, in a regal blue and red instead of the oh-so-gauche Imperial Fists yellow. The model is too cool not to paint, and he’ll fit in nicely when I want to play quasi-Imperial Fists instead of Crimson Fists (if you think this is heresy, just wait until I paint up a blue and red Kor’sarro Khan and Kayvaan Shrike soon…)

That’s a lot of Space Marines, but I haven’t totally abandoned my other projects. My Craftworld Ulthwe Eldar have been languishing for a bit, but I saw a Wraithlord looking lonesome in the garage the other day and decided I’d paint him up. I like his sword a lot – blending through the purples was a lot of fun.

Gaming-wise, I got in one practice game before Echoes, and then obviously five games at Echoes itself. Not a great number, but more than zero.

For March, my goal is to just keep attacking my backlog – I have the aforementioned Infiltrators on my desk, I’m finally going to deal with the last five stalker bolt rifle-toting Intercessors, so that I can hopefully move away from painting power armour for a bit and take on something else.

That said, I did get some building done yesterday…

 

Mike

February saw me finishing out a few work in progress items from the previous month, including my first models for Adeptus Titanicus. These were a real joy to paint and while I didn’t push myself too hard from a technique perspective, they’ve come together looking really cool and I’m pumped to paint the Reaver next. This month I finished:

16 Sergeants

8 Knights

2 Warhounds

 

I also made some good progress on my Saga: Age of Crusades warband, finishing the remaining sergeants and their accompanying knights, all that’s left now is a warlord to lead them! They’ll be joining the crossbowmen from last month to form my first Saga Age of Crusades warband.

 

 

I also managed to get a couple more games of Warcry in, plus a painting day with my local hobby group which was a great way to catch up and socialise while making progress on my backlog. To round out the month, I celebrated my birthday which brought me a third Reaver and the Slaves to Darkness Start Collecting. I swear I’ll start making trees for my World War Two board soon…

 

Beanith’s Hobby Progress Feb 2020

 

	Models	Points
BUILT TOTALS	1	39
PAINT TOTALS	5	344

 

After a sprint out of the gates last month, it does look like I’ve slowed down immensely for February. But as most of us in this hobby are prone to do, it’s because I have several projects on the go and I am flitting between them when I get bored, distracted or inspired.

This is one of the reasons I am considering throwing my hat into the ring when we start the Road to NOVA series where I will focus on getting my Death Guard built and painted into an army ready in time to not actually go to NOVA. I might even take the time to learn how to play them properly too… or just happily push my three PBC around making bulldozer noises. Essentially an excuse to knuckle down and work on the one project.

Building

This month I have built only one model, a Lord Commissar who I have also painted as a gift for a friend’s birthday.

 

Painting

As well as the Lord Commissar, I have also hopefully painted the last Space Marine Terminator Captain for a while… although Saga of the Beast is around the corner and I do have a bunch of Space Corgis in my collection… No, I should be strong and resist.

I painted up one of the Incursors as a test model with the other nine based coated. I’ve also managed to paint a Lord of Contagion and a Blightlord Terminator which I picked up from a Warhammer Conquest issue a while back.

 

Hobby

Undercoated a bunch of stuff, namely the Death Guard vehicles and Incursors. I’ve also started to use Transfers for the first time as well thanks to a few tips from fellow goons and Reddit.

I’ve also been hard at work on my Necromunda campaign making small adjustments and house rules thanks to the great Necromunday articles here on Goonhammer by Dan and Jules. I gave in to my token desire and picked up a set of acrylic Necromunda tokens from Art of War for my GSC gang and spent a few evenings splooshing white paint into the engravings.

 

Games

Just the one this month sadly. I took my undercoated Death Guard and some non spikey Knights for the first time over to a mates place for a 2k point CA19 Maelstrom mission against his Orks where I lost the game 7VP to 11VP. And that was a game with a bunch of rule errors on my part too which is never a good thing. As much as I want to blame unfamiliar rules, it’s something I need to work on for future games, I really don’t like the Feel Bads afterwards, it takes a bit of the gloss away from having a great time with mates rolling dice and talking rubbish.

Plans for March

Work on the other Death Guard terminators and have a crack at painting the Plagueburst Crawlers and Myphitic Blight-haulers. Maybe some Incursors too for a change of pace. Build wise, nothing major planned but that will go out the window should something shiny appear. Games planned? I’d love lots of Necromunda games please, that would be ideal.

 

SRM

I’ve decided that in 2020, My Bullshit is “hard to paint dudes ft. horses” and oh buddy, am I on that bullshit. I’ve followed up last month’s Chaos Chariot with the absolutely gorgeous new Knights of Chaos from the Start Collecting: Slaves to Darkness set. While I absolutely love how they look, they were what I would call “paint averse” as they can’t easily be built in subassemblies and there’s tons of overlapping detail and little baubles hanging everywhere. I am happy to say they’re finished though, and my poisoned brain has decided it wants more.

I preserved the woading that I’ve done on the foot troops from last month, and went a little more vibrant with the cloth. I figure these guys are bright, shiny knights (or as close as these Chaos folks get to that) so should have some gaudiness to reflect that.

I took to the skies next, painting up some Aeronautica Imperialis Orks and Imperials. I started by hashing out the Ork half of the Wings of Vengeance starter set with a dirty camo scheme, hoping to tie them into my Blood Axes force. I haven’t done the bases yet so they aren’t “truly” done in my eyes, but they’re good enough for demo games.

I figure the best way to get people to play this wonderful game about tiny planes with me is to let them try out a painted fighter wing. Where my heart truly lies is with Imperial Navy planes though, and I came through with some Marauder Destroyers to aid my Soviet-inspired Imperials:

While I had completely forgotten how I did the basing for my previous planes, I had the foresight to write a Goonhammer article on painting radar bases so I didn’t have to remember!

That’s not all I got done for the 41st millennium, however. I was at my buddy Dylan’s place and we were going through some excess stuff of his. He had a Cities of Death ruin he built back in 2007 but never painted, and he handed it to me and said “it’s your problem now”. Using what remaining Cities of Death bits I had (and a bunch from my Imperial Guard bitz box) I put together a neat little ruin that tells the story of it being used as a Guard command post.

I kept the painting pretty simple, starting by priming the outside with Army Painter Dragon Red and the inside with GW’s Wraithbone. I followed that up with some washes, drybrushes, and a bit of drybrush and sponge weathering for good measure. It’s not gonna win any awards, but it does the job. I also figure in narrative games, someone can man the heavy stubber or missile launcher, which would be neat.

I closed out the month with The Good Shit, by which I mean Necromunda. I’d had this beast lure lying around since I got the box set, so I hashed it out using the already mixed greens and blues I’d mixed for my main attraction. One coat of gloss varnish later, and I had a slippery looking tentacle to completely own any ganger dumb enough to walk near it:

And now, saving the best for last, I painted my model of the year every year, Ol’ Sumpy herself, the Sumpkroc:

She’s just so happy to be here. With my copy of House of Chains still on its way, I had to channel that Goliath hype the only way I knew how: by painting more models. I painted the tanks and pipes on her to match my other Goliaths, and added some caution stripes to the tanks and basing because it’s not truly Necromunda without caution stripes.

March is going to be a real one, with Adepticon, House of Chains, Aeronautica Imperialis, and my love affair with Chaos dudes on horses all vying for my attention. I fortunately don’t have to paint any models for Adepticon, as my Ultramarines have surpassed 3000 points, and my tiny planes are ready for any pickup games of Aeronautica I’ll be getting into. Watch this space for more spikey lads and jacked beefcakes!

 

Coda!!

Hello internet friends!

Feb was/is all about getting out of the painting funk I was in Dec/Jan. In the last week I’ve managed about an hour a day which is refreshing compared to the slog I’ve felt the last two months.

1st up was getting the Elims and Vanguard ready. There is still one or two deets on the units to backfill in. The Vanguard need their heraldry done but I’m still thinking on what that can/should be.

I’ve also finish the Dread I started painting 4ish months ago and have the second one well on the way to being done. As I was editing the photo I found a bit of trim I missed on the kneepad so I’ll need to fix that up pronto.

Once these two are finished all I have to do is finish one intercessor sarge and make up some really low effort thunder hammer/storm shield Vanguard and my 2k points is done for the Adepticon Ham Slam Road Trip. I seriously cannot wait for these 4 weeks to fly right on by.

I’m a bit split on what to paint next, on one hand I have my chaos marine army waiting for brush time, on the other getting some tiny planes and figuring out a way to take them to the states would also be rad……

 

Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

I already wrote about some of my hobby ordeals for this month in my combination “Hear Me Out”/RTT report, but I didn’t have everything quite finished by the event — it was all mostly “good enough” to put on a table. But, before the month ended, I put the final touches on my Night Lords Warp Talons and that third Obliterator.

I’m pretty happy with the Night Lords Warp Talons, even if they don’t have the red wings that I put on the Raptors in my army. I’ll probably fix that at some point and break off their jump packs to swap them out for some recast 2nd edition gargoyle wings I had Merton make for me. I’ve got plenty of metal ones, but those put a lot of weight on the models so I prefer to only use them on metal minis.

I’m also very happy with the shoulder insignias on these guys, which are all freehand versions of the Night Lords icon. I think it reads well from a distance.

The other big model I had to get painted was a third Obliterator for my Black Legion squad. I’ve needed this for a while, but I didn’t want him to look identical to one of the other two Shadowspear guys. So I decided to kitbash him with some left over parts from a plastic Chaos Helbrute. The guns are a little big and replace the fists entirely, but I think the look works pretty well overall. Smashing this guy took a lot of green stuff.

The final version looks solid, and blends well with his brothers.

 

Raf

January was a pretty big month, what with finishing an entire 2,000 point army. I took a break to work on some smaller projects in February.

I keep trying to use Contrast paints in a big way, and my “painted-ish” drawer is full of Underworlds warbands in half-completed states. I decided I’d finally buckle down, and chose Rippa’s Snarlfangs. These were painted using only Contrast paints, except for the metallics. The White Wolf is Apothecary White, the black one is Leviadon Blue painted onto the fur with Black Templar painted over the entire model, and the brown wolf is Gore-Grunta Fur painted over everything and Wyldwood painted over the fur.

Contrast is both amazing, and a little frustrating. Painting over white primer is always annoying, and Contrast has a tendency to chip off sharp points pretty easily requiring touch-ups even after sealing. Additionally, to reach the quality I wanted I had to keep coming back and cleaning up areas where I was a little bit sloppy. With normal paints I can just paint over those small areas but with Contrast it doesn’t work.

That said, I’m really happy with the way these came out for the time investment. I think the whole project took me about 3 hours and would have been much faster if I’d painted all 3 wolves with the same color scheme.

From there I moved on to another Warcry Warband. This time I decided I truly needed a break from speed painting and I’ve decided to pour attention and time into these Bird Fighters. I’m curious to see how I’ve improved over the years when I take the time to detail paint. Step 1 was to break out the TurboDork Colorshift Paints

There are two different types/textures of feathers on these models. All the fighters have a feathered hump which I’ve given a sort of pale green color that shifts to pink at extreme angles, and the larger wing feathers that adorn the crests of the stronger feathers were given the blue/purple paint pictured. Weak fighters have these feathers only as accessories so I figure that the brighter feathers are a symbol of higher rank.

I’ve also settled on three different skin tones to give my fighters some ethnic variety.

I’m quite happy with the way these models are turning out but it is taking a lot longer. For some perspective, I put as much time into each model’s skin as I did an entire one of my Snarlfang models.

 

That Gobbo

 

These two Armiger Moiraxes are my main hobby accomplishment this month. I followed the same scheme as my Cerastus Castigator with adding an extra step of drybrush stippling the highlights on the top carapace (definitely didn’t need to do this because I messed it up after airbrushing nooope). Unfortunately the stippling looks so good that I’m gonna have to go back to my Castigator knight at some point to redo the top carapace! I’ve had the opportunity to run these guys as infernal chaos knights and man they kick ass. 

 

This is the Kroot model I painted for the How To Paint Everything: Tau article. I originally wasn’t going to participate but when I saw some of the fun stuff Kroot got in The Greater Good book I had to paint one of the carnivores I still had on sprue. It was nice to be able to focus down on a single Kroot and really work the leather. 

 

I got a lot of good progress on my chaos HQs this month getting all of them up to a decent tabletop standard with clear paths to finish them off. For the most part I just need to finish details, faces, and armor highlights then basing to close them out. I’m particularly pleased with how the Chaos Sorcerer is turning out, especially the robes. 

 

Since I was going to run my Chaos Slam Lord in my group’s game, I really wanted something to accompany him to help provide anti-overwatch. Warp Talons seemed like a perfect fit as I have eventual plans to expand with a Slaanesh daemons detachment which can provide some nice buffs to these guys. Plus they look super awesome. This is the first test model and I’m really happy with how the color scheme works out. 

 

For a long time I’ve wanted to do a kitbash with a gundam model kit to build an ork mech. Thankfully I have the opportunity to do so now that my local group Minnesota Gunpla is doing a build off contest with the MG Ball kit. Since the kit itself is fairly simple it’s a great canvas to start kitbashing with. At this point in writing I’ve got the assembly and kitbashing finished and I’ve primed and started painting the parts. I’ve included a picture of a sneak peek here, but if you’d like to follow along with my progress you can check out my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatgobbo/

 

Soggy

Hobby progress was glacial this month, partially due to work but mostly due to getting back into playing games online again with my usual crew.

Games played has been pretty solid, falling into two main categories

• Been rousing local players up for a Necromunda Campaign, have had a few trial games and started getting everything lined up as it looks like I’ll be arbitrating
• The highlight of the month definitely goes to my first pilgrimage to Warhammer World. I made it up there for two day Titanicus campaign which was a blast. I got to see so many awesome titans and meet many awesome people.

Finished(ish)

• Primaris LT
• 3 Primaris eliminators
• GSC Primus
• 6 weapons for Titanicus

For March I really need to get my ass in gear as I agreed last year to go to the Gibraltar GT with some mates. I’m opting to dust of my Blood Ravens who haven’t been touched since the GSC releases a year ago. One of my big gripes with Primaris only forces was their static nature – Raven Guard look to have plenty of tricks so I’m looking forward to figuring out how they work.

The army was my first 40K force which I started with the advent of 8th edition so mostly consists of a bunch of Dark Imperium marines. So the main things on the cards for march will be adding a few components to bring them up to speed – smash captains, chaplains, more eliminators.

 

Wings

Between a full-time job, writing for Goonhammer and attending events my painting time tends to be very limited, and I’m also relatively slow at it. That means that what I paint tends to be laser-focused on what I need for tournament lists, and the two models I finished this month were for my lists for Beachhead Brawl and Winter Warfare.

After a long time languishing as a near completely worthless unit, various point cuts have finally left the winged Autarch as something you want in some army lists, so I painted one up. This was a great experience as it’s an absolutely lovely model, and I’m very happy with how it came out.

I particularly enjoyed trying out a few new tricks here – I’m not a technically brilliant painter, so finding ways I can ensure models look good on the table within my capabilities is an important part of painting. Here, I deployed the power of Apothecary White to do the body and I wasn’t disappointed – the effect above is:

1. Spray Grey Seer
2. Coat Apothecary White
3. Layer raised plates/nodes and the shoulder pad edges White Scar

It was quick and it looks great, and means that I’m vastly more likely to actually get around to doing something like more Biel Tan Guardians/Wraithblades at some point. The other new things I’ve learnt about recently are washing gold with Druchii Violet, especially where you want a darker finish, and using a 50/50 mix of Stormhost Silver/Retributor Armour to edge highlight/drybrush gold, seen here on the leading edges of the wing assemblies and the head feathers.

Those latter two techniques came together for the second model I finished, Eldrad for the latest iteration of my Wraithknight bullshit.

This is easily one of the nicest models I’ve ever painted, and it’s brought together practice from doing my recent Farseer (who has a lot of shared elements) and some of the stuff I did for the Autarch. The staff head here I’m especially pleased with given how trivial it was – it literally was (on top of Chaos Black spray):

1. Two thin coats of Retributor Armour
2. Wash Druchii Violet
3. Drybrush 50/50 Retributor Armour/Stormhost Silver
4. Gem detail

It’s come out looking rich and deep and took almost no time – exactly what I want from my schemes.

The next project in the queue is getting a slight twist on the updated Necron list from my Chapter Approved analysis for them up and running. I was originally going to take this to Battlefield Birmingham, but I’m probably going to hold it for St. George’s Champion, as BB runs fixed pre-game choices, which kind of kills the list as a concept because being able to tune C’tan powers and special abilities to the matchup is critical.

For this I need two things:

1. The Deceiver
2. Nine Heavy Destroyers

The former – well, his entire body wants to be a rich deep gold, so I invite you to draw conclusions about how I’m likely to paint him based on the above. I don’t expect that to take very long. I’ve focused on the Destroyers first, and they’re getting there. First I had to deal with some Finecast challenges:

Some boiling water has largely seen to that, though one has re-warped a bit and might need a second go. For those not aware, when you get warped or bendy finecast pieces you can generally fix them by dipping them in boiling water for a few seconds then re-shaping them after they come out:

I’m also most of the way through doing the rest of the models. I do a simple Sautekh scheme, so the bulk of the time spent is just getting coverage on the multi-stage process to do the silver (not hard, just time consuming) and edge highlighting any vehicle bodywork, which I do as Caliban Green two-stage highlighted with Warpstone Glow and Moot Green.

The body canopies are done, as is all the silver, so all I’ve got left on these is to add details on the bodies (black chestplates with green rune, green eyes, Balthasar Gold headpieces and glowing green cable) and do the guns, which I’m planning to (on top of Chaos Black):

1. Thin coat Vallejo black to make sure I’ve got full coverage.
2. Heavy Drybrush Corvus Grey.
3. Edge Drybrush Dawnstone.

I’ll then do some details Leadbelcher + Nuln, make any cables glowing green and probably call it, and then experience exactly how horrendous trying to PVA the transparent rods into the finecast guns is. I expect very.

Novembermike

This month was all about AOS Duardin for me. I’m painting up a Barak Thryng force that will stiffen up the flying dwarves with additional Vulkite Berzerkers, which are one of the toughest models in the game pound for pound.

In March I’m looking at finishing up my Sky Dwarves and adding some impulsors and assault centurions to my White Scars. I’ve got two Arkanaut Frigates, four Impulsors and two boxes of Assault Centurions on order and they should be coming in next week. I don’t expect to finish it all in March so it’ll probably continue on to April.

 

Jack

February, despite being a short month, had a pretty substantial amount of hobby progress. I started out painting up the first of my Legion Arquitor Bombards. Despite a handful of the usual FW pitfalls around gaps it went together fairly well and was extremely fun to paint up. I’m hoping that the updated FW indexes that GW announced include 40k rules for it as well as the existing 30k ones.

Following on from that I wanted to work on clearing a few in-progress pieces off my desk. I’d had a mostly built converted Carab Culln leviathan, built but unpainted primaris techmarine, and basecoated redemptor dread all taking up space. I’m not entirely sure how, but somehow I was able to grind them all out over the month.

Then of course right at the end of the month GW dropped the Marine FAQ on us, which is causing quite a few changes for my Marine army. With only 12 days until the next tournament I’m going to attend I need to crank out 10 more Intercessors, a Librarian, 3 Eliminators and a Thunderfire Cannon. Somehow I forsee me needing to make some last minute list adjustments based on not having everything finished.

 

Kevin

Well, I had hoped to have more progress than I did. Several trips and competing obligations (I volunteer for FIRST, a high school STEM robotics program) reduced my amount of hobby time to… well not as much as I would like. There was also a bit of work finalizing the scheme, as I decided while working on it that I just wasn’t really inspired. So I went back to the drawing board a bit and came up with an alteration with the help of the folks in the Astradus Campaign group (especially BuffaloChicken); instead of desert bugs I would do poison dart frog bugs based in an alien-style jungle. A bit of yellow ink and some black spots later and I was feeling really good about the result.

So then it was off to paint! I decided to start with some of the pillbug-style Ripper Swarms, and the coloration looks really good.

In terms of progress I’ve gotten 12 Ripper Swarm bases (3 big, 9 small) assembled and primed, and six of them are some detail work and green plants away from being completed. 12 spore mines are also nearly done, just needing a few coats of Contrast and a little basing work. The Hive Tyrant is also coming along nicely, although after getting everything primed and the base coat done I realized I need to trim the wings a bit to make everything fit. I think the combination of blue and spotted gold is going to be really fun to paint and I’m excited to have more to show next month!

 

Got any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.