Half the year has already been and gone, we check in with what the team has been up to in their hobby time.
Soggy
With the a UK Goonhammer Open this month, I was strapped for time only getting to focus on a handful of models after putting together a load of terrain from our friends at Bandua Wargaming. With that in mind I had to make that time count, starting a model which I had been putting of for a long time now, however with two years into the army and it’s system it was about time.
A few evenings of hobby while listening to Behind the Bastards later, I now have a Primarch to use in my games – a shame he’s not mounted on his Jetbike, but that might come in time.
With 4.0 AoS on the horizon, I was fortunate enough to start work on the new Skaven spearhead from the Skaventide box. These were definitely a rush job and need some more TLC, although I might come back to them after I’ve got the clan rats into a similarly tabletop ready standard. I’m looking quite forward to giving them a go soon
SRM
June was a light month for my hobby output, as we ramped up our YouTube presence in earnest and most of my time was spent staring into the bottomless depths of Adobe Premiere.
I finally got around to watching that dang ol’ Fallout show and lemme tell ya – it’s good! Consider this a formal review inside a hobby round-up. Dear reader, you’re getting value in this article you don’t pay for. Newly enthused by said program, I painted up the Brotherhood of Steel Citadel Command set for Fallout: Wasteland Warfare – or more realistically – Fallout Factions. I even wrote up a review! I like coming back to the Fallout minis from Modiphius every so often; it’s fun to just knock out a small group of dudes who are sculpted in a totally different style from all the GW stuff that’s piling up in my closet.
Speaking of, I got the Stormcast half of Skaventide to review, and while my time has been otherwise occupied, I still managed to get some work in on the models therein. Hell, I contributed to the Skaventide review too. I started with the Knight-Questor since he’s such a simple classic heroic looking model, your plate mailed dungeon delver or other adventurer. It was a great start to the box, which I’ll be working through for the rest of the summer, I imagine.
I didn’t have time to get much else done for embargo day, so I picked the Lord-Veritant and her little goth birbdog. The critter was a welcome reprieve from all the details and textures of typical Stormcast models, and despite my grumblings assembling the model, I did enjoy painting the Lord-Veritant. Getting real tired of fire over here though.
For next month, I should have some more stuff from Skaventide done, and even a return to my Black Templars. We’re also in the Battletech Kickstarter Delivery Danger Zone, wherein my backlog will absolutely balloon. It’s gonna be a tough push and pull between Age of Sigmar 4th Edition, Pariah Nexus 40k, and my local community’s exploding interest in Battletech.
Michael O “Mugginns”
SAGA Summer is here and I’m deep into it. I’ve played SAGA for years on and off but I’m getting way deeper into it now.
We’re doing some awesome coverage that is and I can’t wait to contribute some of my own tech. For now I’m focusing on painting some forces up to get on the table. I’ve had Vikings painted forever, but I really wasn’t super happy with their paint, so I’ve decided to paint more Vikings and some Norse Gaels (the Vikings who settled parts of Ireland and Scotland, most importantly starting the city of Dublin).
Here’s the entire Norse Gael warband in it’s glory. It is mostly Gripping Beast pewter guys, some Gripping Beast / Wargames Atlantic plastics, and a few Old Glory 25mms. I chose to make the warband like this:
- Hearthguard with hand weapon / shield x4
- Hearthguard with daneaxes x4
- Hearthguard with daneaxes x4
- Warriors with javelins x8
- Warriors with daneaxes x8
- Levy with javelins x12
I also finished some terrain from 1st Corps – specifically a Romano British church that looks great. It’s resin and comes in a few parts for ease of transport.
The last thing I’ve completed this month is a set of objectives for SAGA – they’re on 40mm round bases. I’m going to create a fishing village table setup so I’ve themed the objectives to match. One of them isn’t really part of the them – it’s a guy who just got blood eagle’d – but I’ve had it sitting around forever so I had to paint him up. That’s it for me this month – I’ll definitely have more next month, including some sweet Saxons from 1st Corps and some Romano British from Victrix!
Roxin
Heading into June, I was well aboard the Spearhead hype train and planning to put the finishing touches on my second Mancrusher Gargant, so obviously I was immediately derailed by the Summer of Saga nope wait godammit Saga Summer. It’s been on my radar for a while, but this was the nudge I needed to go ham. I’m intrigued by the Welsh in Age of Vikings: from a cursory glance they seem to specialise in tricky movement shenanigans and ranged firepower, which tickles my Kharadron Overlords enjoying brain.
The UK-based Spirit Games not only has a website designed as God intended but frequently has interesting and unusual models available for very good prices, though some digging is required. Speaking as an archaeologist, the beauty of the past is that it’s all made up and the points don’t matter, so I’ve gone for some Gripping Beast Shieldmaidens and Mounted Carolingian Hearthguard figures rather than specific Welsh models. I’m intending to run them as follows:
- Hearthguard with javelins x4
- Hearthguard with javelins x4
- Hearthguard with javelins and mounts x4
It’s my first time working with metals, but it wasn’t as intimidating as I feared. The transfers from Little Big men are very good, if slightly wonky – this is entirely a “skill issue” on my part, as the kids say.
I’ve also returned to Warmaster Revolution, the fan-made ruleset based on Games Workshop’s 10mm scale rank’n’flank game. 10mm is a great scale to work in because it’s small enough to hide your mistakes and large enough that catching the details really makes the models shine. You’d think it would be faster too, but the Vampire Counts models made by Forest Dragon are so lovely I really want to lavish time on them.
By next month I’d like to have more SAGA painted, but by then I’ll have attended the Baccus 6mm miniatures open day so I fully expect to have pivoted to an entirely new system.
PierreTheMime
As a lot of you are aware, over in 40K-land the Chaos Space Marines codex has landed in a great spot, giving players new excuses to hobby toward their new favorite detachments. I’ve been a big fan of Vashtorr the upstart Chaos pseudo-deity for a while, especially after they got such a strong push at the 2023 Warhammer 40,000 Grand Narrative, but the models lackluster rules up to now had kept it on-sprue. Now that the Soulforged Warpack is rampaging across the galaxy, it was time to finally put the daemon together.
In addition to Vashtorr himself, I used this as an opportunity to refresh my cultist units (the old Dark Vengeance models) to make the unit WYSIWYG and remove the special weapons no longer available (RIP). This also gave me some hobby options to cyber-up some of the new cultist models that didn’t already have mechanical replacements. To match the Soul Forge King, I opted to make them as grody as possible.
Shoring up my original Word Bearers-themed daemons, I expanded my list by adding a Forgefiend and five Warptalons for backline secondaries/menacing.
Finally, something that’s not technically a daemon but it sure will be as soon as the game starts. While I’m a fan of the 40k-era Vindicator for the dozer shield, the 30k model is just so much nicer in most other ways. I chaos’d it up appropriately by adding some old vehicle spikes, shoulder racks off a spare Terminator Lord, and some War Dog bitz.
This comfortably lands me at “done” for CSM for now, but with the new summer dataslate giving a number of factions a shot in the arm I’ll be bouncing around for a while. Tyranids are back on the menu and I’m hoping to chew through a good number before the next hobby update.
McBill
My hobby output is historically feast or famine, and this June was most definitely about getting my feast on. I cranked out what is for me a ton of models.
These first two were courtesy a review box provided by Atomic Mass Games to Goonhammer, and I was super hype to get to paint and review them. Shang Chi in particular was very fun to paint.
I occasionally ask on my LGS Discord what I should paint next, and the MCP crowd chose Psylocke here. I really like how this came out, except for her skin tones. I don’t know what happened there, other than I was using some pretty old P3 paints that may be separating or just not working like they used to. I used this as the impetus to order several flesh tones and the flesh wash from the Pro Acryl line, and I have to say I’m a big fan. The sable brushes and brush soap have been excellent as well. As for Psylocke, she looks just fine from tabletop height.
Next I switched gears and painted the Jedi Hunters box for Shatterpoint. I’d decided I would be all in on Empire lists for the rest of the year, so these guys got bumped up in priority. I actually won this box when I placed third in my first convention tournament for Shatterpoint last fall. So it was nice to get them painted up for sure.
Ironically, when I asked the local crew what MCP model I should paint next, I did so wanting to get away from painting models with lots of black. I did a bunch last month, and knew IÂ had plenty more with a focus on Empire. But then they picked this model and I’d long thought I’d paint in in the comic Mk42 scheme. This one skewed more grey than I had pictured, but I’m still happy enough with the results.
I felt like doing one more MCP model before diving into a sea of black uniforms. So naturally, “one more” turned into two (or six depending on how you look at it.) This version of Ultron was fun to do. I did The original box set Ultron in this same scheme. It was nice to return to it and see how I had changed and improved since doing that model several years ago.
Speaking of those black models, I next tackled the Inferno Squad here. These models are great additions to the options for Empire lists. They painted up very quickly for me and I’m very much looking forward to getting some reps with them on the table.
With my immediate goals for Shatterpoint done, a local chose the Doc Ock resculpt for me to tackle next. Everything really fired on all cylinders on this one, and I was super happy with the end result. It’s certainly a big step up from the original core set Doctor Octopus, both sculpt and paint:
I was admittedly pretty rusty at painting when I did that original Ock, but it’s nonetheless gratifying to see yourself improve over time. I was happy enough with him I figured it was only right to finish off the full Rival Panel set that had been sitting around for at least a couple of years. The terrain isn’t particularly usable in game, so now I’m stuck trying to find room in my display for it.
I fully expected that diorama to be it for the month. Then I woke up extra early one morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I needed to keep quiet to avoid waking up my family, so why not paint? I have a recipe for clone armor that is very quick and reasonably effective. So, I managed to knock these guys out pretty quickly that morning.
And that’s it for me in June. It was a super productive month, something I hope to continue going forward. My goal for the remainder of the year is to clear out my substantial backlog for both Marvel: Crisis Protocol and Star Wars: Shatterpoint. If I can keep up a pace similar to this, I think I can actually do it.
Rockfish
Bit of a random mix of things recently, guard, chaos and nids on the 40k side…
On the AoS side I got a little spearhead of the new stormcast models painted up in record time!
Also a ratto:
realSnice
I spent the past month working on my Horus Heresy War Hounds (Loyalist World Eaters). This was largely for a local event that took place this month but also to get the force 95% ready for Nova later this year.
Bair
It’s been an incredibly busy month, a little for hobby but mostly in the content mines. Over the last week we’ve been posting up a lot about AoS 4th Ed and you should go check it out whether you’re already playing AoS or just curious about it. I wrote about 8 of the 24 factions and have contributed to various other articles with my co-authors, it’s been a lot but also great getting to pour over an entire new edition’s worth of content in a couple weeks. I am incredibly excited for this edition and really wish I had more time to play!
Now onto the hobby! Entirely and completely separate from Age of Sigmar I started Saga. You may have seen some recent, very high quality (I can say that, I didn’t write them) articles up about the game and I am just in love with it. Historical wargaming is entirely new to me and this is the easiest step into it by far. So across about 12 days I built and painted 8 points worth of Saga Vikings, naturally, as a way to dip my toe in. If you’re not familiar that point system is going to sound very strange considering the number of models I’m showing off here. Go read the very good article and it’ll explain it in full, but in short each point gets you: 12 Levies, 8 Warriors, or 4 Hearthguard. There’s a few special units like Berzerkers which Vikings have access to, which is just 4 Hearthguard with less armour and are angrier. It rules.
The author of that piece is a local too and showed me the ropes of the game; only two games in and I’m itching for more, planning more warbands in different time periods.
Saffgor
This month for me has been a turning point in my return to 40k, as my 2000pts of Ash Waste-themed Admech are close to being done! It’s been a massive project, and I’ve done my best to use every part of the buffalo, as it were. Bits appear from nearly every kit in the Ash Wastes range, as well as Sylvaneth, and of course Admech.
First up is the centerpiece of the army: Cawl, affectionately Crawl. This was a massive undertaking, given I was tacking on a hunk of resin (Wy’tari Stormcaller) onto half a Cawl, but some pinning and clever “cupping” of the resin with sturdier bonded plastic components has made it work perfectly. This model’s a little self-contained simulacra of the army as a whole, and I think that’s just wonderful.
We also have some freshly-varnished finished models, from the Arthromite “Breachers”, Spitefly-winged Pteraxii, Raiders on Helamites, and a host of heroes leading the way. You can tell that this project was started well before the slate dropped, based on the units therein, and while I’m definitely going to be cutting my teeth with Skitarii Hunter Cohort, my true eyes are on a mechanized Data-Psalm list. Stay tuned for Electro-Priests, boats, and some group shots with good lighting!
JellyMuppet
I’m in my weird little guy era.
Since long before my Demons Faction Focus I’ve been slowly building an allied detachment for use in Heresy. These are the followers of my demons lord, Drustos Vol (who I also have in Marine form before his ascension) known as the Eyeless Host.
This is nothing fancy, really, just Flesheater Courts with greenstuff over the eyes, painted with basic drybrushed tan skin and a lot of blood, ichor and nonsense with contrast paints. I spiced it up by adding some Bad Squiddo Ghouls, a gorgeous range of horrid boys and girls. Look at em go!
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