More hobby from our contributors this month, kicking off with some creepy goblins!
RichyP
For the second half of February I’ve gone back to my green skin roots and decided to remake my old Night Goblin army. So far I’m at about 920pts painted and 240pts assembled. Goblins being dirt cheap points wise means in terms of models I’ve painted 64, here’s some of the more interesting ones.
The left character is an old Night Goblin Warboss I found on eBay, he’s supposed to have a shield but it was missing so I added a glowing mushroom to distract from its absence. The other Shaman next to him is the old Battle for Skull Pass one, that I ordered with the boss only to find the one I painted 15 years ago a few days later along with the cute little boss guy. The Shaman from eBay had a broken nose and missing top of the voodoo doll thing, I painted a nose on, and the hood isn’t too bad in isolation. They’ll both be rebased to fit in with the other guys.
A lot of the time spent on these has been chasing down older models, movement trays and basing. Next month, at least for the start of it I’ll be carrying on with them. I’ve got some Fanatics and 40 Shootas assembled and ready to prime for March.
Corrode
Just a couple of bits from me this month, some more Fallout: Wasteland Warfare models with an X-01 armoured Sole Survivor and a Super Mutant Aviator!
Soggy
I painted up some Forge World knights for Titanicus over the past fortnight, which reminded me how much I hate painting the paint scheme for House Vornherr until they are pretty much done. I managed to push on through and got to try out masking fluid for the first time – interesting but did have a bit of seepage, not sure how much I trust it but will give it another shot. Next month I’ve got a new Titan Legio to start, which I am very keen to get started on.
Charlie B
From a distance it’s kinda hard to spot the difference between the three flavours of bolt rifle, so I’ve made it easier for my opponents by modelling the auto bolter dudes to be the ones running forwards firing long, uncontrolled bursts and going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Kitbashing the assault/intercessors kits also granted access to a thunder hammer. That’s a happy bonus to be sure, but hammers aren’t a very thematic choice for Space Romans Cobalt Scions. There was only one POSSIBLE solution: write a short story. Some of you may be thinking “just stick the goddamn hammer on the little plastic man,” but that is clearly the coward’s option and I’ll have none of it.
Mercifully my decision to write an origin story for a wargear upgrade has been rewarded by various strangers on the internet saying very nice things about it (friends’ compliments don’t count; they might just be being supportive). If you want some shooty-death-kill-in-space about hammer-thirsty orks, a trio of plucky Valhallans, and the lonely battle brother who didn’t know when to give up, it’s over on the Beard Bunker.
Said link will also go over the recipe I used for this, my second attempt at a Middle Eastern skin tone. Oh, and also how I used my computer monitor to give me a backdrop for the photo above. (Hint: I placed the stuff in front of the monitor and took a f—ing picture; I know the rules of clickbait require me to be more vague than that, but clickbait can die in a fire).
Of course the real joy here is that I have finally painted the third troops unit needed for a basic battalion, which you will undoubtedly agree is a perfectly sensible milestone to have reached after a mere sixteen months working on this army. Self-pwnage aside I’m actually getting seriously close to finishing this army, and am very pleased with how it’s coming together.
SRM
It’s been a minute since I’ve had the Raw Posting Energy to contribute anything, but constant work fires and unpacking a new house have had me pretty beat. However, I’ve gotten to unwind with an awful lot of painting! I’ve continued going hard on Specialist Games, and have knocked out a buttload of Eschers. First off, the Wyld Runners, Death Maidens, and Phelynxes:
The Phelynxes were definitely knocked out in a session or two, as an easy way to induce the Good Brain Chemicals by saying I had completed some models. The Wyld Runners were more of a challenge, as they’re remarkably detailed:
Of course the real stars of this particular show are the Death Maidens, with their endless baubles, teeth, pelts, jewelry, and other bits and bobs hanging off every conceivable part of the model.
I went for broke and decided to do the translucent veil effect on the left Death Maiden. At first I was a little concerned with how I’d pull it off, but figured it would work the same as any other specular highlight. So, working from the basecoat of Celestra Grey, I mixed in progressively more Cadian Fleshtone in 2 or 3 thin layers to build up the effect. I wrapped it up by mixing in a little Dark Reaper and hitting up the eye sockets.
Last, but certainly not least, I knocked out another 5 Gangers. These are pretty much the same as the first two batches, but I mixed in a little more Emperor’s Children into the highlights, and added a final pure highlight to really push the contrast.
With these, I only have 6 models to go in my Escher backlog, and then the Sisters of Mercy will mostly be complete – still gotta grab some Phyrr Cats for them. Rob’s already asked me to write a Gang Showcase for them, but I’ll wait til the gang is quite literally all here. However, I’ve got to wait for the weather to cooperate before I get to priming those last 5 Eschers, so for the time being I’ll be working on some Fallout minis.
Skails
First up this month was this little night goblin fanatic diorama. It’s for a contest on Instagram (hosted by @paula_she_creature) to paint a night goblin or fanatic of some sort. It was fun to pick up and work on a goblin, a first for me. I took some cues from Nicklas Pilhstrom (check his work out!) in terms of skin color, especially on the face and nose. There was a little green stuff work on this project too- took the gap out of the chain where it glued together, the mushrooms, and the arm band for the shield.
Next up were the final pieces of the set of 40k objectives I’ve been working on. These painted up fairly quickly.
The last pieces I worked on were the final few skeletons of this batch of Armored Skeletons. This fills out their full set of unique sculpts. I want to come back to them later to fill out the unit and do another, but this is satisfying for now.
The full set:
Rockfish
While not as prolific as the first half of the month I still got a good chunk of things done!
I started this half of the month with going back to Titanicus, while I used mostly the same colours as my original scheme the results are dramatically different!
For comparison, here is the last one I painted 8 months ago!
The apocalypse has kinda been messing with my style I will be the first to admit!
Now for a model which both went insanely fast and I feel really chuffed about, I did a Deredeo from bare resin to done in 36 hours. Why that fast, I honestly can give no valid reason as it’s not like I was on a time limit or anything.
I also worked on some admech for fun, this time a gaggle of Skitarii Rangers and a Skorpius Disintegrator!
With how many armies I am painting at the same time these days, its not too surprising that I also did some Howling Banshees.
Fowler
After a long hiatus and a very productive stretch building, I am finally getting varnish onto some models again! First off is a model that I made for my buddy. I sculpted a beard from greenstuff, and made a full record crate out of an ammo box and thick plasticard squares.
Next up is another batch of MANWOLFS, my Orlock gang. Commander Cheapskate’s Anarchy Road campaign has sent me spiraling down a rabbit hole of vehicle conversions, and I’ve also been knocking out some hanger-on and brute models.
Last up is my new Orlock Roadboss, and the model that inspired me to do a second round of Manwolfs. The Ripper Jackson model was a blast to assemble and paint.
Pendulin
This month has been all Necrons, all the time. Trying to get through the Necron half of my first Indomitus box (my backlog grows by the day, send help), and I’m making good progress. Starting off with these chonky boys: Skorpekh Lord and Skorpekh Destroyers.
And followed those up with some smoll boys, a Plasmacyte and some Cryptothralls.
Absolute blast to paint. I especially like how the heads turned out on the Cryptothralls. That weathered bone with the glowing single eye. Definitely going to be painting more Necron heads like this in the future.
Bair
Work had been pretty slow the last 2 weeks, and I work from home so decided that when I wasn’t actively working I would be painting, which meant I was getting minimum one Titanicus Ttian done from sprue to completed per day, usually within about 10-12 hours from beginning with time for glue to fully set and texture paint to fully dry. The only exception here is that the Mordaxis Reavers were done together in a day as well as the Warhounds were done as a pair in a day. I restarted my Gryphonicus having first done them when the game first released in 2018 but having gotten to be a better painter since then, as well as doing up 2 Mordaxis Reavers, the only Titan class I had not yet done for them. My Vulcanum will soon be joined by a second pair of Reavers as well, but not started on those yet (expect them in the next roundup if I remember to post). All of these are done by hand (I don’t own an airbrush) with help from spray paints, for a breakdown on the Gryphonicus check out the Warlord Wednesday article featuring Gryphonicus which I updated this past week with the newer (simpler) paint scheme. The best part though is obviously the tiny space marines which contrast is way too good for. This brings me to 21 painted Titans in total and only 4 left in the backlog (until I add more to the backlog…)
“Primaris” Kevin
Progress slowed considerably on my LED project after I miswired the electronics and released the magical pixies on my Raspberry Pi… twice. Turns out sensitive electronic devices don’t necessarily like it when you connect voltage where it’s not supposed to go. Fortunately replacement Raspberry Pi Zeros are only 1/3 the cost of a Games Workshop character model, so getting a replacement wasn’t difficult. This also gave me an opportunity to take a close look at how I wanted to wire this thing and make a few modifications. Summoning soldering skills I hadn’t used since high school I connected a barrel power connector and plug, socket for wiring, and a DC voltage converter onto an Adafruit Proto board. This makes the connections much more stable, and the converter also allows me to run the Pi directly off of the 12V power supply that will run the LEDs, further reducing the number of wires I have to deal with and probability that I will kill this one. Hopefully.
My daughter and I also finished the inaugural member of the most feared group to ever roam the Underhive; the Puppy Gang. I can say without a doubt that this was one of the most enjoyable things I have ever painted, and it was a lot of fun getting my daughter to learn how to paint by having her work on the base. She base coated it, applied the metallics and shading, positioned the festive little alien tuft, and insisted that instead of a boring black rim her gangers be encircled in a ring of colorful metallic blue. This was an incredibly fun and challenging model to paint, and I’m excited to do more with her.
Beanith’s Hobby Progress Feb 2021
| Models | Points | |
| BUILT TOTALS | 52 | 1095 |
| PAINT TOTALS | 37 | 610 |
Large sections of February were quite rude this month and thus can largely FOADIAF. That said, it was a decent amount of hobbying achieved despite all that and that tends to helps keep the black dog at bay somewhat.
Building
As mentioned last month, I slapped together amongst other things 30 Necron warriors for my February Slow Grow efforts. I also managed to build some terrain and not super glue anything to a desk for a change.
Painting
I was hoping to use an airbrush this month to smash out the copper base coat on the warriors but wasn’t able to arrange it sadly. So instead I decided to kill off a few cheap brushes and just windmill slam on the paint leading to a nice dull copper feel. Happy little accidents indeed.
And as per the rules of getting ready for any tournament, I needed to quickly smoosh 3 Plague Champions and 2 Blight Lords for my Death Guard army to update the list to fit the new loadouts as per the updated codex.
Games
After a month hiatus, the FLGS tournament was back and now running at 1500 points giving me a few more toys to play with. Again I walked away with the wooden spoon because I am a terrible decision maker when it comes to picking Secondaries. That said, holy shit I love the Death Guard secondary “Spread the Sickness”. It’s almost certainly going to score me 9 or 12 points per game. Now I just need to stop taking Grind them down and I’ll be set to maybe accidently win a tournament game…
I also got in a few games with Coda and a new friend in our ongoing Crusade campaign. Lost one of the games with Coda by losing control of the objectives but I did push his marines down and steal their lunch money after giving them a good kicking so I feel like that counts for a moral victory at least.
Hobby
Some interruptions meant I got some time to catch up on my reading which I used to great effect by ignoring the Reading Pile and diving straight back into the Horus Heresy collection of short stories. My particular favorite being Dan Abnett’s (who may or may not be as nice as Aaron Dembski-Bowden?) Blood Games. I smooshed a couple of models for our How to Paint Everything series and I was also playing around with some new Vallejo Dry Rust on some spare bits trying to get a handle on how best to use it. Tips are very welcome btw.
Hobby Goals for March
My Slow Grow goal for March was a toss up between the Stalker and a Flying Croissant. Thanks to the advice from the incredibly talented and beautiful people from the Goonhammer patreon discord I have decided on the Stalker alongside however many Necron Flayed Ones I can get my hands on.
