It’s been a busy couple of weeks with AdeptiCon – and all of its tasty reveals – capturing the team’s attention, but we’ve still found some time for our own projects here in the Warhammer Community excruciator. We first checked in on our hobby progress a fortnight ago, so how have things got on in the meantime? Are the Dark Angels now resplendent in bone ready for the upcoming doubles event at Warhammer World?
Andy: In answer to the question above, no I have not painted any of my Terminators yet. But I have a whole seven days until the event, and it wouldn’t be a proper tournament experience if I weren’t up til 2am the night before doing edge highlights.
I have been making the most of my hobby time though, converting up a unit of Assault Terminators. I wanted to bring the unit in line with the newer Terminator models, so used them as a base.
I had a bunch of arms left over from a unit of Deathwing Knights (as I’m using the robed bodies for sergeants in my regular Terminator units), but I swapped out the heraldic shields for the ones from Bladeguard Veterans to make them look different. The Thunder Hammers were made from the Deathwing Knight Maces of Absolution, with the heads from Leagues of Votann Beserk concussion mauls.
Right, I really really really must get painting now. OK, I might finish making a Terminator Ancient first, but then painting. For real.
Rob: In between continuing my Heresy-era Iron Warriors – at the head of who stands my newly completed Warsmith – I’ve been getting quite a few games of Kill Team in with some friends. As great fans of roleplaying games, we’ve collectively gained a great love for narrative-driven missions like those found in the Boarding Actions book for Warhammer 40,000, adapting some for use in Kill Team and often playing through the new content released in White Dwarf.
This led to an epic game recently that merged two full sets of the Killzone: Volkus terrain and Compound Siege upgrades into a dense urban labyrinth claimed by four full-sized teams: Nemesis Claw, Warpcoven, Corsair Voidscarred, and my Angels of Death.
The result was a joyously bloody affair with several cinematic moments twisting the fate of the game – it was amazing when the Ventrilokar coaxed a Tzaangor towards a seemingly innocent hatchway before taking advantage of the door fighting rules to chainsword him to death from the other side. Classic Night Lords.
In the end, my beloved Salamanders squeezed out the win by a single point after a heroic lucky Assault Intercessor tanked a frankly unfair amount of firepower from the Aeldari and a tenuous alliance with the Nemesis Claw fell apart the moment I could get a decent shot on their leader. Look, they would have done the same thing. Probably.
Joel: Shortly after our last article, I managed to finish The Swift Twins to play for my very first Blood Bowl team, the Elven Union. The team colours were based on some art of the Celestial Comets, and the blue/white dice that I got alongside the team when I picked them up – I wanted the team to match the dice.
Over the past few years I’ve slowly been adding units to my growing Raven Guard army for the Horus Heresy. I’ve just finished up a converted Praetor with a jump pack, so I built a custom jump pack Command Squad to accompany him using pieces from the MKVI Assault Squad, Command Upgrades and Raven Guard Heads. It’s always fun making the more elite units since I allow myself more white and gold to make them stand out as exemplars of the Legion.
My local Warhammer store (Leeds) has graciously allowed me to display the whole army in their cabinet (which is great for a hobbyist running out of storage space for models in his room…), so it’s lovely to see the whole project come together.
Luke: Last time I shared some Aeldari I’d been working on, thinking they were going to take up most of my painting time as I continued to tinker with Chaos Chosen for our team Armies on Parade entry. The reveal of the new Spearhead set has shifted my priorities and motivated me to finish the unit of Cryptguard that will complete my Flesh-eater Courts Spearhead.
I started this project quite a while ago, trying to find a decent level between display painting and high-end tabletop miniatures. As a result I ran out of steam after the Morbheg Knights, who are a gory feast of details to get lost in – enjoyable, but demanding!
All that practice helped me nail down an approach and I had a lot of fun putting as much character I could into the command options – hopefully the rank and file of the unit should be quicker. After painting Ushoran my own way over a year ago now, it was fun to use the ’Eavy Metal recipes as a starting point for the musician and the champion.
You can see the Abhorrant Archregent, Varghulf Courtier and Morbheg Knights above – one of my favourite things about the Flesh-eater Courts is that there’s no need to stick to one skin tone across an army – a handful of unifying elements like basing do the heavy lifting and convert a rapacious rabble into an army.
Graeme: I’ve had multiple Spearhead forces on the go for the first three months of the year, but recently I started to see green, feeling the call of the Waaagh! and focusing all my energy on the heavily-armoured boyz of Spearhead: Ironjawz.
With the goal of having a playable force on the table quickly, I used a mix of traditional basecoats – Orruk Flesh, Zandri Dust and Leadbelcher – shaded with a variety of Contrast paints to get a saturated and eye-catching finish without them taking ages to paint. The basing represents snow falling on a blood-soaked Aqshian plain with fiery red grass underfoot. All my Spearheads are based the same way, to make them visually cohesive.
You may notice a couple of models in there that don’t come in the box – I took the opportunity to break out a couple of Warhammer Commemorative Series miniatures I’d had on the shelf for a while. Bazdrogg Nekk-Choppa has stepped up to lead the Spearhead (with the skull on his back presumably being that of the previous Megaboss), while Bawla from the Boss Rat-Killas is putting his Skaven-hunting expertise to good use in the wake of the Vermindoom as the champion of the Brutes mob.
Next, I’d like to emulate Luke and finish my Flesh-eater Courts, but the green still calls and I can hear the howl of snarlfangs… I have all the components of the Gitmobs Spearhead assembled, and they also double as a Regiment of Renown I can add to the Ironjawz for larger games, so who knows – maybe you’ll see some speedy grots in the next Workbench update.
Tom: This week I’ve once again been questioning my insufferably hipster decision to choose Mentor Legion livery for my Space Marines, as I struggle to get the right colour of paint on the right parts of my pauldron rims. Not least because someone else who works at Warhammer HQ also plays them, and he’s a much better painter.
Meanwhile, my girlfriend has taken her first tentative steps into painting. Of all the options available to her from all the worlds of Warhammer, she has chosen… a house. So we’ve also built and undercoated the Sigmarite Chapel, ready to be painted in colours that will, shall we say, diverge from the box art. I haven’t taken a picture; no-one wants to see smeared shoulder pads or matte black houses.
