Night Goblin test

Following the massive new update for Total War: Warhammer 3, I’ve been playing this brilliant game again for about two hours. For a change from the High Elves, who I usually play, I chose Skarsnik this time and tried to capture Karak Eight Peaks as quickly as possible.
It worked out, though unfortunately my Warhammer-Thoughts have been revolving mainly around Night Goblins of late…
So I thought a little colour test wouldn’t do any harm (of course not!). 

In the process, I realised just how incredibly good these old models still are. Truly brilliant, timeless sculpts, sculpted with a great deal of charm and finesse. Simply brilliant, and I thoroughly enjoyed painting this test figure.

 

I tried to stick very closely to the Games Workshop box art colours whilst still achieving a good result relatively quickly… As always that was quite a challenge for me (see also the last post on this blog for more on this), but we’ll see. If I ever get round to painting my Battle for Skull Pass box, then I’ll find out if it takes too long.
I’ve already put together a ‘small’ 1,000-point army in my army builder and I’d have to paint a whopping 100 goblins… But hey, that’s still a long way off. 

For now this lonely goblin will stand proudly in my display cabinet, next to the ever Goblin-friendly Gotrek and Felix. 

The Steel Legion returns

Well, here I am again with even more 40K!
My lone Steel Legionnaire was feeling a bit lonely next to my Space Marine, who’s quite intimidating by comparison, so I’ve given him three more comrades to keep him company.
I wanted to speed up the process a bit, but that didn’t quite work out that well. 

I always find it difficult to strike a good balance between so-called ‘speed painting’ and my usual painting style. Often I simply take too long, but if I skip a step or two, the result looks a bit too messy.
In this case, it’s mainly about the final highlights on the yellow-brown fabric. I just wanted to use something straight from the pot instead of adding more and more beige to the base mix, but I suppose that was a bit too drastic.

Oh well, next time I’ll invest a bit more time after all!
But it’s fine – at least three new figures are now finished. I guess on the gaming table they will look okay!

And here’s something else I’ve tried:

I wasn’t entirely happy with the finish on my Space Marine – it all looked a bit too matte, somehow.

I’ve now given him a 1:1 mix of matte varnish and satin varnish, and now I think it looks much better. At least to the naked eye! You can’t really see the difference that clearly in the photos, but I’m absolutely delighted with it now.

And here are all the figures from the project that I’ve managed to complete so far! Things are moving forward, albeit in baby steps. But it’s still fun to hop between the different projects depending on my mood, even if that means the overall progress isn’t quite as fast as one might wish. 

 

Oh, and one last thing: I just love the bases! I think they now look very similar to the ones on the official box art figures, and that just makes me happy. 

My very first Space Marine

I suppose I can admit it now… I bought the Armageddon starter set for Warhammer 40K on release day. Outrageous, I know! You can get it much cheaper these days, and 40K just distracts me from The Lord of the Rings and Warhammer Fantasy.

But, I really must say, I was – and still am – absolutely thrilled with this starter set. The miniatures are so incredibly well sculpted and presented, the poses are just brilliant… I really couldn’t resist. And on top of that, you learn a lot about modern design for plastic miniatures, which isn’t a bad thing either.

A few months ago (actually almost a year ago, now that I think about it), I did a first little test, painting a Space Marine yellow and then weathering him with oil paints. It was quite fun, but I never finished painting him and only worked on him for testing purposes.

So this is my very first, fully painted and based Space Marine, a Blood Angel. I’ll, of course, be trying to copy the box art from the Armageddon box, which is why I’ve tried to replicate the colour scheme on the one hand, and also adopted the base as closely as possible on the other. This website was very helpful for that, with some wonderful recipes:
https://eavy-archive.com/40k/orks/?modal=wazdakka&block=ash-wastes-base

Of all the Space Marine Chapters, I’ve actually always liked the Blood Angels best – probably ever since White Dwarf 357 from 2009, when the new edition of Space Hulk was released.
Anja Wettergren from the `Eavy Metal Team had written a brilliant tutorial for one of the Terminators in that issue, which I found really impressive back then as a child. And it's still very impressive I think.

 

In the end, though, I went for this armour recipe from Matt’s Hobby Hour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ag0QOpu6No&t=74s

It actually worked quite well and I’m mostly happy with it, but my photos didn’t turn out too well. I’ve noticed that, particularly with the Space Marines, a satin finish works a bit better than my usual ‘ultra-matt’ approach; I think I’ll get hold of some satin varnish for my next figures. Also, the figure looks a lot better on my painting desk than in the light box, that's probably killing a lot of contrast. 

I also had a bit of trouble with the decals, but I’ll get hold of a decal softener for future use.

The figure itself wasn’t from the starter box, but from a magazine I bought for the bargain price of a few euros back in about 2019 at the train station in Würzburg! So it’s been sitting in my cupboard for a solid seven years now. It’s great that it’s finally been given a coat of paint! 

 

And here he is again with the first Steel Legion figure I painted a few months ago. I redid the base of this figure to the new "original" Armageddon recipe, and I think it works a lot better than before.

 

All in all, painting the Space Marine was a very satisfying process, but I’m not quite happy yet. Firstly, it takes ages to paint them this way, and secondly, my edge highlights aren’t quite neat enough yet… And the pictures are not really what the figure looks like on my desk. 

I also get the feeling that the Mephiston Red from the spray can looks much better than the one from the pot. I don’t know why, but the difference is huge. 
Well, we’ll see! For now, I think I’ll carry on with the Wood Elves, but who knows where my motivation will take me. I already have a few more Steel Legion guys basecoated, so maybe they will join the fight soon! 

Elf command finished

Last Sunday, and for a bit on the mornings before work, I carried on painting more elves, and finished a standard-bearer, an old Haldir conversion and another spearman.
The spearman’s face is a bit creepy, but I quite like the other two figures!

I’d already done the Haldir conversion a few years ago and have now stripped the paint off it again. He was meant to represent Gildor for one of the ‘Quest of the Ringbearer’ scenarios.
Now I’ll probably just use him as a simple captain. 

The banner gave me a bit of a headache, I hate painting freehands! But with a bit of time and practice, it turned out okay I think. For the emblem, I based it on the one Games Workshop has on their website.

Here’s another comparison between my set and the one from GW – it wasn’t easy to make the captain look any less strange than he does in the official product photo. But it's quite interesting to see the difference between my elf captain from a few months earlier compared to the recent figures, my "new" method of painting faces is a bit more effective and cleaner I think. 

 

 

 

Next up will probably be three more plastic wood elves, which I’ve modified a bit more extensively. More on that in the next post!