nerodine

My first finished Primaris Marine for the Space Wolves, and it's the Ancient standard bearer. I've tried to give the banner a feel of embroidery on the raised surfaces and hopefully that comes across in the photos. It's probably the single most complex thing I've painted this year, due to all the fine detail and how it interacts with the other pieces. Details to note. This is one of three figures where I'm working out the colour scheme and what to paint, and how. Senior figures, from squad sergeants and up, will have yellow kneepads to distinguish them from normal squad members, which should make removing the correct figures from the board a little easier. This took a lot longer than expected, but it feels right. Happy that the basing scheme looks good (phew) and while there are obviously some parts that I can go back and improve on for the next Marine, this is a good starting point.

My Space Wolves are advancing, slowly. I hit a low point last weekend when after spending so much time painting grey, when I realised they were pretty much back to sprue grey - which feels like you haven't achieved anything despite the time spent. However! After edge highlighting, chipping and shading I'm at this stage with a couple of the test troops. Pardon the wobbly photo, but hopefully it gives an idea of how much weathering I'm attempting to apply. This also helped to give me afirmation that this is the effect and style I want in these troops - they've reached the battlefield and thrown themselves in at the deep end. Adding the redish brown as the shade helps to lift the greys, as it was quite desaturated with the cool greys, and this gives some much needed definition. Next up is adding highlights under a few of the larger and medium sized chips, then painting the shoulderpads and knees with chapter colours. Picking out suitable heads to bring that Spac

Well this was a more productive weekend than expected ... here's all the scenery finished up! A reminder that this is all from the wonderful Crooked Dice, just to give them the recognition they deserve for such excellent pieces. If it has an orange earth then it's from their Junk Piles range, and if it doesn't then it's from the Drum & Crate Barricades  selection. Initial attempts at using the chipping medium didn't yield the results I wanted. My first attempts were only successful in spreading paint around instead of removing it. Bit of (metaphorical) hair pulling and reading, and this excellent tutorial by Tibbs , which covers it succinctly. In short, I was doing it wrong. Not just dabbing the area with water but soaking it then taking away the excess. After that, it's sharper objects like toothpicks that yield the best results and taking away Here's a few close-up shots to see detail a little better - but I'm happy with the final resu

... or how to spend seven hours feeling like you've achieved nothing. NOTHING. After priming my marines, I wanted to weather them differently to how my other marines have been done. The old method was sponge dabbing the chips on, but this time I wanted to try a different method - chipping medium. First step is to apply two different browns on the models - starting with all over Dark Fleshtone, then covering a random 50% of each model with Parasite Brown. Out of shot, I've applied the same process to arms, legs and other missing pieces. But you don't need to see those in the test shot. After this, a full coverage of Vallejo's Chipping Medium - which works surprisingly well straight through the airbrush from the pot. Then it's Dark Grey Blue to cover everything so no brown is visible. So after two full sessions I'm now back to sprue grey! Brilliant. Well done me, what a great use of time. It's a little demoralising at this point to realis

I'm jumping back into 40k with 8th edition. Hello to you Mr Bandwagon. My gaming pretty much stopperd when 6th edition landed due to a family emerging and everything else taking priority. In the interim I've gotten big grown-up jobs and felt it was justifiable to treat myself and went all in ... so that meant a collector's edition, all five indexes and the Dark Imperium starter set. Would I recommend the collector's edition for the price tag? Hmm, not sure - it's very expensive for what you get, and in an ideal world it would have been around the £150 mark ... but that's what tax rebates are for! However, quality is excellent and I'm a happy chap. Building of the Marines has now commenced. I'm trying to built them as sub assemblies with the least effort possible - which is pretty straight forward so far. Mostly involving not gluing on the gun arm for the majority of figures. Assault marines glues at weird angles temporarily, because I want to do

Well here we are - all the wolves from Zombicide: Black Plague, Conan, Blood Rage and 40k finished up! Phew. Here are the full group shots of everything. That's a total of 40 wolves, and I feel vindicated in my decision to paint them in two large batches using the same techniques but different colours. It adds enough variety to not feel monotonous, and that's just what I wanted - so this has been a great success. They've also served a purpose as a useful palette cleanser between other, more complex pieces too. Would definitely take this approach again, as there's enormous satisfaction to see more figures leave the pile of grey and join the painted ranks.

And here we are with the definitely, positively, absolutely last wolves to be painted - the final four Fenrisian Wolves. Well ... until I realise more are needed, obviously ... Similar approach to the grey test model. Started with a black undercoat and have airbrushed up to lighter colours, then washed and drybryshed. They're not much more than tabletop quality, and that's fine with me. You may be able to see a glint of metal from underneath the base. I've added a washer to each figure. Purpose is two-fold: to add weight and to use for transportation on a magnetic sheet in the future.

The second large tabletop-quality batch of wolves - covering Zombicide: Black Plague and Conan. Again, there's nothing complex here, just block painted to get them in our games soon as possible. I make no apologies for the liberal use of blood - thanks to various mixes of Tamiya X-27 Clear Red and purple ink. More figures that can move from the "to do" to the "completed" list and adding that little more character to our Tuesday night gaming sessions. Marvellous.

Dusting off the 40k boxes and found old objective markers I made from scratch and thought I'd share. Not fancy, but effective on the table. The former is empty paintpots, and the latter is MDF offcuts from an old project, and some sort of plug that was lying around.