Weekly hobby update #5

This week, I finally decided to resume work on some of my models that were almost finished or had been sitting half-painted for quite some time. One of them was this Daemon Prince of Khorne, which I started painting a long time ago. However, I realized I didn’t like where I was going with the colour scheme, so I simply stopped working on it and moved on to other models. I knew that at some point I would return to it, once I had figured out which direction I wanted to take it in.

Well, that time finally came, and I am very happy with the progress so far! I completely repainted the wings and one part of the armour. Previously, there was simply too much red: the wings were leathery red, the armour had more red sections, and the model was basically drowning in different shades of red. I don’t think it was a bad paintjob, but overall, the colours bothered me and the model just didn’t look right:

So I took a look at some illustrations and other paintjobs of the same (or similar) model and figured out how I wanted to approach it. This is already much better than it was before. The wings still have plenty of texture, but they are now clearly defined, and since they are predominantly dark, the head and face stand out much more. You can see in the pictures below how the model looks now.

There is still some work left to do — the horns, tail, weapon, a few more details, and the base — but I can’t wait to put this bad boy on the battlefield!

Weekly hobby update #4

This week was a bit quiet when it came to hobby time. I got some new models (Aethon Shann and a box of the new Chaos Marauders) and played a game of HeroQuest. The Marauders are (obviously) for my Chaos army for The Old World. Aethon Shann is part of a different project. I have a small collection of Space Marines — mostly Phobos — that I want to play as Raven Guard or one of its successor chapters, and this is exactly where he fits in. It is a very specific and small hobby project, but I’ll write about it in one of my future blog posts.

But HeroQuest holds a special place in my heart. I never had the opportunity to play it when I was a kid, so I bought the new Hasbro remake a few years ago. It has become my go-to game. I love it, and it is basically a system that lets me create all kinds of adventures and tweak them however I want. On top of that, you get that great old-school experience.

I’ve bought most of the expansions as well, and my son absolutely loves the game. So our regular gaming crew is actually me, my best friend and my son, and we have a blast every time! We put LED candles around the board, play instrumental music (usually dungeon synth) during the game, and have plenty of snacks: two generations of gamers enjoying a game that is almost 40 years old.

This week, we played the first quest from the Jungles of Delthrak expansion. I’ll dedicate one of my future posts entirely to HeroQuest, not only because I love it, but also because I think it is one of those games that the whole family can enjoy.

  

Weekly hobby update #3

This week, I decided it was finally time to finish my first unit of Aggradon Lancers (I have two).

My Seraphon collection (an army, actually) revolves around Lord Kroak, a Slann Starmaster, and lots of Saurus models: Warriors, Kroxigor, Aggradons, and an Oldblood on Carnosaur. I just love Saurus. I have some Skinks running around as well, but I really love the new Saurus models and wanted to build an army focused on them.

I don't care too much about how powerful they are, I simply find the idea of big, bloodthirsty Lizardmen backed by ancient magic very exciting.

Since I have almost finished painting my Seraphon Spearhead, I decided to add one unit of Aggradon Lancers and one more unit of Kroxigor to it, giving me a nice 1,000-point list to play against my friends (they don't have large collections and prefer smaller games in general).

I started painting the Aggradons a while ago, but stopped simply because I focused on something else. However, this week I decided it was time to pick them up again. I am very satisfied with the progress so far and expect to have them fully finished within a week or two.

Weekly hobby update #2

Time for a new weekly hobby update! This week was actually great — I managed to do a little bit of everything:

• Assembled my unit of Scarab Occult Terminators and started building the Rubric Marines.
• Finished painting my Treelord Ancient.
• Played my first game of AoS Spearhead! I took my Bitterbark Copse (Sylvaneth) against my friend's Cities of Sigmar, and we had a blast. We both really enjoyed it — so much that he has now ordered a bunch of minis and started building his own Cities of Sigmar army. 😄

I’m really, really happy with how the Treelord Ancient turned out. He’s probably one of my favourite models I’ve painted so far.

I also decided to take a different approach to photographing my miniatures, and I think the results are way better than what I’ve done in the past.

All in all, a very satisfying hobby week!

Weekly hobby update

I haven't posted anything here for a while. I'd like to change that — but rather than trying to write big hobby articles regularly, I want to start with something much smaller.

So, here's the first post in a new series: weekly hobby updates.

The idea is simple: each week, I'll post a picture or a short article about whatever hobby-related thing I managed to do. It might be Warhammer, but it could just as easily be a board game, card game, RPG, or something else.

I really believe in small actions accumulating over time. I've seen it work for myself, not only with hobbies but with other things as well. And when you have a family, a demanding job and a dozen other things competing for your attention, I think there's something valuable in simply doing something each week rather than waiting for the perfect opportunity to devote an entire weekend to a hobby. Sometimes you assemble a few minis, sometimes a few units and sometimes you paint something. And you just keep doing it. And hour here, 30 minutes there... in a few months, you might be surprised with what could be achieved. 

This week, I finally decided to start assembling models for my Thousand Sons army.

I love Tzeentch daemons, and I've had a few Thousand Sons units sitting around for quite some time. The funny thing is that none of them had actually been assembled yet.

Well, that's finally changing. I've decided it's time to build the army, starting with the unit of Scarab Occult Terminators. I will probably use this army mostly for Incursion, Combat Patrol and smaller WH40K games in general. I have absolutely no desire to get involved in 2,000-point affairs. 

It might not be much, but that's kind of the point. One small hobby project started (among several others already in progress :D). Let's see where it goes.

Looking back at old paintjobs: Sylvaneth

Sylvaneth are my primary army — and the main reason why I started playing Age of Sigmar back in its 1st edition. They are also the closest thing to the Wood Elves I loved in Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I have a few other armies that I enjoy collecting and painting, but there will always be a special place in my heart for the forest spirits.

However, Sylvaneth were also the first AoS army that I fully painted. Most of that work happened between 2016 and 2019, and my painting skills have progressed significantly since then. As time went on, I started noticing that the paintjobs on some of my favourite models no longer matched the standard of my more recent work. That left me wondering how I should approach the problem.

I did not want to fully repaint the miniatures. That would feel excessive and, in a way, those older Sylvaneth models are a snapshot of my painting skills at that point in time and a clear reminder of how much I have improved over the years. At the same time, I also did not want to leave them completely untouched.

Eventually, I realized there was a middle ground. Instead of repainting the models from scratch, I could strategically touch up certain details and areas to make them stand out more while still preserving the character of the original paintjob. 

The first of the models I worked on was the Treelord I wrote about some time ago. Next were the unit of Kurnoth hunters with scythes. I love those models - Kurnoth Hunters are my favorite Sylvaneth models as wells as some of my favourite Age of Sigmar miniatures. The original paintjob was a bit "flat" when it came to the details: everything was precise and clean, but there were no highlights or emphasis on specific parts of the model. Also, the bases were pretty simple and did not help in makind the model stand out. Below you can see the pictures of the models before the refresh: 

I wanted to perserve the original identity of the model (which I liked a lot), while improving "readability" and atmosphere. I think the bark has much better texture now, the green foliage/branches are not so overpowering, the weapon gradient is much better and the base actually frames a miniature (instead of being just some mud with grass).

Looking at the models side by side, the changes are not too dramatic, but they make a surprisingly large difference overall (at least to me). The original version was already clean and precise, so I did not want to repaint it from scratch. Instead, I focused on improving contrast, adding selective highlights, and making certain details stand out more clearly. I also reworked the base to give the miniature a bit more atmosphere and visual framing.

The end result still feels like the same model I painted years ago, just viewed through the lens of the experience I gained since then. And that was exactly what I was aiming for (and seeing the result, it's clear that the repaint would be such a mistake)!

Painting Glade Guard

Recently, a few friends and I started preparing for a small Old World campaign. I wanted to try Wood Elves and realized I could field an entirely painted army using my Sylvaneth models - but I was missing one thing: the Glade Guard (which is mandatory unit for Wood Elves). So, I bought a box of Glade Guard and started working on the first unit. First batch of 5 models is almost done, and here's the test model that I used to set the colour scheme for the unit: 

Painting Lord-Arcanum on Gryph-charger

Recently, I bought some Sacrosanct Stormcast Eternals models from a friend that decided to sell them because they are being moved to Legends. I was OK with that (I liked the models anyway and I don't play competitively); It was a small army (just a bit over 1000 points) and it was nicely painted as well. I especially liked the Sequitors, because I could easily play them as Liberators. However, there was one model that wasn't painted: Lord-Arcanum on Gryph-Charger. 

I have always loved Stormcast heroes on Gryph mounts. I own Lord-Vigilant from the Skaventide box and I'm really looking forward to painting him. However, I think that Lord-Arcanum is probably the best-looking of those mounted heroes. The pose is really dynamic and there's a lot of interesting surfaces on the model (armour, cloth, skin, feathers, etc.). 

As I have already mentioned, Lord-Arcanum was the only model in this small army that was not painted, so I decided to change that immediately. I really enjoyed this paintjob: the model is interesting to paint and the painting scheme is different from my Thunderstrike Stormcast (I painted him to match the rest of the Sacrosanct models). Actually, I am so satisfied with the final result, that I believe this is probably one of the best paintjobs I've done this year.       

Painting terrain - Sacrificial Rocks

During the last few weeks, I have been working on some terrain pieces. Actually, I got quite a few of them from a friend who wanted to get rid of most of his wargaming terrain (for both WHFB/AoS and WH40K), so he kindly gave all that stuff to me. There were some really cool terrain pieces in that lot; the most interesting is probably Warscryer Citadel/Skullvane Manse (click here for pictures). I did a lot of work on the Citadel but it's not done yet (however, I expect to finish it soon because there's not much work left to do). Besides that, I managed to do a quick refresh/repaint for the Sacrificial Rocks from the GF9 (that were also part of the lot). Their original color scheme is very dark and I wanted more contrast and brighter colors. I repainted the bases, added mossy effect and made the rocks much lighter (by drybrushing several highlights). Here's the final result:

I find it funny that I was thinking on buying some terrain pieces later this year, to have bit more variety and also be able to build some futuristic-looking terrain for WH40K. These terrain pieces came out of nowhere and saved me a lot of money. Now I can build some great looking battlefields (for both AoS and WH40K). 

My Khorne Army - painting update #5

When I started collecting Age of Sigmar back in 2017, my main armies were Sylvaneth and Khorne. Sylvaneth are still one of my favourite armies, but, due to several reasons, I sold my Khorne army at some point. One of the main reasons for selling those miniatures was that I messed up the paintjob for the daemonic units. Mortal units were beautifully painted for me by Warbrush studio, but I wanted to paint the Daemons. However, I simply was not able to make the models look the way I wanted. I simply looked at Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers and felt frustrated. On one hand, I committed several painting mistakes while trying to paint those models: not doing enough research on the paint scheme, spending too much time on infantry and not using test models. There were also a few painting accidents, like varnish frosting on freshly painted Bloodcrushers (which resulted in having to repaint some of some of the work), or having to strip down the primer from unit of Bloodletters because of the loss of details and granulation. All of these things combined with my inability to meet my own expectations killed the most of my enthusiasm. I started painting other things and didn't want to even look at these models because they always reminded me of my failure. The only exception to this was Skarbrand. My painting skills were definitely not at the current level back then, but I was proud of how I painted Skarbrand and I still think that it was a pretty good paintjob.

I sold the army to a friend of mine and few years went by. In the meantime, I learned a lot and made a lot of progress with my painting. Somewhere during 2022 I decided to collect Khorne again - but only daemons this time, no mortals (they are fine, but they were simply not what I imagined or wanted to play). I love the aesthetic of those models and the fact that I can use them in AoS, WH40K and WHFB is great. I also enjoy the lore and the playstyle. So I decided to make things right this time. 

Right from the beginning, I aimed at a relatively small army - about 1500 points for AoS (since I usually play smaller games) but with the ability to expand to full 2000 points. The fact that I could use those models in other systems was pure bonus - I wanted to primarily build Blades of Khorne army. I also picked which exact models I wanted and managed to buy most of them below regular prices. However, then I learned that the friend I sold my original Khorne army to wants to reduce the number of his AoS armies and was looking for someone to buy his Blades of Khorne. We talked a bit about it and he let me buy my Skarbrand off him for a fair price. That was the model I really enjoyed painting and I was looking forward to getting him back. 

So, once I got Skarbrand, I decided to freshen up his paintjob a bit and modify his base. Here is how the model looked like originally:

This picture was taken 5 years ago, on the same day when I have finished painting the model. I think the paintjob is still good, but I wanted to make some details "pop" more, make the base more busy and do some minor corrections on the armour. Here is the model after most of the refresh is done: 

I am really happy that this model is now part of my army again - the model is absolutely fantastic and is exactly what I think of when I think of Khorne Daemons. The only details that I want to address in the future are the spikes at the end of the wings - they don't look good and need to be defined some more. 

Oh - I forgot to mention the most important thing: my Khorne army is finished! I have met my hobby goal for 2023 and I am very happy because of it. Before the end of the month, I will make a post about it and show the army in all its glory (and also make a recap of my painting in 2023). Stay tuned!

My Khorne Army - painting update #4

Recently, a friend of mine was selling his Blades of Khorne stuff, so I bough a few things from him: Herald (Bloodmaster), Judgements of Khorne, Skull Altar and the latest Battletome. Fun fact: this is the same friend that I bought my Khorne stuff couple years ago, so I basically bought back some of it :D 

Anyway, last Saturday I had a few hours to spare, so I decided to paint the Herald. I already have one Herald (made from slightly converted rider of the Blood Throne), but the new model is really nice and with all prayers that are available to Khorne priests in the new book, it definitely pays off to have two of them. I have managed to paint this guy in about two and a half hours and you can see the result on the pictures below. 

Besides Bloodmaster, I have also finished painting my Flesh Hounds. I made these pictures while the unit still wasn't fully complete, so the fifth Hound is not shown. 

And with that - there's only one unit left to paint - 10 more Bloodletters and I my main hobby goal for this year (to have a fully painted Khorne Daemons army for Age of Sigmar/WH40K) will be achieved! It won't be full 2000 point army - but since I'm mostly playing 1000 and 1500 point games, that's OK. With the current point values for Blades of Khorne, one more unit of Flesh Hounds and Bloodletters will get me to 2000 points, so I will probably add them in the near future. I'm not worried about building WH40K army at all, because I have more than enough Tzeentch daemons to add. 

My Khorne army - painting update

One of the armies I have is Khorne daemons army. I always thought that Khorne daemons were the best-looking out of all Chaos daemons; their range is fairly small, but models are very nice and the general aesthetic really appeals to me. In the same time, these miniatures can be used for both Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40K, which is great. So, over the last year I slowly built the army and started painting models in January. I'm happy to say that the work is progressing nicely - since the beginning of the year, I have managed to paint quite a few models and my plan is to have a fully painted Khorne daemons army by the end of the year. Below you can find the photos of the miniatures I have painted so far. 

The Bloodthirster is probably the most spectacular out of those that I painted. As you can see, I tried to make the base more interesting; I planned that since the very beginning, but ultimately I had to do it because my son dropped the model so the flame/fire part broke. So besides pinning and reattaching the broken part, I also used one of the broken pillars as a support - I placed a pin that connects the pillar and the model's leg, so now it is much more stable. 

Next one is Skulltaker - it is a very nice model, way better than the old metal one. 

And there's also a unit of Bloodletters - I have two units of 10 models and I might add a third one at some point in the future. I haven't painted a 10-man unit for quite a while - I'm mostly painting monsters, heroes and heavy infantry. I knew that painting multiple small models might become boring pretty quick, so I painted the unit in two batches of 5 models. I also painted the same thing on all models at once, meaning that I painted flesh on all models first, than did faces and horns, then swords, etc. 

I also painted Herald of Khorne (which I made out of the model that sits on top of the Blood Throne), but I haven't made a picture of him. Right now, I have to paint the following units/models in order to complete the army: 

• 10 Bloodletters
• 10 Flesh hounds
• 3 Bloodcrushers
• Skull Cannon

I'm pretty confident that I should be able to paint all that by the end of the year, especially since the painting scheme is clearly defined and for most of these models it all comes down to simple reproduction (Bloodletters and Flesh hounds). As always, I will post more pictures as soon as I finish something :) 

More painted Stormcast

Recently, I have painted some more Stormcast Eternals models. I really enjoy painting Stormcast, because they can be painted fairly quickly and the models look very good even with a simple paint scheme. Even if you go for the basic battle-ready look (most of which usually involves just painting the armour and applying wash all over it) you should be able to get pretty good results. But if you spend just a bit more time, add a few highlights and work out some finer details, you will get some really beautiful models.  Over the past 8 months, I was able to paint over 1500 points of Stormcast Eternals (which is pretty fast - for me). I wrote recently about how much I've accomplished by doing the work in small batches and this is especially true with Stormcast models, because once you are able to reproduce your paint scheme, you should be able to paint the whole army in no time. Also, the models are bulky and unit sizes are small, which also helps. 

Below are the pictures of models I have painted recently.