Hello and welcome to a new monthly hobby post by me!
In these series of posts I intend to review my hobby progress from the previous month, including website and personal projects, tournaments and other Warhammer/Hobby based shenanigans.
Listeners to the podcast know that I am a bit of a magpie when it comes to the hobby, and flutter between projects quite a bit. I am however getting better at sticking with certain projects, and I am hoping logging what I am doing for the internet to see will help me stay on target.
So without further ado, let’s see what I’ve been up too!
Website
So I’ve had a couple of cool reviews up this month, none of which are models!
I’ve reviewed both the Modular Art Box and Series M Brushes, from Krydrufi and Artis Opus respectively. Both have helped with my hobbying, in particular the brushes as I’m trying to improve my highlighting and layering.
Aside from these reviews I’m also the host and editor of our podcast, and this month we had two cool episodes. Episode 226 has us discussing the reveals from the Las Vegas Open, whilst Episode 227 includes an awesome interview with none other than Duncan Rhodes about his current hobby projects and of course the launch of Wave Three Kickstarter campaign of his increasingly popular Two Thin Coat paints.
Finally to round out the last few weeks of Sprues & Brew’ing I took a look through the latest issues of the Stormbringer magazine series which landed on the doorstep of Sprues & Brews Tower, which featured some super handy basing tips in one of the issues.
Personal Projects
Whilst I haven’t painted any models for the website recently, I have been a little busy building, rebasing and painting some of my own stuff.
I have now well and truly been bitten by The Old World bug, and have decided to take what Soulblight stuff I had and rebased them for The Old World. I’ve got just over 1250pts of Vampire Counts now that I can play with.
Due to wanting to paint something for this army, and to help review the previsouly mentioned brushes and Art Box, I decided to paint the Black Library Cado model as my Vampire Count General. I put quite a lot of time in to this model, potentially more time than I’ve ever spent on a single model before, and I am super happy with the outcome. I still have some minor things to finish off (mainly his base) but I’m super happy with him.
I managed to pick up 20 Grave Guard with Great Weapons, built and primed, (thank goodness as I really didn’t like the idea of building more Grave Guard..) and my vamp looks awesome amongst them. Looking forward to getting paint on these, but it may not be in March, as you’ll soon find out.
Speaking of the Old World, myself and fellow Brewer Jay went over to a club night for our local Warhammer gaming group, the Purple Sparkly Unicorns, and played 1250pts of The Old World. I brought along the Vampire Counts, whilst Jay used his Dwarfs. Being only my second game of the edition I was really looking forward to it, and it did not disappoint. Some clever Rune usage from Jay provided some debuffs to my army, however it was lots of fun, and with each game I’m learning more about the rules and it’s helping my army building.
From hordes of skeletons, to boyz that go WAAAAAGGGHHHH!!
Way back when I got into the hobby there were two armies I always fancied. Imperial Guard (now Astra Militarum) and the Orks. Please to say last year I built and painted a Guard army. It only made sense to make it my mission to do the same for the Orks this year.
To that end I signed up for the New Year, New Army challenge in my local Warhammer store. Now, I’m not left with much time, as the store deadline for the Combat Patrol by the end of March.
I have now built the contents of the Combat Patrol, sprayed them all, and decided on how I was going to paint the Ork skin (Orc Hide and the Goblin Green alternative from Two Thin Coats have been the answer!). Decided on painting the awesome Warboss in Mega Armour as my first mini, and base aside, he looks amazing!
I’m really happy with how he has turned out. Perhaps the highlights could have been chunkier, but aside from that I’m really pleased with how he looks. I’ve also started putting some base colours down on one of the Deffkoptas. For both I’ve primarily used Two Thin Coats paints, and to be honest that’s a running theme for most of my painting now. I do occasionally use some of the Citadel range, such as the washes, texture paints and some of the colours, but more often than not its Two Thin Coats for me.
I think my next port of call is going to be one of the 10man strong unit of Boyz. They’ll take the most time, and if I’m going to have any chance of hitting the end of month target both units need to be completed ASAP.
I’ve got a whole bunch of other Ork stuff to build once the Combat Patrol is complete, and would like to finish the year with a Stompa.
Finally, I also took part in a Age of Sigmar One Day tournament hosted by the Purple Sparkly Unicorns. It had been a while since I’d played any Sigmar, and decided to dust off the Skaven. The points limit was 1250, and it was my first time playing with the current General’s Handbook. I thought I did OK, considering I wasn’t playing that competitive of a list, plus my inexperience with these season’s Battle Tactics (which seem to be ever increasingly hard to achieve) and Grand Strategies. It doesn’t help that the ones in the Skaven book aren’t that great for me, considering the units I take.
Still, it was a really fun day. Game One had me paired with fellow Sprues & Brews member Andy and his Bonereapers, Game Two I was up against Macauley and his Bonereapers and finally Game Three was against James and his Fyreslayers (of which he painted in just a week, and they were amazing, they were even nominated for best army!). It was three losses, but I took solstice in that I wasn’t really ‘battered’ in any of them, and remained competitive until the last turns. Overall I finished second from bottom, but came away having had a great day’s gaming and that is what is important to me (although I am getting jealous of the trophies by fellow team members are getting, so perhaps competitive Dave is on the horizon…).
Building a Kill Team Board
And so we move on to what will be, quite a big task really, and almost certainly will be something on going for a number of months.
Again, podcast listeners will know that I tend to butcher names and keep making promises and New Year resolutions to paint scenery.
Well, I’ve finally decided to get an old Imperalis scenery tile out (no idea when these came out, but I’ve had two just sitting there doing nothing for so long) and to get it painted.
The plan is to try and fit as much multi-level scenery on here as possible, ensuring it remains playable whilst also ensuring lots of cover and potential for objectives and fun gameplay. My thinking is, whilst not the recommended size for either, this board could make for a fun game of Kill Team and/or Necromunda. I have a whole bunch of scenery including some older Imperialis buildings, some of the new Sector Imperialis stuff and lots of Mechanicus gantries and things.
I haven’t quite decided on a layout now, but once I do, and once everything is painted, everything will then be glued down. I know this means I’m locked in on layout, but if I do glue down I can make it look more ‘natural’, perhaps using stones and polyfiller on the bottom of the buildings where they meet the board.
Even if the board is too small to play on, it’ll at least give me a tile I can pose images of models on instead of a generic white background. My plan would be to create an Age of Sigmar/Old World one eventually too.
The plan is to try and get the tile itself painted before the end of the month, however I will be prioritising the Orks first.
And with that we come to the end of this first series of posts. If you enjoyed reading this please let me know via social media. Perhaps you may think I should go into more detail? Whatever your feedback, please do let me know!
Now to get really cracking with those Orks!
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