HowdyHammer

Austin

Gnomes! Gnomes In The Dungeon!

I thought you ought to know…

…that I completed my College of Shadows team! I had showed off my single test-gnome at the end of last month’s article, so it seemed only fitting that I start this one off with the completed team! Representing the College of Shadows is my team, “Hello From Down Under,” sporting two Skaven Blitzers, two Gutter Runners, one Skaven Thrower, one Witch Elf, one Dark Elf Lineman, two Woodland Foxes, one Gnome Beastmaster, one Gnome Illusionist, and two Gnome Linemen! Quite an eclectic mix, no? But that’s what I love about the Dungeon Bowl teams. They offer an amazing opportunity to bring together the various Blood Bowl teams. And with the recent addition of Gnomes to their roster, I figured it was high time I get the College of Shadows painted up! Here are some close-ups of the various members…

I went with grey foxes for the Shadows team, since I felt they fit in more with the team’s color scheme than the starker red fox one might expect. And I am pretty happy with how they turned out!

You may also notice one additional, mysterious member I have yet to mention. That, my dear readers, is my Wizard! Alongside the eight Colleges, I want to also make up eight Wizards to act as sideline tokens for the Inducement. This is the first of those, the Grey Wizard, who quietly sports his team’s colors with the dark blue frill on his robes and an emerald scarf underneath them. While most of the Colleges are fairly easy to build from the Collegiate Arcane/Empire Wizards kit, the Grey Wizards are unrepresented, so he ended up requiring a bit of work to get right. The hat I had to sculpt, and the skull was added to the staff by replacing one of the other ornaments. Fun hobby tip, floss makes great rope or bandages, and I used that to tie the skull onto the staff.

With some playtesting already done, it is likely that I’ll have a few more members still to paint up for this team, to beef up the roster slightly. But at least my initial roster is complete! That said, the College of Shadows team was not the only thing I have done this month for Blood Bowl! With our local league starting up I decided I needed to get a team finished up for that. I had initially figured I’d run Vampires, but with them being rather overrepresented in the league by the time I was signing up, I switched my decision last minute to… Gnomes! Yes, more Gnomes! I really love the new Gnome models, and I had bought a second box to do up an 11s team. Given I had just gotten some experience painting them up, I figured now was a decent time to continue with them, just in a different color scheme. And so I am proud to present to you the “Poppin’ Daisies,” my Gnome team!

They’re not quite complete yet for this article, but they likely will be done within the next week or two. Alongside some Star Players that I plan to play with them. And speaking of Star Players…

I have completed an Akhorne the Squirrel! This was a fun little side project I had been wanting to do for a while, and now with a League to join and the opportunity to make use of him, I figured I would get the little bugger done! The skull pile in particular was really fun to figure out. The center is actually just filled with modelling putty, with the skulls pressed into the sides. Plus a few loose jaw-bones to fill in gaps here or there… That Skulls kit really is great.

Now hopefully by next month I will be able to show you the full Gnome team, Stars included. But atop that, as I said last month, I do really need to return to my Vampire team, who may well be getting their own Stars to show off! I do need to get them done for NOVA – or maybe even the Goonhammer Open, which I intend to attend! So work needs to be completed on them post-haste. 

May The Force Be With You

Alongside all the Blood Bowl stuff I have completed this month, I’ve also been more slowly working through my Shatterpoint backlog, which is growing larger with every month. And with there also being a Shatterpoint event at the Goonhammer Open, I may be needing to speed up the process in preparation there too! Plus we have new boxes coming out next week… Yeah, it’s rough! But you know what’s harder? Painting white! Or at least I thought it was…

Yes, what I have added to the completed pile this month is some Stormtroopers! And they were not quite the pain to paint as I thought they would have been. But then I think that might have been aided by some new paints I procured. The release of the Warpaints Fanatic range has certainly taken local painters by storm, and all the good press I have heard regarding the line convinced me to pick up a few paints to give them a try. I think the results speak for themselves. The white here is fairly simple: GW Grey Seer primer, washed with GW Soulblight Grey – which is pretty much my standard start for white nowadays – then layered over with the new WPF Brigade Grey, and then highlighted with the WPF Matt White.

I have had a ton of issues with other companies’ white paints before. GW’s tends to dry up in the pot (though all their paints to, the white just does it faster) and is rather chunky, while Vallejo’s tends to get clogged in the dropper top and separates constantly. But these two paints I have yet to have any issues with. I have cautious optimism moving forward with the rest of the Fanatics range, but I have been duly impressed thus far. Oh, and pre-loaded mixing balls. Need I say more?

Beyond the Stormtroopers, I also tried my hand at the iconic black armour of many other Imperial units by painting the Fifth Brother. This model was more of a hassle to paint, though that primarily came down to the paint scheme more than anything. Black on black is very difficult to pull off. Differentiating two or three different blacks on the same model was a challenge and, while I am happy with the end result, I do not thing I quite achieved what I was going for. Further models will probably go with a grey for cloths, to have at least some difference.

In The Far Future…

…there is only more to paint! Alongside the upcoming events and the necessity to paint through all these models for them, I’ve also volunteered to be the Arbitrator for a small Necromunda campaign with some other friends of mine. While I might not have much to show for it next month – as I am only in the preparations stage at the moment – I will be working on an Escher gang to play in this campaign, as well as terrain for it which I will definitely show off once I get around to it. I have already gotten back into the swing of things with a quick palette-cleanser/test-subject in this Hive Scum, for whom I used as an experiment piece for a process for dirty white armour. That might show up with a few models in the future as well… 

Kevin C.

Bretonnian Pegasus Knights

After a month of losing progress on my Bretonnians, I am back to it! I wanted to make sure I finished all of my knights before working on the filthy peasants, so this month was all about getting the Pegasus Knights completed. For these, as with my regular knights, I painted the knights detached from the mount, and glued them when they were complete.

In contrast with many white and light-colored Pegasus knights I’ve seen online, as well as my old Pegasus knights, I wanted to paint these mounts brown. This way, I could really explore the color spectrum along the wings, and get some cool feathering effects. I’m not sure I am entirely thrilled with the blend I instituted on the wings, since the colors were not quite as smooth of transitions as I would’ve liked to make them look natural. But, as always, washes and drybrush cover many sins.

My hope is that, next month, when I work on the Royal Pegasus (which will be white), it will be a good contrast to the more rustic look of these “normal” Pegasus knights.

Legions Imperialis Solar Auxilia Support (Rapiers and Cyclopses)

The support batteries were rough to hold onto – they had to be assembled beforehand, so I couldn’t simply paint them on the sprue like I did with the tercio infantry, but they were much smaller than the tanks and liable to get lost. In the end, I had to store them in a bin until I could get to painting them. Finally, I was able to do so this month.

I did nothing fancy with these guys – just Iron Hands Steel with Nuln Oil on any of the metal bits, and my Vostroyan tank paint scheme:

• Zandri Dust Base
• Ushabti Bone Heavy Drybrush
• Athonian Camoshade Wash
• Screaming Skull Light Drybrush
• Blood Angel Red for any detail markings

Thank goodness I painted the bases beforehand. I think that saved me a massive headache of trying to do these in conjunction with the miniatures.

Inquisitorial Stormtroopers (Kasrkin) Kill Team

My final main project for this month has been the Inquisitorial Stormtroopers I’ve been wanting to paint up for a while now. I like how they play as a kill team – no synergy shenanigans, no layering dependencies, just reliable firepower – so I’d like to bring them to NOVA this year if I can.

I used to play a lot of Darktide back in the day (you know, six months ago), so I figured that it’s only natural that I do an Inquisitorial Stormtrooper squad paint scheme. I used much of the advice from Peachy’s video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_8wtU28oJw), though it is less of a “speed paint” than one might believe watching the video. It took quite a bit for me to finish this squad, but I got it done.

When I finished painting them, I thought they looked good. However, once I finished painting them, I sprayed them with dullcote. Sadly, it was less “dull” than I was hoping, and it is still quite shiny, so the pictures do not make them look great. 

True to form, I wanted to make sure all the troops had masks on – except for this mad lad. He’s the Warhammer+ miniature from last year, which I decided to paint at the same time in the same skin. Maybe I’ll use him as a proxy or something.

Other Projects

As you well know, dear reader, we are preparing for a campaign in Legions Imperialis, so we are trying to paint up as many buildings as we can. Using a pretty simple paint scheme that have been used for Osgiliath Ruins (detailed here: https://youtu.be/QbYRtcSU5fs?si=assJoiAuH9IWzf7p), I painted up two additional buildings for the campaign.

Jerry S.

Howdy readers! I gotta say, May was a great month for me in the hobby space. I was able to get a solid start on my new Solar Auxilia, finish painting my Legions Imperialis Titans, build a firstborn tactical squad for Killteam, 3d-print a board for the squad to fight on, completely build a Thunderhawk gunship, and get a couple units done for my Tomb Kings! A busy month indeed over in my studio, hopefully June brings just as much productivity my way.

First up, I want to show you readers the Solar Auxilia that I painted up this month. I’m particularly proud of the paint scheme of these models as it was relatively quick and looks absolutely fantastic on the tabletop. I mostly followed the painting guide here from Feral Painter. his metals and fatigues are almost an exact match for what I ended up with, the only real changes I made to the scheme were changing the helmets and shoulders with Kantor Blue with a Thrash Metal Drybrush overtop to give a nice weathered blue look to these guys. I love how the red eyelenses contrast with the blue armorplates. This scheme was so quick that I was able to paint up 20 of these guys in just one week!

Staying in the Heresy era, I was able to finish painting (sans basing and decals) my Epic Scale titans- Two Warhounds and a Reaver titan! I love the Legio Astorum scheme that I’ve settled on and I look forward to getting these guys on the tabletop soon. As Kevin mentioned, our gaming group is starting a campaign in July and I have a TON of models I still need to get built and painted before I can play a proper game. The main thing holding me back was deciding on a basing scheme for the army but I am happy to say that I think I finally have a winning scheme picked out. A simple wasteland basing to make the Whites of my Space Marines pop, as well as contrast the Blues of my titans well. Looking forward to having the whole epic force painted up soon.

switching gears away from massive armies and grand battlefields, at the behest of Kevin, I have started a space marine killteam (pictured below) using some first born bits on Tortuga Bay bodies. I love the look of these guys and I expect to get them painted in the near future.

Of course, I can’t start a new game without creating a whole board for it, and as you can see, my printer has been very busy this month creating a space for my and anybody else in my gaming group a space to play.

Switching gears once yet again, I managed to put in some more work on my Tomb kings army, building and painting my first Old World Monster-The mighty Bone Giant! This isn’t my favorite model in the world but It was a quick paint and stands out on the tabletop.

Also painted this month was “most of” my casket of souls. As you can see, I left out the mortuary priest. This was mostly because I intend to paint all four of the army’s priests at the same time, or at least close together, to preserve the uniformity of the cult.

Last but certainly not least, I finished the build of my Thunderhawk. I think by mass this is the largest “mini” I have ever built. I absolutely love this model, it was a challenging build but not as bad as the Warhound titan’s I’ve built. I’ll probably write up a side article detailing my building process in the future so stay tuned!

In the meantime- please enjoy looking at this beautiful bird resting upon its roost.

That’s all for me this month, and what a busy month it was! The month of June will likely be a good hobby month for me as I race to finish my Solar aux and thunderhawk for NOVA as well as paint an entire legions Imperialis army for our upcoming campaign in July so stay tuned!

Michael S.

This month I took some time to build and prime up a number of models from various projects. I did manage to get some paint on a couple, but most of my hobby time was spent on the less glorious parts of mold-line trimming and laying down enough yellow primer to finally get good coverage (It takes more than you’d think!)

I painted up one of the squads I primed for my Templars and was quite happy with the way they turned out. They were slightly altered from the typical assault intercessor kit using a few bits and bobs leftover from other templar kits. Edge highlighting tends to take me a while, so I was happy to get these 5 done in a few hours.

I also primed and built about 20 Imperial Fists models. I threw a bit more paint on one of the lieutenants to get a feel for how I wanted the armor to look. I’ve tried a few different methods for getting the right shade of yellow, and I am happy with this method I’ve come up with.

I started with a Yellow-Brown basecoat and relied on a mix of some enamel washes to get the right shading in the recesses. Using enamel washes is much faster than acrylic due to the similar properties to oil washes. 

Last for painting this month, I tested out a scheme for the Imperial Guard Combat Patrol I showed earlier on the blog. I got all the models fully primed, and a few fully painted.

May was a bit of a slower hobby month, so that’s all for me! I am aiming to jump back to my Death Guard/Tomb Kings in June!