I have just finished “Thousand Sons” from the Warhammer 40,000 “Horus Heresy” series of novels produced by the Black Library. Reading this series, and other Black Library novels, has really helped to immerse myself in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K universes and provides a constant source of motivation to get me painting my miniatures. I’ll often have the audio books playing as background noise whilst I am painting miniatures.

Whilst reading the Horus Heresy series the Word Bearers legion has jumped out at me. They appear to be the instigators of the Chaos corruption within the legions, although they haven’t been featured that heavily as yet. I figure if you are thinking of doing a Chaos Space Marine army why not go with the original bad boys. I painted up a standard Chaos Space Marine miniature as my test Word Bearers marine.

For the red I started with a base coat of Mechrite Red. I then washed the red areas with BadabBlack. Derivan MiNi’s Spartan Red was used as the next layer. I applied this in a few thin layers to get a smooth, even coverage. To avoid the whole “orange red look” I used Kommando Khaki sparingly as an extreme highlight. I wanted a really vibrant red for the armor so I then applied a wash of Baal Red. This also had the effect of giving the Kommando Khaki a reddish tinge.

For the metal areas I used a basecoat of Chainmail. I then applied a heavy wash of Badab Black. For the highlight I used Mithril Silver.

The bone areas were base coated with Khemri Bown and then washed with Badab Black. To save time I applied all the base coats at the same time so I could wash them with Badab Black all at once. I wanted the bone areas to be quite bright so the overall look of the miniature didn’t become too dark. To achieve this I used thinned down Denheb Stone as the first layer. If your paints are thinned down enough you can actually use the same colours as a highlight. This is because the translucency of the pain allows the previous layer to show through and give your current layer a darker tint. That’s what I did in this case and built the Denheb Stone up in two or three layers. I used pure white as the final highlight on the tips of the horns.

This miniature shows the versatility of my basing techniques, as I used brown static grass this time and the base has more of a dead landscape feel too it.

Again I am happy with how quickly the miniature paints and its overall look. The one advantage the Word Bearers project has over the Tau is that I can include daemon units in this army to provide some painting variety. Alas, I am still no closer to choosing a project to continue with….

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I decided to take some time out from my commission works and paint some miniatures for me. A group of my gaming mates and I have recently decided to venture into the Warhammer 40,000 universe. I have never really played 40K but have always thought that the fluff behind the game and the miniatures are some of the best around.

Venturing into a new game system is often a daunting prospect with having to learn new rules, purchase all the miniatures and equipment and then find players to play against. However, doing this with a group of mates makes it a much easier process! You are learning the rules together (the other guys finding rules gems that you may have missed), you can share any extra equipment required and you can scale your games up in points values as you all expand your miniature collections. We have decided to proceed in a “Tale of Four Gamers” style where we have a spending budget each month to gradually build our forces. None of us plan on attending tournaments with these armies, so our armies are going to consist of the units / models we like as opposed to those that perform the best on the table top.

For my forces I am torn between Chaos Space Marines, particularly the Word Bearers legion, and the Tau empire. I have painted up a test miniature of each and am still no closer to deciding on what force I am going to collect.

I wanted my Tau to look different than the usual Tau miniatures seen in all the Games Workshop pics, so I opted for a grey colour scheme with purple as my accent colour. I wanted a light, soft grey and went about painting it as follows. I base coated all the armor areas with a 1:1 mix of Adeptus Battlegrey and Black, even the areas that were going to be painted purple. I then applied a layer of Adeptus Battlegrey to the areas of armor I wanted to be grey, leaving the basecoat only in the deepest recesses. I used Fortress Grey as my next layer and left the Adeptus Battlegrey showing the panel joins of the armor and recesses of medium depth. For the highlight I used an extreme highlight of 1:1 Fortress Grey : White. This was applied only on the extreme edges of the armor.

For the purple I painted Liche Purple of the grey basecoat. I then applied an extreme highlight by adding in some Fortress Grey to the Liche Purple. Again this was only painted on the edges of the purple areas.

With the bases I was originally going to do ruined city style bases, but, decided against it as I couldn’t come up with a colour for the buildings I liked that still let the miniature stand out. Anyway, I reckon the Tau only want nice unspoiled worlds in their empire not war torn husks of worlds. The base was base coated with Scorched Brown with dry brushed layers of Graveyard Earth and Fortress Grey.

This paint combination has quickly become my “standard” base technique as it gives a natural look that is very versatile. Simply apply green static grass and you have spring / summer bases, whilst applying brown static grass give a more wintery feel. If you don’t apply any static grass at all it has an ash waste feel to it. Too easy really.

One thing I have learned when painting test models is to take note of how easy the technique would be to apply to a whole army. When starting a new project it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and forget you have to paint another 40 models this way. I am happy that the paint scheme I have chosen is quick and easy to apply and will look great on the table top.

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Well it’s been a long time coming but a new book and miniatures are nearly here for one of my favorite Warhammer armies…the Tomb Kings. As with all new editions of their armies, Games Workshop have a swag of new miniatures to accompany the new rules. I am going to need a heap more skeletons if the new points are true…4 points for a normal skeleton and 6 points for a skeleton archer. Hordes of skeletons here I come!

When I first saw the range new miniatures I’ll admit I was little disappointed with some of them. I mean skeletons surfing on snakes…what were Games Workshop thinking? The more I think about it and try to imagine them riding across the battlefield slaying their foes the more they have grown on me. Stomp attack, poison attacks, special attacks to turn your foe into sand, attacking from below the ground during the game…whats not to like! I’m sure I’ll have a unit in my army.

Now the release that has me really excited is the Khemrian Warsphinx or Necrosphinx. This thing is AWESOME and huge!

One kit that can make either variant of the this miniature kit is going to have heaps of extras with which to use through out the rest of my army. I can already see my army including a variant of each in it. I cant wait to deliver twin Thundercrush attacks to my enemies.

These new miniature releases will really help Tomb Kings armies stand out on the table top. Previously the army lacked height or had a center piece type model to grab peoples attention. Tomb King generals are certainly spoilt for choice now! Considering the numbers of new skeleton models I’m going to need to paint up and the success I’ve had with speed painting my Dwarves, I’ve been experimenting with some speed painting techniques for the skeletons. I think I’ve hit on a method with is going to flesh out the ranks of my skeleton units nicely and match the miniatures I already have painted. I’ll explain my speed painting skeleton method in a future post.

WarPuppy has all the new Tomb Kings releases available for pre-order here at 20% off Australian RRP. Plus orders of $99 AUD get free regular parcel post within Australia.

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Warhammer 8th edition in my gaming circle has taken a bit of a back seat in recent times to smaller skirmish games like Blood Bowl and Anima Tactics. This is understandable as these games have a smaller impact on the budget and our time as they generally only require about a dozen miniatures to play the game. I however still like pushing units of warriors around on the table top. With the release of the new Tomb King book at the end of April, my desire to play Warhammer has increased.

Keeping in mind my goal to clear a few unfinished projects this year, I’ve decided to use this desire to fuel my efforts. I’ve chosen my Dwarf army project as a speed painting project, to see if I can quickly create a reasonable looking force on the tabletop. Something that peeves me is the fact that a lot of my armies are unfinished, generally because using my normal methods they take so long to paint. Something I plan to remedy with my dwarves. Given that my desire to play in tournaments doesn’t really exist anymore, I am unconcerned if the army I create isn’t the ultimate fighting force in the Dwarven realms. I have therefore created an army around the concept of a Dwarven force going to reclaim a lost hold.

I’ll go into the army list and how it relates to the theme in more depth in another post. For now I intend to discuss some of my thought processes and techniques for painting my Dwarf miniatures quickly. This first thing to consider is your colour palette and undercoat colour. I’m not about to start the white vs. black debate, but, I’ll offer these comments. If you want your colours to be brighter than use white and are prepared to be fairly neat with your paint application, then use white undercoat. Be warned any white bits you’ve missed will stand out a mile. Using Black undercoat will generally mean your colours are darker, but, it enables you to use the black undercoat has the first shade, i.e. leaving the black showing in the deepest recesses. Also, if you miss a bit it doesn’t stand out so much. For me, I always use black undercoat and it just seems the logical choice when speed is the key.

I’m not going to delve into colour theory here, as there are heaps of other websites that have already covered the topic in sufficient detail for miniature painters. One thing I will touch on is the colour palette you will use. I have used colours all based on brown. The colour palette I have chosen is a warm palette and consists of muted red, green and bronze. These colours can all use brown as the base coat, meaning not only can I base coat all these areas in one go, the base colour ties all the colours together.

For the bronze armour I used a base coat of Scorched Brown, followed by a Dwarf Bronze over brush and then a light dry brush of Mithril Silver. For the red, I applied Mechrite Red over the Scorched Brown Base coat. I used Catachan Green over the Scorched Brown base coat for green areas. Once I had completed all the colours to this stage and everything was completely dry, I then applied as wash of Devlan Mud. Once this wash was dry I applied a 3:1 Mechrite Red : Denheb Stone highlight to the red areas. I reapplied Catachan Green to the green areas followed by a 2:1 Catachan Green : Denheb Stone highlight. These areas were now complete.

One thing to consider is that by applying the washes to nearly the whole model darkens it up considerably. On a table top in dim lighting the effect of the army can easily be lost. To counter this I have used lighter colours to accent different parts on the miniatures. Any runes I’ve picked out in Mithril Silver and I’ve also take the opportunity to apply some bright colours to the Miners candles and lantern. I have also used snow bases across the army to lighten the units up.

With the Foundation Paints and Washes from Games Workshop, the ability to produce good results quickly is so much easier than when I first started painting miniatures. For the Dwarves I’ve made extensive use of these where ever I can. The techniques I have described are quite rough and don’t really look all that great when you look at a single miniature. The washes in part help to smooth out the roughness of the techniques. But, when things really click is when the unit is put together on the table top. The roughness of the individual miniature is lost and the viewer instead takes in the effect of the unit as a whole. I have been producing these Dwarves at about the rate of one figure every 40 mins. For me, this is insanely quick.

Speed Painting for armies requires a different mindset to single figure painting and the confidence that when everything is put together it’ll look good. The methods and techniques I have chosen have produced a result that I am very happy with.

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