Lost Again at Warhammer 40,000

Do any of my loyal readers remember when I was undefeated during 10th edition crushing the dreams of kids with their golden armour clad super soldiers that were even taller and more bullet proof than the Emperor’s finest? Astride their majestic jet bikes, capes blowing in the wind facing off against two chaos spawn and whatever else I plucked from the shelves of my miniature cabinet and threw on the table when summoned by Bill. Expected by one and all in the gaming store, to be swept aside because the Internet said Death Guard sucked? Those were the days.

Stay twelve inches away at all times.

I have of course been busy and I also injured myself, so badly in fact I could not paint and there was doubt I’d even make it to my scheduled game against Bill. So before I go any further you may be asking why are there goblins in the banner image? Several reasons, one I never took any photos of our game today I thought would make a good banner, there was doubt I would make it to the game, let alone persevere through pain to blog about it. Two it was recently Orktober, I was going to keep painting hard then I suffered a seriously painful injury. Mike, neigh Uncle Mike also talked to Bill and I informing us that not only was Mordheim coming up but Warcry may be run as a league at the Sentry Box soon. These very goblins were used in Warcry at the Sentry Box previously, some of them may have even been used to play Mordheim. The rules for Orks and Goblins were in a White Dwarf article which must be at my mom’s house somewhere.

Now that everyone is confused and I’m on beer number four, I should inform you this will not be an exhaustive turn by turn battle report, like some of the fifty or so others I’ve typed up over the years. Rather it will be some observations both on what has changed in Warhammer 40,000 since I last played and they re-balanced the game, but also will reflect the fact that I painted my ass off. And although most people would say I have little to show for it, I would counter not many people have the painted Nurglings necessary to flood a flank with them. The record will clearly show I lost the game to the snazzy codex toting Ultramarines. Some random store patrons were really impressed with my museum quality collection of nurglings though.

Ten things I learned today playing 40K

Deep Strike then Charge!

Exterminatus Level Threat

Bagonhead’s Last Stand

The Beast needs more torque!

1. I really, really, need to read all the rules. I have excuses, work and pain being chief among those. But I bought the mission card deck and I still haven’t read it. I also need to learn the stratagems to the point of memorization. I’ll never read all the enemy codices and I’ll continue to pay for that, but I just don’t have time. However I own two 10th Edition Rule Books, Bill kept borrowing my new small one, but I really should learn the basic rules.
2. I need to remove some of the restrictions I place upon myself. No I’m not switching to unpainted pieces of plastic. No I’m not using named characters. No I’m not abandoning Nurgle. But since I can’t paint faster, I need to paint smarter. I still plan to finish a few more models I don’t need for any tactical or strategic purpose in Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition. I also still plan to paint more fluffy models like Chaos Spawn, but I spent all of 9th Edition using a single sub-optimal Chaos Lord. The fact Maceo the Maligned ended up a Chaos Spawn is indicative of how effective he was on the tabletop. So new leaders or even old leaders will be fielded and I’ll slowly improve my army by adding more characters to it as the Death Guard can field a lot of character models with up to two leaders per plague marine squad, because plague marines with knifes and nurglings with strength two claws can only kill so much.
3. Today we played 1000 points and honestly I can field a lot of models at 1000 points these days. I had twenty plague marines, a dozen nurlgings, I had Blightlords, a hellbrute, I even had two Chaos Spawn! But Bill had some fancy land raider which had super flamers and took advantage of the new Overwatch rule and killed seven plague marines during my movement phase when they walked around a corner. I didn’t even charge the damn model! It is indeed 2nd Edition all over again. I honestly didn’t mind playing 1000 points but I think we’ll trend towards larger games as some people do field Chapter Masters and named characters and models that cost four hundred plus points!
4. At this point in time, I must complain that Google has gotten worse. I of course am too busy to keep up the latest and greatest thinking about Warhammer 40,000 but I try to provide useful links for my readers on occasion and honestly it seems hard tonight. I had a lot more observations I wanted to make, detailing my thoughts having been away from the game for a few months, but I am getting frustrated trying to find a link to illustrate my point above. I told Bill I think someone at GW HQ reads my blog, because things I write seem to get incorporated into rules updates eventually, but maybe someone at Google will read my blog and become less greedy. Who am I kidding? Usually I can find a link explaining what confused me, but I have standards, there are websites I don’t link to anymore for reasons. Also the reason Google sends you to YouTube videos is Google owns YouTube.
5. Seriously today, may be the day I finally abandon Google. I just want a blog post I can link to about the Landraider Redeemer’s effectiveness in 10th Edition since the rules update came out and no, I don’t want to link to Redit, YouTube or a random forum post that will be blocked in a day or two. If you have thoughts on the Landraider Redeemer or Google please leave them in the comments. I just want to support fellow indy hobby bloggers, not feed the giant corporate juggernaughts devouring the Internet. Shoutout to Goonhammer for not sucking.
6. So besides adding a better or even more Chaos Lords to my army along with more Foetid Virion and finally learning the rules, what else do I have planned? Blightlords. They died but they did protect my Chaos Lord and they can teleport. They can have a gun that shoots over 24 inches. I’m not sure if one squad of ten is better than two squads of five. But given restrictions I place upon myself they are the closest thing I have to a hammer in my painted miniature collection. They don’t take that much more time to paint than a regular plague marine and they have more wounds, a better basic gun and a better basic H2H weapon. Their objective control score may not be as good but at one point today I had infected four of the five objectives and I still lost. I definitely chose sub-optimal secondary objectives.
7. I finally counted and I have 21 bases of painted nurglings. Plus I have five and should convert a sixth nurgling infested objective. That would give me the maximum number of 27 nurgling bases that I think can be fielded by the Death Guard. I doubt I’ll buy and paint two more boxes of nurglings. When I played Kharne, Angron, and the angry red horde, the nurglings died quickly. Today most of them survived the entire game, so the optimal number of nurglings per 1000 points is yet to be determined. Nine nurglings in a single unit is awkward to maneuver but I do think just dumping them on top of or slightly in front of the centre objective is “my plan”. Then I’ll either teleport or march up another unit to actually capture the objective as they are famously objective control zero.
8. Fast Attack is no more and for too long was denied the followers of Nurgle. My commitment to the aesthetic and the inexplicableness of Chaos Spawn is admirable but there are faster better models I could be fielding. I still plan on finishing the fourth Chaos Spawn which has been primed black on my desk since before my injury but eventually I’ll add some daemon engines. Bikers or jump pack assault troopers are unlikely to return to the legions of the Death Guard and I told Bill that if the Chaos Codex comes out first I will give it a go as last edition I bought it then never even used it. Hopefully the option to field plague marines with CSM remains. Because let me tell you, having a codex is generally, if not always better, than not having a Codex.
9. Bill has apparently switched allegiances to the first company, abandoning the second company. That is what passes for variety among Ultramarines. Why this matters, is Bill and his Ultramarines are my most frequent opponent since moving to Calgary. Today when I chose my army list I thought to myself, “this doesn’t have much anti-armour.” I just fielded my latest greatest painted models or most of them because we were playing for fun. Then Bill brings a land raider, a particularly brutal dreadnought and what Bill referred to as a transport. That adds up to three vehicles, plus terminators, Sternguard and Bladeguard so despite going with the -1 armour infection, I struggled to put it mildly. Melta guns have always been my favourite special weapon, but I plan to keep painting more plague flamers because I’ve bought the models. My need for more better guns continues. This army will never be an alpha strike army, but Bill likely will never play an army again which deploys one gun that can shoot over twenty four inches. I really want to field the Predator Annhilator and may even have one “new in box” from several editions ago. I need to paint harder or at least faster.
10. It has already taken too long to type this all out but I feel I should have ten top learnings. Even if Google did sap my mojo and I have decided to not publish this tonight because I like to proofread and carefully edit my text if you can believe that. So besides learning all my rules, bringing more better models I’ve already painted, planning for bigger games against tougher opponents, trying to make time to keep up with the meta so I don’t have to rely on Google, painting and fielding more Blightlords, tempering my nurgling obsession, adding more maneuverable elements to my army, getting my own codex, fielding more guns with high strength and longer range, what else does my army, the Diseased Sons of Nurgle need? Probably practice. Back when very few people had played very few games I was more competitive. Now that the fine print of stratagem cards are being adjusted and actual thick ass codices are being released I’m going to have to commit a little more time to actually playing the game instead of just painting and earning badges.

Today is #MiniatureMonday and I was going to write more, I did type up a revised 1000 point army list. Basically I swapped hellbrutes, dropped five plague marines and added ten chaos cultists which can infect objectives now though they too need more guns. The other addition will be an Icon Bearer. I had one per squad painted before so I have seven painted already. This unit is only costs 45 points but I can’t decide to put him in the five model squad or to make a twelve man squad. One thing I discussed with Bill was putting a Chaos Space Marine Lord in the Burning Sores. That may happen eventually, after I paint the Lord of Virulence, there are so many options I’ve never tried. I also have an unpainted Daemon Prince that I specialty ordered…

If you have thoughts on everything wrong with my playing, my army, my blog, and Google you can leave a comment below. Who knows I may heavily edit the text tomorrow, but I also need time to edit the photos because if I could post better photos on the Internet surely I’d be rich and famous by now.

Behold, my badges!

So it took a while, but apparently I earned two more badges on the Internet. If I read the rules better and tried to game the system more, perhaps I could have done even better. I didn’t think this was even an online painting competition, but it turns out there were prizes that I could have won. Online painting competitions are a lot more common than they were twenty years ago.

Besides being rushed for time and trying various untried techniques and paint combinations, I also would have benefited from taking better individual pictures of my models. I pay for webhosting and Flickr and I actually tend to upload smaller images than kids these days, because I’m old and remember when the Internet was slow. So next time I volunteer to paint something for the good of the Internet I’ll try to take better pictures as I think I may have painted more hours than the average participant but earned less points.

Plague Surgeon

WordPress updated since I last posted and if you guessed it works worse, you’d be correct. Every time I tried to use the menu on the left to add a subheading, it would crash. Now experts say subheadings help your search engine optimization so I tried and tried until I used a different button to add this subheading.

So my Plague Surgeon is going to be called Dr. Stealgood, because of course he’s going to make your gene-seed all mine. I actually think I could have done a better job painting him. I wasn’t happy with the grey or even the apron. I wanted to avoid the usual burgundy everyone else does. I did go with white or offwhite armour using a technique I’ve already described.

Nurgling Infested Objective

So the reason I wanted to add a Plague Surgeon to my 9th Edition Warhammer 40,000 campaign army was he had his own agenda. Recovering the gene-seed of fallen foes as represented by a special objective you were supposed to convert, paint and give to your foe to place on the table. So of course I made mine an Avenging Son, because clearly they need something to avenge and apparently they don’t like the Death Guard for some reason that was never clearly explained to me.

Of course I scoured the Internet for bits, of course I had to use Swaggy P or whatever they call this Nurgling which meant buying another entire model to get one bit. Then for the Ultramarine I was pretty sure I had an Ultramarine bit or two. Obviously they are all old and thus not Primaris. Apparently the Imperium isn’t against all mutations, hypocrites.

Bill was supposed to give me the exact transfer to apply and I bought the specific blue to use as the basecoat, but then I used whatever blues and other paints I had lying around for the rest of the model. I put a lot of skulls on the base and a lot chain which I spent a lot of time rusting. So yeah this was a time consuming paint job but it could have been worse. Maybe the Nurgling shouldn’t have been dark green, but I didn’t have a lot of time to second guess myself.

The Future

Since painting these guys, I’ve already painted more Nurglings and I have more models on my painting table but we’ve gotten busy at work again. I think some people are about fed up with us always being busy and being expected to stay late. I expect there will be more changes in the New Year.

We or at least me have not been playing much Warhammer 40,000 or anything. But I did complete my painting vow and earn my badges. I don’t know if that will impress Vince Venturella. I did buy some of the paint he recommended so I don’t know if I’ll use much of it on the models currently on my table but I can see some Poxwalkers in my future not to mention, Blightlords, Plague Marines, and probably more Chaos Cultists. I seem to be big on footslogging this edition, because I have lots of painted models so might as well push them around on the table.

The problem is of course is the cheap models die easily and they can’t kill big tough stuff, I’m still hopeful the Blightlord Terminators can, so that is the unit I will optimize next. I also will likely get new HQ on the table, maybe not in 2023 but in 2024. Not sure when I’ll paint a tank or a daemon engine but eventually.

I don’t keep up with the rumours, but I think Necrons may get the next codex, but if regular Chaos Space Marines get their codex before the Death Guard, I’ll probably go back to being Nurgle Renegades or I could just run my non-Nurgle guys the Nefarious Fire. In the mean time, I hope to keep painting with my new lower standards, but basically it is the weekend or nothing, as during the week I work late and don’t have a lot of spare time or energy, hence updating this blog later than usual, but I got my badges.

If you have thoughts on the optimal Death Guard army, online painting competitions or people’s obsession with badges and vanity metrics you can leave a comment below. If you hurry over to the Bolter and Chainsword you may even be able to vote in an online painting competition and see all the models better than mine.

I can’t believe it is Slapchop

Believe it fanboys! Of course after my slopchopping I then carefully or at least quickly painted on one or more highlights on each Nurgling then I may or may not have put a wash over top. And of course I used not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, well it might have been six, but I meant to use seven different rust effects.

It was another busy week at work, stuff may have even gone wrong, but that didn’t stop us form partying and going to a Stampeders game on Friday, after all the markets were closed. All this combined with my determination to at least try to lose weight meant I basically painted Sunday. I didn’t even paint that hard, but I finished three stands of Nurglings.

Hockey season also started but I may have lost in my head-to-head league but last I looked I was winning in my keeper pool. Go guys I drafted. These are the same Nurglings I blogged about last week and as planned, I highlighted overtop of the slapchop. So the paints I used are not important but they were a mix of OOP Citadel paints, Reaper, Nostalgia ’88, Vallejo, Secret Weapon, and Wargames Foundry. I did use some Two Thin Coats but honestly they don’t impress me and they have the worst pot design since the original screw top bolter shell.

I’m going to re-watch it someday soon, but I’m giving a shoutout to Vince Ventrulla. I’ve followed him for a while and I’m not a hardcore fanboy or miniature painter. But if I had to recommend one of those YouTube guys I’d recommend Vince, so his paint recommendations are probably more well thought out than mine and he’s probably not drinking while he types.

Other painters and bloggers I like are the Polish. I also follow an obvious French blog, but when I upgraded my MacBook Pro to the latest MacOS recently, I lost all my RSS feeds again. I will rebuild from 2018 again if I have to, but in the mean time, check out Vince and Stahly. They get my Sunday night shoutout. Some famous miniature painter followed me on Instagram yesterday, so you should probably follow me over there too. Apparently I am big in Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

I may require a third beer to finish this blog post, but I’m also listening to one of my latest playlists, this one is called “Mmm, Chicken” and let me tell you beer and music are integral to my painting methodology. Actually I probably paint better without beer, but after a hard day painting, I enjoy a cold beer or three and update the blogosphere about my exploits.

But I didn’t come here to blog about beer or even music, I came here to blog about painting rust or rust effects. I was going to use seven different rust effect paints on the weapons the Nurglings are crawling around, but then I think I ended up using six, but if you count silver or Army Painter Strong Tone as part of the rust effect then I used eight!

Newsflash Nurglings, you don’t need to use seven different rust effect paints. Even three rust effect paints is probably overkill. I know everyone loves Dirty Down but I get better results from some Vallejo stuff I bought and actual rust coloured pigments, particularly the set I bought off of AwesomePaintJob dot come which is apparently no more. I’m still experimenting with which order I should apply the rust effects and like I said at the top of the paragraph three rust effects may be enough for the average miniature painter.

So I decided to consult the wayback machine because not everyone commits to the hobby for twenty plus years like me. AwesomePaintJob dot come seems to have peaked in 2019, but I likely ordered from Lester Burley sooner. His website started in 2009. He last posted a video to YouTube four years ago. Life is hard. One of my oldest gaming buddies died this week, my oldest gaming buddy died many years ago. Don’t put off living forever.

Now I’m sad or at least melancholic. I don’t have infinite sadness. I already made a token post in tribute to Angus. And I definitely haven’t forgotten Kev but yeah some of my old gaming buddies are still alive, I saw Owen this year and I’ll have to try to see some more of them next time I’m on the Island around Christmas time.

One of my big accomplishments this week was upgrading my home office, so I can now edit pictures on a new bigger monitor. Despite some goading I haven’t played any video games on my latest video gaming monitor. I’m just not a hardcore gamer anymore, if I ever was. I guess I was back in the early to mid 90s. Anyway, maybe I will play a video game again, but I’m trying to focus on painting and trying to make time to go to the gym and read books.

If you have thoughts on melancholy, infinite sadness or painting rust effects you can leave a comment below.

Slapchopping Nurglings

Before it became trendy, I wanted to field a sea of Nurglings. Now all over the Internet people are doing the math to figure out how many stands you can field in a Death Guard army. The answer may be twenty seven, but before you can do that you need to buy and paint all those little beady eyeballs yellow.

I’d already tried Contrast Paints on some Nurglings and of course I tried dry brushing or painting Contrast Paints over a black primed model pre-highlighted with grey, but now drybrushing and shading quickly is called #Slapchop or the slapchop method. People have tried to improve on it, so of course I did too, basically I painted on quick highlights and then threw a wash overtop of the Nurgling skin.

I already posted a finished Nurgling stand to Instagram because it is #MiniatureMonday, but it is also the Thanksgiving holiday Monday here in Canada so I had extra time to paint, go to the gym, and yes blog. My test Nurgling came out well enough especially since I used more than just Contrast Paints. I used Army Painter Speed Paint 2.0 too which some like better, but some don’t, but I also used my lifetime collection of random paints and I stuck to colours I have experience painting such as green and purple.

Of course I used the incredibly difficult to spell Aethermatic Blue, but for the next three Nurgling stands I switched from Dark Angels Green to Ork Flesh, so I can get some Orktober practice in I guess. I painted pretty quickly but besides actual highlights and washes other things I did that may not be pure slapchop was paint pure Wraithbone on parts of the models. I also painted metallics, a steel color made by Army Painter, on weapons. I didn’t leave them grey. I even painted some things Greyseer and Wraithbone that I wanted to look different like a zombie head or some guts on my second batch of three Nurgling stands.

The guts were painted Fleshtearer red which is one of my go to painting techniques. I didn’t give them a wash or anything on the test model, but the metallics got some thinned Army Painter Strong Tone, then some highlights with the new GW silver, whatever they are calling it now, “Stormhost”. My new mixer finally made it useable, so I gotta say get yourself a paint mixer, it will save you time and frustration. I tried the Dirty Down again but was not satisfied so I got out the poisonous bottle of mineral spirits I’ve had for years but never used and my AwesomePaintJobDotCome rust pigments and probably went a little overboard.

Then I was reminded that if you spray matte sealant over your rusted pigments they can reactivate and you end up with a different rust effect than you posted to Instagram. I don’t think Dirty Down reactivates with Citadel Matte spray sealant but it might. This is probably why I moved away from pigments, I want to seal and be done with a model.

Besides Nurglings I spent a lot of time cleaning and trying to fill in gaps on a Forgeworld Nurgle Plague Toad which I plan to use as a Chaos Spawn. You must field spawn in packs of two, because they are sold in boxes of two. But besides one lone Nurgling, I painted one lone Chaos Spawn for the Bolter and Chainsword painting challenge. Tenth edition has been out a while and I hunted down one of these models to be my fourth and likely final Chaos Spawn.

I probably spent too much time with gap filler and liquid greenstuff. I never used to use either. I also pinned the model as one of his legs didn’t fit very well, hence the extra large gap to fill. I also planned to pin him to a resin base, as that is what I like to do for basing models. I think this base is Polish. Hopefully I can get these Nurglings and Chaos Spawn done quickly as I plan to paint more strategically valuable models. I may even rebase some more old models and last of all I plan to paint a greenskin if I can find time this month, but we remain busy at work.

If you have thoughts on slapchop, or hashtags, or Contrast Paints or Speed Paints or Nurglings or excessive use of conjunctions you can leave a comment below.

Heroic Painting Accomplishment Achieved

Not only did I finish painting the models I’ve been working on for the last little while, they look decent and I earned a badge on the Internet! I haven’t seen the badge, I kept checking the Bolter and Chainsword to see the final score, but I’ve also done a couple minor touchups or additions since the deadline officially closed.

The last thing I did was put gloss varnish on a few choice bits and then I did gore. I couldn’t do bloody gore the way I usually do, because my Tamiya Clear Red was a solid block when I tried to use it today. Instead I used Citadel’s new Blood for the Blood alternative and I even mixed in a bit of strong tone. I may have to buy some more Tamiya Clear Red and maybe even some more black ink because sometimes the old ways are the best.

The latest greatest picture of my Plague Surgeon is actually on Instagram as today is #MiniatureMonday and I remembered to post. Most of today’s holiday day off was spent ranking hockey players in Excel and I really should prepare more for my two fantasy hockey drafts coming up this week, but I made a vow. I did of course take more WIP photos and posted some of them to Bill‘s Discord server for his amusement. We’ll see if he follows through and gives me an Avenging Sons’ transfer, I used Macragge Blue.

So the banner picture represents about three months of hard painting for me. I painted most every weekend and often for very long shifts. Plus I painted some during the week, even on my lunch break. All the models were primed and assembled before this escapade started though I may have done some extra cleaning and gap filling, especially on the Chaos Spawn. I also hunted down a model to be Maceo’s new squadmate so that will get cleaned and primed soon.

In the near future I plan to paint yet another Nurgling stand, this one will be slapchopped. Though I’ll probably still do extra details and highlights and throw a wash on, maybe even Army Painter Strong Tone. Having enjoyed my Pro Acryl paints I’m going to give Scale75 a try. I even found a store in Edmonton that carries them. No I’m not going to Edmonton anytime soon, but I like to support local stores when I can and Edmonton is in Alberta and I’ll have to visit there again, because besides the airport which I was forced to detour to, I haven’t been to Edmonton since the 90s.

I’m almost on to my fourth glass of a Belgian beer I don’t even like, but what can I say I bought a giftset on Friday to celebrate it being payday and a long weekend and I didn’t use Untappd first and realize I actually don’t like Duchesse de Bourgogne. Though in general Belgian beers are my favourite, but in truth my favourite style is Russian Imperial Stout. I like the strong abby beers a lot and the tradition of brewing beer since the Middle Ages, maybe I’ll have to go to Belgium soon, I think I may have some beer or hobby contacts.

I almost forgot to mention I bought a Vortexer Mixer from Vevor. But it whines so I complained. It works best on dropper bottles, even the rounded lid Citadel paints work better than my old flat lid round or hex pots. All the illfated bolter shell pots hardened long ago and were chucked by me. But now with little steel balls and this mixer I may try to save some paints. I also transfer them to droppers when their old pots when the lid starts to crack, which always happens…

The other thing I forgot to write about was all the effort I put into the rust effect. It didn’t come out as good as last time even though I used the Internet’s favourite product. I tried five different rust products and I may have to try seven next time. I painted a lot little bits of rust and the last thing I recommend is brushing on some thin silver lines overtop. You can see how the products look over a flat gunmetal splotch. I recommend you change the order or do what I did and add more of the bright yellow rust last, which I thinned too much this time. I like to turn it into more of wash, but you can try dry brushing it just like Ryza Rust, but with all the off-white armour on the Plague Surgeon no drybrushing was being done at the end.

If you have thoughts on beer, music, or painting miniatures rusty you can leave a comment below. Optimizing my Apple Music and acquiring new songs and records is also crucial to my painting success. I bought the 10th Anniversary vinyl edition of Southeastern on Friday when it came out, but I’m not sure there is any Jason Isbell on my 40K gaming mix, maybe I’ll have to rectify that. Until next time make mine Nurgle.