Painted Lord of Contagion

This is a Lord of Contagion, part of the Death Guard for Warhammer 40,000. He’s a leader with a melee focus, and therefore I suppose will spend his time just slightly behind something big and scary ready to counter-charge.

I don’t have any specific plans to actually play a Death Guard army any time soon but I wanted to test myself by painting one of the big minis in this range and decided that a few test / practice miniatures would be useful. The crimson and bronze colours I’ve picked are thematically linked with another group in the lore (specifically, followers of Khorne and the World Eater chapter of Chaos Space Marines) but I felt that they would fit in well with this miniature. And even if he’s a follower of Nurgle, that huge chain-axe the Lord is wielding will still spill plenty of blood. The mini is really busy and I found that he didn’t really come together until the end as there are just so many little bits of detail from the Nurglings underfoot (tactical Nurglings!) to the smoking tripartite trophy rack atop his armour. To contrast with the crimson armour I went with what I hoped would be a noxious and mystical looking green flame effect on the stuff coming off the censers and trophies; I’m a bit torn on whether this actually looks good in itself but it does at least stand out nicely.

Next on the painting table: Corvus Glaive.

Painted Primaris Outriders

Here are a trio of Outriders, a unit for my slowly-ongoing Adeptus Astartes (or Space Marines, if you’re old-fashioned like me) force for Warhammer 40K. As you might expect from a team of motorbiking, sword-wielding post-humans, this lot are a highly mobile unit mainly focused on close-quarters fighting. Sadly, because of a combination of me being awful at the game and my constant poor choice of potential victims for the Outriders, the usual game proceeds with them zooming around a bit and shooting quite ineffectually, then charging into melee and being blended out of existence without achieving a great deal of anything. The standard unit size is three, but in Death Watch they can be added to Fortis Kill Teams and ride around in a group of up to five if they feel like it.

The Outriders were a unit that felt like a bit of a slog right until the last few touches of paint were applied when suddenly everything came together beautifully, and in the end I’m very pleased with the outcome. The riders were painted in the same white, black and green scheme as the rest of my Astartes. I eventually decided to make the bikes green; this would tie them into the Chapter colour scheme, keep them distinct from the predominantly white armour of the Space Marines and also not blur into the black of the tires.

Next on the painting table: Proxima Midnight.

Painted Assault Intercessors

This is a second combat squad of Assault Intercessors to be part of my Space Marines (Adeptus Astartes) army in Warhammer 40K. There’s not much more to say about them than I mentioned for the previous squad; they’re the basic troops of the faction and they specialise in close quarters combat. I opted to give the sergeant a Power Fist mainly because it’s such an iconically 40K weapon; really embodying the ethos of ‘I fly across the galaxy in mile-long spaceships, purely so that I can punch you on the nose’.

The painting was the same as the rest of the Space Marines. I think that the white on the Intercessors’ armour really shows up the difference between really skilled painters and me. My minis look fine on the tabletop, but in these brightly lit zoomed-in photos all sorts of errors are evident. When I look at the many highly-skilled bloggers I like to follow, there is no such evidence of paint-streaking, wash-pooling etc even when they post really great photos. I love this hobby; there are so many ways to continue to improve even after an unholy number of years of enjoying it.

Next on the painting table: Killmonger.

Painted Kustom Boosta-Blasta

This a second Kustom Boosta-Blasta for my Warhammer 40,000 Ork force. There isn’t strictly a Kult of Speed sub-army, even though I think that there should be, but if there was then that is definitely what I’d be building.

Just like with my second Boomdakka Snazzwagon, I painted this Boosta-Blasta in the same style as the first one but with more emphasis on the red. Otherwise, I’ve tried to make them look a bit different with some slight changes to the optional modelling pieces like opening the roof a bit and switching the top gunner to face another direction. It’s not a perfect solution but it’ll do for now.

Next on the painting table: Assault Intercessors.

Painted Assault Intercessors

These fine ladies are Assault Intercessors for my Space Marines / Adeptus Astartes force in Warhammer 40K. They’re the spiritual successors of old-fashioned Assault Marines, though for whatever reason they don’t come with the jump packs that were the main draw for their inclusion in armies in the first place. Nonetheless, Space Marines are as tough as nails and do just fine at close quarters and melee so this loadout of pistol and sword is quite fitting. In the event that I play Death Watch, the only downside of Assault Intercessors is that they don’t fit into any Kill Teams. Luckily, recent experience is telling me that I’m utterly terrible at 40K so I’ve stopped worrying about the relative power of any of my army options and just gone with rolling the dice with friends.

I adore the dynamism of the sculpts for the Assault Intercessors; though it is true that a close friend of mine quite uncharitably (but accurately) refers to them as ‘skippies’ since they look like they’re frolicking into battle. The heads here are mostly from Shapeways and I’m really impressed with the quality of the printing; I’d recommend them for anyone wanting to mix up their GW armies with alternative heads. The paint scheme is, of course, the same as my previous Space Marines. On the one hand, I do love the look of a fully painted coherent army. But on the other, more pertinent hand, I find it a bit of a drag to paint essentially the same scheme on 50ish models. Character driven skirmish games are my preference these days for that reason among others.

Next on the painting table: Boomdakka Snazzwagon.

Painted Shokkjump Dragsta

Here is Shokkjump Dragsta number two for my Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. I have acquired a third one of these kits so I’ll have a complete Force Organisation chart slot of them once I paint the last one.

I’ve kept the same general blue colouring for this Dragsta as I have for my other Ork buggies but in an attempt to make it stand out a bit from the first one I’ve put a few of the panels in red rather than white. I’ve also make some slight changes to the build; mainly cutting off one rocket and replacing it with the firing one that was spare from the Scrapjet kit and leaving the engine intake off the front so that the poor blood bag Gretchin from the Snazzwagon kit could fit on the bonnet. I’ve really enjoyed painting these buggies; they’re very quick and satisfying to put a brush to despite how large they are.

Next on the painting table: Assault Intercessors.

Painted Boomdakka Snazzwagon

Here is a second Boomdakka Snazzwagon for my Orks in Warhammer 40,000. Although there are limitations on the number of repeated units per army in the game, I think I max out at 9 of each type of buggy so I’m never going to have to worry about that.

The painting is largely the same as the previous Snazzwagon, though I put more red splash colours in and less white to make it a bit more distinguishable. I’ve also mixed up some of the extraneous pieces, for example I cut of part of the roof to expose the crew, I left the poor Gretchin tied to the front off (but don’t worry, he’s going to show up later) and I mixed up the heads of the crew with some of the other kits just for a bit of variety. Ultimately the buggies still look pretty similar but at least I can feel like I’ve made an effort to keep them unique.

Next on the painting table: Black Panther.

Painted Kult of Speed

Since I’ve painted one of each of these Ork buggies for Warhammer 40,000 I felt that it would be a good time to share a ‘family photo’. The buggies are actually pretty cheap in the game so this lot only comes out at about 500 points; for context we usually play 1000 points and I think that the tournament standard is 2000 points. This was a really entertaining project so I do have some more further down the queue. Vroom vroom!

Painted Deffkilla Wartrike

Here is a Deffkilla Wartrike which is an HQ unit for my Kult of Speed Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. Since every other buggy is (not surprisingly) classified as Fast Attack, it’s important for game reasons that this HQ option exists as almost all armies require some form of HQ. In game terms it seems to be a bit more of a second line support model than the sculpt would suggest. Not that the Warboss riding the Wartrike here is any slouch when it comes to punching things with that ridiculous glove but rather it’s not particularly hard to kill him on the return swing and he provides a lot of utility to the other buggies via the Speed Waaagh! rule which allows nearby units to advance and charge thereby extending their threat range a fair bit.

Although the Deffkilla Wartrike is a fun sculpt I think I enjoyed painting it a bit less than the other buggies. This might be because so much more of it is just plain metal rather than chassis and so I felt that it fitted better to be painted black and silver rather than a lovely bright blue. Still, it was a highly satisfying miniature to paint and being the least fun of the buggies is still a pretty high bar to meet. GW has really shown why they’re the top as far as miniatures are concerned.

The driver is taking the current pandemic very seriously, even wearing his mask when going into battle and not just when going to the shops. Truly, he is the hero we deserve.

This Gretchin gets a lot of love from me for being a cute little critter calmly doing his job while everyone around is whooping and hollering. One has to imagine that a single wrong step from the Warboss when the Wartrike goes over a bump would see him sailing off into the dust though.

The Warboss is demonstrating that he has amazing core strength and balance as he’s seemingly not holding onto anything as his Wartrike careers all over the place.

Next on the painting table: Ant-Man.

Painted Megatrakk Scrapjet

This is a Megatrakk Scrapjet, yet another buggy to go in my Ork army for Warhammer 40,000. Unlike most of the other buggies this one is actually competent in melee, presumably due to the giant drill on the front. However, it is also fairly competent when shooting as it’s loaded down with machine guns and rockets; although of course being an Ork vehicle it’s pretty unlikely to actually hit anything at range.

The Megatrakk Scrapjet is my favourite sculpt out of the Ork buggies; it’s literally a plane with the wings knocked off and some wheels and tracks added. I really enjoyed working on the whole thing; it’s just such fun kit to build and paint. There is actually supposed to be a Gretchin in the back firing the rear guns but I realised while I was assembling it that 1) it would be impossible to paint while assembled and 2) it’s not actually possible to see the little chap anyway through that tiny little window. As a result, this is the only buggy with just a single crewmember.

But! What a crewmember! It’s Biggles, but as an Ork. Words cannot express how amusing I find this sculpt; it’s just perfect in every way.

Next on the painting table: Shuri.