Michael S.

This month I aimed to tackle a few different projects. I wanted to get some more work done on my Tomb Kings and continued to finish up some half-baked projects around my desk.

I was a bit scarred from trimming moldlines off endless skeletons for the past few months, but I was finally back up to the challenge and was motivated to complete another squad of skeletons. A quick zenithal undercoat and contrast paint made short work of the majority of these skeleton archers. Since I was pretty mindlessly slopping on contrast paint, I was able to be a bit more mobile while painting these guys. Plenty of time to watch some TV and paint!

Towards the end of the month, my fiance and I took a much needed vacation into the mountains for an escape from work. We both brought along some hobby supplies and got to spend a bit of time painting and building models. In the interest of traveling light, I opted to bring some chariots and horsemen to build. Using some spare Tomb Guard, I was able to build these into some tomb guard chariots

For 40k, I finished up some Imperial Fist intercessors. The only thing remaining here is transfers for their right shoulder and they should be battlefield ready. I chose to go with a dark brown for the leather details to add some variation to the model. All in all happy with the end result. Setting them on a simple dark base helps the yellow really pop.

For my Black Templars, I was able to finish up the Captain from last month. After finishing up the details on the Bolter, I just need to add some texture and paint to the base before calling this model finished.

For the rank and file, I used a much less time-intensive method for painting. A simple zenithal highlight and some quick edge highlights and battle-damage made the black armor pop a bit. I used some crosshatching with thinned paint to achieve a nice cloth texture, and painted in some frayed edges to complete the worn look. For the Templars, layering up the shoulder pads to white has proved to be pretty time-consuming. By next month, my plan is to have tried out a few new methods for painting shoulderpads that don’t involve as many layers.

Joe R

August is always a busy month as I try (and fail) to get as much hobbying done as possible in preparation for the NOVA Open. For those unfamiliar, I am part of the team that supports all of the Blood Bowl events at NOVA Open. As such, I like to make sure I’m following the hobby requirements. There is also a significant amount of downtime while running an event, so I like to have several hobby options available to putter with while I wait. So, without further ado, this is what I’ve got to share for August (and a tiny bit of September).

Chests and Teleporters – Dungeonbowl

I cannot believe how long it took me to finally get around to preparing these essential pieces for Dungeonbowl. I’ve had these pieces assembled for a long time. I even had some of them primed. I had never bothered to try and paint them. Since we were running Dungeonbowl at NOVA Open, I wanted to make sure that my kit got a little attention. So, the week before NOVA Open I primed everything and got to painting. I said to myself “Joe, how hard could this possibly be? It’s 6 chests and 6 teleporters. They hardly have any detail.” A week later, I was at NOVA Open frantically scrambling all morning to get these components ready for the evening. I am pleased to report that I finished! Are they amazing? No. Are they painted and washed? Yes! Can you tell the difference between a bomb and the ball? Yes. Are all of the teleporters clearly identifiable? Kinda! The numbers are hard to read, but my colored dice system helps out quite a bit.

A long while ago, I bought these dice so that folks could paint their teleporters to match and look for colors instead of numbers. I’m pleased to report a majority of our Dungeonbowl sets follow this scheme and it works pretty well. We are getting ready to roll into a short Dungeonbowl season, so it helps to have this set ready to roll. I just need to varnish them now…

Weathering with Aaron Lovejoy

I only took one painting class at the NOVA Open this year. I had already taken a weathering class at Cold Wars earlier this year, but it’s a technique with A) lots of options, B) limited stress, and C) relaxing practices. This was also one of the only options I was interested in AND fit my schedule.

Aaron provided us with a teal barricade. The barricade had originally been undercoated black and mishmashed with rust spots. Then he applied a silicon coating and sprayed it with teal. The idea was, at some point, we were going to pull off the parts of silicon to produce chipping. We also practiced the acrylic application of various ages of rust, dirt, and grime. We also applied some scratches and graffiti. You can see the end result below.

I was pretty pleased with this, especially since I had almost no plan. However, the best thing I learned? Blending through feathering. Aaron had us use two brushes. One was for the application of paint. The other was to feather out the edges of the paint to blend it more seamlessly with the base color. This was pretty cool! I’ll admit that I still like sponging more, but it was definitely nice to learn how to do scrapes and streaks.

Zhufbar Cinders – College of Fire Dungeonbowl Team

I mentioned that we are doing a season of Dungeonbowl in our local league. I must admit, I vastly prefer to play variants over traditional Blood Bowl (aka 11s). 11s games almost always go for 2+ hours. I would prefer to play something that I can finish in about an hour (Oh… hello Trench Crusade!  How you doing?). Our league has put a timer on Dungeonbowl (1:45 minutes), but it’s different enough that I’m very excited.

Originally I thought I had enough official GW models to fill out the entire College of Fire roster. I had the Ogre & Dwarf sprues from the Dungeonbowl box plus a Khorne team. However, I am adamant about running 3 Ogres. So, it turns out that I didn’t have enough stuff. 3D printer go BRRR. In the end, I printed out 1 3rd party Ogre (this fella) and a couple of 3rd party marauders. I wasn’t ready to dedicate two official GW marauders if I was already going to be printing stuff. 

I spent most of my painting time at NOVA Open (after the Dungeonbowl parts) working on this team. I decided that each player would utilize Turbo Dork’s Redrum paint, a candy apple red metallic. It is very striking! Initially I was batch painting things, but eventually fell into a rhythm on the Ogres. I got especially enticed by the 3rd Party Ogre.

My painting continues to improve. Most times when I finish a model I say “Well, this is probably the best thing I’ve ever painted.” I think that’s a great sign. Are there imperfections? Absolutely. Could highlights be brighter? Could shadows be darker? Yes. Does the model look bad ass on the table? HELL YES. And that’s good enough for me right now. Is this my entry for Capital Palette in 2026? Probably not, but I also wouldn’t be afraid to enter him (once he’s based of course!). I’m hopeful to continue knocking out these models because… I’m invested. I haven’t felt that way in a while. So I look forward to seeing if I actually finish this team before the season is over.

That’s all for now folks. I’m working to write a review of the NOVA Open Blood Bowl experience. Hopefully you’ll see that come across your feed in the near future.

Kevin C.

For the Empire!

I spent this entire month finishing up all of my remaining Empire that I bought back from my brother, as I discussed last month. However, to kick off the month, I still had a few miniatures left over from when I sold the whole army back in 2014. They were gems, and I knew I wanted to paint them. I spent a good amount of time making sure they look nice, since they are colorful characters, and it gave me a chance to practice painting fur. The Empire Witchfinder I am using for the Pathfinder campaign I am currently playing in, and the regimental… ahem… mascot will double as a musician and standard for my halberdiers. 

For the faces, whenever I get a chance, I like using a yellow-red-blue glaze at the very end (yellow-red-yellow if you are painting female faces). After shading and highlighting the face, use a red glaze at nose/cheek level, a yellow glaze above the eyes, and a blue glaze near the mouth and below. It gives great depth to the face, and it’s a neat, quick trick. For female faces, just replace the blue for another yellow glaze. 

Hellblaster

I still had a very old pewter Hellblaster from long ago, along with some old pewter crew. It reminded me that Games Workshop used to strive for much more realistic scaling back in the day. These guys are tiny and slight compared to my other war machine crews, but they are properly proportioned. 

The Troops

So, the majority of my time has been spent painting up the handgunners, of which there were a lot. 57 in total. I like to run missile troops mostly in small units of ten, which allows me to use them as detachments when appropriate. I had some old school handgunners, which I was able to apply a nice quick contrast paint to to get them tabletop ready. 

Next, I had a bunch of “newer” (released in 2006 as opposed to 2000) handgunners which I painted using my more traditional methods. These were annoying to paint, as they apparently had quite a lot of paint and primer on them already, so much of the detail is gone. In retrospect, I should have used isopropyl alcohol to remove the layers of paint, but I wasn’t terribly keen on spending a lot of time getting these guys looking great. They aren’t Greatswords, after all. 

And yes, one is missing a head. He’ll probably be fine. 

Pistolliers

So, while I was painting these guys, I’ve been reading the Dan Abnett book Riders of the Dead about two pistolkorps survivors behind Chaos lines. Such a good book! It kind of made me want to spend more time with these guys, but I was ready to get these guys done with. 

For the horses, I used much of the same recipes I used for my Rohan horses several months back. I didn’t give them too much detail, but I’m glad I was able to give them some variation. 

Characters

Finally, there are my mounted characters. These lads will probably end up being captains for the army, as army standard bearers or some such. I wanted to paint them similarly to how I painted the Knights Griffon earlier, so I based them with Castellan Green and then used an ‘Ardcoat to mimic lacquer finish on the armor.

I will get a full picture of the army hopefully next month, but I have now officially finished painting all of the miniatures I got back from my brother, minus those I sent to Jerry for painting. 

NOVA Open 2025

I don’t think I have missed a single NOVA Open since it started in 2009 as a pavilion in a park in Northern Virginia (hence the name), so of course I went this year. I have been backing away from most miniature games at these events however, as I end up being more annoyed and tired from them than invigorated. So, my weekend was packed with mostly RPGs with a few painting sessions built in. 

One was taught by Marco Frisoni on underpainting shapes and textures and then using a light contrast paint above the underpaint, similar to what was done in canvas painting during the Renaissance. I was not very good in the final result, namely because I am unused to using mattes, but I hopefully will get to use this technique in the future. Here is my final result 

Next, I took a class on building a display board. I don’t actually own a display board, but I have always wanted one. I have considered building one for Meduseld. However, I was given some great molding tips for pink foam, on how to create natural (and man-made) surfaces. This was the small display board I produced. I will still need to paint and base it, but I am hopeful I can do that this month. 

Finally, I got a ton of great RPG sessions in, mostly in games I have never played. My two favorites for the weekend were definitely Fallout with fellow blogger Joe R., and Pirate Borg. I am very thankful that NOVA Open has started branching out into RPGs, as I am starting to drift away from competitive miniature gaming. 

Next month, I am looking to complete my War Wagon, and finish painting both the display board from above, and Hera of the Rohirrim. Wish me luck!