And like that another month has flown by. The Goonhammer crew have been painting all sorts this month, including some models from the upcoming 10th edition boxet for Warhammer 40K !
Jack
Not a ton of words from me this month – my painting focus was squarely on working on the review copy of Leviathan I was sent, and I managed to get most of the Space Marines done.
SRM
I had the delightful opportunity to review this crew earlier in the month, and review them I did. It had been a minute since I’d painted any Stormcast, then from the end of April through the beginning of May I had a trio of warbands to chew through. This crew was plenty of fun to paint, and their faces are some of the best in the entire Stormcast range. Their rules seem interesting, given their ability to yeet themselves across the table, and I’m glad my variety pack of weapon choices won’t bite me in the ass in AoS, where they all just have a generic, yet fairly strong, Questor Weapons attack.
I was fortunate enough to be included in the Goonhammer Collective who got to review the contents of Leviathan, and I started with the Terminator armored components of the set. You can read my full thoughts (as well as the full thoughts of other, far more succinct writers on this site) in our review, but I had an easy time putting together these Tactical Dreadnought Bois. The Marshal here was a pretty simple conversion, really just a headswap, a different hood ornament, and a few extra doodads to give him that Templar flair. Naturally, I went all-out on the heraldry, as is customary. The dude’s got twice as many tilting plates as a normal Terminator, how could I not?
In a batch with the Captain/Marshal, I also painted up the unit of 5 Terminators from the same set. It had been a few years since painting anything in Terminator armor, and the added details in all the piping meant they took about as long to paint as any Gravis armored models I’ve laboriously edged through. I’m rather happy with them though, and I intend to include them in my Tacoma Open list in July.
Unfortunately, Tears of the Kingdom and Boltgun both dropped this month while I was working on some Krieg Guardsmen and absolutely tanked the remainder of my hobby progress, but we’ll see what June brings!
Charlie B
I last checked in to a hobby round-up in February, and since then have been happily chipping away at my marines, interspersed with some (still unfinished) terrain and rounding out a regiment of Greatswords for my Empire army.
First up are these incursors/infiltrators. I built them kind of agnostically according to which components I preferred the look of, so they can be fielded as either unit. I often add helix and tech adepts to my units as purely cosmetic variety, so it was cool to have the kill team sprue to lean into those details.
After that I jumped back into the Old World and added 8 Greatswords into a unit, rounding them out to a block of 28. I also painted a new full command for them. This way, in campaigns, there can be two different regiments of Greatswords running around the map.
To aid them in battle I finished off a (technically overlarge) detachment of 15 assorted idiots from across many decades of Citadel’s existence. The count as a free company collectively known as the Hochland State Circus.
In April I had a crack at the custom 3D-printed conversion kit @Scriv_paints made to change Primaris Outriders into grav bike riders. Some gap filling is needed for the boosters, but otherwise they went together fine, and Dave’s design fits really well into the design language of the Primaris range.
If you fancy having some of these lads yourself, you can find some notes on the assembly process over at the Beard Bunker.
Moving finally on to May itself, I painted my first and possibly last box of heavy intercessors. Foolishly I’ve gone the way of the true edging enthusiast for my army’s paint scheme. It’s the slowest, dumbest way to paint, but I find it satisfying. Unfortunately this does not mix well with gravis armour, where all the edges come to hang out. One gravis boot has about as many edges as a whole second edition space marine. I have another 10 of these lads on sprue, and there they shall remain for… possibly forever?
Finally, I painted up a techmarine, of whom you can see more angles here. This model somehow manages to be extremely detailed without feeling over-cluttered, and was an absolute joy to paint. Let’s just not think too hard about having the power supply of the axe being both on the cutting side and right underneath the head.
Bair
By far my most prolific month this year (to date)! With 91 minis painted in May I’m up to 263 for 2023 so far. I started with my Conquest Ice Jotnar (a huge mini) to be in time of a Conquest event I’m running in London in June, there aren’t many events at all around for what’s become a well sized community and so hopefully this is the start of many!
Mantic announced new rules for pirate and ghost fleets for Armada, and I have no idea what those rules even look like yet but decided to take the opportunity to hack up my Basilean fleet that’s been sitting in boxes and paint them as ghosts. This was a really fun project and Briar Queen Chill is an incredible paint for ghost effect! The resin on those sails is incredibly thick so took a good deal of work to get through but worth it!
Next up I decided to get my Khazad Dum dwarves out of their box and finally actually get some paint on them. After painting a couple hundred old world dwarves last winter these were a breeze to get through, but even smaller since the MESBG scale is smaller compared to Warhammer. I’ve set them in Durin’s time as King under the mountain before their fall in the second age, and cannot wait to play against my friend’s elves. I’ve played MESBG off and on since the mid-2000’s and it’s amazing how the core of it doesn’t seem to have changed much, whenever I look at it again I always wonder why I don’t play more of it.
Then, it wouldn’t be a new month if I wasn’t looking at yet another new game. Burrows and Badgers from Osprey Games and Oathsworn minis has really caught my eye so I ordered a few minis that I thought looked cool, and ones to create a Witch Hunter themed warband to paint up. These really were the most fun I’ve had painting in a long time! Single piece metal (or resin for the really big ones like the Badger) miniatures that need no cleanup whatsoever and what looks like a very fun narrative based story-telling game to play with them. Already setting up a campaign with 4 other friends to play! As well as getting some sign posts and stone walls (one visible in the pic) to use as well. Looking forward to doing more of these and some of the little burrow buildings soon!
“Contemptor” Kevin Stillman
After a busy April, I was excited back to the painting table. I decided to focus on my End of Edition challenge of getting a full Dark Angels army ready for the end of 9th Edition/Start of 10th Edition.
First was to finish a project I’ve had kicking around for awhile, which was to paint up a squad of Space Marine Heroes
I’ve added in some parts from mainline kits, to replace some missing parts. But overall it was a fun little project. After those guys were done, it was onto my Deathwing Contemptor Dreadnought.
For the new edition, he’s going to be a Counts-as-Venerable Dreadnought because GW decided to send Contemptor Dreadnoughts to legends. I’m not thrilled with that decision. After the Contemptor was completed, it was time to get to the centerpiece of my End of Edition Army: The Primarch himself, the Lion El’Jonson!
This was the model where I finally got the hang of my airbrush, and switched to a slightly brighter green for the rest of the models.
To finish up my Dark Angels Combat Patrol, I did the Inceptors and Primaris Chaplain
Next month/before I get Leviathan:
One squad of Assault Intercessors, one squad of Deathwing Knights, and one Land Raider for my Deathwing. This will replace my Heavy Intercessors and Desolators in the End of Edition challenge, I think.
NotThatHenryC
This month I have mostly been bashing kits. Bash bash bash!
First up I got an old Land Speeder Storm I’ve had for years and finally got round to converting it into a Javelin for my 30k Raven Guard. This involved hacking away at it and some bits of Stormhawk (mostly), resulting in this… thing. I have plans to improve the base.
I then bought a couple more Land Speeder Storms so I could complete a squadron, but then did something else altogether instead: a much bigger project to build a Fire Raptor.
This is basically the rest of the Stormhawk (and bits from another one) smashed into a Corvus Blackstar. It’s still very much WIP, with big gaps I’ll have to fill with Green Stuff and/or gubbins. But the overall shape of the thing is coming together into something I quite like.
As I play Raven Guard I’m interested in trying out the Liberation Force Rite, which requires an allied detachment of Solar Auxilia or Militia. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Aurox model so I thought I’d make my own, out of Goliath Trucks. This is the first of three, hopefully.
I also made up the new Vindicator for a review which you can read here, if interested. The Javelin(s) and Fire Raptor will get the same scheme – which I shudder to think of doing on the massive plane.
Soggy
I nearly had three weeks off from the hobby this month, spread across holidays, family visits and a Vampire Surivors relapse! That all aside, I managed a serious painting montage to turn around some of the models from the Levtiathan boxset which GW kindly sent out to us.
Ideally I would have had some more time to spend on these and may come back to revisit them once my backlog is finished (ie never). My biggest challenge for the next few months will be deciding on a Tyranid scheme that I am happy with to paint up the other half.
Skails
This month I painted the early 90’s sculpt of Vlad von Carstein by Gary Morley. Seeing all the chatter about ‘Olden Demon’ on Instagram got me hyped to do up an old model. Olden Demon is a contest put on by @Chilvers_Industries. Basically paint a metal Games Workshop model or one inspired by the aesthetic. And do a goblin green base. So I grabbed this Vlad out of a recent EBay lot and painted him up over a week.
Rockfish
I painted a griffin!
I don’t think I did anything else really, bit of a quiet month really.
Ok I might have painted one or two other things.
I managed to paint 63 models over about a month, which is a hell of a marathon even by my standards. Totally worth it though, as I am over the moon with how they turned out!
The Characters
This section was of course more heavily weighted towards marines by number, as they have four in the box to the nids two.
Big Bois
Swinging back in the favor of the nids here with their two big beasties.
Mid Weights
The terminators probably have to be grab the spot light here, just because of cultural cachet more then anything!
Everything Else
These are the more conventionally scaled marines with Sternguard and the Infernus squad, and the endless horde of gribblies for the nids.
