Welcome to the Hobby Roundup for June, a look at the hobby that our Tiny Plastic People contributors have been doing. It’s been a bit of a quiet month for most of us this time, so this will be a briefer article than most – but that’s alright, isn’t it? There are no prizes for this hobby. Unless you enter a contest I guess, but then that’s true for everything.
Tom F (LeSwordfish)
So I didn’t go as deep into vampires as I was worried last time round, just picking up a single unit of Blood Knights – they’re such glorious models, I figured a one-month deadline to paint a five-vamp unit was doable. My plan is to have them finished in time to take to the Witney Warhammer event in mid-July, and I’m hoping to have them polished off quickly enough that I can also paint up the classic one-winged Vampire Lord model as well. (Thanks Cronch for selling me both him and Vlad Von Carstein). Not that I don’t already have plenty of vampires, but I want that one too!
Other than that, I need to rebase my old Blood Knights (being made from Dragon Knight models, they’re going to look pretty titchy next to the new ones) and my Zombie Dragon – being a conversion from the Forge World Warpfire Dragon, it’s on an oval base… going to be an interesting process wrenching it off and gluing it back down on the correct circular one.
In addition, readers possessed of a keen memory may recall that I painted – and was unsatisfied with – a squad of Osgiliath Veterans for the Middle Earth range last month. As such, I spent the first week of June working on a squad of Warriors of Minas Tirith to accompany them, and using the lack of a deadline to try out a few blue cloth schemes. Once I had one I liked, I went back to the veterans and spruced them up a bit. The outcome – especially once brightened up by a few Gamers’ Grass tufts – looks much nicer, I think.
Next month: once the vampires are done, probably Faramir and his Rangers… or maybe paint some Cataphractii and keep putting them off. Faramir is my favourite character in Lord Of The Rings, and I want to do him justice.
Drew
This month has seen me finish off two adorable ‘Squig Bosses’ to lead my bold squig forces into battle in an upcoming 40k Crusade Campaign.
Also for my gobbos and orks were the first results of my casting experiments. Delicious white chocolate bases?
Finally for my orks, a sweet ride for the squigs to get around inside, so their little legs didn’t get too tired to jump on some folks.
And last but not least, in light of the new Sororitas Codex, a very not new lump of metal and plastic, the classic Exorcist model:
Rich (Cronch)
The Lumineth train has no brakes, and so a lot of hobby time this month has been spent painting aelves. Up first was the man (aelf?) himself, Archmage Teclis, and his pet cat. This model absolutely blows my mind – the huge variety of textures and materials made for a really enjoyable project, with lots of bespoke bits that don’t appear elsewhere in the range. I’m particularly pleased with Celennar’s silver mask and the tiger stripes on their wings, as well as Teclis’ flowy satin robes. I had a blast putting it all together, and I’m super happy with how it came out. I’ll tell you what though, gluing all of those tufts down on the base wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had!
With the Realm-Lords shelf looking particularly hero heavy at this point, I decided I better paint up a unit of Wardens! I’ll probably round these out to a block of 20 soon, but the impending new edition and General’s Handbook mean that I’m holding off for now. I’m happy with the end result of the Wardens, but doing them in two uneven batches (3, then 7), combined with the UK’s mini heatwave, meant that they took a bit longer than expected and felt like quite a slog. For future units I’ll try to paint no more than five at a time.
Remaining Lumineth-adjacent, a moment of madness led to me thinking that perhaps I could also integrate them into a Settlers Gain Cities of Sigmar project. I’ve only done a couple of test models so far, but I think this might be a fun way of using a few Lumineth models without making an overwhelmingly competitive list. I’m pretty happy with the Warden King, and will finish off the rest of the Start Collecting! Greywater Fastness box the same way, but I’m not entirely sold on the Knights Excelsior scheme for the Stormcast. I might try a different approach, such as this tutorial from Henry at the excellent Cult of Paint.
And finally, as a momentary break from the Lumineth obsession, I grabbed the Kainan’s Reapers Direchasm warband for a palate-cleansing project. These were really simple to paint, achieved almost entirely through drybrushing and Contrast paints with a few sparing highlights here and there.
Next month was going to be full of Lumineth projects to get an army ready for BLACKOVT (a 2 day matched play event), but that has now been postponed for a few months so the pressure’s off. I’ll probably use the time to dive headfirst into the imminent Dominion box!
Alistair C
I’ve had a slow hobby month compared to my last one – and I didn’t start any more Tau. Instead I did a couple of smaller projects as the fancy took me. First I painted up Sigvald, in a scheme inspired by the Castlevania animated series. Sigvald is quite vampire-like already, and this ended up working really well.
Then I did a quick paint of something purely for fun: I painted a Mindstealer Sphiranx with a colour scheme based on a classic meme.
Then, on a completely different note, I finished the last three Adeptus Titanicus Knights which I had. This brings me within reach of perhaps finishing all my Titanicus models…
Finally, as more rules were previewed for Age of Sigmar 3rd edition, I became increasingly enthusiastic about my Beasts of Chaos. Everybody knows that goatmen hate almost everything, but one of the things they love is giant magic rocks. So I painted their rock. Hopefully the excitement holds up so I can paint up some more of my sad goats, because the forces of Order are encroaching on our precious wilds this edition!
