My Warhammer Thread

[Commodore]

Someone used the sound files from Dawn of War: Winter Assault to make an hour-long "ambience" track for playing 40k.

This one's kinda spooky: A Necron invasion of an Imperial city. Has kind of a War of the Worlds vibe.

Love the Necron one. Really does a good job of portraying what the average civilian hears as they hide from the destruction going on all around them.

Which gives me an idea: It would be kinda cool if someone made a game like This War of Mine set in the 40k universe.

 

[Commodore]

Finished the voxcaster (radio/commo guy) guardsman for one of the Valhallan infantry squads:

Spoiler :

 

[FriendlyFire]

I bailed on WH40K the prices got too ridiculous, only the starterbox sets were decently valued and by then I had already lost interest
The stupid hover tank cost $140 aud, for that price I can buy like 4x 1:35 scale military model kits from Korea or 2 decent sized used SW lego kits.

Some of the new GW kits do look nice, but they have priced themselves well out of my taste.

 

[Gorbles]

I bailed on WH40K the prices got too ridiculous, only the starterbox sets were decently valued and by then I had already lost interest
The stupid hover tank cost $140 aud, for that price I can buy like 4x 1:35 scale military model kits from Korea or 2 decent sized used SW lego kits.

Some of the new GW kits do look nice, but they have priced themselves well out of my taste.

Currency conversion makes a lot of the kits horrendous outside of the UK (and US, I'd imagine). But also, the kits were never cheap. Tanks went for as high as £35 back in 2000 (the biggest tanks, admittedly). That's (about £51) nowadays. I'm not saying this makes it any more affordable, but the prices themselves have remained mostly consistent with inflation.

The problem in being able to afford them is something I'd not want to ruin this thread with

I haven't found the time to take some pictures yet. But I will! When the weather stops causing me problems, hah. Thunderstorm last night took out the broadband line, thankfully my provider operates a backup service that I'm using at the moment. Looking like close to a week to get the line fixed

 

[Commodore]

I bailed on WH40K the prices got too ridiculous, only the starterbox sets were decently valued and by then I had already lost interest
The stupid hover tank cost $140 aud, for that price I can buy like 4x 1:35 scale military model kits from Korea or 2 decent sized used SW lego kits.

Some of the new GW kits do look nice, but they have priced themselves well out of my taste.

You're in Australia right? I've heard the complaints about how Australians get charged more even after adjusting for currency conversion. I did the math on my own once and it does seem there is some truth to those complaints. One of the reasons I've heard is that GW won't set up warehouses in Australia to store products like they do in the UK and US. So any time an Australian orders anything it comes all the way from the UK and GW passes that extra cost onto the Australian consumers. I don't know how true any of that is though since if the market in Australia were as big as it seems, GW would be stupid to not invest in the same infrastructure for the Australian market they've invested in for the UK and US markets.

But if the above isn't true, then I'm at a loss as to why GW does, in fact, charge Australians more for their products.

 

[FriendlyFire]

You're in Australia right? I've heard the complaints about how Australians get charged more even after adjusting for currency conversion. I did the math on my own once and it does seem there is some truth to those complaints. One of the reasons I've heard is that GW won't set up warehouses in Australia to store products like they do in the UK and US. So any time an Australian orders anything it comes all the way from the UK and GW passes that extra cost onto the Australian consumers. I don't know how true any of that is though since if the market in Australia were as big as it seems, GW would be stupid to not invest in the same infrastructure for the Australian market they've invested in for the UK and US markets.

But if the above isn't true, then I'm at a loss as to why GW does, in fact, charge Australians more for their products.

Part of this is likely to be our smaller market, remote shipping location. I can accept some mark up in prices because of this but the kits are often a third to a half more expensive while there are other kits which havent been mark up and are only a few percentage difference in currency conversion rates. For the starter sets it dose make sense for GW to cut there profit margins as those are a way of hooking new players into the hobby. But everything else is just priced at strange level
The landscape of table top games has since changed with Kickstarters, whom has established an industry and manufactoring in China for cheap miniatures as well as competition from other forms of electronic entertainment.

I think that once GW went public, they switched to higher profit margins to secure dividends for the share holders.

 

[Commodore]

Just played a game with my wife and daughter. It was a three-way fight between my Valhallans, my wife's Slaanesh daemons and my daughter's Tzeentch daemons. We each started on a corner of the table and had to capture an objective in the middle of the table by getting a model in base-to-base contact with it and keeping it there until your next turn.

Even though my army took the fewest losses and inflicted a heavy toll on the daemon filth (autocannons are awesome), I could not secure a victory for the Emperor this day. I was too conservative in my advances and couldn't get close enough to the objective in time. It was the foul hedonistic servants of Slaanesh that won the day.

I tried to let my wife and daughter fight it out with each other while I just took potshots at them and then planned on swooping in for the win. It mostly worked as they both nearly annihilated each other, but my wife outmaneuvered us both and won the battle.

 

[thecrazyscot]

The Inquisition would like to know your location.

 

[Commodore]

I think my Valhallans acquitted themselves well despite their defeat. Of course that doesn't matter to the Inquisition since merely being exposed to Chaos warrants their execution in the eyes of the Inquisition.

 

[Commodore]

I did paint another Valhallan over the weekend and did the bases for some of them as well. Nothing complicated, just painted the bases white and glued some white sand my daughter got me for my birthday to it to make it look like snow. I'll have some pictures of all that when I get home from work. In the mean time here are some older miniatures I've done for your viewing pleasure:

Spoiler :

 

[EgonSpengler]

I think my Valhallans acquitted themselves well despite their defeat. Of course that doesn't matter to the Inquisition since merely being exposed to Chaos warrants their execution in the eyes of the Inquisition.

I know some people go right to Monty Python when they hear "The Inquisition", but I thought of Mel Brooks' A History of the World, Part 1 first.

 

[Commodore]

Here's those pics I promised to post yesterday but never quite got around to. One is the Valhallan I painted and the second one is the basing I did for the last three minis I painted:

Spoiler :

EDIT: I've been thinking about trying to do a YouTube video or live stream while I paint. There are several problems with that though that are discouraging me from doing it. The biggest being that I did a live stream once and I hated it. I felt awkward and uncomfortable the whole time. The idea of being live and not being able to edit out mistakes or have any do-overs makes me way to anxious and self-conscious. Another problem is technical limitations. I don't really have a setup that's good for live streaming or for doing recordings of me painting minis. All the stuff I have was geared towards recording game footage for Let's Plays. Finally, I don't know how entertaining I would be. I know there are some miniature painters that can pull off talking to their audience while painting, but I don't know if I can. When I paint, I tend to hyper-focus on what I'm painting and tune out the rest of the world.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Are they called 'Valhallans' because they're basically already dead?

 

[Commodore]

Just a random thought on the setting of 40k: As horrible as the life of a guardsman may seem, the Imperium has no shortage of volunteers for the Imperial Guard. This is because joining the Imperial Guard is the only chance for upward social mobility in the Imperium for the vast majority of citizens.

This is because it is the members of the Imperial Guard that, upon the conclusion of a successful campaign, are rewarded with land and titles on the worlds they liberate/reconquer. Officers are usually made planetary governors or given other titles of nobility and will comprise the planet's new aristocracy while the enlisted men will become minor landowners, which is certainly a step up from slaving away in a manufactorum until you drop dead from exhaustion.

I think the fact that the horrible life of a guardsman is the best most citizens of the Imperium can hope for really testifies to just how bleak, dark, and hopeless the setting is.

 

[Commodore]

Thinking about the future armies I have planned I'm worried if I'll be able to paint them properly. It's mostly the flesh tones I'm worried about. Valhallan skin is easy to paint because they are all pale-skinned. All I have to do with them is throw on some cream colored paint, slap a wash over it and it's done. Darker skin tones seem like they are going to be harder to paint and still make them look like believable skin tones.

That is going to make painting armies like the Tallarn Desert Raiders, Tempestus Scions and Cadian Shock Troops difficult. I could go the easy route and either paint them all as pale-skinned, but that wouldn't be very lore-friendly since the Tallarn are Arabic/Middle Eastern inspired and the Cadians and Tempestus Scions aren't monotone in terms of skin color like the Valhallans are.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Thinking about the future armies I have planned I'm worried if I'll be able to paint them properly. It's mostly the flesh tones I'm worried about. Valhallan skin is easy to paint because they are all pale-skinned. All I have to do with them is throw on some cream colored paint, slap a wash over it and it's done. Darker skin tones seem like they are going to be harder to paint and still make them look like believable skin tones.

That is going to make painting armies like the Tallarn Desert Raiders, Tempestus Scions and Cadian Shock Troops difficult. I could go the easy route and either paint them all as pale-skinned, but that wouldn't be very lore-friendly since the Tallarn are Arabic/Middle Eastern inspired and the Cadians and Tempestus Scions aren't monotone in terms of skin color like the Valhallans are.

You could paint little electric-blue face masks over their mouths and noses and say it's because of Covid-19.

 

[Ajidica]

Thinking about the future armies I have planned I'm worried if I'll be able to paint them properly. It's mostly the flesh tones I'm worried about. Valhallan skin is easy to paint because they are all pale-skinned. All I have to do with them is throw on some cream colored paint, slap a wash over it and it's done. Darker skin tones seem like they are going to be harder to paint and still make them look like believable skin tones.

That is going to make painting armies like the Tallarn Desert Raiders, Tempestus Scions and Cadian Shock Troops difficult. I could go the easy route and either paint them all as pale-skinned, but that wouldn't be very lore-friendly since the Tallarn are Arabic/Middle Eastern inspired and the Cadians and Tempestus Scions aren't monotone in terms of skin color like the Valhallans are.

I never had much experience with large area skin tones, but my understanding from some model painting guides is that a good way to accomplish Mediterranean skin tones is to use a very light primer and light skin color as a base, and then progressively add on diluted India Ink washes until you get the desired color.

 

[Gorbles]

I'd honestly forgotten inks existed until I dug through the remains of my models literally earlier today and found my later models that I had, indeed, used inks for. Mainly Chestnut Wash, from memory. Back in the early days (for me) when GW had only just started producing their own inks.

So yeah! I dug up my models! Literally, in the case of the two boxes I had with them all stuffed in (so very, very sorry, but I was never rich enough to get the miniatures and then shell out for the carry cases. I could barely keep up going through paints. I have one carry case, and that's it. For about 20,000 points worth of stuff, haha).

Disclaimer: most of this stuff has survived (ish) through about six house moves, so a lot of it is bashed, scraped, and has weapon parts missing. If this offends folks' sensibilities, which I would understand, ye have been warned!

I'm going to start with my attempt at Horus. He'd look a lot better painted (most of my stuff would). I was heavily into conversions, lore, rules lawyering, the works, back in the day. Horus was one of the latest total conversions I did before leaving for university, which puts him at about 13 - 14 years old. They'd just released the new plastic Chaos Terminators and plastic Chaos Lord. Finecast was brand-new. Most of the Chaos roster was still horrifically-weighted metal casts, in dire need of overhauls.

Spoiler :

Pretty happy with how he turned out. With Green Stuff in all his joints, he stands higher than (old) Abbadon.

Here's one of my more-finished Iron Warriors.

Spoiler :

You can see where the paint's just worn off him (mainly his legs, yikes)

This was my . . . third attempt at an Iron Warriors colour scheme. My first was all metals; silver and gold. I liked it as a young teenager, but the contrast was terrible and I didn't actually have strong enough gold to shine past the bright silver. My second attempt didn't get very far, I gave up on it. My third one was actually based off of a colour scheme I created in Dawn of War, a 40k-themed RTS for anyone who doesn't know about it. Dark base, bright bone-coloured highlights. The game taught me how to better make a recognisable army palette at a glance. Sadly I didn't get much further before I left for university, and completely ran out of time for the hobby.

You'll see more of my paint style evolving in another post, when I get to the Khorne lot. They were the very first I started painting - the originals I did not take photos of, hah - but also some of the very last. I had two main Chaos armies, Iron Warriors (plus random bits like Horus) and a Khornate Cult. They'll come in a later post, this is getting big enough as it is! As well as a certain Skaven monstrousity Commodore wanted to see

 

[Commodore]

With Green Stuff in all his joints, he stands higher than (old) Abbadon

I bet Horus's arms actually stay attached to his body too...unlike a certain Despoiler we all know.

Love those Iron Warriors too. Did you do the yellow and black stripes freehand or did you have a stencil/masking tape to keep them straight?

 

[Gorbles]

I bet Horus's arms actually stay attached to his body too...unlike a certain Despoiler we all know.

Love those Iron Warriors too. Did you do the yellow and black stripes freehand or did you have a stencil/masking tape to keep them straight?

Freehand!

I'm not sure I could do it anymore, at least not for very long painting sessions. Used to hurt my hands being that precise, and that was a long time ago now.