Another month has flown by, lets check in on what the team have been up to!
SRM
With my Adepticon goals set last month, I got to accomplishing those goals and knocking out some other stuff for funsies. First up, I’ll start by admitting I’m a filthy cheater.
Dylan gave me these Kasrkin for Crimbo, and I got them to 95% complete in December. However, I was waiting for some transfers, which pushed them back further, then again for some agreeable weather in which I could finally varnish them. Resultantly, I didn’t get pictures of these guys til February, and didn’t post them til almost April. This millstone is off my neck, and now you’re looking at a group of carapace armored troopers who can take on any threat, so long as it doesn’t try and punch them.
In my road to Adepticon article, I figured that I really, really wanted to take a unit of 10 Chosen to the AoS event I was playing. They hit like a truck and can be easily buffed to hit like a larger, spikier truck. I painted up my unit fillers after tackling the command last month, and now I’ve got a hearty 480 point brick of pain:
We’ll find out just how they do once I finish up my final Adepticon article, but they weren’t the only thing I had to paint for the con.
After including my Chosen, 10 Warriors, and a Sorceror Lord, I had 180 points left over. I wanted some cheap screening units and already had one band of Untamed Beasts painted, and the second had been sitting around assembled and primed for almost 3 years. They were an enormous pain in the ass, absolutely too detailed for chaff, but I have a standard I want to hit with all units in the army so I didn’t cut too many corners. The plethora of straps, bones, and bones sticking out of the straps really sapped my motivation, but with 18 of these guys painted I can happily say I’ll never need to paint one again.
I needed a second Mauler for the Into the Wastes event at Adepticon, so I knocked this one out in a day. There isn’t too much I can say that I didn’t say in our review last year. After plugging away for a week and a half on a bunch of overdetailed idiots, it was nice to knock something out quickly with a bunch of drybrushing and sponging.
I started these guys before Adepticon and wrapped them up on my return, but I’m happy to say I’m finally clearing out some of the Guard who have been clogging up my backlog for the last few months. I went with the same scheme as on the Kasrkin and my test model at the end of 2022, which will be my standard for Guard going forward. It’s based on a WW1 Russian cavalry uniform, and it works pretty universally with Guard models. I think it’ll work especially well on Rough Riders, and if they ever make plastic Valhallans, I will be in deep, deep trouble.
As for next month, Battletech and Age of Sigmar are likely going to be the focus. The events I played of each at Adepticon really got my motivation going, and I’m excited to paint more musclebound idiots and hundred ton clankers. See you in April!
Rockfish
Ok so I’m not going to waste any time and just jumping into leading with my favorite model of the last month, Farsight!
The rest of my month has been entirely been dominated with preview models too, Vashtorr, Azrael and Snikrot! I’ve basically not had any time to work on anything else really…
I did find sometime to whip out a quick Warhammer (the mech) though! It was kinda a experiment in finding if I could do it completely from grey plastic to varnished and based in 90 mins, which I just made!
Then I did a somewhat higher effort Apothecary!
NotThatHenryC
This has actually been a pretty productive month of hobby for me. I had to get a 3000 point Heresy army ready for an event and one of my local clubs is starting a Chain of Command campaign set in 1940 Belgium in a couple of weeks as well.
The biggest thing I’ve managed to do is get my Warhound battle ready. There are a few things left to do, like the gun cables, and I could improve some of the blending here and there. I might also stick some of my AT-scale transfers here and there and then finally do some fairly light weathering.
I’ve managed to get most of the rest of my Heresy stuff finished to a pretty decent standard. Unfortunately I ran out of time a bit so my characters and dark furies are only really battle-ready. Here they are in action (with the Warhound out of shot, sadly)
I had fun converting this Praetor. The wings started out on a Skitarii but I cut the cloth bits off and sculpted these blade-like things over the “fingers”. One day I might finish him, but rather than do that I have started work on a Delegatus, who I plan to have lead a command squad.
Meanwhile I’ve been slowly painting a BEF platoon for Chain of command. So far I’ve finished my HQ guys and the first section of 11 men. These are Rubicon metals that I’ve slightly converted, adding gas mask bags and shovels. Two more sections like this and various support options are needed, including things like entrenchments.
And of course I’ve got myself far more vehicles than I’m likely to need for a game. It’ll be nice to have choices, at least. These are all Warlord models – a mixture of plastic and resin. Crew are from Perry and Rubicon.
Thundercloud
After clearing almost 50 models for the Boarding Party challenge, I’ve pledged 15 for the End of the Edition challenge. The first one was a Primaris Lieutenant.
The Primaris Lieutenant kit is great, and I grabbed a spare Intercessor body to make a second one. I also built and painted the Primaris Company Champion I got at Warhammer World. The extra head is from the Forgeworld Mk4 heads set, which is great for Primaris suitable character heads. This also crosses off the first model from my pledge and adds a couple of bonus ones so I can go into the next edition with some painted HQs.
I’ve been working on a very beer and pretzels little game to play called ‘Weird Little Guys’, which features the little critters you get on sprues like Rippers and Nurglings etc. Here’s a complete Tyranid roster, individually based.
PierreTheMime
Not a huge amount of progress this month, but I’m plugging away at my Word Bearers collection and promising myself I’ll have them table-ready for an RTT coming soon. Possessed are fantastic models and I had a lot of fun spending time on them.
Keewa
My hobby time this month has mostly been consumed painting the wonderful miniatures from Eldfall Chronicles for Goonhammer’s ongoing coverage, there have been quite a few of them!
Soggy
This month started off with a bang, with my first despoiler squad sneaking my White Scars onto the GW Hobby roundup (clip). I was very happy they didn’t comment on half of the decals on the legs being inverted, which I only noticed after I had varnished them lol.
When I went home at Christmas I picked up an old metal techmarine from 1992 and painted him up for something different. I put the 25mm slotta base on top of a 32mm one to give them a much needed height boost.
After this I painted up some more units for the Pride of the Legion list I’m planning to run at Warhammer Fest- some heavy hitters for my terminator brick and Qin Xa to lead the army.
Pride of the Legion will let me use the leviathan I’ve been unable to use with my Sagyar Mazan/Kharash list, so I took the opportunity to finally paint it up. I painted the Leviathan up in the Kharash colours, as I figure they must have a lot of redemption to do if they need to die in battle for a second time!
Rocco
I’ve been a very busy boy since the start of the year. I’ve been pretty hobby dormant apart from building and priming a Votann army. I was able to eek out some choice Marvel: Crisis Protocol Models though!
I painted these two in a rush to get them ready to learn the game with our very own Joey K, Crab-Stuffed Mushrooms. Both of these characters are absolute beasts. Ghost Rider hates your opponents at medium range and makes them pay for attacking his friends, and Taskmaster punishes your opponent for trying to take him out in a single activation. The game was super fun and I can’t to paint and play more of it!
Bair
Some friends and I are actually keeping track of our hobby and games played this year on a google sheet, going month by month how many models we’ve finished (painted, based etc) and tabletop games played; adding up both for a total “hobby points”. March was even my most productive month for painting so far with 55 models painted, putting me on 148 painted minis and 39 games played for 2023. Hoping to beat my number of painted minis from last year but April will be much slower with a weekend Titanicus event and Warhammer Fest at the end of the month.
It was my local GW’s store birthday at the end of Feb so I picked up the new Arkanaut Admiral, which absolutely had to be given the option of holding a model of his own flagship – incredible model and one of my favourites now in my collection.
March was a pretty Star Wars heavy month, adding to my Separatist army with 18 more B1 droids and then painting up my Shadow Collective force that I build the end of last year. Also adding an AAT to my Separatists in time for my second Legion tournament That’s No Bad Moon in London.
Cytoplasm
The Kings of War community has a bunch of community slow grows going on – one here in Australia run by Matt Croger, and another run by the Countercharge Podcast. For both I am putting together and painting my Riftforged Orcs, miniatures acquired at the start of 2022 but only now are getting some attention. Thus far I have painted a few Legionaries, getting the color scheme solidified, and with a few of those done I decided to treat myself with something slightly different; the Stormbringer on Manticore.
The Stormbringer on Manticore probably the best resin miniature of Mantics I have had the pleasure to assemble and paint. Everything fit and only the hammer needed a bit of reshaping under hot water. I am sure everyone can agree that the details on this guy pop, every piece of armour is so well defined it really made the painting quite easy. I am proud of this guy… now back to more (and more) infantry…
Cronch
It’s been a fairly quiet month for me in terms of finished projects, which can be a bit demotivating as a person who thrives on emoji reacts to finished photos! There are two reasons behind this – up first, I just haven’t been able to focus much. There have been other things going on in life, and so I’ve been bouncing between projects, not able to bring the full force of my paintbrush to bear. That’s OK though, it’s best not to worry too much about a hobby that is supposed to be fun and de-stressing.
I did pick up the Cadia Stands box, and painted up two guardsmen. I’m happy with the test scheme, and I’m looking forward to rounding the force out, although some shifting priorities with 10th arriving this year might mean that it will be a bit longer than expected before I come back to them.
I also painted this delightful snake-man from Northstar Miniatures’ Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago range. I had great fun with this, using contrast over a tinted underpainted gradient to try and achieve depth and shading, before using quick highlights to make it pop (including some very simple non-metallic metal). I’m painting some more of these up to make a warband for Magewinds, a small-scale mini-agnostic skirmish game created by my friend Rachel.
The other reason I haven’t been finishing much is that I have been lucky enough to snag a ticket for Golden Demon at Warhammer Fest this year. I’ve entered before but never come away with anything, so my expectations are restrained, but I’m really looking forward to displaying something that I’ve poured time and effort into! I’m working on a diorama – there’s a sneak peek below. I’ve been really enjoying working on my scene composition, modelling, and sculpting skills in this project, and can’t wait to get it done.
