Arkhanist

For those unfamiliar, powerwash simulator is a game where you use a water pressure washer to wash dirt off various filthy things in sections; buildings, a wide variety of vehicles, fairground rides etc with different nozzles (power vs spray width), one scene at a time. It's not exactly AAA graphics, but it's relaxing and meditative - much more fun than real cleaning! My moderate gaming PC happily runs it at 100+ FPS. They've done various themed DLC (some paid, some free) addons to the main game, and this is now the 40K one, if you fancy cleaning the mud and blood off a land raider etc.

I doubt the exception for Death Company will last beyond the next Blood Angels supplement, as the firstborn and intercessor sheets seem certain to be merged ala sternguard. At best, jump pack Death Company will get the vanguard vet treatment with heirloom weapons; they could also just restrict them down to the contents of the new jump pack intercessors kit i.e. bolt pistols and chainswords only. Either way, I expect them to end up with the datasheet options of the relevent jump pack/assault/bolt rifle intercessor kits and no more, whether you use firstborn or primaris models. A squad that can all take melta pistol&power fists OR all BP&chainsword etc does not seem like it's going to last long in the 10th ed design space.

Blood Angels at least deploy jump pack assault marines from high altitude thunderhawks so they can deep strike onto the battlefield. Using grav chutes to help offset the splat risk, especially given a Primaris marine is presumably heavier than his firstborn equivalent, would reduce fuel use by not having to do as heavy a landing burn, so they can fight for longer. Similar benefit, though smaller, when doing a long assault jump. Running out of fuel and having to ditch the jump pack has happened in the fluff; specifically Dante in Devastation of Baal. I definitely prefer it to the anti-splat grav sled boots they gave incursors and suppressors! The two additional swivel thrusters they should make it easier to pick your precision land spot somewhat while coming in for landing after a powered jump. The old MK IV mono jump packs (still used by Sanguinary Guard) have two very similar side thrusters for exactly that, so it's not like it's a new idea in 40k. I don't mind the idea of the calf thrusters, but they're just freaking huge, and the logistics of how they're powered and where they get air from just makes my head hurt. Still, I'm happy to FINALLY get primaris scale assault troops in models and datasheet, even if I end up just putting the new design packs on assault intercessors. I've been waiting for them since 2017!

Having a nu-height gold-helmeted company command squad, with attached sanguinary priest if possible, escort a foot Captain is cool enough for me! (though if we could get a very old school Honour Guard squad with jump packs, that would be even better!)

That's a lot of brush soap! I've always got my brush clean between colours just by painting on paper (gets the worst off), then a rapid back and forth in water, run against edge of water pot, blotting on paper to see if clean, and repeat that sequence until the brush is blotting clean. I usually only soap a brush after 2 or 3 sessions (and leave it on for a bit to condition the brush) when I can start to feel it in the body of the bristles; longer for my less important brushes. I do end up with a lot of dagger strokes on my blotting paper though, and I try to make sure I don't let paint dry on the brush - if painting a large area, I'll wash the brush in water several times while still on the same colour. I also use army painter brushes for bulk work, and keep my kolinsky ones for smaller and detail work. After testing it, the paint puck definitely reduces the amount of water and blotting I need to do so a brush comes out visually clean; 1, maybe 2 rub and swirl vs 3 or 4 without, and the scrubby looks like it perform the same function.

I picked up a set of these 'paint puck' silicone brush cleaners a while back to go at the bottom of my water jar; it does feel like it gets the brush cleaner, quicker. (the suction cup holds it firmly to the bottom of the pot). I don't smoosh the bristles or scrub it hard, just run it against them. They've been quite popular as a fine art tool for a while, so should be ok. I suspect a spare one would also work nicely as a drybrush blotter for getting off excess paint but I keep forgetting to try it! No apparant damage to my kolinsky brushes so far, though I do also regularly use Masters brush cleaner.

Huh, the extra detailing and extra greebles e.g. on the pack that makes it look a bit 3rd party are what make me really like this model! It feels like proper custom artificer plate for a high ranking officer without being too legion specific. That precise helmet wouldn't fit great in either of my legions, but that's an easy swap. Nice pose that's not too extreme but still has movement, I'd love to do a veteran squad with a bunch of those backpacks, given one of the known weaknesses of MKIII is the stock powerplant struggles with the weight.

Here in the UK I hear constantly people complaining about energy prices, broadband, and supermarket food pricing. And all 3 are often noted as greedflation, where prices are going up faster than inflation to keep profit margins up despite shrinking demand. The difference is those are necessities of life, while GW is a hobby. And even so people are indeed buying less food, or cheaper versions, using their heating less (this winter is going to be another tough one), and driving for essentials only. I live too far from work to cycle, and I can't 3d print food, electricity or petrol. I can however 3d print models for painting for much less, and am doing that significantly more (mostly bits to customise my existing backlog, rather than new models). I'm buying less of other forms of entertainment, like streaming, books and eating out too, and I know I'm not alone.

Just another thumbs up for a vortex mixer here; getting old and creaky sucks, but mixing paint is trivial with a mixer. I've GW metallics that have *never* been fully mixed until I vortex'd em. Adding a paint-safe mixer ball of some sort will speed things up for tricky (contrast) or thick paints. I posted these over 2 years ago, and it's working just as well as it was then. before: after ~15 seconds on mixer: The four E's mixer is one a lot of people have as it was almost the only option in that size for a good while, but it's basically science lab equipment hence the price. The much cheaper alternative ones should be fine too, as long as they're similar e.g. about 5000 RPM; the build quality may be lower, but the 4E is built like a tank which is probably overkill given we're not using the thing for hours a day. As always, if your paint has dried out a bit and is too thick to easily mix, adding in a few drops of medium, e.g. contrast medium or lahmian medium (plus a mixer ball) will help it to liquify and mix much more easily, without affecting coverage as thinning the pot with just water can. I tend to do it from the get go with base paint thickness equivalents.

New scouts - finally! Blockhead boys were really showing their age... Happy that jump pack intercessors are finally out. The kit is fine, though rather limited posing and I can see it not being to everybody's taste. But can kitbash in intercessors and assault intercessors and pretty much any old tacticus models by adding a jump pack, and assault arms aren't hard to come by, so they'll work just like we used to do for assault marines/DC/vanguard/tactical kitbashes for alt poses. Losing the calf mini jet would actually be a bonus... Presumably Death Company JP intercessors will be a thing for Blood Angels; the options will likely be limited to chainsword and pistol, same as foot DC assault intercessors, but that's actually not all terrible when doing that option with classic JP DC costs the same as giving them all e.g. powerfist and plasma pistol. Purely personally, it always felt a bit odd giving your not-coming-back suicide troops the absolutely rarest and most treasured weapons from the armoury.... Really like the new chaplain; being cleaner and less cluttered than the older ones is actually nice, though I think he'll be getting a spiky iron-halo style thingie on top. The rest of the kits feel a bit superfluous given I have leviathan, but easy access to new scale terminator legs will be helpful to kitbash with e.g. my spare blood angels assault terminators arms and bling. And I'm glad those that have been waiting for MPK versions instead of monopose haven't had too long to wait. All I need now is some time in RL to actually model and paint Leviathan...

With the very high humidity lately due to the rain, I'm not surprised the army painter spray went badly - one of the main reasons I switched to airbrushing myself! Matt or satin varnish over frosting will do basically nothing as you've discovered. Frosting is caused by an excessively rough surface; usually the matting agent clumps up due to not being shaken enough, sprayed from too far away and it dries mid-air (with AP sprays you do want to be pretty close and fast, light coat passes), or, most likely in this case, high humidity caused it to clump mid-air. The goal is to fill in around the excessively rough surface to get a smooth, glossy one again, so you can then start-over to get the final finish you want. This is the idea behind olive oil, it acts as a gloss oil finish, though obviously not the durability of varnish! I find gloss varnish more effective. I'd double down on the vallejo gloss by hairy stick you've already done. 'ardcoat is okish, but it's not a very glossy varnish, so not ideal for this and you'd need a bunch of layers. Apply the vallejo gloss in thin layers and let fully dry each time (several hours min), on each area that is still frosted - may take several if the frosting is particularly bad. Once the frosting is all gone (or as much as you can) and you've got a full glossy dried mini, you can then do a thin layer or two of matt or satin to get the final look, hopefully without frosting this time! For this final finish coat, either get the airbrush out and do it properly :) or a thin coat of the same vallejo matt by hairy stick will also work, just slower. I'd avoid the rattlecans until the weather improves, and humidity in particular is much lower.

Well one obvious potential reason is to make taking tactical squads less convenient and flexible, to continue to gently nudge us to buying more primaris and less firstborn before they eventually retire the kit in a few more years. The tactical squad remains a pretty popular purchase for now, so it won't happen overnight. We'll see if they stick to the decision come the codex, but I expect the indexes to be a preview of that ratchet effect rather than an aberration. e.g. we now know bikes, scouts, land speeders, assault squads etc are either going away, or being merged with their primaris replacements ala sternguard, so I expect the 10 man tac squad to be a permanent change, which of course has the knock on effect of also making the razorback less useful etc. The only suprising thing for me really is that it's taken this long to put the squeeze on people with old firstborn armies, I was expecting it to happen a bit faster.

I have a bigger and more impressive beard* than you, so my dwarf thane gets to re-roll hits. I shudder to think what the 40k equivalent would be. I have more cthulu tentacles than you, so my swarmlord gets to re-roll wounds? * I do, in fact, have a beard.

So new players don't even need to know how to count. It's what they did with AoS, and now they've done it to 40k. You buy a box, you build it exactly as instructed, making maybe one choice, and put the contents in your list. 40k, Simplified. At least we skipped what they did 1st time round in AoS, where they dropped points entirely and you just literally took what you thought was fair, until backlash forced them to introduce the 'optional' generals handbook. And oh god, the 'funny' rules where you got literal dice roll bonuses based on time of day or stuff like "if you hold aloft a goblet and shout 'for the lady' in a heroic voice". It was a shock coming from WFB, that's for sure. GW apparently think their target market are mentally 8 year olds.

Whatever nice organisation scheme I ever end up arranging my paints into, it usually descends into near madness in short order... I've one rack of Contrast, one rack of pro-acryl (they've effectively replaced citadel base paints for me), one rack of citadel layers, one rack of air paints in droppers, and one rack of miscellanous in droppers. I then have a toolbox which holds my non-standard bottles; vallejo metal color, inks, flory clay weathering washes etc. Certain key paints like white, black and mediums never leave my painting tray. I also have a big box of rarely used paints stored elsewhere; I find it *really* hard to throw old paints away. I need to purge some more from my miscellaneous rack (like my army painter paints that I hardly ever use) into there so I can decant a bunch of layer paints into droppers! Organising by colour kinda works, but I don't get too picky about it as I tend to accumulate paints from my current project in a huddle on my desk. Organising alphabetically breaks as soon as you buy a new paint and realise you have to shuffle half a rack over to accomodate it.