9th edition is coming! There’s a new General’s Handbook! There’s… well nothing else is new because those two things have kind of taken over the GW release stream recently, but those are exciting enough on their own. Check out what we’ve all been painting in anticipation.
Corrode
I’ve talked about painting these a couple times recently so I won’t go on about them. Suffice to say, the Indomitus box is really great and I’ve enjoyed painting all the new Space Marines in it! Maybe for next time I will paint something that isn’t a Space Marine.
Silks
I started off with a shiny new Astraeus all assembled and ready to paint. It actually didn’t take me too long thanks to the magic of airbrushes and resin is actually a dream to edge highlight since the edges are so crisp.
Once this was done I actually hit a bit of a hobby brick wall. I had a bunch of half finished projects and very little enthusiasm which was quite demotivating. I ended up taking a few days off from hobbying and sold my “pile of shame” on eBay.
Despite initially not liking the look of the Lumineth Realmlords, I was desperate for a fun new project so I ended up ordering the special edition box. I’m so glad I did. After spending a lot of time on Pinterest looking at old High Elf models I hit upon a paint scheme I really like and most importantly really enjoyed doing. I’m now churning my way through the box and can’t wait to get the rest of the army and start playing some games with them.
Greg
I also painted an Astraeus.
Hell yeah.
Ryolnir
I also painted an Astraeus…. and like Silks my hobbying hit a brick wall after painting this big beast. I’m just finally getting back into building and painting more Crimson Fists!
PierreTheMime
This month has been heavily influenced by War of the Spider, as the new stratagems that buff select units have given me an excuse to bring some long-languishing models out of the storage bin.
First off was the Lord of Contagion, which is a great model and it’s almost a crime I hadn’t gotten around to putting paint on this thing until now. While I’ve leaned heavily on contrast paints for a few armies recently, I went “traditional” on these Death Guard to keep them in-line with my current scheme.
In my Nurgle-induced fugue state I also picked up a Plague Surgeon, as their new ability to reroll wounds tipped the scales on whether I’d consider bringing one to battle.
I also spruced up my Tallyman, which had previously been left in a halfway painted state to just get it to the table for a game a while back.
I lied about contrast, I used them for another set of Poxwalkers. Contrast and Poxwalkers are a natural pairing and they’re so fast and satifying.
Now for a model that I’ve had sitting assembled and magnetized since 8th edition began: the “noble” Helbrute. Now with both Disgustingly Resilient and a slick reroll stratagem I can finally put this thing on the table without feeling disappointed.
Finally, I just completed building a melee-centric Plague Marine unit which will likely be my final Death Guard work before I jump to Necrons for their glorious return to the table. A decent amount of work went into finding/creating enough plague knives for five models as well as adding a second flail of corruption. In the end I used a few spare knives from “easy to build” three-model kits I had lying about, some axe blades (heavy cut back) and shaft/arm from the AoS Maggoth kit, and three flails from an ancient Skaven Plague Monk kit. Death Guard (and Nurgle models generally) are great for kitbashing.
Can’t wait to get these gross dudes painted to start stabbing enemies of the Grandfather.
Bair
Same as Pierre, I’ve also been working on a load of Death Guard recently (pesky 9th edition rules making me paint my armies). I love the bone armoured and more Heresy-era themed scheme for the Death Guard and thanks to contrast paints (and so much shade, so much) the armour gets done pretty quickly now too.
Finished off a unit of Plague Marines, wanting to keep the basing simple but dirty, and got some new tufts playing off of the “Nurlge=Life” motif that I often forget about.
Some close-ups of the Marines (please don’t look too closely).
Have also started work on a unit of 5 Deathshroud Terminators that will accompany Typhus as and when I use him as well.
Really looking forward to seeing the full army painted up, probably try and do a Plagueburst Crawler or Bloat Drone next…if I don’t get sidetracked by another project first.
Charlie B
Nothing says “Ohmycrappingzeus, 40K 9th ed incoming!” like painting some tiny spaceships that haven’t been in print since 2013. See this finger? Yeah, this one? Firmly on the pulse, mate. You see, Boon has a few of us working on a series of posts exploring the Perfect Game. No, not Horus Heresy, I’m obviously talking about Battlefleet Gothic.
To be fair it’s not without clunk, and yet somehow I continue to love it after all these years.
A side effect of writing all this stuff about BFG was the irrepressible urge to paint some tiny ships, so I strapped on my spelunking gear, waded into the Cairn of Opportunity under the stairs in my house, and pulled out 1,200 points of Astartes ships. And painted them in a single afternoon/evening. I’d almost forgotten how quickly BFG stuff paints up. Err… well, if you’re drybrushing. Which I was.
Painting tiny blue fist icons on all those guys could bugger right off, so I just kept it to the rough silhouette on everything bar the battle barge. The big upside of getting this done is that I now have a fleet for my beloved Cobalt Scions, so 40K/BFG tie-in games and campaign goodness lie in my future. We’ll touch on ways to do that sensibly in our BFG series, once the flurry of the 9th ed release has calmed down some. Allow me to increase your space ship thirst with a butt shot:
For the last few weeks, I’ve been spending all the rest of my hobby time on lore and maps to use as a new 40K campaign setting for my gaming group. On the offchance that drawing pictures of space and then writing an assload of lore about the various systems within counts as hobby progress, here are the maps in question:
That’s the two sector maps next to each other so you can see how the background art I made lines up. Because that clearly wasn’t enough Photoshop action for one month, I also made a diagram/map of the Cobalt Scions’ home system. Credit where credit’s due; in this second map, the icons for the inhabited planets are recoloured versions of the 40K map icons made by the Mighty Goat Man over on Reddit.
If you’re curious to learn more, I’ll touch on this again in Part 4 of our BFG series here on Goonhammer, and am also going through the Achernar/Eridani Sector stuff in more detail in this post over at the Beard Bunker.
SRM
I went hard in the paint on old Warhammer Fantasy models this month. First up is a unit of 5 Chaos Warriors for my Slaves Daves to Darkness:
As usual for this army, I kept the armor and highlights simple, then picked out the fur as cleanly as I could and paid extra attention to the woading on their shields. They’re just about the last models I’ve got in my spikey bois backlog, save for another one of those hateful chariots.
While I wrote entirely too many words about Cities of Sigmar for this here website, I also painted a block of 10 Empire State Troops Freeguild Guard with Swords to go with them. They’ll round out the regiment I already had and bring the entire unit up to an extremely reasonable 40 men:
Last, but certainly not least, is a group of Demigryph Knights I built like 3 years ago. Painting them wasn’t too bad – I went for something pretty akin to the old Empire Reiksguard scheme instead of the crimson of the studio models.
They’re lovely models, and represent that weird period where things are maybe a little too weird for Warhammer Fantasy, but not quite weird enough for Age of Sigmar. Just uhhh don’t ask who that “Karl Franz” guy is when you’re strolling around the Mortal Realms.
That’s all for this month! I may move on to my other 3 Demigryph Knights to round out the unit, but something far, far more sinister is on the horizon:
Soggy
The past two weeks wasn’t that productive, mostly due to a full relapse into Destiny 2. That aside, my marine backlog is pretty much completed – just in time for the release of the Indomitus boxset, which I’m really looking forwards to getting ready.
Alongside the new boxset, I’m in dire need of a paint top up as I ran out of both black primer and the base Vallejo Scarlet Red that I use for my Blood Ravens. This resulted in the Aggressors being significantly bolder than I’d like. I’m pretty happy with how the Apothecary came out, as I was tossing up waiting to get and try out Contrast Apothecary White but instead opted for very diluted Tallasar Blue to give it depth.
“Primaris” Kevin
I always feel bad posting after the other authors dump something like 100 models or a Forgeworld vehicle, but everyone has their pace. In my case that pace involves a new project to use the new Marines in the Indomitus box into the biggest assholes of the 41st Millenia: The Marines Malevolent.
The guy above was a quick mockup of the color scheme. The number on his knee-cap is for Strike Force 105, so chosen in thanks to a very particular fact from Warhammer Community. I still need to do some tweaks on the approach to be fully happy, but as a quick job I think it shows a lot of promise. And what bigger assholes to bring to the game table than Infiltrators?
This has been the bulk of the work for me; cleaning up and modeling 20 Intercessors and a Phobos Captain so that every one of them is posed differently and has a helmet. That meant getting creative with the Shadowspear units since 6 of them are identical, but the judicious use of the Infiltrator and Reiver sprues allowed me to keep all of them unique. Hopefully the humidity will break at some point and I can get them primed and ready for paint.
Mugginns
This past month I’ve been working hard on getting my Genestealer Cult newer models ready for 9th Edition. I have a ton of stuff painted for my GSC but just fell down on it when they released the bikes and ridgerunners. I’ve finished all the bikes I have (four squads of five), the last Ridgerunner I have to round out at three, and a Goliath Rockgrinder. I also painted the remaining characters I had to finish: a Locus, Magus, and Nexos. The only remaining units in GSC that I don’t have painted are Metamorphs (press F) and Goliath trucks.
I’ve based all my vehicles so far for GSC because everything else is on a base now and I think it’ll help tie the units together. These vehicles are really worn and dusty due to the Rusted Claw cult being wasteland nomads.
I’m really happy with how this Ridgerunner turned out – I especially like the decal that is on top. I got this from Skumbag Customs decals, you can find them on FB or Instagram. These are sweet little models and I’m really excited to see how they do in 9th Edition.
I’m not sure how often I’m going to be using these models – the Nexos for sure because he’s a CP battery, but I already have a Magus I really like and the Locus just seems like stuff we don’t need (a character killer and defender). I love the models, though, especially the map of Warhammer World on the Nexos’ table.
I’ve painted up all of the Atalan Jackals I have and I’m very pleased with how they turned out. As a Rusted Claw player these cultists have been a huge staple of my lists but I just didn’t have the energy to paint them. They took a long time to paint, with a ton of details and hidden stuff on them but it’s all worth it.
A group shot – ready to hit the table for 9th Edition and blast the oppressors!
Crab-stuffed Mushrooms
I finished my Custodes Wardens, although they may never see the tabletop compared to Allarus. I’ve been working on these guys on and off for about a year. You can learn more about how I painted them here.
The bases were purchased from Scibor Miniatures.
The waist cloths were a new experiment:
Painting Custodes Robes
- Basecoat Kantor Blue
- Layer most of the robes with Phoenician Purple (leave some Kantor Blue in the recesses)
- (Optional) Add another layer of Xereus Purple with some of the previous layer showing. Note: Xereus and Phoenician purple are so similar, you could probably skip this step.
- Add a layer of Screamer Pink, with the previous layer showing.
- Add a final edge highlight of Pink Horror mixed with Screamer Pink (about 2:1 Pink Horror to Screamer Pink)
- Alternative Step: You can add a final edge highlight of Warpfiend Grey instead of Pink Horror, depending on your preference.
The purple on the Custodes Pauldrons were painted similarly:
- Basecoat Kantor Blue
- Layer with Xereus Purple (leave some Kantor Blue in the recesses)
- (Optional) Add a line highlight of Genestealer Purple
Jack
Like Liam I’ve spent the month working on Indomitus. I’ve talked about them plenty in our other posts, so enjoy the pretty pictures.
