40k – Grimmleigh's Lab

40k Orks Project: Krumptoof’s Krumpas

I got another squad of boyz done, which is a surprise even to me! I struggle to paint large armies anymore, but the new Warhammer 40,000 Ork Boyz are really pretty cool, so I think I owe it to myself to finish them off!

Officially I am a little over half way finished figure count wise with the Ork half of the Armegeddon box. There’s 11 Grots, a Big Boss, a Little Boss, a Banna Boy, a Pain Boy and a Weird Boy left for foot troops, with a couple of vehicles to finish as well. But that’s the pudding course on this project, it’s always the chaff that trips me up.

Krumptoof is a particularly nasty Nob, with a penchant for cruelty even for an Ork. His superiors adore him for this, so if any other nasty, ill-tempered boyz start making a name for themselves, they’re certain to end up in Krumptoof’s Krumpas!

Krumptoof started out with a dark blue basecoat and brown zenithal highlight, which was then drybrushed with a light ice yellow to bring out the details for my very tired old man eyes. This helps in a huge way and has become standard procedure for me!

After that, I give each area a wash with its respective contrast paint, also to help pop out detail so I don’t miss it. Then I started with skin tones, going from a dark green to a poppy swamp green, and highlighting that up with successive blends of ice yellow.

Everything else (except white) was also mixed with ice yellow to help unify the highlights throughout this model (and the rest of the squad, actually). Once everything looked how I wanted it, I dabbled on some rust effect from Army Painter, which really helped bring out some dynamic contrast with the vibrant blue.

Also, I love the squig. More squigs, please!

The running theme with these guys is the blue being used to pick out the armor plates and weapons, and everything else (except the skin) being fairly muted. No direct yellows, bright reds, lots of ochre, mustard, and washed-out purples and greys.

The rust effect was surprising for me, it takes some work to get on the model because it’s actually textured a little, and leaves a pretty convincing rust on the areas that you apply it. I liked it so much that I ended up going back and applying the rust on Skullpuncha’s Ladz, too.

The last step is a diluted wash with Army Painter Strong Tone, which helps dull down the areas I wanted dulled, and pulls down the sharp contrasts I had in the skin highlights. I do dilute the strong tone about 50/50 with acrylic medium, which helps keep it from overwhelming the model.

Next up, Grots! And I’m challenging myself to just paint the little idiots and not obsess over them. I rarely make it past Grots on an Ork project without burning out!

I’m also thinking about statting out some boyz using the Pulp Alley rules to see how that goes, just for something fun to do on my own. I’ve been reading through the rules the last few days, and they look like they might be a lot of fun for solo gaming!

Take care, everyone! Make sure to take some time to paint today, it’s good for your soul.

-Leigh

Warhammer 40,000

40k Ork Army Project: Grimmguttz’ Lads

This project has been a funny one, and an oddly therapeutic one. Accidentally therapeutic. Weirdly therapeutic.

Anyone who has been around this ramble factory for more than a minute knows of my love/hate/adoration/ambivalent relationship with Games Workshop. I freaking love 40k, and have for nearly 40 years.

And I kinda hate what it’s become, and the all consuming capitalist machine GW has become. I’ve been consuming GW media for nearly as long as there has been a GW, and while the games haven’t always been perfect, they were always pretty free spirited and anti-establishment.

Early Warhammer 40,000 was brimming to near overflow with the kind of punk energy that came to life to counter the Thatcher/Reagan political machine, and thumbing through a book or White Dwarf was sometimes akin to putting on a Black Flag album and knowing you weren’t alone in being pissed off at the direction the world was going.

Now, I look at GW and it feels a bit like running into someone I used to know in the old scene, but they’re sporting a suit and clutching scripture while desperately trying to fit in to the corpo world.

ICKY! It feels icky! Modern GW is pretty much everything classic GW was making fun of. Those guys weren’t worried about stock dividends and shareholder satisfaction. They wanted toy soldiers of comically fascist orks, disposable infantry, and uber-men that poked fun at the macho swagger that polluted the entertainment sphere of the time.

So, where does that leave an old-timer like me? I still love that space. I still enjoy the franchise. But it’s a lot like Disney era Star Wars– You’re playing my song, you’re hitting the right beat, but I’ll be damned if you aren’t much more than a pretty good cover band…

This Ork project was one I went in to with pretty open arms and a fairly open mind. I love miniatures, I love painting miniatures. Sometimes, I even enjoy playing the games that are out there that I use to justify loving miniatures. But I’m not a fan of the modern holders of the license, and their interpretation of the rules and I don’t mix well.

But, if I want to play a game with anyone, I pretty much have to have some grasp on 11th edition. So, my solution is to have a Combat Patrol sized force, with an army that hasn’t changed much unit wise since the edition I did like, which was 4th. Again, I know it has problems. But I know how to work around those problems, and it feels like properly cinematic wargaming to me.

Grimmguttz is my Warmaster, and he’s the dessert portion of this painting project. He’s also a little nod to my situation, as I use Grimmleigh* as a pen-name, and my guts tried to kill me. So, Grimmguttz. You’ll see him in a couple of weeks.

Grimmguttz in 11th will be leading a couple of squads of Boyz, a squad of Grots, a Weirdboy, and a buggy. In 11th, I’ll probably put some other goodies like Killa Kans and Dredds, but I’m not in a hurry.

Here’s the first squad of Boyz, lead by Skullpuncha. He’s the farthest up the leadership ladder this squad has with the Deathskulls, so he gets a little blue tattoo action. Everyone else has a little blue worked into their wargear, but they have to earn anything more.

I wanted to lean into a little pirate look for these guys, so there isn’t a unifying color scheme outside of the blue bits here and there. But I did do some stripes on some of the clothes, and plan on doing some other fun marking on boyz that have more clout in the gang.

The rule of thumb I’m trying to go by is that gear bigger than basic shootas should be stolen, so I’ll be stealing lascannons and other goodies from my bits box. I want these guys to look like they’re really only out there fighting because krumpin’ is the best way to get stuff to pinch!

The other rule is that nothing else is getting worked on until this Combat Patrol is done, which is driving me crazy… I like to have a buffet of projects in front of me, but I’m hoping that the desire to paint other stuff will help me buckle down and finish all the Orks I currently have!

The best part of this project, for me, at least, is that these guys translate pretty cleanly into 4th edition 40k. While 11th doesn’t let you do any gear shopping, I can clearly buy extra goodies and gear for my troops in 4th. So, while they don’t have a heavy weapon option for their squad yet, there’s room to buy one later, when Skullpuncha has earned the Teef for it.

Here’s the unit in 4th edition, clocking in at 70 points:

Here’s that same unit for 11th, which is 90 points no matter what I do equipment wise:

Like I said before, I like to shop for my toys. So even though the first unit actually cost the same 90 points as the second one if I buy the kombi-weapon, the fact that I can field 9 basic mooks and a nob for less points and build them up as I like them is a huge win.

Plus, the 40k rules for Killteam mean I can pick bits and pieces from a larger Ork army to make a cool action squad, which is always aces in my book! I’ll show that off as I get closer!

*Grimmleigh is a nod to The Damned song ‘Grimly Fiendish’ from the ’80s, which in itself was a nod to a long running comic strip in the UK… I’m not British, but my name is Leigh and I like that damned song, hahaha!

Workbench

The Workbench: Finished Models for September 13th, 2026

With last week being dominated by Trench Crusade, I thought it would be good to check back in with the overall backlog and see how things are moving along!

Black Templars Project

My friend Jackson is just about the best person you could hope to know. I’ve been fortunate to have quite a few friends like that, which is great for me! Jackson has a huge Black Templars army and I was happy to get in there and start painting them up. It’s funny, because this batch is the latest in a project that has been going on for about 7 months, I should probably post the rest of them sometime!

The Battle Standard Bearer is a fun one, still a little over-wrought with fiddly detail for my liking but I can’t deny the final product looks pretty spiffy. (Jackson has his own basing scheme that he likes to do, so that’s why the bases are unfinished)

I have no idea what this tank is, it’s a transport of some sort, but I stopped paying attention to what worked with Space Marines when Primaris stuff came out and made Rhinos useless. Getting rid of Rhinos would be like taking Space Mountain out of Disneyland. I’m against it. Still, the transport does look cool, it’s floaty, and reminds me of my Uncle’s El Camino.

Also not sure on the rest of these dudes, they have swords and shields, and I like knights. So I guess they are knights now? Fun to paint regardless.

And this last guy looks like a Chaplain. A big, grumpy chaplain.

Dracula’s America

Still plugging away at this warband, which I’ll be using Gangfight rules for when they’re ready to rock. There are two Draugur gunslingers and the vampire boss, all are 28mm metal casts from Northstar Military Figures in England. After painting a metric ton of Space Marines, I am really loving the opportunity to paint a classic feeling sculpt. I know they’re lacking in detail, but they just ooze personality, and I love knowing someone sculpted these by hand and cast them the old way. Not a knock against modern production methods, but I love the old method. It puts me in a very happy place!

Marvel Crisis Protocol: The Living Mummy

This guy makes me so damned happy. As previously discussed, I am a sucker for the old 70’s monster craze that hit Marvel and DC. The Living Mummy made his debut in I think 1974, and had sporadic releases for a few decades. He’s never been anything more than a minor character, so getting a really good miniature for him is part of why Marvel Crisis Protocol keeps me in its thrall. Fun stuff.

Warhammer 40,000: Orks

This is the project I’ll be working on the most for the next week or two, just getting the Orks from the new Armageddon boxed set finished. The New Antioch warband project from Trench Crusade was really satisfying to finish, and now I’m thinking that I’ll be approaching most of my projects like that. Just getting into a squad or two and getting them done, and being satisfied that they’re not sitting in the queue waiting forever for me to get to them.

I’m painting these guys up as Deathskulls, which will be fun since they steal everything they can get their hands on. That will help me keep off the boredom once the box set is done, I’ll be taking bits from other armies and adding them to kits to make it look like they’re just booting around with looted gear.

As for 11th edition 40k, I owe it a little debt for the freedom it gave me. I played a couple of games, bounced right off of the rules, the terrain layout, and the constant re-rolls (constant re-rolls feel like sloppy writing to me). This led me to pull out my old 4th edition books, and I remembered what I liked about 40k at the turn of the Milennium.

I like choice. I like fussing about with a list, buying wargear, building out the flavor of the unit. I could care less about meta, I just want to tell a story when I play a game. There is not a single person I know that’s interested in trying 4th out, so I’ll be doing anything I do with these minis on my own.

Which is freedom, frankly. 4th edition is far from perfect, but it’s fun for me, I know what I need to fix to make it work a little better, and I can build narrative lists that tell the kind of stories I want to tell with dice.

I have some Red Corsairs, Space Wolves, Inquisition, and Eldar Raiders that I’ll be building out to help tell those stories, but since this is just for me and NOT something that has to chase new rules collections, I’ll just be taking my time and getting this stuff together as the urge hits me.

After the orks, I’ll be tackling the new Trench Crusade two player box, and rounding out my Konflikt ’47 groups as well.

Until next time, friends! May the point of your brush remain ever sharp!

Warhammer 40,000

The Salt Mines: 40k Space Wolves

Anyone who has followed this blog for a longer period of time knows that I’ve been struggling with Warhammer 40,000 for a while. I’ve been playing off and on since 1989, and I honestly can’t stand the business model. If that game needs to be updated every three years after being in print for close to four decades? You’re doing a shit job.

*He’s mean! He’s beardy! He’s not a dwarf! But he should have a hammer anyway!*

Sadly, most of my friends have a bad case of 40k Fever. It’s pretty much all they want to play, so I can either NOT play games with them and happily plug away on my other projects, or I can put together something that I do like in the lore and grumble about it a lot.

Yeah, I’m a bundle of fun. People line up around the block to play games with me.

Space Wolves have always had a special place in my heart. They don’t care about the Codex Astartes, they look like they can pilot a longboat, and beards are cool. Plus, they have wolves. Wolves are cool.

I’m going to put together a total of 2,000 points for this army, for a game I really don’t like, just because the people I play with are a lot of fun and I don’t want to NOT play games with them!

Still not sure how to keep engaged enough to learn the janky ass rules without lighting it all on fire, though. Sure, One Page Rules has a good alternative, but good luck getting anyone with 40k Fever to break from the GeeDubs greed train. Grumble grumble.

I’ll have some Terminators up soon, and probably a Rhino or two. And some Bloodclaws and a Dreadnaught. That’s still not 2,000 points, but that’s what I own already, so it’ll have to do for now, hahaha!

Miniatures, Warhammer 40,000

Let’s Throw That Color Scheme OUT THE WINDOW

When the 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000 came out, I fell into a trap that I tend to set for myself. I jumped head first into a horde army, knowing full well that my sensibilities are far more skirmish game sized.

I painted up a Carnifex to test a color scheme I had percolating in my head for Tyranids, and it’s pretty neat, right?

Thanks. I loved it. And then, 25 minis into that scheme, started to hate it. Loathe, even. The type of loathing that I tend to reserve for B Movie villains and bad barristas.

I moved on to another color scheme, and while it was spiffy to look at, I was faced with the same problem. Painting the same color scheme, over and over and over and over and over a hundred times is no longer something I have any patience for!

Slowly, something began to dawn on me. Why on earth was I painting a horde of space bugs a uniform color scheme? How about if the colors the bugs end up has more to do with what biomass they consumed than some Grand Color Scheme from the stars?