A Tale of Many Lamers: Quarter 3

Quarter 3 was much lighter than previous ones - a Malanthrope and a pair of Tyrannofex. It became even lighter as it went on, as with the release of ninth edition it became apparent that with point increases I would be way above 2000 points by the end of the year. I chose to drop one of the Tyrannofex (though he was built, magnetized and basecoated) and instead plough through a bunch of Flesh Eater Courts, Necromunda and even some Tau.

Basing

As mention way back at the start of the slow grow, I planned on doing jungle bases from a tutorial on Goonhammer. I modified it slightly, choosing not to use aquarium plants and adding in some yellow blossom tufts for a spot color to match my army's weapons.

This quarter I went back and based all of the large monsters I'd already completed. I hit them with a satin varnish first, giving them an unpleasant/alien sheen, then mostly followed the guide. The basing is really fun to do and it really finishes the models off.

Big Guys

The Malanthrope is my favourite of the Forgeworld Tyranid kits, I really like the tendril detail under his carapace.

The Tyrannofex is the largest bug I've painted and it wasn't too bad, though the green is by far still the most tedious.

As a bonus, I posted the Tyrannofex to Twitter and it was picked up by Warhammer Community for their Hobby Roundup on Twitch. I think I most enjoyed when they speculated what it's insides look like, particularly the phrase pink blancmange ichor.

Next quarter is the home stretch and I plan to add in some medium sized models, a unit of Hive Guard and a unit of Zoanthropes, as well as filling out my Hormagaunt/Termagant squads to 30 models each.

Flesh Eater Courts

My Flesh Eater Courts were the army I got into Age of Sigmar with at the very start of 2019, after some light encouragement from others in my gaming group. In a shocking turn of good fortune, I started collecting them just before they got a new flavoursome and powerful Battletome, which was a nice bonus.

The range isn't the most expansive, when I started they only had 3 plastic kits that built most of their roster (and conveniently were all in the start collecting box), plus an ancient finecast character. That expanded a bunch with the new Battletome, adding a new character, scenery piece and some boss looking endless spells.

The scheme I picked was a simple as possible, a classic basecoat->wash->drybrush->details one. This was a choice driven heavily by the prospect of painting 70 ghouls...

That simple scheme is the main reason that this is the first army I have fully completed, I now have just over 4k points of them painted with all the models I currently want to field - until something new is released for them or a new death army comes out to ally with them. Enjoy a quick and dirty full army cupboard shot:

A Tale of Many Lamers: Quarter 2

The overarching theme for quarter 2 would be "oh god, too many bugs". Having learned no lessons whatsoever from quarter 1 I set myself the task of a Broodlord, 16 Genestealers, 12 Hormagaunts, 12 Termagants and a Mawloc.

Lockdown Progress

With the country firmly locked down in April and no distractions like "socialising" or "leaving the house" to get in my way I made a ton of progress. The weather was lovely and I was able to spend the weekends in the garden building away - I got the Genestealers and Mawloc built like this, along with a whole load of Necromunda Zone Mortalis terrain put together.

I switched to batch painting the little guys in groups of four and found this infinitely more manageable than what I'd done the previous quarter. Getting the Broodlord and Genestealers done early felt great and meant I could spent more time on the Mawloc. There was a mild rush at the end of the quarter again to finish up the rest of the 'gaunts, but nowhere near as bad as the month before.

Turns out all I need to make steady progress is a global pandemic and nationwide lockdown...

Results

I'm still improving with the airbrush, I'm still super happy with how the pink comes out. The green basecoat is proving the most tedious, it takes 3 or 4 coats to get the Vallejo Dark Green opaque.

I also made a start on the basing at this point, adding a mixture of fine/small basing grit, painting it brown and giving it a light drybrush. Next quarter I'll be adding more jungle to it.

The plan for next quarter is a grand total of three models, a Malanthrope and a pair of Tyrannofex. Easy.

T'au

My T'au were the army that I got back into the hobby with back in 2017. I have around 3000 points now, though only about half are painted.

For my birthday last year my girlfriend surprised me with a trip to Warhammer World (as surprising as "we're driving to Nottingham on your birthday, I'm not telling you why" could be) and while there I decided to cave and buy a Y'Vahra. This model's rules have swung between good to great to trash and back several times, but it looks awesome and if nothing else it's hilarious to use. In April I finally finished painting it:

The base is the Riptide kit and it's a fantastic model to pose.

I'm happy with the paint scheme I went with for this army, but in retrospect white was a poor choice for my first force. The airbrush improves it immensely but it's still scheme that I burn out on regularly.

I will revisit the T'au more soon, in particular I want to paint the Kroot I have, and I'm looking forward to using it as a benchmark of how I've improved as a painter.

A Tale of Many Lamers: Quarter 1

I had sporadic hobby time in 2019 - I was renovating my house so I switched between not having hobby space and having to paint walls instead of minis. In 2020 I was looking forward to getting more time to paint, particularly with the set goals of the slow grow.

Project Management

Being a somewhat analytical person, I usually start projects via a spreadsheet. I have a Google Sheets document entitled "Shame" that tracks all my models and their status, quantified by their wounds characteristic. More than anything else this does as it's name implies, it shames me into not buying a mountain of grey plastic that I'll never get around to painting...or at the very least makes me aware of when I ignore it and do this anyway.

For 2020 I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my friend John, who through the course of 2019 painted his entire model backlog through a rather wonderful burndown chart. I'm not a fast enough painter that I was confident that I could paint everything over the year, but I felt like I could put a good dent in it.

A snippet of my shame.

I set myself some goals in January - chief amongst them the slow grow but also including finishing up my Flesh Eater Courts, putting a dent in my Tau and at least building/basecoating a load of LotR models and terrain so I could play with them.

Progress

My cadence for quarter 1 was erratic. January was extremely productive, driven mostly by it starting with a weeks holiday, while February was not. A combination of illness (I was off work more in that month than I was in the entire 3 years prior) and trying to plow through some DIY meant the only hobby I completed was painting 12 Hormagaunts. This snowballed into a very frantic March, where I ended up having to take a couple of days holiday to reach my goals.

Completed first was my Hive Tyrant ("The Withering Horrification") and a unit of Hormagaunts:

At this point the bases are plain - I have plans to jungle them up but time constraints and a delayed basing material order meant it wasn't going to happen for a while yet.

Not pictured are 12 Termagants, which I failed to photograph when complete for some reason.

Finally, there are two Carnifex:

I'm really happy with how all these models came out. I tweaked the scheme slightly as I painted more (notably leaving the tongues pink instead of yellow) and I started to get more comfortable with it as I went on. I still need more practice using the airbrush, but I'm starting to feel fairly comfortable with it.

I had plans for quarter 2 that involved more models that Q1, as well as hopefully better organisation to hopefully stop me rushing so much at the end...

Hive Fleet Sybaris

Urgent Communique Re: Hive Fleet Sybaris

Magos, I forward to you further notes on Hive Fleet Sybaris. The splinter has been lost following it's consumption of the Pyraxia system, it is believed to be moving to the galactic East.

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Arrest Report
Attending Officer: Sergeant Hamish "Hawkwind" Scott
Unit: 151st - "Jock Law's Law Dogs"
We have apprehended a juve belonging to the "Battle Buffalos" gang down in sector 58. I'm referring him for genetic testing, he has extremely pallid skin and a third, clawed arm. Suspicion is that he is a mutant, heretic or extremely convincing cosplayer.

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Recovered fragment of diary of Crash Beefmuscle, heavy for the "Regent Royal Fight Kings" street gang:
Dese new preacher dudes ain't like de preacher dudes when I grew up, it's great. The big boss man got dem to come down and do the baptising on us. We pray to de Four Armed Emperor (who I believe is a local embodiment of the Emperor and thus continued worship of him is not deviation from the Imperial Creed and ergo is not heresy) and he gifts us with the hardened skin plates and all the extra arms wot we can want.

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Incident Report
Senior Officer: Captain Jock "Law Dog" Law
Unit: 151st - "Jock Law's Law Dogs"
Goddamn Genestealers have infested the hive. Goddamn missed them on the gene sweeps. Gonna lead the Law Dogs on the offensive, we'll purge this infestation, I won't let no bugs take over my sector.

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Distress Signal
Origin: Pyraxia Prime
Sender: General Tax Swoleman, Planetary PDF
So the Tyranids are invading. Bright pink ones with green carapace and orange claws. They are as horrific to fight as they are to look at. Backup would be nice, maybe a Space Marine Chapter or two? A Knight household wouldn't go amiss.

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As you can see, Magos, the threat is intense. Of particular note is the Hive Tyrant that has been colloquially codenamed "The Withering Horrification", it is believed to currently be the prime manifestation of the Hive Mind for this particular fleet.

I await your reply and your instructions for our next course of action.

Tech Priest Bore Divinastastius
Section Lead, Research Station Rho-75.5W
Beald Secundus
(Directly to the galactic East of the Pyraxia system)

A Tale of Many Lamers

At the tail end of 2019 my gaming group decided to embark on a slow grow for 2020 similar to the old "Tale of Four Warlords" series from White Dwarf. Over the course of a year a bunch of us would build towards a fully painted 2000 point 40k army, 500 points every 3 months. We'd have games along the way escalating to a huge Apocalypse style game at Warhammer World at the start of 2021.

My choice of army had already been made for me - a year prior for our Secret Santa I had thrown out the bold (and possibly foolhardy) request of "buy me a model for a 40k army and I will collect it". Dodging something ludicrous like some Sisters of Silence or Harelquins (god I would not enjoy painting Harlequins) my gifter got me a Tyranid Broodlord, an excellent choice. My existing 40k army was Tau so 'Nids were a complete departure (I get to learn the psychic phase rules for a start) and it's also an army that doesn't have a big presence in my gaming group.

When planning my slow grow I had two big things I wanted to keep in mind:

• I wanted this to be the core of a solid Tyranids collection, it should include the staples - blobs or Hormagaunts, Termagants and Genestealers, some big monsters like Carnifex and Tyrannofex and a Hive Tyrant and Broodlord to the lead them.
• I wanted a custom paint scheme that I could execute well and efficiently - if I chose something too difficult I knew I would burn out, especially on a horde army. I also wanted it to be bright.

Choosing the Models

I decided early on that I didn't want to plan out the full army in advance - I wanted to do 500 points at a time and adapt based on what I liked and how the games I played with it went. If this was a Ciaphas Cain novel it'd be here that it'd say something like "little did I know that 2020 would interfere with my plans in ways no-one could expect"...

Another thing that influenced my choice of models was the collection of  plastic I'd already acquired - in addition to 2018's Broodlord Secret Santa, Xmas 2019 added a box of Termagants. Even more impactfully, the release of Apocalypse and some frighteningly good value battleforce boxes added 2 Hive Tyrants, 4 Carnifex, 2 Tyrannofex and 2 Trygon/Mawlocs.

For quarter 1 I kept it simple - Hive Tyrant on foot, 12 Hormagaunts, 12 Termagants and 2 Carnifex. A nice even force that would let me practice the paint scheme as well as not get too badly dumpstered on the tabletop.

Choosing the Paint Scheme

I knew I wanted to be bright. My Tau are very cool colors, white and blues, and my Flesh Eater Courts and muted greens and browns. I wanted the 'Nids to pop.

I narrowed my initial focus down to either bright pink or bright green. Knowing nothing about color theory (and being more than a little color blind) I googled various articles and videos on choosing a paint scheme that worked, which led me to various color wheel apps and let me home in on a triad of pink, yellow and green.

Next came gathering reference material, mostly from Instagram and Google image searches for "pink Tyranids". The biggest spark of inspiration appeared when I came across the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Shai Hulud here belonging to MikeyP of Deployment Zone (hilariously I've just noticed the pictures are all taken at Element Games, where my Tyranids are likely to play most of their games). This scheme seemed to be exactly what I was looking for, I set about concocting a version of it I could implement:

• The pink would be Vallejo Warlord Purple, with Squid Pink for highlights. I planned to use the airbrush I'd bought myself as a birthday present a few months prior for this. I'd use Red Wash in the recesses.
• The yellow would be VGC Heavy Goldbrown with an Umber Wash, then highlights with Gold Yellow and VMC Ivory.
• The green would be VGC Dark Green with carapace markings/highlights of Sick Green and Scorpion Green. This was a minor departure from the Shai Hulud scheme, I wanted to push the green highlights an extra step brighter. Also, I enjoy that the Vallejo Verde Escorpena is translated as Escorpena Green - "yeah, we've translated half the name, they can make an educated guess with the rest"...
• For basing I was in luck as just as I was planning it BuffaloChicken over on Goonhammer posted an article about jungle bases. Perfect.

The Test Models

Models and paint scheme selected I moved onto test models:

The only modification I made to the scheme was swapping the Umber Wash on the yellow to the Red Wash I was already using for the pink, much less dirty looking. The scheme is going to work, I love the look of it and it's not too onerous to implement. It also lets me grow my painting skills with plenty of places to improve on.

A friend referred to them as Stabby Candy. I could not be happier.