Goonhammer Hobby Round-up: November 2021

There’s just one month left in 2021 – let’s see what our contributors have been painting as they head into the holiday season!

Pendulin

It’s November and it’s time to beef up my Custodes with a pair of big beefy boys, starting off with the biggest and beefiest among them, a Telemon Dreadnought.

This guy was a joy to paint, as there is something zen-like about edge highlighting. Just zone out and trace edges. Real happy with how he turned out, especially the red fade and his “I’m gonna getcha!” hand. Grabby!

I followed the Telemon up with a Contempto-Achillus Dreadnought, who was similarly great to paint. The shoulders have the same red fade as the Telemon, but I smartly chose to not photograph it because I am smart.

And of course I jammed him to the brim with magnets so I can pose him like this and shout “WOLVERINES!”

Taking a step back from 40k, I also painted up some Dropfleet Commander ships. I’ve yet to play a game of DFC, but these ships were just too cool to pass up.

Last up are photos of two Kill Teams that took a while to frame and set up. They aren’t new models per se, but I consider taking fancy pictures as part of the hobby, and I rather like how these two pictures turned out, so I’m including them in this hobby round-up and you can’t stop me.

Rockfish

As usual I have been painting a complete scatter shot of different things, starting and ending with GSC/Guard stuff:

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That tank only took 2 hours! it was a nice test for being able to do a bunch of vehicles quickly, as I plan to get a bunch of GSC and Guard vehicles painted up.

I also did some Custodes that were hanging around:

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If I had any kind of focus this month it would be Tau, as I have gotten into repainting a bunch of my old stuff that had been gathering dust and not seeing use.

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I stared with some sniper drones that never got finished, they were sitting around in the old scheme unbased.

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I quite liked doing these breachers and drones, I will have to do some more soon.

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I did a hammerhead too, which is of course magnitized but that rail gun looks rad as hell so I was always going to use it as the main shot.

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I also did a few dropfleet commander ships too!

Corrode

I’ve had a hellishly busy November at work, so I haven’t had a chance to get as much painting done as I would like to. I did still manage a few bits, though – some Repentia for my Sisters, a Harlequin Troupe and their Starweaver to ride in, and then right at the end of the month an Achilles Ridgerunner. I’d mostly forgotten I even owned this, and then a combination of doing a lot of dirt races in Forza Horizon 5 and someone mentioning the existence of the Cult buggy inspired me to dig it out, build it up, and then paint it with lots of mud and grime all over it. I also grabbed the Sanctus out, and now I’m thinking about reviving my long-abandoned Genestealer Cults army, an impulse I absolutely must not indulge. The Dialogus, meanwhile, is from last month, but I forgot to take a picture of her then so she’s here now.

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Soggy

I missed the last month’s post so I’ve got a wee bit to catch up on, although the last two months have been pretty light from a hobby perspective, mostly thanks to Pathfinder 2 and Forza 5.

At the start of October, I had my first 40K event where I was actually taking part and thought I should spruce up my Contemptor Dreads which I painted really poorly a few years ago. I resprayed them and turned them around in same day which was pretty good going for me. Yes, they aren’t double volkites but with the new melta rules I thought I would give them a go – I had to borrow a melta cannon from one of my Ignatum Reavers, which looked the part.

It was nice to field an army of units painted during lockdown, figure out how 9th edition works and play a bunch of armies I hadn’t played before. Next up I had the Marine half of the Aeronautica Imperialis starter set.

I painted these up as Thousand Sons in their Horus Heresy scheme, so they can support my Legio Xestobiax force during the burning of Prospero. I thought I would try out the Tamiya Clear Red route for these, which to be honest I really disliked using and am glad I won’t be doing many more of these.

The end of October saw the organisation for the UK Goonhammer Open and Pathfinder 2 eat up a large amount of my free time. Although I did get to pick up my little big next project at the GHO. Before I got started on that though, I had started scraping the very bottom of my backlog, which was an ebay rescue unit of Deathwatch Hellblasters. I had been avoiding this unit for years as the pads had been plastic glued on and involved a bit of butchery to change them back. The end result is functional but not really one I was happy with.

Once these were out of the way, it was time to embark on a new hobby project. In a previous hobby round up I had flirted with the idea of revisiting my misspent youth and doing another Empire army or getting my old one shipped over from NZ to do up. This wasn’t going to happen, although something else caught my eye.

What if I did an Empire army but smaller? I fell in love with MiniRat Studio’s 10mm sculpts and managed to get a set of these printed up. At this scale the two systems being played are Warmaster or Kings of War, although to be fair I’m more interested in just painting them up. At least if I never play with the army it won’t take up too much space..

I had initially planned to do them all in the purple and yellow of Ostermark, although I’ve now changed my mind to a joint Empire army – lead by Karl Franz. This means other units will be painted in appropriate livery, such as Nuln for warmachines. Speaking of Karl Franz..

I love my tiny plastic sons and wish I could paint nothing but characters in this scale, sadly that isn’t the case.

SRM

I’ve been painting up Templars and Stormcast like it’s my job, because until I land full time employment again, it basically is.

I was fortunate enough to paint a bunch of minis for Goonhammer, including big daddy Stormcast himself, Bastian Carthalos. I found painting him to be an absolute joy, as you can read in my review, and I’m thrilled to add him to my homebrew Stormhost, The Undying Phalanx. He definitely got me stoked to paint more bronze bois and girls, and there’ll be a tutorial for how to do that soon.

Another extremely cool character I got to review was the Black Templars Castellan. I blitzed through him in two stressful days to get the review out fast, but didn’t spare any effort in making sure he looked cool as hell. Fun fact: he’s really, really thicc, and stands taller than any firstborn Marine, so those smolmar truthers will have to eat it. He’s just a cool, weird model.

Going back to the Black Templars launch box (which, hey, I reviewed that too!) I finally got to finish up these Crusaders. I’ve been working on them in fits and starts for a month and change, and I’m glad I can finally field them. They got First Game Syndrome’d hard and got stomped by a Knight, but they at least looked good while it was happening. The fact that there’s 3 base sizes in the kit is moderately frustrating, but there’s better stuff to be mad about.

While I was batch painting those 10 fuckos, I was also painting The Emperor’s Champion. He’s frankly a pretty simple model, as befits his anonymous status, but with how open he was it was a pretty frictionless painting experience. If I get more Crusaders I don’t think I’ll batch all 10 of them again, but I’m glad I was able to get all these newcomers ready for action together.

Last, and by no means least, I painted up High Marshal Helbrecht. I wrote up not just a review of building the model, but a How to Paint Everything article should you want to replicate my scheme (or Jack’s scheme) at home. I found him to be an extremely good time, and painting so many textures, colors, and types of model in this mini-diorama was a blast. It really was like painting four minis in one.

For next month, we’ll see what we’ve got! There’s more stuff I plan on writing up for Goonhammer, plus my own backlog to get to. My acquired:painted ratio has gotten skewed into the negative lately, so we’ll see if I can crack 200 minis painted by the end of the year. I’m only 10 away!

Zuul the Cat

November was a busy month for me. Lots of folks at my local club have been painting up and playing Marvel Crisis Protocol quite a bit, so I decided to work my way through my backlog of Magneto & Toad, Cable & Domino and She-Hulk. Somewhere along the way I also picked up and painted Jean Grey & Cassandra Nova (whoever that is) and Mr. Sinister.

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Painting the explosions for Cable and Domino took a couple tries but I eventually landed in a spot I was happy with. Omega Red was a pretty straightforward paint job.

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Jean was a nightmare to put together, but was really fun to paint up. I’m trying to purposely push my highlights very bright for my MCP stuff to get that comic book feel. I also painted Cassandra Nova because she came in the box. Mr. Sinister was extremely fun to paint up and is an extremely cool model.

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Lastly, I also painted up Magneto and Toad. I’m extremely pumped with how both of these turned out. Magneto has been one of my favorite characters ever since I played the 1993 X-Men game on Sega. Toad was really fun to paint up – I wish the jester outfit was my original idea but I saw a post online ages ago and fell in love with the idea.

All the models were very fun to paint up, but now I’m unfortunately out of MCP stuff, so no idea what I’ll paint for December!

“Primaris” Kevin Genson

November started off with me getting more Van Saar gangers done for Necromunda, along with a grapplehawk proxy to use in our Lost Zone campaign. I’m a big fan of grav guns and hadn’t purchased the upgrade kit yet, so I kitbashed one for my specialist using the laser shotgun and a grav gun head. The squid uses the head of a Sicarian with several of the Van Saar head tentacles glued underneath. I think it adequately represents a floating little murder bird that grapples enemies and never lets them go. 

Next up I decided to tackle some of my considerable backlog of terrain pieces and put together the beginnings of a Sector Mechanicus board. I was inspired by the awesome Necromunda setup at the Springfield Games Workshop store; if you have an opportunity swing by to check it out I definitely encourage it. I started off with a single level piece to try and get a sense of how the system should come together. I wanted to go with an approach that was flexible enough to work for both 40k and Necromunda, but was particularly relevant for a Lost Zone campaign where things are derelict. After looking at some images of old steel mills and abandoned factories I decided to make the floor level look like a dirty concrete floor full of dust and accumulated trash. The sprues from resin printing make excellent pieces of steel for debris, and you’ll see a few bits here and there on the floors. My other priority was to make each terrain piece compatible with others nearby, which meant that any section which could form a walkway with another had to hang over the base.

For my second piece I wanted to do something with the thermic plasma regulators which came in the War Zone: Charadon box. These pieces aren’t at the same level as other SM pieces, so I decided to put them on top of a supported bridge and form a sort of raised centerpiece. I made sure there was enough room around the exhaust stacks for gangers to walk by, and as with the first piece any area which could form a walkway with another piece hangs over the base.

For the third piece I decided to get a bit more vertical and work on a second level. One of the biggest challenges with Sector Mechanicus is finding a balance between interesting and playable; you need to be able to get your hands inside every space and also provide plenty of locations for models to move and fight. I probably need to do another 3-4 pieces to get enough terrain for a 4’x4′ board, and ideally I’d like at least one of those pieces to be 3 levels.

As part of the build I decided to explore the use of 3D printing in resin and making my own pieces. I have a background in CAD, but I wanted to learn to use Fusion 360 for my personal work. Autodesk Fusion 360 is a professional grade parametric design program available to free for hobbyists. In order to learn the program I decided to model one of the 61mm squares for Sector Mechanicus, and then play around with things until I came up with my own spin on the design. One of the biggest issues I have with the Sector Mechanicus pieces is how busy they are, with layers of cabling underneath a grid structure that most people don’t bother to paint. I decided a more reserved approach with bolted panels and simple vents would be a good contrast. Once I had done the solid concept, I did a variant with a hole in the middle so that you could have a ladder go through the tile and provide access to different levels.

Unfortunately it’s not enough to simply model something; you have to actually make it. Using my original Anycubic Photon that I purchased two years ago, I went through several iterations of orientations, support strategies, and scaling in order to get a part that had good surface finish and was also square to within plus or minus a tenth of a millimeter. This required orienting the squares on the diagonal, heavily supporting the underside, and squishing the part on the horizontal plane to compensate for the distortion that the soft resin experiences during the printing process. I also had to incorporate a ‘grid’ pattern in the underside in order to minimize variations in part thickness during the build. The parts were printed out of the Anycubic EcoResin, which doesn’t have as much of a smell as other resins.

For December my goal is to continue to work on the terrain pieces, building and printing more designs while I lock down how I want to paint everything.