Worlds In Miniature

Another month gone by, so time to look at the hobby books for April:

• Miniatures purchased: 28
• Miniatures assembled: 54
• Miniatures started painting (including priming): 47
• Miniatures finished painted: 42
• Warhammer Fund withdrawals: £28¹
• Warhammer Fund final balance: £75

It was a surprisingly steady month, even if it didn’t feel like it at times. There were two main themes: completing my Sylvaneth project, and building my backlog of Stormcast Eternals.

The Sylvaneth had been kicking around in a half-painted state for a few months so I wanted to make a concerted effort to get them finished off. In the end it only took a few hours over two days to get them “tabletop-ready” (or “Battle Ready” to use GW terminology). They look fine, if a little uninspiring. There’s not much interesting happening with the main colours, and they certainly could have been neater. But they’ll do for pulling out as a different army to try out. I’m particularly happy with the basing, so I’ll try to do a post all about that in the near future.

While I’m on the subject of Elves, I should mention the Daughters of Khaine I was working on last month. I put that project to the side as I just wasn’t enjoying the painting process and was in danger of burnout if I tried to force myself through it. This is the second time it’s happened with DoK, so maybe it’s just not a good range for me. They’ve only got some thin layers of paint - yay Contrast and the like - so it will be straightforward to repaint them entirely if I ever pick them up again.

As for the Stormcast, I resprayed some existing models; most with gold primer, some with black (these will be going into a custom Stormhost). Then I set about building. As it stands I have every infantry model except for 5 Vigilors and Bastian Carthalos assembled. Beyond the infantry I have some dragons (big and smaller varieties) and a chariot still to build. Then that will be everything ready for paint - just in time for the new models. I’m hesitant to build the remaining dragons at the moment because they’re just so awkward to store once assembled; the flying stands, lances, and wingspan make it hard to fit them into any case or box I currently have.

Unfortunately the weather has taken a turn for the worse over the last few weeks and I haven’t been able to get any of the newly-assembled miniatures primed. Fingers-crossed I can get a big spray session done soon.

The final little bit of painting I managed to finish was a “pallete cleanser” of 8 plastic Warhammer Fantasy Battle Wood Elf archers. They’re monopose, single-piece miniatures, so very simple. The mould lines were a major pain; even though I spent a lot of time going over each model before priming, and everything looked smooth, somehow there’s still some showing up. I’ll try to post better pictures soon, I just haven’t had a chance to take some nice ones.

May is likely going to be all about the Darkoath. I’ve started a tester model - the Darkoath Chieftain from Silver Tower - and I’m hoping to get a lot of the models assembled on the Sunday + Monday after release. The Monday is a public holiday in the UK, so I’ll have at least some time to work through them. This is dependant on the box arriving in the Saturday post though, so there’s at least some luck involved! I do have some travel in May, so overall output is probably going to be lower than recent months, but if I can try to get little pieces done here and there it’s possible I can complete the whole set before the end of the month. That really would be something!