Correspondence From Limbo

Hello, and welcome back to my recurring column on my hobby progress. Last time I was diving deep into the Necromunda mines, as well as working on some medieval fighters and the start of a Black Templar army. It’s been a while since then, as I’ve been away on holiday, traveling to Houston in September and Wales in October – hence the later and longer round-up. Without further ado, here’s what I’ve been working on for the last two months.

Angry men with chainswords

The first model to cover is my Black Templars Execrator for Warhammer 40,000, which I finished at the beginning of September. This was a wonderful model to paint, and I absolutely loved trying my hand at new techniques I had not really tried before, including subassemblies and mixing paints. The model (as well as my other Black Templars) was mostly painted following the tutorial written by SRM for Goonhammer’s How to Paint Everything article on the chapter. This involves a lot of highlights, as well as the aforementioned paint mixing. My favourite part of the model is the skull helmet, which came out really well – although I have no idea how I actually ended up with the finished result, as it involved a lot of relayering and trying new washes to get what I ended up with. I’m also not super sold on the snow effect on the base. I used Valhallan Blizzard from Citadel, and it did not seem to work as well as I was hoping. Hopefully, if I repeat the base across the rest of the army, I’ll be able to learn how to use that paint properly. Even if I don’t, they will at least all be uniform.

I honestly really enjoyed painting up the Execrator so much, I ended up going out and buying the Black Templars Combat Patrol. So far, I have built up six Crusaders, with three of them more or less fully painted, aside from the bases, which I’m currently working on. I liked painting these, but I have found some areas to be a bit of a slog. The shoulder pads, in particular, have been an exercise in frustration. I alternatively manage to either catch the lip of the shoulder pad with white paint or, when filling in the black edges, manage to spill onto the white. It’s been annoying, but hopefully it will get easier to manage as I paint more. Overall, though, I’ve loved painting these models, the Sword Brother in particular. I left the cape and backpack off for painting, and I honestly think that was the right idea – I can’t imagine trying to paint the lining without doing that. I am going to have to find some shortcuts when painting these though, as it does take a while to get it all finished.

Angry men with regular swords

In September, I also finished a unit of medieval archers for SAGA and Baron’s War. I discussed these in the previous round-up, but they deserve mentioning here as well. I like how these came out, and they will be very useful in Age of Crusades, but it did take a while to get them all finished, especially since I was batch painting eight models, which almost all had different colour uniforms/tabards. In future, I might try to make sure my historical minis have identical uniforms and colour schemes (although I’m not too sure how historically accurate that is. Reading is required…).

I also finished painting a group of peasants. These were from the peasant levy kit from Wargames Atlantic, and will pull double duty as peasants in Baron’s War and pilgrims in SAGA: Age of Crusades – although I might try to track down some actual Catholic monk minis to replace them at some point. These were relatively easy to paint: I basecoated them with Grey Seer, then used most contrast paints to paint them up, with the occasional acrylic paint for stuff like the metallics or the darker skin tones. This approach had positives and negatives; I was getting through these guys very quickly, and could use a really wide array of colours, but for whatever reason, I’m never able to get a perfect result from contrast paints. I’ve had some success using them on highly textured parts such as beards or fur, as well as over a metallic basecoat (Flesh Tearers Red was the only reason I was able to successfully paint 2,500 points of Word Bearers in three months for the Goonhammer Open earlier this year), but I struggle to use them in the more “proper” way, over a light undercoat. The result is usually a bit too streaky, with the undercoat showing through. I don’t know if this is an issue with the paints or my technique, but it is something that I find more than a little frustrating.

Following the layer of contrast paint, I washed over the models with some “Sonic Sludge/Marine Juice”, the wash mix that I first heard about from YouTuber Sonic Sledgehammer. I’ve used this on my other medieval minis, and it helped to tie the levy into the rest of my models, as well as add some shading and definition, especially to the creases on the clothes. I then based them in the same way as my other crusaders.

I’ve also started work on a unit of mounted serjeants, which I’m looking forwards to hopefully finishing soon. Once they are done, I will have a full crusaders force for SAGA; I can’t wait to see them all finished and on the table!

Heroic men with swords

During the last few months, I’ve ended up falling down a bit of a rabbit (errrrrr… Hobbit…?) hole, and started the work of getting myself into the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Like many people who are into tabletop wargaming, I absolutely adore the LotR films, and I’d heard that the ruleset is one of the best ones that Games Workshop has ever designed, so I thought it would be a good thing to try out. The fact that it is a relatively niche system, especially compared to Warhammer 40,000 or Age of Sigmar, meant that I also would not be fighting against an endless tide of updates or new editions, something which had put me off my previous “main” system The Horus Heresy (my enthusiasm having more or less evaporated when it became clear it was going to be a three year cycle similar to 40K). Plus, I have some Rohan models that my friend Jake gave me for my birthday back in February (thanks, Jake!), which I had never touched, despite being enthusiastic about the faction.

So far, I’ve only built two models, Haleth and Hama, from the new Battle of Edoras starter set. I still need to find time to basecoat them to start painting them up, something which has become more difficult due to the change in seasons and the cold weather. But that has not stopped me from admiring the minis. They are both beautiful, and I really love the mounted version of Hama – it has a wonderful sense of movement, and I can’t wait to get it on the table. I ended up making a mistake when I was glueing together the mounted version of Haleth, the main body of the horse did not go together properly, but I still loved putting these models together and I can’t wait to paint them up.

Scum without swords

Finally, I also did some work on the House Orlock gangers I put together for Necromunda. I haven’t got super far with them, and there is part of me which is tempted to drop the project – I don’t find them massively inspiring. However, that might change as the winter drags on. As I said, the cold weather means that basecoating minis is not super viable, so I might have to force myself to paint them as I slowly run out of other models to paint.

Thanks for reading. For more adventures in hobbyland, feel free to check out my hobby Instagram: PaintingFromLimbo.