Kommander Sorscha

 

Kommander Sorscha of the Khador faction, from the Warmachine game, by Privateer Press. One of the earliest "classic" figures from this company, despite the somewhat goofy pose. The traditional Khador colours are red, black, and gold. So I went for blue-grey and steel-silver ;).

 

 

Goblin Hack 'n' Slash

 A Goblin Hero from Gamezone Miniatures. Again quite comparable to Games Workshop's old/mid-skool style (not their modern rubbish), but even more charicatured. This was....variable to paint. Most of it was okay, the weapons were really fun getting a strong blended metallic, but the hood did not turn out as planned...  My red recipe was b0rked with not enough red in the mid-tones, and the complex folds and creases were exactly in between "textured enough to be effectively washable" and "clean enough to be easily blendable". So I'm not fully happy with that but the overall vibe I'm okay with.

Chaos Plaguelord

 

This is a model by Avatars Of War, but is a direct correlation with Games Workshop's style for Chaos warriors of Nurgle - the Chaos God of plague, pestilence, death and decay. Fitting, huh. Nurgle's traditional colour is a sickly rotting green, but I flipped this idea over and painted the armour in a bruised purple, with only the tabard in green, and used a dark turquoise plume and some verdigris to bridge the tones between that and the purple. I'm quite pleased with the result, having clear recipes for the purple and copper helped.

Doom Eternal: Real Talk Guide To Dealing With The Bullshit

 Doom Eternal: Real Talk Guide To Dealing With The Bullshit

N.B. This highlights various difficulties and issues with the game and thus has a negative tone, which is only part of the picture. There are a lot of good things about the game and the better prepared you are for the various perculiarities and frustrations, the more you'll be able to appreciate the good stuff.

1. This is not the straight up action shooter you're looking for...
It might look like it on the surface. You do move around, shoot demons, and actually the core combat is theoretically very good. But it is overwhelmed and cluttered with many other gameplay aspects i.e.:

Double jump - Dash - Double dash - Trapeze bars - Wall climbing - Grappling hook - Glory kills - Chainsaw kills - Blood punch - Sword - Flame belch - Offfhand grenade - Offhand ice grenade - Two alt fire modes for most weapons - Demonic kitchen sink and all.

Jesus. Yeah. This is not the Doom you remember. There are a lot of game guides on the internet. Most of them have words of wisdom like "keep moving in combat arenas" (really??) and "chainsaw zombies in between arenas to get ammo" (like the game shows you 2 minutes in...). Utterly useless (apart from the occasional boss / mini-boss guide). They don't tell you that you need a different approach from the start, so here we go...

2. It's a gimmick shooter, learn the gimmicks straight away.
Apart from glory kills and chainsaw kills which are shown prominently earlier on, the gimmicks are mostly presented as fun optional extras. They're not, the game is fundamentally balanced around them. So you need to base your gameplay around them, rather than just straight up shooting. Ideally you'll genesplice yourself with an octopus for the constant weapon changing / alt fire / alt-fire changing / off-hand / off-hand changing / multiple melee options, but failing that, at least focus on them early on. This includes getting a comfortable configuration for those extras - and for weapon changes because you'll be low on ammo a lot. 

Practise all the options even when you don't need them, because you will bloody need them, almost all of them (including different combos of jump-dash). Even go to the basical tutorial course or the arena in your homebase to practise. You'll be glad you did pretty soon. Also the glory kills are pretty funny / stylish / horrifying.

3. Read stuff and explore menus, yay!

Is that what you signed up for, instead of just jumping in the game?? No....but it does really help.  There's bloody loads of options in the menu so you might as well play around and try to get it as comfortable as possible. Again, not what you expect from a streamlined FPS, but worth tinkering with. On the subject of boring menu stuff, read all the codexes about the monster weaknesses too, it can save plenty of ammo / time. BTW, monsters have good damage skins, if you can see them through the effects they're worth heeding to focus your fire.

4. Warm-up with deathmatch FFA, parkour platformers, and boss combat games
If it was a straight action shooter you might warm up by playing some Doom, Quake, Quake 2, Painkiller, modern Wolfenstein games, etc. Pretty much useless for DE. More realistically, a recent diet of, say, Quake Champions FFA deathmatch (for the very deathmatchy arena chaos - including learning to care a lot less about losing health or dying), Mirror's Edge or Ghostrunner (for the parkour platforming sections), and a bit of a Soulsborne game of your choice (for the fun of the Marauder mini-bosses and the few but lengthy main bosses) will get you into the spirit more.

5 Expect the other bullshits:
A. The upgrade bullshit
Just like there being a lot of movement / melee / off-hand gimmicks, there's a lot of upgrade gimmicks. And most of these affect the other gimmicks, rather than desirably basic factors like "more armour" or "stronger plasma balls". Best to look into them fairly closely to see what will make the gameplay more palatable - and best to keep exploring as despite their fiddliness, the benefits do add up. One thing to note is that most levels have points where you can't backtrack from so keep using the map to make sure you're not missing potentially useful stuff.
Keep an eye out for: Armour upgrades - Weapon upgrades for each alt-fire mode - Crystal upgrades for stats and extra gimmicks - Rune upgrades for extra....stuff - Home base items to access more upgrades.

Be warned that some upgrades and weapon mods are far better than others at certain points....e.g. best get the shotgun grenade mod to start to avoid wasting the tiny ammo pool with the auto shotty mod.

B. The OTT effects bullshit
A reliable fundamental of straight up shooter gameplay is being able to see what you're doing. DE dispenses with that misguided and outdated concept and throws such a vast amount of hallucinatory and obfuscatory visual clutter at you it's more like being in a rave held at an autopsy than it is playing a shooter. Expect masses of lurid plasma and fireball attacks, enemies flaming red due to your flamebelch, enemies flaming red due to a Buff Totem, enemies flaming red due to an Archvile summoning, Dread Knights flaming red for the sheer annoyance of it, enemies flashing orange and blue for glory kills, constant explosions, showers of items for glory / chainsaw kills, constant centreprint notifications for low health / low ammo (a state the game intends you to be in a lot)....and one of the worst design decisions in any game, a moronic red haze at low health, specifically to punish you and distract you when you need the most clarity. There's not many ways to avoid the visual mess, except:
- You can turn down the saturation (but not brightness) of the item showers in a menu option....somewhere.
- Upgrading health via crystals earlier on reduces the chance of dipping into red haze low health.
- You can get rid of some of the HUD notifications in the menu options.

C. The Marauder bullshit
Just bullshit. You'll know what I mean.

Pistol Dwarf!

 

I forget which company this was from but they were doing some nice old skool style metal sculpts. I'm quite pleased with my colour scheme on this, especially getting some subtle "rough fabric" hatching on the hat and cloak.

LOTR Keeper Of Dungeons.

 

One of the very few Games Workshop recent releases that transcends their awful "grossly over-designed by committee to appeal to children and morons raised on World Of Warcraft and Monster Energy" current design philosophy, so I bought it and tried to paint it in a different style to the Forge World default. My theme was simply "cold". 

Copper Necron Lord

I'd already started this colour scheme before Games Workshop decided to copy it and use copper Necrons for their 40K revamp :P. This was a second-hand "Finecast" resin model from when GW decided to raise the prices and reduce the quality by using resin, and true to the Failcast reputation, the casting quality was horrible and took 2 hours to clean up as well as having missing pieces and irrepairable lumpy bits.

The blade and bone took ages to get smooth enough blends, but the copper was mercifully easy using a good basecoat colour and translucent bright coppers. Recipe as follows:

Copper:

1. Basecoat Screaming Bell
A very rich orangey copper, pretty much covers in one coat.
2. Black line all joins
Optional but useful for a model with many joins, tidy up with SB afterwards.
3. Wash Nuln Oil
Current Nuln Oil is weaker than the previous one so this doesn't dull it down too much.
4. Recoat Screaming Bell
Over most of the armour, leaving the recesses shaded. 
5. Layered highlight Hashut Copper
On the raised areas - a brightish translucent copper that doesn't need blending.
6. Layered highlight Sycorax Bronze
Ditto, but closer to the edges.
7. Blended glaze of Rhinox Hide into recesses
This brings back some colour and matt contrast into the reccess, much easier than trying to blend the metallics.
8. Edge highlight Mithril Silver
To get that nice crisp shiny edge.
9. Wash Agrax Earthshade 
To bring back some colour and tone down the brightness a bit.

Eldar Ranger

Another one donated by an online gaming friend. This time the colour scheme is all mine, but the cloak colour was actually inspired by watching a Starcraft 2 stream in bed one night (as I do most nights to wind down) and seeing some map designs with purple fading to electric blue, so I thought I'd give it a try! Again a bit of distracting varnish shine in the photos but I need it to stop my sweaty paws rubbing off painted areas.

Orc Shaman

Donated to the TEAMShambler painting cause by Kinn aka Slenge from his extensive suggestion of 'hams. He suggested the split colour scheme for the robe, and he was right! Subdued court jester style. The photos don't quite do it justice due to varnish and light reflections, but here you go...

Painting Tips And Tricks.

A few personal ones from the last few decades.... There's a shit load of information on the internet from "two thin coats" to "juicing" to "zenithal undercoat spraying" etc etc. These are ones that I've worked out myself to be useful. Particular favourites marked with an asterisk.


General tactics:

1. Put a layer of soft foam on your painting tray / desk. So when you drop the model you don't fuck it. *

2. Leave the top of the head / weapon tips for last as you're more likely to hold them / rub paint off. *

3. If you're prone to rubbing paint off protruding sections (I am), then paint over them as you finish them with matt varnish. It makes touching up mistakes a bit harder....but still easier than touching up lots of worn areas. *

4. After doing a matt spray varnish, recoat the metals etc with gloss, or at least, satin varnish.

5. Get a pipette to thin down extra thick paints in their pots, easier than dabbing lots of water in.

6. Paint bases first if they're going to involve lots of dry-brushing / stuff next to the model's feet. Feet are less likely to mess up than the base and the base will need less fastidious touching up.

7. When you're starting to paint, take care early on to get the desired level of painting quality, so you've got a standard that's suitable to stick to. I.e. avoid spending 5 hours on Golden Demon-winning undergarments and then realising you don't want to extrapolate that to a 60 hour model to make everything match that quality.

8. For larger / more complex models, avoid getting daunted by the size / timescale by simply applying paint each session you tackle it - don't think about the whole model or even the whole area you're doing, just focus on each paint coat and you can get over "the hump".


Preparation:

9. A thin wash (thinned black or a wash paint) can be pretty useful on the bare metal / plastic / resin to check mould lines and flaws to clean.

10. After the main cleaning a soft brass brush is great for final cleaning / scrubbing to get a smoother surface - on tin-based models only, not lead-based!! *

11. Sub-assemblies - lots of people like separating models into sub-assemblies, but my general motto: if it's really hard to get a brush too, it's probably really hard to see, so glue it together and just make sure there's some darkness inside there. But sub-assemblies can also be useful to avoid spreading paint on the rest of the model, sometimes base-coating / shading subs are enough.

12. If you do have sub-assemblies, put a wee blob of blu-tac over the areas that will be glued together - easier to glue and saves cleaning paint off them later. *

13. A useful "mixed" undercoat is a black spray undercoat followed immediately by a faint white spray undercoat, or even a fine white drybrush once dry. This gives a neutral surface, a bit of texture, but dark shadows.


Colours:

14. It can be worth blocking out all / most of the base colours in thinned down base colour first - it gives you an idea of how a colour scheme is going to work, and can sometimes reduce the amount of overspill with later final base coats. *

15. Keep all mundane areas (pouches, straps, buckles, wraps, handles, etc) in simple colours with simple painting. They'll look more natural, won't detract from intended colours, and as "supporting" areas they don't need fancy painting, just some definition.

16. Sometimes, especially for batch painting, it's useful to choose a colour scheme around the paint colours with best coverage. Within reason of course - no pink orcs - but it can definitely speed things up.

17. Maybe shade with muted colours or black added to the mix. Shadows are relatively desaturated in reality so it can look pretty natural.

18. Maybe stick to similar hues of the mid-tone / base colour for highlighting - again it can be more natural and usually makes smooth transitions easier. *

19. Contrast....look at your WIP model with black and white vision. Then you'll see if it has enough contrast overall.

20. If you have a bunch of old inks, and of course at least Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade, don't buy coloured washes for small areas, a tiny bit of the ink mixed into a new Wash will work well.


Techniques:

21. Just like Quake textures, don't think of the surface as "what am I going to paint on top of this", instead think of it as "what is this actual substance", and that will encourage painting that suits the surface (which obviously can be dyed fabric or painted armour or daemonic skin and thus open to lots of creativity in that case.

22. Make the model angle and the brush work with you - hold and angle the model so you can flow along the suitable painting lines, use the edge of the brush on edges if needed. *

23. Most modern tutorial waffle on about really thinning paint down. Yes this can be useful but equally in the right circumstances (edges etc), straight out of the pot can be fine.

24. To get strong highlights in the right place, paint an area of solid highlight colour within the area you're going to highlight, then blend / translucent layer towards that to get the usual smooth transition. This also is a good tactic for blocking out and planning highlights (and maybe touching up with the previous colour before the blending stage).

25. Metals can work great with Washes (almost cheating, they're so easy), keeping the shadows matt as the metal wouldn't reflect light there, and some small bright highlights on edges and points that would reflect the light. Thinned paints dabbed on can provide a nicely dusty matt rust effect too.

Grot Tank!

Bring in the big guns.... I've always liked this cute and characterful little tank. Recently muk0r on #terrafusion has been posting pics of plastic tank and train kits he's made and painted with nice weathering, so I got inspired to join in and weather the shit out of this one. The basic painting is cruder than normal but it still took me 3 times longer than a normal figure due to the complexity. I think it works okay with the weathering and theme of the model overall, though.

PURPLE!

4 Pot challenge - black, white, silver, purple:
(I hadn't actually intended to do another 4 pot challenge but a friend of mine asked for purple and I found this Daemonette and I'm pretty chuffed with it as the painting worked exactly how it should)

Also... SQUIG:
Gotta love a good squigo and this fella is a classic. Painting is a bit rough from drybrushing but fuck highlighting all those scales individually - life, even in the misery of lockdown, is too short.

4 Pot Painting Challenge.

Four pots of paint only: black, white, silver, and one coloured paint. I originally started this....in 2005 maybe?? With one figure, and a pot of red paint:

Challenging but satisfying especially getting so many different tones from the same hue.

15 years later I've completed the planned quadtrych:

GREEN:

YELLOW:

BLUE:

Space Marine And Plague Doctor

Lockdown Paintdown Part 1:

A Warhammer 40k Space Marine looking particularly arcane and knightly.

Lockdown Paintdown Part 2:

Plague Doctor aka The Cure Is Worse Than The Disease

(model is a Gas Goblin from Rackham)