Goonhammer Hobby Roundup: January 2020

Starting in 2020, we thought it would be fun for the Goonhammer authors to post their personal hobby progress each month and share it with the wider community. This month we have a whole lot of prep work from the Las Vegas Open, some New Year, New Army work, and a whole lot of other great hobby from our contributors.

Corrode

This month was all about the Crimson Fists for me. I was taking them to the Las Vegas Open, and there was a whole lot of stuff that I needed to get finished. I still found time to get diverted though; partly with other Space Marines, like the Centurion Devastators which don’t feature in my LVO list at all, and partly with a completely random model from another faction in the form of the Sloppity Bilepiper. I bought this guy a while ago just because he’s a cool model, but never got around to him until now. He was really fun to paint and surprisingly quick, being 90% drybrushing and washes. I also finally got to deploy the neon purple alien grass I bought from GamersGrass a while ago with no particular use in mind. They’re my favourite place to buy tufts and such; they have a great range of colours and sizes available.

Overall I finished:

• 1 Phobos Librarian
• 10 Intercessors with auto bolt rifles
• 1 Techmarine
• 1 Sloppity Bilepiper
• 5 Intercessors with stalker bolt rifles
• 4 Centurion Devastators

That makes 22 models in January, which is a great start to the year.

Gaming-wise, I obviously mostly got to play at LVO, although I played a couple of practice games beforehand which you can read about in the Road to LVO series.

For February, I need to finish off that squad of Centurion Devastators, and then I pretty much have an open field. I bought Tor Garadon the other day with the intention of painting him blue, some more Intercessors and the remaining Shadowspear Infiltrators, a GSC Magus, and that’s just the stuff in my direct line of sight as I type this post. Lots to be getting on with!

Greg

Dark Angels finally got their Psychic Awakening, which meant it was time to not paint any of them. I’m getting married next month, so my hobby time is extremely limited and only going to get moreso, but I primed all 32 of my kit-bashed Fallen and started working on my first non-Primaris marines in years, and first non-Loyalist marines in ever. I started with the bolter joes and chainsword joes, since it seemed safer to work out the kinks of the new paint scheme on the most disposable models. I’m saving Cypher for the end, but I’ve been alternating batch-painting 5 grunts at a time with spending an evening on a single sergeant or HQ model, which has varied up the workflow while keeping me on the same project long enough to get into the proverbial zone with it. January got me halfway through (finished 16 out of 32 models), in the form of:

• 5 Fallen with boltguns
• 5 Fallen with chainsword/bolt pistol
• 4 Fallen with power swords
• 1 Fallen Chamption with power maul
• 1 Fallen Champion with power sword

The only downside is that I was only able to get a single game in, a 2000 point showdown against fellow Goonhammer-er Felime, but at least we had a blast.

Kevin

I’m bringing Tyranids to NOVA, which means I have roughly 8 months to get 2000 points done. To motivate myself even further I’ve teamed up with Greg and Evan to do our Path to Shame series, where we randomly roll on tables to determine what unholy combination of pain and suffering I’ll get to field. So far my initial army is a Hive Tyrant, 12 Ripper Swarms, and 12 Spore Mines for a total of 480 points. Yes, really. Fortunately Hive Tyrants and Ripper Swarms are a core part of nearly any Tyranid army, and Spore Mines paint up pretty quickly. The good news is that to maintain my schedule I’ll need to finish up everything by February. The bad news is that so far I’ve finished:

• Nothing

What I have done is a lot of prep work. I cleaned up every mold line, applied all the basing material and rocks (oyster shells look great at 40K scale, especially for desert bases), converted three “big boy” Ripper Swarms out of Trygon pieces and toxin sacs, did a healthy amount of Green Stuff work to clean up gaps and add some features, and converted a Hive Tyrant out of the body of a Trygon because I’m a mad man who is pathologically incapable of leaving well enough alone. Fortunately this particular paint scheme paints up very quickly so this time next month you should see a lot of bone and blue in the picture below.

That Gobbo

A Sonic Dreadnought doesn’t really fit neatly into what I’m currently running in my Chaos Space Marines army, but I ended up going into a fugue state and assembling, kitbashing, and painting this within a week. I had a lot of fun adding the missile pod from the Vulture and using the super glue and PVA glue technique to make some real gross flesh texture for gap filling. It was also a blast to sit down and work on some really grody Chaos flesh. 

Just a couple of quick contrast paint jobs for characters to add to my Genestealer Cults soup. It took an unfortunate amount of time for me to even think about pouring resin into a rock mold to use for my character bases. 

 I had this Vulture sitting in a bin for a few months and I wanted to add something mobile to clear screens to my Genestealer Cults soup, so this was a great opportunity to assemble and paint it. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could do a GSC icon stencil and eventually landed on using my Ender 3 3D printer to create a thin stencil which worked great for the large flat surfaces of the Vulture. It’s actually not technically finished as I need to do the cockpit but it’s far enough along that I’m happy to take a break and play it on the table. 

Originally I started working on my Imperial assassins to follow along with Bohun’s Keeper of Secrets latex stockings tutorial for the bodysuits which ended… poorly. I ended up pivoting to drybrushing as is my natural inclination, I’m actually more pleased with the base than anything.

Overall that means in January I painted 6.9 models:

• 1 Sonic Dreadnought
• 0.9 Vulture
• 1 Vindicare Assassin
• 1 Primaris Pskyer
• 1 Nexos
• 2 Company Commanders

Number wise it’s not a lot, but I did get through two pretty large models with the Vulture and the Sonic Dreadnought. Going into February I’ll be finishing off two Moiraxes with Lighting Locks, a Terminator Sorcerer, and whatever I feel like jumping on.

head58

I can’t resist the siren call of a licensed skirmish-level game, so I’m all in on Atomic Mass Games’ Marvel Crisis Protocol. Thus far I’ve only gotten the heroes done – I was hoping to have them all done before CaptainCon the second weekend of February but that ain’t happening. I decided to try comic book/cell shaded style for these so it’s been slow going as I learn my way around the style. The models themselves are very nicely detailed and some of them lend themselves to cell shading more than others.

I also threw together a bunch of difficult terrain zones for an Adeptus Titanicus event I’m running at the aforementioned CaptainCon. Nothing fancy, just some 3D printed ruins and spackle stuck onto a CD, sprayed brown, washed black, then drybrushed.

I might even finish an Adeptus Titanicus Reaver before the month is done if I’m lucky and completely ignore my family. Watch this space!

Soggy

January was a slow start to my hobby year, going home for Xmas and finally getting around to the masterpiece that is Disco Elysium. I burned out a bit on 40K at the end of last year and have been leaning into Specialist Games, which is reflected in my hobby progress for this month.

My local group is looking to start a Necromunda campaign soon, so I picked up an Escher gang and got them ready to roll. I’m quite happy with them as my first models for the year and looking forward to revisiting Necromunda after a 10+ year hiatus

On the Adeptus Titanicus front, I picked up a number of weapons to mix things up and another Warlord to strap them onto. I have the Warhammer World AT event coming up in a few weeks time so these will likely be my focus at the start of February.

Assembled:

• GSC Primus conversion using Janus Draik from BSF
• Kria, the huntress
• Warlord Titan (Bellicosa variant, magnetised)
• Reaver Vulcan Megabolter carapace x2
• Warlord Gatling Blaster carapace x2
• Warlord Laser Carapace
• Warlord Megabolter carapace
• 4 Blood Bowl Saurus
• 3 Blood Bowl Skinks

Finished:

• 8 Escher Gangers

Beanith

Not a terrible start to the new year for me, I have been mostly focused on building and painting my Genestealer Cult gang for an upcoming Necromunda campaign I’m hoping to run with some friends throughout the year.

Thanks to Warhammer Conquest here in Australia, this month I’ve built a couple of Marine HQ choices and 3 Plagueburst Crawlers which is an absolute bargain in dollarydoo, 3 Plagueburst Crawlers for the price of 1.

Painting wise, aside from the GSC, I’ve been mostly trying to clear out my backlog of Space Marine Terminators from the Space Marine Hero series 2 range that I picked up on a trip to Japan. Those have been sitting assembled and undercoated in my ToDo box for a while now.

I’ve also picked up a cheap lightbox and have been playing with settings and with a lot of help from friends have started taking some decent looking photos, some of which have shown up in the recent Genestealer Cult Necromunday article.

Plans for Feb – Work on my Death Guard terminators next and have a crack at painting the Plagueburst Crawlers. Maybe some Incursors too for a change of pace. Build wise, nothing major planned but that will go out the window should something shiny appear. Also my transfers have arrived so I also have bold plans to start adding transfers onto all my Primaris troops.

Pvt_Snafu

I started this year but actually thinking about what motivates me to paint, and keep me passionate about the hobby. The end result of this was a set of hobby commitments, which I added to my Trello board. Somewhat ambitiously, my goal for this month was a fully playable table and models for Chain of Command and a Titan Battlegroup. Due to various issues with my 3D printer, and waiting for stencils, I ended up finishing off:

• 1 Chaos Knight
• 8 Sergeants
• 3 Panzer IVs
• 5 75mm Shermans
• 3 76mm Shermans

This model took me a little longer than I perhaps would’ve liked, but it’s also the first model where I tried out masking putty, applying decals and weathering powders. I still have a couple of touch-ups to make but overall I’m pretty pleased with how it’s come out.

This rounds up the armoured support and everything I’d need to play either Chain of Command or What a Tanker! I still need to finish off enough terrain for the table, but I’ve had a couple of issues with the 3D printer this month. Hopefully I can get them resolved over the weekend and get back on track with both painting and printing.

One of the other things I wanted was a set of models I could paint quickly, when I wasn’t in the mood to do something that took a lot of thought or detailed control. Enter contrast paints and historical miniatures. These chaps are primarily going to be used for Saga: Age of Crusades and will eventually be joined by a Hearthguard of 8 mounted knights, 8 crossbowmen and 8 spearmen.

One of the other commitments I made this year was to play more games! So my total for the year now stands at one, which may not sound like a strong start but it’s left me feeling good. That about does it for my hobbying this month!

TheChirurgeon

After a lot of talk about painting up Emperor’s Children, I painted two of my painstakingly-converted Noise Marines and then… started painting Death Guard. These guys have been sitting on my desk for a few months since their release, and I love the Heroes models so much I though it was a crime not to paint them. Death Guard paint up surprisingly quickly for me and I’m happy I was able to finish off the whole squad plus a couple of stragglers I got from a buddy in a trade for some bits. Don’t tell anyone, but I maaaay be working on building out my Death Guard army and getting up to some Great Unclean One/Blight Hauler shenanigans.

SRM

I started Vulpes Vulci’s Venti Venti with what will hopefully be the most annoying model I paint all year, the Slaves to Darkness Chaos Chariot. This thing was a mess of subassemblies, painting into awkward crevices, getting repeatedly stabbed and greenstuffing the ropes to actually connect, but it’s done!

I’m glad I finished this dumb thing, as after working with Ellar on the Slaves to Darkness Battletome Overview article, it sounds like it might actually be worth taking! That might be the sunk cost fallacy in effect, but coming from a Freeguild army, something fast, durable, and relatively dangerous is a novelty to me.

After that I decided to artificially inflate the numbers in my “models painted” column and knock out 30 “models” in a day with the Aeronautica Imperialis Ground Assets set. Shocker: it’s hard to photograph a mess of tiny things together!

With January looking like a month of Specialist Games and Age of Sigmar, I doubled down on the spiky lads and lasses and took to painting the Chaos Warriors from the Start Collecting! Slaves to Darkness set. The minis are a little tricky to paint with how their shields overlap parts of their bodies, and I definitely did too much brass on them which slowed the painting process, but I’m very happy with how the mob of 10 came out. I’m also extra proud of how gnarly the severed Aelf head looks.

All of my Chaos Warriors also have some Celtic-inspired woading on their shields. I tried it on the armor of one dude and he looked way too busy, but I’m especially happy with how it came out on the unit champion’s shield:

About this point I realized my brush was splitting in half and I had to wrangle it pretty hard to get anything resembling a fine line. However, my month wasn’t done! After working with Ellar on entirely too many words about Slaves to Darkness in our Battletome Analysis article, I decided I needed a Sorceror Lord. I didn’t find any of the easy plastic options appealing – they all lacked the bulk and heft I would expect an especially powerful devotee of Chaos to have. With that I searched eBay and found the Games Day 2010 Chaos Sorceror, who had the exact “Muscle Wizard” aesthetic I was looking for! With that I sat down and knocked him out in a day:

Real life bullshit kept me away from the gaming table, but February already has a few games lined up which I’m extremely excited about. On deck right now are 5 of the new Slaves to Darkness Chaos Knights (who have already drawn blood – mine) as well as the Ork half of the Aeronautica Imperialis starter. I don’t really have any big, unified plans for the year as my initial goal of finishing all my Ultras by Adepticon has already gone out the window, but new year’s resolutions are made to be broken!

Raf

January marks a pretty awesome milestone; I completed my first 2,000 point army. This Gloomspite GItz army began in earnest last year with the launch of the new models, but technically began in 2009 when I bought the Battle for Skull Pass starter set for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I got very into the Warhammer Age of Reckoning MMO and channeled that into my first ever box of miniatures. I painted all the grots in that box before getting out of the hobby. When the model line was refreshed as the Gloomspite GItz I knew it was the perfect opportunity to blow the dust off these minis and get them done.

Most of what I worked on was batch painting units to a solid tabletop standard. This last batch included 20 Stabbas, 10 Boingrot Bounders, 10 Squigs and their Squig Herders (the character that started it all back in the MMO days!), 6 Sneaky Snufflers, and 5 Puffshroom Fanatics. They weren’t all started in January but they were finished. One of the fun things about this project has been being able to repaint old models and give them a bit of a glow-up.

Finally, I capped off the model by giving this Loonboss on a Cave Squig a little more attention than I gave the batch painted models. I’m very pleased with how it came out.

This has been a fun project, but I’m glad to put it behind me. Batch painting this many models was draining and I’m looking forward to moving on to something different.