Warhammer World Open Day – 2023

After far too many years, I finally made it to Warhammer World 🙂

The first weekend in March was Warhammer World’s store anniversary / open day, so I used it as the ideal excuse to take the Johnmobile Mk II on the six hour drive south to Nottingham for the day.

Truth be told, I wasn’t really interested in the game demos or the other festivities, I really wanted to visit the exhibition, see if I could catch up with friends (hi, Art!) and spend some hard-earned (hah!) cash in the shop. In any case, I had a great time, and can’t wait to go again, but next time I’ll take some minis to get a game in.

The Exhibition

I spent a good hour in the exhibition. While my photography skills are questionable at best, I’d like to share the highlights.

Finally, it wouldn’t be an open day without a gratuitous swag shot!

Lord of Blights

Been a slow start to this year, got hit by Covid pretty hard (yes, I’m vaccinated), so it’s somewhat appropriate that my first completed mini is a Nurgle Maggotkin Lord of Blights!

Operative Umbral-Six – Vindicare Assassin

Even though I’ve a million things in-progress on my painting desk (well, my only desk), when my Warhammer Plus year one miniature dropped through the door I couldn’t resist!

Since this is really a display piece, I decided to take inspiration from the box art rather than go my own way. I think if I ever pick up the more game-ready variant I may try something different.

Necron Immortals

Finished these over the weekend. Far from my finest work, I have to confess the Age of Darkness box has been making sad eyes at me from the back of my hobby room, but I’m fairly happy with them.

Next on my table are some Imperial Fists in Mk IV armour, with some effort I may have then done this weekend.

Laying it on too thick…

We all do it sometimes, usually when we’re in a hurry or trying out a new paint, sometimes we terminally bugger-up a paint job and have to start again.

In this case, I was both hurrying and trying a new paint, in this case Colour Forge’s awesome Sunset Yellow spray. I’m going to use this for my 30K Imperial Fists as it’s a near (if not) perfect match for GW’s Averland Sunset.

To test it out, I decided to paint a spare Praetor in Cataphractii Terminator Armour from the old Betrayal at Calth box. This particular one had been cast in a strikingly blue shade of plastic, and idiot that I am I thought it best to apply a black spray undercoat before the base spray. This was the result…

Yuck.

As you can see, while the colour’s fantastic the coverage is so heavy it’s obscured much of the detail. It’s as if the Brother Captain was hit by a heavy mustard cannon.

I posted this on the ‘Eavier Metal Facebook group and the opinons were quick and many! All agreed (and mostly in a pleasant manner) that the coverage was far too think and it was time to consider going back to the drawing board. Or in my case, the hobby station.

Fortunately, I always have plenty of BioStrip to hand so before turning in I gave the mini a quick spa break.

Seriously, if you’ve not used this stuff you should look it out. It works so quickly and cleanup’s a breeze. I ran it under warm water this morning and used an old electric toothbrush to remove the few stubborn flecks of remaining paint.

A couple of hours ago I resprayed the model. As you can see it looks so much better now!

While there are a couple of small areas that will require a touch up with Averland Sunset, that’s hardly a big deal. Now I just hope I have time to finish him before my copy of the Age of Darkness box arrives this weekend.

Lord of Plagues

Finally, my self-portrait is done 😉

I’ve wanted to paint one of these since it came out about ten(?) years ago. Hopefully this will help me get the rest of my Nurgle stuff finished.

Dark Angels Primaris Inceptors

After much gnashing of teeth and shouting to the heavens warp, I finally finshed my first bouncy Primaris unit.

Originally I’d hoped to use the supplied flying stems, but no glue in the world would stick them securely and I’m too clumsy/lazy to even consider pinning such a small connection Fortunately I have a ton of spare scenery bits so after attacking some unfortunate sprues with clippers and a saw, you see the results before you.

Dark Angels Tactical Squad in Mk IV Armour

I’ve not been able to proper paint in a while, so I thought the best way to get back into the habit was to go back to my roots so-to-speak and paint something old school, and you don’t get much older than the First Legion in Heresy-era armour!

I used the current Mk IV plastic kit mixed with parts from the non-Primaris Dark Angels upgrade sprue, fairly basic paint jobs, but given how long I’ve been out of practice, I’m quite happy.

I actually managed to use five of these in my first game of 9th Edition a few weekends ago and while my army was certainly pretty, things didn’t go that well for the Unforgiven…

Necron Deathmarks

After a very busy festive period followed by my wife’s birthday and a metric ton of work thanks to my day job, I’ve finally been able to devote some time to my ever-so-slowly-growing Necron army. Today I was able to finish this sniper-assassin squad.

I’ve tried to keep it simple but for the first time I’ve attempted to edge highlight the black carapace armour rather than taking my usual approach and drybrused it. I still need to work on getting the lines thinner and crisper, but it’s a start.

Denting the Living Metal Backlog

Once again, it’s been a while! Thanks to the ongoing worldwide pandemic my work has been extremely busy so I’ve not had as much time, indeed hardly any time, to get myself into a headspace where I’d be able to paint miniatures. However, even though the Situation is far from over, I’m begining to find enough time in the day to restart some projects and first off is my embryonic Necron army.

Just over a year ago, I was able to get a Lord and some troops ready and as I thought I’d be massively out of practice I decided to get another box of the now old style Warriors and Scarabs done to break myself back into things. I think I did ok.

I still have the contents of a Start Collecting box as well as the Apocalypse Outrider Detachment to start on, not to mention the Catacomb Command Barge my wife got me for my birthday last year (which started this project) and the contents of the 9th ed Indomitus launch box. I think I’m good for a while…