Ace Debonair

Today in the Hobby I finally bought and tested out some paint markers for doing chapter symbols and the like, instead of trying to do it with a brush. They're a lot easier to use, though I couldn't get any super-tiny-fine ones and had to settle for some 0.7 mm ones. They're still pretty good! Once I've got some more models painted up that actually need me to do symbols, I'll be ready to test them out. I also finally finished painting my Arbites kill team that I've been working on since April, so that's pretty good. No pictures yet though since my phone is a super potato camera from the dawn of technology, and I'll need to borrow a better one.

I mean, I 100% agree. It's no substitute for a properly painted mini. (Or even a badly painted 20+ year old model, to be honest) But it's fun* for me to see my marines, or at least approximations thereof, with what looks like a proper Warhammer 40k background, like you'd get in a White Dwarf magazine or other official publication. But yes, it's just a novelty - Though I could see it having some application for trialling different colour schemes on an unpainted model, perhaps. *Ace's definition and use of "fun" here is malleable and subject to change, fun not guaranteed for all readers, terms and conditions apply, etc etc

It's also applied parts of the Agrax Earthshade wash from the newer model to the older model (especially around the wrists and hands); definitely unifying them a bit more. All in all, it's not a bad result, but as Shinespider pointed out, the Unforgivable Tech Heresy AI sure does have a strong preference towards older official helmets.

Oh boy, that's pretty cool, although definitely heresy. I had a picture of my first ever Space Marine and my most recent (circa 2023), which I ran through the unholy machine, using the same prompt as our honoured brother N1SB: I'm saddened it got rid of the quartered-style kneepad, amused by the added trim on the dragonskin pauldron and somewhat pleased by how it's reasoned the outer armour on my old marine's legs must be like the ones on the MK X armour. It has a lot of trouble with any of my marines where I'd used a converted Chaos Warrior helmet instead of the standard Mk VII / MK X, giving them instead a thinner version of the standard helmet (still cool, but I don't want to flood the thread with examples) Mostly though I'm laughing at how it's kept all the dust on venerable brother first-ever-marine's base. (He's been cleaned up since, don't fret!)

By the throne, that's incredible Does he patrol the mean streets of Githam City?

I'm a simple man, I'd just like an alternate infantry unit for Thousand Sons, something where the designers can go really crazy showing super-mutated Thousand Sons marines, where Tzeentch's wildest mutations are on display. I now realise that I'm in essence just asking for Thousand Sons-specific Possessed marines. But darn it, we got super gross body horror cultists in baseline CSM, so surely we could get some Flesh Change shenanigans going on for the 1k sons. (Magnus trying to use newly-gleaned and/or ancient magic to get around the flesh change, only for it to backfire for obvious reasons, or something to that effect) Also, obviously, Rubric Dreadnoughts please, ideally available ALSO as Sorcerer Dreadnoughts via a dual kit. Rules? I'll leave all that to the experts, or at least to GW.

Absolutely exquisite. Basically scumbags in shining armour, and I love it. Even better if everyone else genuinely believes the Unicorns to be actual paragons of virtuous humanity, even though they make no actual effort to seriously appear as such.

By the throne, these are incredible. My only real nit-pick is that I'd make it so the Blood of the Bull doesn't always trigger the Black Rage (partly for Astaroth-related reasons mentioned above, and partly for rule-of-cool), and maybe have drinking it and not succumbing to the Black Rage considered a necessary rite of passage to high rank (or entry into the First Company maybe).

I don't go in for Death Korps as a rule, but I really like the lighter-then-typical blue on the coat and pale helmet there. Very, very nice.

I'm back, and I brought some friends. A mixed bag of slightly Dragonball-inspired Eldar Guardian Defender / Storm Guardian NPOs for Kill Team, leaving me with just the Farseer, Six Jetbikes, Wraithlord, Swooping Hawks, Fire Dragons and ten Striking Scorpions left to paint before my eldar are completely finished. Alright maybe I bought a few too many things there, but at least most of them were cheap with the magazines and stuff.

This is all fantastic stuff; I've got a bunch of Necron warriors for my nephews to fight, plus a couple of the big three-legged guys I've forgotten the name of who would make great heavy brawlers. This looks like it'd be a fun challenge for them! Also I like the colour you've used for your terrain, as an aside. I'm currently thinking something in Space Wolf Grey contrast for my ones, but the reddy-orange looks good too.

Ah, a kindred spirit! I always paint every single part of the model separately, still on the sprue, at least up to the point where I'm going to apply washes/drybrushes/other things to bring out the details. Getting the base colours blocked in on-sprue helps me have less anxiety over which bits are even slightly visible on the completed model so I don't beat myself up over missing bits. My other habit: I can't generally have any other plans for the day when I start painting, otherwise I just stress myself out about being on a timer, even if I'm literally eight hours away from going out. I don't know why, since eight hours is enough time to paint and base a couple of models to my usual tabletop standard, even taking my perfectionist attitude into account, I just get panicky about being "on the clock". I can 100% recommend using spray primers, though, which I always do outdoors. I've never used a mask, but I have managed to spray-paint the flagstones white once or twice over the years. Generally I prime the entire sprue, but I also tend to get snow-blind as to what's done or not done so it often takes two attempts to get it right. But it's so much quicker than trying to prime everything by hand even with that taken into account, and these days having hobby time is harder and harder, so speed always wins out for me. My only other advice is always go for white or other light colour primers if you're going to use contrast paints; they're designed for use on top of light colours, and painting an even layer of white (or other bright colours) OVER black paint is a righteous pain in the neck. I can say that with the regret of way too much experience in that field!

As somebody who habitually gets really obsessive about it and paints literally every part of a model before I stick any of it together I can say, with the absolute certainty of someone who's done it this way for twenty years(!), that plastic glue works work just fine over paint. I can also say from plentiful experience that the glue does hold on a bit better over time if the paint in question is either really, really thin (like contrast paint) or scraped/filed/scrubbed away, but it's not 100% essential to make the parts stick. Oh, Unless any of the bits involved are resin, in which case superglue is definitely your friend, and ALWAYS dry fit parts first because superglue doesn't give second chances

That seems fair enough. I hadn't considered the idea of just making the 'power' swords into Wraithbone swords, that's a clever solution.

By a stroke of luck, I'm actually painting some Guardians now to use as NPOs next Christmas, so the timing on these is really good. EDIT: I'm a month late to the party on this topic, so actually *my* timing is awful The only minor quibble I have is that there are only five chainswords available for the Storm Guardians in the current kit, alongside seven power swords, and we have enough of a headache tracking all the book-keeping without counts-as-combat weapons that happen to look like power swords. Admittedly, that might just be a 'me' problem, and I have no problem house-ruling things a bit to make it easier for my nephews (and me, if I'm honest ) to keep track of. Also, if this was an intentional design decision (now I'm more awake I can see why you don't want squad-wide power weapons), then fair play.