Tag: Warhammer

Warhammer 40,000

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!

Workbench

Oops, I Did a Trench Crusade

Really, folks, I tried. It wasn’t for me, I said, fooling no one. It’s too gross, I said, not seeing past the butchered bits on some of the minis. It’s just another game, I said…

Then I looked at who had made Trench Crusade, and it’s literally a who’s who of designers that built my favorite game of all time, yes, the glorious brains that made Mordheim had assembled again, like the Avengers but probably more middle-aged and myopic. I thumbed through the rules, and the mechanics of the game system rolled over my eyes and directly into my brain.

This is the first time in nearly a decade that the rules to a game system have stuck with me just from reading the book. I know there’s some fine-tuning I’ll need to do, but the system is ridiculously simple and elegant at the same time.

I was still safe, though. I’m trying to stay away from resin minis because we just don’t know the long term health risks, and my doctors have encouraged me to just maybe not mess with something potentially toxic. Sadly for my wallet, that all changed when I stopped by my FLGS last week.

Glorious, beautiful, and down right dynamic plastic Trench Crusade figs were sitting there, playing a high-stakes game of chicken with my wallet. My wallet lost. I won.

Everything I love about plastic miniatures is front and center with the troops choices. You can put the weapons and heads you want on the bodies you want. Even the elites and command have a number of options, so you can just make what you want.

And as opposed to the modern GW system of “this is your dude, you get EXACTLY this and can’t change the weapons!”, you can put together pretty much whatever you want within certain limits. The Old World and Necromunda seem to be the only games that let you shop for gear, and that’s one of the reasons why I seem to like those two games… I want to shop, dammit!

This is the first time since Wild West Exodus that I bought some boxes of minis, went home, put them together, and just painted everything in a few days. It was amazing. I had the best time, and now I have 90% of a finished warband.

It’s also the first time ever that I’ve painted the entirety of a plastic range of miniatures, but that’s just because these just launched and there aren’t that many out yet.

Archon Studios did an amazing job with these minis, and the command and elite models are as good as anything I’ve picked up from GW.

My leader, the Hauptman I’ve name Karolina Katzenbach, has a tank-splitter sword and machine gun. She looks like she laughs in the face of danger!

The Feldkaplan (Field Chaplan) has wooden wings and a huge breaker sword, and literal Holy Hand Grenades. The fact that this warband is from New Antioch is not lost on me, either.

Sniper Priests blind themselves and let The Almighty aim their guns for them. They look so freaking cool.

Strosstruppen (shock troopers) come with a variety of weapons, my favorite is the guy with the sword and shield. I painted a praying skeleton with halo on the shield, just for fun.

And the yeoman are just basic cannon fodder, but the unit musician has a glockenspiel, so I imagine he’s got to be the first to die. Just thinking about someone clunking away on one of those while you’re trying to fight makes me laugh a bit…

Overall, great models, great game, and only as gross as you want it to be. And best of all, I’ve actually managed to talk a friend into coming up for air from 40k to check out the game, so I’ll make sure to let you all know how it goes!

Workbench

The Workbench: Finished Models for August 23, 2026

Another week down, and another check in with finished models off of my workbench!

Projects that are ON the bench but not yet finished: Heroclix Kingpin and Sin, 6 Black Templars, 1 Black Templar Land Raider, and some pickup-truck for hillbilly marines or something. Not sure, the Black Templars are for a friend, but they’re cool looking knights in my head! Also, Gladiator from Marvel Crisis Protocol.

This week’s finished models!

Elsa Bloodstone, Marvel Crisis Protocol

She has super-strength, loves guns, and considers being British a super-power! It’s Elsa Bloodstone, ass-kicking Monster Hunter and all around fun character to paint. This mini has been sitting in my back-log for years now, and the Midnight Sons faction is one I’ll be holding on to for MCP.

Orange is not a color I play with often, and I think I’m going to have to change that!

Carpathian Gunslinger, Dracula’s America

I love the concept of the game, but the rules are just not my thing. Still, great concept. I’ll be using these models for Silver Bayonet instead, which is great. I have had these guys sitting on a shelf for years, so it’s great getting some paint on him. Plus, I’m really enjoying these hand-sculpted casts, there’s something incredibly charming about painting the old-school stuff.

Austrian Paranormal Investigator, Silver Bayonet

Another rescued straggler from the back-log, I seriously love the no-nonsense look of the guy. Like I said a little earlier, there is something really gratifying about painting up something that isn’t 5,000 skulls bolted to a headpiece. This mini is solid pewter, one piece, and cool as hell.

I have some shacks and blasted buildings that would go really well in a Silver Bayonet game, so as soon as I get his unit painted up, I think I’ll be diving straight into this as my first solo game/battle report.

Hawkeye and Enchantress, Marvel Heroclix repaints

You can tell how simple these sculpts are, especially after seeing the Elsa Bloodstone mini above. These presented different challenges, and you can tell the newer Hawkeye mini has a lot more going on with the sculpt. But there is something really unexpectedly amazing going on with the Enchantress mini; she’s a very good early sculpt for Heroclix, and just radiating personality.

The Enchantress mini is proving to me EXACTLY what I was hoping to find when taking on this Heroclix repainting project– these minis are much better than they initially look, and with a little love and a little more work, there’s a world of cool toys that can be had for a very small amount of money.

There is no denying that the Elsa miniature is a better sculpt, and she was an absolute joy to paint for completely different reasons than Enchantress. But I find myself really proud of the Enchantress miniature, she was a challenge, and she rewarded my work and patience.

This was an absolute joy. What an amazing hobby we have!

Workbench

The Workbench: Finished Models for August 16, 2026

I’m trying a little change-up here, realizing that adding some substance to my blog posts like a couple of my favorite bloggers do would be a good thing. Still plan on posting pics, just maybe a little more thought into the context as well!

First off the block is Moon Knight for Marvel Crisis Protocol. One of my favorite characters from the Marvel comics of my youth, he’s like Batman, but the insanity is surface level instead of suppressed. The challenge with a character like him is that white is a bastard to paint convincingly without looking like you had an accident at a chalk factory!

I went really slowly and deliberately with Mark, starting with a pretty bright undercoat of Wolf Grey, then doing a zenithal highlight with White Blue, then layering in some very subtle white glazes. I’m pretty exclusively using Pro Acryl paints these days, the pigment count seems to be pretty high, and very finely ground as well. This really helps a ton, and I’m really happy with the result!

Another MCP figure, this time a mutant menace named Avalanche. He’s also part of the super-hero A-Team, which is guys that have an “A” on their costume, like Apocalypse and Animal Man.

Avalanche also has a bit of white to him, so I used the same technique as with Moon Knight, then my standard super-hero blue. The water was painted with the same blue, just different highlights and shading. I also had some fun with the fire hydrant, which was just blocked in quickly over a dark red undercoat. Sometimes, simple is best!

On the skirmish front I painted up another couple of soldiers to use with Warhammer Empire themed groups, the first is another Witch Hunter. I’m calling her Grizelda Kaine, and she has some of the same bright color choices as my Witch Hunter captain. I’m really enjoying bright color pops in my fantasy!

There’s also a Gallant, which is a type of lesser knight from Age of Sigmar. He’s cool, and has a weirdo frog on his helmet. Since I’m really not caring much about AoS, he’ll see action in skirmish games like Frostgrave and Five Leagues from the Borderlands.

With the new edition of Necromunda coming out yesterday, I wanted to have a color test done for House Orlock. Normally I’m not a fan of this gang, but I wanted to try something quick and dirty to see how it looks.

I underpainted the mini blue with a red zenithal highlight, then went over the upper part of the mini with a lemon yellow drybrush. The bottom part of the figure is mostly washes, with metallics picked out to show some contrast. I spend some extra time on her skin and shirt, and I’m actually looking forward to painting more Orlocks now!

I’ll be playing some Necromunda solo, so if you’re interested in my thoughts on the new edition, let me know in the comments! I was going to try and arbitrate a game with some friends, but I never know week to week if my health is going to play nice with me.

And wrapping things up for this week is Marley the Ghost, part of the Moonstone Shades line that I backed a few years ago. Sadly, that all happened right around the time I got sick, so I didn’t get a chance to get any painted while recovering. Happily, I have a really cool collection of ghosts and zombies to paint now, and plan on having these done for Halloween this year! Goals are good!

Marley was really fun to paint, I used Jade and light Jade from Pro Acryl, and shaded up from there with white blends. The eyes are yellow, layered up from orange, and the robes were terra cotta with lemon yellow mixed in for highlights. This is probably my favorite mini from this month so far, and I’m really looking forward to painting more!

For this coming week I have some Black Templars to finish, as well as more MCP figs. I’m hoping to get some of the new Escher minis from Necromunda on the table as well, but we’ll see how things go!

Until next time, I hope your projects go well and you treat yourself kindly!

Workbench

Coming Down with a Bad Case of The Old World

There I was, minding my own business at my FLGS. I had stopped in to pick up some of the new (to me) utra-metallic metallics from Vallejo (which are freaking amazing) and then everything went fuzzy.

When I came to, I was sitting at my hobby desk, with a freshly assembled unit of Chaos Marauders from Warhammer: The Old World in front of me. Holy hell, I did a nice job putting them together, too!

This is obviously what happened, since the reality of just seeing these amazing minis in the shop, shrieking like a schoolgirl at a BTS show and deliriously buying these beauties in a state of delirium doesn’t sound as cool. I’m a super manly man, mind you. I don’t swoon at just any war-dolly.

Just most of them. Here’s the first finished minis, looking damned fine and ready to kick some teeth in:

The unit leader is called Karga, she’s from a Warhammer Underworlds warband, but she looks cool with this group, so she’s the leader. The mini might even be a dude, who cares. She’s Karga. The Ruinous Powers care not for the gender binary.

She’s backed up by Hjork, who is wielding a banner of the Carrion Crow. The Carrion Crow is definitely not Nurgle, or any kind of Chaos God. Just a freaky cool crow who brings disease and laughs at mortals whilst they sleep.

The other three dudes don’t have names yet. Karga cares not for names until these milk drinkers earn them. Then Karga might stop calling them Meat.

The long term on this project is going to be a full-on Chaos warhost, supplemented by some Nurgle duders from Age of Sigmar because those sculpts are sweet as hell. I also have a bunch of stuff from Darkwater that’s going to fit in really, really well.

And for once, there’s no time limit on these guys. I’m just going to have fun and paint. Fun is good.

As for The Old World? It’s a good time! As I was thumbing through the rules I was really happy to see how much they had streamlined the old ruleset, which was pretty bloated and cumbersome. It’s still a little bloated, mind you, and you could bludgeon a small contingent of halflings with the FAQ alone, but it feels a bit like home.

Miniatures, skirmish games

That’s MISTER Lord of Infection to You!

Womp. My pancreas says hello, and it’s terribly sorry for kicking my ass for the last little bit. I keep telling it that you all understand, but my pancreas is surprisingly compassionate about you folks missing out on content, so there is that!

In between flare-ups I’ve managed to get some painting in, and I’m actually feeling okay at the moment, so fingers crossed. I had a friend ask me to play a little Age of Sigmar, which I tried and actually almost enjoyed, it was my vampires vs. his awful, smelly, tricksy elves.

There are some really fun and thematic actions baked into the game, but they usually come in the form of a re-roll, and there’s just so freaking many of them. Once again, GW‘s penchant for over-complicating a ruleset gets in the way of what could be a rocking good time. Still, my friend was awesome to play a game with, and that’s what matters in the end.

I even had the urge to paint up a little Warhammer, this demon lord from the Darkwater box has been calling to me for months, and he was a blast to paint!

That got me thinking, though. Mass fantasy battles used to be catnip to me. The Old World rules look to be pretty close to classic Warhammer Fantasy, but honestly that’s way to many rules for me. I want something fun, loud, and easy to table, but still elegant enough to get a little crunch going if I want it.

One Page Rules is cool, it’s just not crunchy enough for me. Close, though. I think Oathmark holds some promise, I just have to get enough minis together to give it a test game. Kings of War and I never really got along.

And there’s the fact that at the end of the day, I’m a hobbyist, not a gamer. That’s going to impact what I enjoy more than anything. Still, I like to build something to a list, just so that I can say there’s a theme or method to the madness, hahaha!

I started printing some Forest Elves from Highlands Miniatures, and if I use Warhammer rules as a template, there’s about 1,700 points worth waiting for a paintbrush. The minis look cool, and I’m not really pushing myself to do more than have fun at the moment, so looking at them isn’t making me want to scream and hide.

What do you all think about mass-battle fantasy games? Any of you find a system that you love? Or are you all tourists in the gaming world like me? It seems like most of the folks reading this are more into hobby building and painting than gaming, but I would love to hear what you enjoy building and (even ocassionally) playing!

Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40k: Returning to Fenris

I heard something the other day that stuck with me, especially when thinking about the state of modern table top miniature gaming.

People don’t know what they like, but they like what they know.

That pretty much sums up my feelings about Warhammer 40k. It’s not an elegant rules system, the release schedule is predatory, but the miniatures look great and everyone knows about it, hell, most of my friends grew up with it. Getting them to come up from the Warhammer 40k mines is like pulling teeth.

My Space Wolves commander as he was originally painted

So, in the interest of continuing my gaming hobby with some really nice people that I enjoy hanging out with, I begudgingly started up a Space Wolves army, and had a good time painting the first 1,000 points. But I was kicking and screaming the whole time, I promise!

Last week, though, I saw someone’s army that had been painted up like medieval knights, and I fell in love. I decided to go back and start making these Wolves work for me. If I’m going to play 40k, I might as well enjoy what I’m painting, right? So, I went in and darkened up the armor, making the grey/blue more of an accent. And I’m very happy with the results!

I also decided to re-paint the gold as silver, which really adds a lot of contrast to the armor and allows any warm colors, which I’m keeping for leathers, furs, and skin tones, to really shine. Now, to finish up the other 20-some odd space vikings!