The third quarter of the 2024 is over, let’s see what the team has been up to recently hobby-wise.
Rockfish
Well, I’ve been up to a few random things this month, both painting and in my life can’t say I can argue with variety!
Marines!
Rattos!
And even some space ships!
Wake
Oh boy, my first Hobby roundup as a Goonhammer contributor! No pressure…!
For me, like a lot of teacher/gamers, the end of summer and beginning of the school year tends to mean either no productivity or a wild final burst of creative energy in defiance of the grading to come. I had both, on alternating weeks! Most of this month was Marvel Crisis Protocol; I have a few other irons in the fire- some Lumineth Realm-Lords, an absolutely stupefying amount of Battletech Kickstarter product, some Shatterpoint stuff, and the latest Middle-earth SBG releases- but none in any kind of a finished state!
I also apparently broke my photo box…oh noooo, time for an upgrade I guess…so these photos are what I could cobble together using regular lighting.
First up were some Spider-Foes; I ran a demo day event I called “Peter Parker’s Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day” this month. Players could drop in throughout the day, grab a classic Spider-Man villain, and team up to try to- you guessed it- kill Peter Parker. It was a hoot.
I knocked these out, collectively, in about the last four or five days of summer vacation. I genuinely enjoyed each of them; one of the things I love about painting MCP is how each project is unique. Painting for this game is never boring! (Quick tip for anybody doing Sandman anytime soon- make sure you’ve got some texture paint on hand when you assemble him; there are some pretty serious seams/gaps in the sculpt, but generous application of texture paint along them will clean them right up and have him looking nice and sandy. Fortunately none of those seams are on the non-sand details of the model!)
Next were some X-Folks; I’ve been trying to finish up the X-Men/X-Force/New Mutant line and am almost there- only Honey Badger and Gambit remain. These models are lovely but the amount of extra Sentinel junk on them is just beyond gratuitous…I’m happy to report that with these complete, our long national nightmare of extraneous Sentinel basing bits has come to an end.
I knew I wanted to do Deadpool in his X-Force costume, and got the idea to do Psylocke in a similar look, which led to the idea to give the poor woman pants instead of having her running around trying to fight in a bathing suit. I also went sans-rocket on Deadpool, thinking it would be a more “X-Force/serious” kind of look for him, but my 5 year-old son immediately commented that it looked like he was skipping, and now I can’t unsee it. At least it’s in character!
Crimson Dynamo is a great model in the game and was fun to paint. I am particularly happy with the chips to the armor and the glow on his star.
Lastly, I tackled the New Mutants releases, which I was very excited about, as that’s the affiliation I’m currently playing.
Sunspot was a lot of fun to paint- I had a really good time blending some highlights for his costume that unfortunately don’t quite come through in my less-than-stellar lighting. The weirdest part of his look is the hand, which I looked at multiple sources to confirm, but yes, his hand glows when he does this, but the glow seems to stop at the wristband for some reason. Comic books!
Warlock has always been a personal favorite, so I was a little disappointed in the stock AMG sculpt for him. I extended his neck with an old Adeptus Mechanicus bit to capture a little more of his “telescoping limbs” look and then completely ignored the sculpted detail for his eyes, which is…not great. I’m very pleased with the final result, though:
Just look at that adorable doofus!
We’re into the school year proper now, so I expect next month to be less productive, but you never know. Now that I’ve got all the New Mutants painted, I’m going to need to expand my stable of splash characters for them, after all…
SRM
It’s a seemingly light and fantasy-flavored month for me, with most of my hobby time going towards upcoming video projects, tournament games, prep for said tournament games, and writing a bunch.
Before my trip to NOVA at the end of August (please check out my event report, without your validation I am but a blossom without water who will wither and die) I started this squad of rank-and-file Stormcast, and I gleefully knocked them out on my return. I’ve firmly missed the Skaventide review window here, but in short: this kit rocks, it went together in no time and their open poses made painting them a pleasure. The bare heads are also great, and make what could be a squad of faceless jobbers look like a group of proper heroes.
This fellow was the only thing I was planning on picking up at NOVA, and I excitedly started on him the morning after I got home. He took like, four hours, and I don’t know if he’ll ever find a use on the tabletop, but I adore the miniature. Maybe I’ll lobby for a new D&D campaign just so I can use him as my little dude.
Speaking of event-exclusive miniatures that likely won’t see the table much, I painted up this accidental self portrait here. Those little character series boxes were really stacking up in my backlog cabinet and I was all too get through this guy in a couple days. Also note that every single time you see a blue gem on my models (such as here and on some stuff I can’t post about yet) know that I’m attempting to channel the user interface from Warcraft II.
After spending a load of time on some neato stuff I can’t show you yet, I wanted another simple project. I blitzed through this Warhammer Hill in an afternoon, taking it from black primer to finished product in just a few hours. It was real model railroad dad/arts and crafts hours over here. It’s not really a kit, just a single molded piece of plastic, but I’ve got another I’ll either do up similarly or saw in half and use in some display board or another. I’ve already had one person on Instagram ask for a tutorial, so who knows.
I’ve got a load of exciting stuff that I’ll be showing off next month, so if nothing else, let that be reason enough to get excited for the next round up!
Jake 🐙
I’m a notoriously unproductive painter, so I decided to try and shake the stagnation off by taking a bunch of painting classes at NOVA this year. In total, I took six classes over the week totaling ~23 hours. That’s easily more than I’ve done any hobbying for the entirety of 2024 combined.
My three favorite classes had to be Brush Skills with Andy Wardle (of Cult of Paint fame), Mastering Volume and Depth Using Airbrush Techniques with Izzy Sanchez, and Knightmare Chrome with Dan Ozborne. These classes managed to hit the magic combination of wonderful instructors, useful and practical content, and hands on practice to implement the skills taught.
Andy’s Brush Skills class was both insightful and kind of funny — I spent about six hours painting a single Space Marine leg. It primarily focused on brush control, being mindful of starting/ending brush strokes in deliberate places, and it was my first time using glazes to do color blends. This leg is by far the best thing I’ve ever painted which is why I based it and put it in my cabinet.
Izzy Sanchez taught an airbrush class where we worked on applying volumetric highlights to various 3D shapes. He gave out four wooden blocks — a cube, a cylinder, a sphere, and a cone. This happened to build off of the previous class I took since the leg was mostly just a cylinder and a sphere. It’s neat having two different instructors approach similar topics in different ways with different tools. I’d share the blocks here, but I gave them to my daughter when I got back and now they’re part of a Barbie barn or something. Sorry!
The last class I want to touch on was one by Dan Ozborne. Absolutely wonderful gentleman and his prior experience as a teacher is evident both in the ease at which he directs the class and also how he sometimes would say “okay, friends” before starting a sentence. This was a marathon of a class where we painted a knight sized robot utilizing the airbrush, stencils, liquid masks, masking tape, and a wee bit of drybrushing.
I can heartily recommend checking out classes by any of these individuals if you ever have the opportunity. I know I’m looking forward to trying out more in their range next year at NOVA, or maybe earlier at Adepticon if I can make it out there.
Wrapping up my NOVA experience, I went to play Underworlds on Sunday where I got my butt handed to me by a bunch of lovely opponents. Hooray, Underworlds!
Saffgor
This is the month I fully intend to have a big beautiful Data-Psalm Conclave list ready for 40k, fully converted for the Ash Wastes. I’ve got a whopping 45 priests to get painted, being 30 Fulgurites and 15 Corpuscarii, and with the amount of individual conversion work it’ll be a lengthy project. That said, once these spider-men (no copyright infringement here) are ready, it’ll be time to jam lots of games in Pariah Nexus in earnest.
Also seen is a group of both Raiders and Vanguard, as well as 3 Technoarchaeologists, standing in as Asun’ghar, and a Enginseer, being a mish-mash of whatever I had laying around. The cobbled-together feel here is intentional, and while there’s a way to go, Admech by way of rad-saturated Tusken Raiders has been an incredible project to see come together, and I’m confident it’ll be a treat to see on the tabletop, complete with a boatload of boats.
Stay tuned for the next month’s update, as hopefully by then they’ll be ready for a full-blown army overview article, and I’ll have gotten my bearings in 10th with a Tournament in early November.
Michael O “Mugginns”
I went to the Michigan GT in late September and player in the Age of Sigmar Team Tournament and Warhammer 40k Crusade. For the AOS TT I had to bring 1,000 points of bros. I have a huge Beasts of Chaos army painted but I couldn’t bring myself to use them as I’m still depressed they got shuttled off to the other game. Instead, I chose to get a start on my Cities of Sigmar army.
For some reason these doggs just filled the giant void left in my soul when Beasts died – I don’t know if its because they’re also dregs of society, they’re just dudes trying to make their way in the Mortal Realms that are full of insane gods and weirdo monsters, or maybe it’s just because they were the natural enemies of Beasts back in the day.
Here’s the list I brought:
I am a pretty slow painter. I also work insane hours and have an 18-month-old, so all told, my hobby progress could charitably be described as “glacial.” Still, September was a pretty solid month for me – I’ve found that I can paint a half hour in the evenings here and there and an hour or two per weekend.
My painting queue right now is mostly new Malifaux releases from Ashes of Malifaux, but before I got started on those, I couldn’t resist painting up the alt Alphonse LeBlanc. I love this guy on the tabletop, and while I have a soft spot for his goofy old model, it doesn’t really visually convey “this guy will twist your Master’s head off if you let him get close to you.” The new model carries that across, I think.
The second project I finished recently is a passel of characters for my Alpha Legion. I have, at last count, about 5700 points of these boys painted up, and I have yet to play a game with them. I don’t care. I finally did a Space Marines.
The new additions are Desmun Nyv and Litus Porr, Apothecaries; Brother-Librarian Mortens Phylt; Siege Breaker Dylo yg Goriko; and Armillus Dynat. I try to make my characters’ names sound like they come from different cultures to reinforce the “out of many, one” nature of the Alpha Legion.
Normally I’d have repainted Dynat’s eyes – he looks surprised all the time – but I found it too cute to change.
Finally, I’ve been making progress on my real hobby white whale, my Cities of Sigmar army. Nobody can remember the founding of the city of Carcosa, deep in Shyish. None have ever visited it; envoys sent to find it never return. There’s no record of “Carcosa” in any histories of Dawnbringer Crusades. The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever. The Stormcast won’t speak of it, and they’ve never been seen marching alongside its armies. But every so often, a column of soldiers in sickly yellow and faded crimson march out to stand alongside Sigmar’s armies.
Aside from their tattered uniforms, the most distinctive feature of the Carcosan levies are their masks. None have ever seen the face of even the lowliest Carcosan soldier. Even in death, their masks remain affixed to their faces, grinning their final grins into eternity. The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever. Soldiers who have fought alongside the Carcosans don’t like them – they don’t speak, not even to each other, and there’s something wrong with their movements. They’re jerky, as if tugged to and fro by unseen marionette strings. In fact, soldiers whisper that sometimes, when the Realm of Shadow is at its brightest, you can see the strings, puppeteering the armies that pretend to be men.
The masks are Harlequin masks, which I sourced in bulk from Facebook. The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever. Narrow-gauge craft wire forms the marionette strings; the rule is that everyone is a puppet, except the royal family of Yhtill and the King himself (still on my desk for now).
Rocco Gest
I only worked on one model this month because of my masters course and having a full time job, so I spent that time pushing my painting skills. I have a deep hatred for metallic paints, and my only recourse is too learn nonmetallic metal techniques. I’ve been cautious about trying it out, only because I don’t like repainting models. So I decided to rip that band-aid off and just increase the quality of highlights on an older model of mine that I am already nominally happy with. I took a Caraphractii Terminator model that i kitbashed into an Ancient and upped the highlights and completely re-did the metallic trim and gem stones.
All of my space marine models feature some amount of a brass with verdegris, so I tried to add the verdegris over my NMM. I think I did a pretty good job for a test model, and I’ve got the painting fire in my belly to try it more.
“Contemptor” Kevin Stillman
I spent a big chunk of September hobbying (still on my hobbying high after NoVa), but only finished a few painting projects in preparation for my local GW’s Armies on Parade. A bunch of different models were primed and basecoated, but only a few were finished.
First was Belial, to lead my Deathwing Terminators.
After that, I was off for a few days to a work conference. While there, I brought my mobile hobby setup and successfully finished off a Stormraven Gunship.
As the Mini train kept on chuggin’, I joined Primaris Kevin at a local store called Huzzah Hobbies for their monthly hobbying day. There, I took a Repulsor Executioner from “finished the Green Armor” to “Ready for the Grand Narrative.”
And lastly, I finished a Secret Weapon/Elrick’s Hobbies Display Board
Soggy
I haven’t had too much hobby motivation this month, however did manage to crack out some Age of Sigmar models to let me give Spearhead a go. Doing 20 clanrats in one go was probably not wise! I’ve recently made some foolish hobby purchases (Horus Heresy fliers) which I’m looking forward to working on next.
