Goonhammer Hobby Round-up: July 2022

July flew by, so let’s check in on what our contributors have been working on!

Jack

This is really more of a 2-month update because I was using my photo space for hobby and was too lazy to clean it up, but I’ve been quite busy. Almost everything is painted in red as this is my Blood Angels Summer.

First off is a pair of Contemptor Incaendius dreads. Not only are these incredibly cool with their talons and jump packs, they give me a chance to take contemptor dreads in the fast attack slot. Definitely not turning them down.

Sadly I think the Math says that power fists are better than the talons, but the talons are cooler so I do not care. These will also serve double duty in 40k as death company dreadnoughts, as I’m not in love with the appearance of melee box dreads.

Next up is a squad of assault terminators. I wanted a more durable unit to hold down objectives and still have quite a bit of hitting power, and these hit the spot. Plus the BA specific terminators are gorgeous. At some point I’ll probably be expanding this out to a full 10 man squad, maybe with a few pairs of lightning claws mixed in.

Every month needs some models with jump packs, so some Angels Tear’s got painted up with grenade launchers. My hope is the rad grenades can do some work softening up dreadnoughts in Zone Mortalis, but I’m not totally certain of that. I did them in bone rather than red to help them stand out on the table as it feels somewhat appropriate for their role.

Two squads of incursors round out my 28mm painting. Nothing too fancy here, just some core units I’d never gotten around to painting for the most common BA lists.

I’m planning to attend the GW Grand Narrative this fall, and part of the player pack asks us to bring Aeronautica Imperialis. I’ve had these since they released and just never found the time to paint them, but this gives me some justification. I’m planning to paint up a 28mm Storm Eagle to match the patterns of the one on the left next month.

Finally, a small Thunderhawk rounds out my painting for the month. I painted this up to match my 28mm version as best as I could, some of the decals are different but otherwise the color scheme is identical. This was my first experiment using the new formulation of Nuln Oil instead of gloss nuln. Overall I think I like it. I’ll need to give it a try on a normal marine, but it feels like it gives a very similar look with a little less pooling. Downside is needing an extra coat of gloss varnish as I can’t decal right over the matte surface it leaves, but that’s not too horrible.

Soggy

To say I’ve been on a roll this month with my White Scars is a bit of an understatement. In the past month I’ve painted most of the contents of the Age of Darkness Boxset – starting the month with only 5 termies done.

I’ve been roped into a doubles event at the end of August, so I really need to get some games in ahead of this. My doubles partner is spamming terminators, so I’ll have to paint even more stuff to get some boots on the ground. Nothing like an event for motivation.

SRM

This has been a busy month for me, leaving one job, starting another, flying across the country for a funeral, and failing to get a single game in. I don’t like my life being this busy, but at least I was able to hit the painting table for a minute and knock out some models.

First up, I did the cool thing I do where I batch paint a character and squad at the same time, ensuring that it’s neither the efficient experience of assembly lining similar models, or the relaxing experience of painting a single character. Said character was this Judiciar, who I gave the Crusader’s Helm from the Templar upgrade sprue. The existing “skull with a napkin on his mouth” helmet never clicked with me, so with that headswap in place I went from thinking this model was merely okay to thinking it kicked wholesale ass. The last time I painted one of these guys I went all out on the hourglass, doing some cool translucent effects, but I just used some Aethermatic Blue Contrast paint on this one and did a good enough job with minimal effort. The big, soft, volumetric highlights on his coat were a nice change of pace from the rest of this batch painting experience, however:

Here we’ve got some Oops! All Edge Highlights! bois in Gravis armor. The sheer quantity and variety of edges on these guys’ backpacks and moon boots make them take a long time to highlight, but they’re a load easier to work with than Aggressors. Instead of seemingly endless overlapping pipes and ammo feeds, it’s just a dude with a big gun. I went with the all-black livery of Templar fire support squads, and big yellow guns. It’s a fun way to make heavy weapons stand out.

Speaking of big yellow guns, I got a big honkin’ one on Brother Thiccums here. This is the last model from the army box I reviewed last year, and he absolutely fills a gap in my army list. Coming up with some custom heraldry and repeating it in triplicate was my favorite part of the process, and I always love using some Admech transfers on the guns to give them just a smidge of believability. The last detail I’m really proud of is the chain decal on his powerfist. Templars typically chain their guns to their hands, and I thought it was an extremely thematic way to echo that feature on a vehicle. He honestly came together pretty quickly, and I feel like I got enough detail and transfers on him to make him look interesting without looking like a NASCAR stock car covered in sponsorship stickers.

Next, I’ve got some Necromunda weirdos that I knocked out in 2 evenings. I had an online D&D session I’d forgotten about until the last second, and I typically paint during these since so much is in the theater of the mind. With moments to go, I dug around my closet for something – anything – that was primed, and I came across these two. My first goal was to differentiate them from the stock Forgeworld schemes. For the Rogue Doc, I wanted it to look like she was in a hazmat suit, and for the Gang Lookout, I based him on the Rebel forest troopers from Return of the Jedi. The black leather on both of them is all Black Templar Contrast over Mechanicus Standard Grey, highlighted again with the same color. I don’t know how much time it truly saved, but it got a good effect. The cloth straps were just Skeleton Horde Contrast over Wraithbone which definitely saved a minute or two, and the metallics were just a wash and a highlight too. I spent most of my time mixing colors and chilling out with some nice volumetric highlights on all their clothes and skin, only doing that sharp edge highlighting on the Doc’s airbrush-looking hypospray gun thing. These were the perfect palate cleanser, even if I wasn’t initially planning on painting them anytime soon!

I somehow found it in me to crank out just a few more models, knocking out the Chaos Lord and Marines from Blackstone Fortress, who I primed like 3 years ago now. I’m in the midst of writing up a painting tutorial while I scribble this out, as my goal was to get something I could paint up relatively quickly. I don’t think I wholly succeeded, but I got some Marines I really like out of it, so I can’t complain too much. As for August, we’ll see what it holds. I should probably work on my Templars just a smidge more before NOVA, plus I’ve got a model I’m painting for my wife and I’s anniversary and some stuff I’ll be reviewing for Goonhammer coming up. It should be just as eclectic and busy as this one!

Charlie B

Nineteen crusade games with the Goff Metalwaaagh have taught me one simple truth: my warlord Sirrus Bizniz cannot be stopped by man or iron beast. Ork warbosses accrue XP with alarming speed, and he hit Legendary a couple of games ago. I didn’t mean to create a monster, but that’s absolutely what I’ve done. I’m going to paint up a new boss to use in casual games, because frankly he’s too horrific to be used every time. His army continues to grow; this time round I’ve painted up a unit of nobz with big choppas – absolutely not the choice of the competitively minded gamer – and also a unit of burna boyz, which at 11 points a model are only 2 points more than a regular ork, but with the added bonus of a cigar.

Of course crusade games mean crusade rosters, and rosters mean MANDATORY UNIT PORTRAITS. Behold a sampling:

While I’ve prodded a number of scenery projects without actually finishing anything, I have painted one other model this month: the new(ish) Captain in Gravis Armour. He’s the Chapter Master of my Ultramarines successors. The brutish face that comes in the kit wasn’t right for the character, so I used the wonderfully sculpted face that comes with the Primaris Ancient kit that came out at the same time. Due to the way this model goes together, I didn’t feel able to use sub-assemblies. This definitely made painting the face and armour and cloak (so, everything then) significantly harder. After six months of painting slapdash orks I’m also out of practice, and had to correct a BUNCH of mistakes, but I’m happy with the finished result. I also magnetised the offhand weapons so I can swap them out between games.

If you’re a heraldry nerd and/or want to see more angles and his lore, that’s over at the Beard Bunker.

Rockfish

I have been pretty busy this month with life stuff so this will be a bit of a lighter collection of things being painted then normal for me.

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Technically this first guy was from June, but he just missed the last round up, so here he is.

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After that I did some dakka dudes and a Rhino to haul them around in.

I also went back to fill out this squad of Cataphractii to bring them from five models to ten.

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Here are a few Missile Launcher dudes, they were surprisingly fun to do for whatever reason. The last 30k I did for this month was a second Contemptor, this one went together a bit better then the first but I am still not impressed with the number of pieces used to do some parts of the model.

Last but not least, I also got a few different chaos weirdos done!

Togepi

I paint incredibly slowly and tend to paint multiple models at once, which means that I will have nothing done for months at a time and then finish 5-6 projects at once in a month.  That month is this month.

For Malifaux, I’ve been working on the Syndicate and Cadmus keywords, but I paused to paint Wong the Enchanter and his Backup Assistant as they arrived in stock last month.

I’ve also been working on Horus Heresy – my first Space Marine army since buying into Warhammer 19 years ago.

Bair

Like a lot of the other goons I’ve been working on Horus Heresy stuff, not a lot in the way of painting but I did paint Dorn and Rann, each within a day of starting them too. I really disliked the Rann head and couldn’t find a helmet I liked enough so went for this Stormcast head instead, which I think matches the art pretty well but I’m much happier with the paintjob on Dorn’s face. I really dislike painting faces in general but using contrast as a base to build off of is a massive help. 

For Dorn’s gold armour it’s just sprayed with a black primer then Retributor Armour followed by 3 golds from DarkStar (Classic gold, Braid gold, Renaissance gold) in different areas, layering up the look and a recess shade of the new agrax earthshade which recess shades a lot better than the old one. I didn’t want to use my normal oil wash over the gold. The grey/white hair is Corvax White followed up by the new Soulblight Grey with a drybrush back over in white. 

PierreTheMime

In advance of the Goonhammer Open Maryland, I decided which of the tactical units I wanted to bring around: the Parasite of Mortex. It’s such a lovely sculpt so I took a bit of time on it:

I’ve got a bunch of other stuff on the backlog that I’ll hopefully have an update for next month. I had planned to have a lot more done by now, but life happens.

Keewa

This month I’ve gone back to a model that’s been sitting on the shelf above my painting desk, shamefully half-painted, for yonks. Originally the scales of this Maw-Krusha were a sort of pea-green (really leaning into the Battle-Cabbage moniker) with a tan stomach but ultimately I couldn’t make it work, and the result was incredibly boring. So it sat, and it waited, and waited as two years went by and finally I thought to myself “I should really finish that thing, but not green, I want to do it blue.” 
The rider is magnetised, so I popped him off and after one bath in the local stripping agent of choice (“Brennspiritus”) and a brutal savaging with a toothbrush, the Maw-Krusha was back to bare plastic and ready to go. My scheme was inspired by those awesome Poison-Arrow Frogs in the Amazon jungle, and I think she looks lovely. The base is made from XPS foam cut into a big rock platform (and a big orc idol head) and decorated with all sorts of Orcy bits, shields, spears, bone axes, and a couple of heads on spikes – a fitting end for the leaders of other destruction forces subjugated by the Megaboss. The base was heavily inspired by a great post from Jonathan Iozzelli on his excellent blog “The Simulus Chamber”.

I’ve also had a grand old time painting up this Jackal Alphus, the first member of my new Genestealer Cult army, I’m looking forward to getting stuck in with them soon!

TheArmorOfContempt

Back at the start of, *checks notes*…freaking May!? I began a squad of 3 Eliminators and a Phobos Captain. I had assumed well before the points change that Eliminators would be useful going forward, what I didn’t account for is that their small squad size means they eat up the Heavy Support slots in a battalion. Even more annoying I had no idea it would take me this long to finish these guys up, even if I did technically finish them a earlier in the month. I put an issue amount of time into those Camo Cloaks.

Don’t get me wrong, I am pleased with my work, but NEVER AGAIN!

DYLON

July was a month of vacations, but on a casual comment, I finally cracked the Ambull out that’s been sat on my desk for nearly three years. I went over how I painted it in a HTPE article.

Other than the big beastie I’ve been working on my Trading Post project which is slowly marching towards completion.

Rocco Gest

July has been a hell month for me. 53 models to paint leading up to the Goonhammer Open in August. I’ve thankfully completed 31 of them at this point, so say hello to the newest additions to the Brotherhood of the Flowing Tide (formerly Emperor’s Carapace).

The model of the bunch I’m most proud of. A kitbash of the new Gravis captain kit and the Forge World Qin Xa model to act as my Chapter Master. I used Qin Xa’s bits as an homage to the White Scars and as a way to give him more and cooler armor than a normal Gravis Captain.

Fowler

This has been an extremely productive month for me, but unfortunately the majority of that work has been middle steps on my Age of Sigmar Nurgle Army. There has been a tremendous amount of gapfilling, priming, and basecoating. Is it smart to paint 31 Blightking-sized bodies in a batch? Probably not. Am I doing it anyway? Yeah. However I did manage to knock some stuff out!

First off is the Squat brute, the Vartijan Exo-Driller. While the build was a bit dicey, it was a blast to paint up. I made a custom Zone Mortalis base topper from a pressmold of a tile, as there are no 50mm Necro bases. 

Next up is my AOS Nurgle army, which has gotten a kickstart from new Rotmire Creed Warcry Warband. 

This chonk is a 3d print available from Ghamak. The print you see above has been scaled down to fit on a 60mm base, but it’s still a bit leggy so I built a larger platform.

And here is the prerequisite chaos spawn. This dude has been stripped and restarted a few times – it was nice to finish up a quick paintjob on him.

Last up is some terrain for Goonhammer open. These pieces came from the Kill Team Moroch box. It’s nice to knock out a fast terrain paintjob after so much focus on building and detail work. I may not be able to attend this one, but my terrain can!