Last Month's Painting: Lost Patrol

For this November I’ve being trying to paint the entirety of the Lost Patrol boxed set. As one of Games Workshop’s smaller releases, this wasn’t a huge task and I managed to successfully paint the entire set in slightly less than a month.

Not that many models, but for me, that's
pretty good going for a month.

Lost Patrol was a game released a few years ago as part of Games Workshop’s seemingly endless slew of board games based on its properties it was putting out at the time, and like the slightly-too-obsessed collector that I am, I had to have them all. Some were better quality than others, and from what I understand the actual game isn’t one of Games Workshop’s better efforts. Like Space Hulk before it, it was once again a small group of Space Marines vs a much larger swarm of Genestealers, trying to find the macguffin before they all die, though in this game they are Scouts rather than Terminators. Unlike Space Hulk, however, there were no new models designed for it – they were all currently-existing models. The game used a very simple rule set aimed at younger players, a noble idea, but it had the effect of stacking the game quite heavily in favour of the Genestealer player. And even though there are a huge number of ways the map can be arranged, there is only one scenario which limits its long-term appeal. The latter two are things I’ve heard, by the way. I haven’t actually played the game yet.

The Scouts were a lot of fun...

But we’re here to talk about the painting rather than the quality of the game, and here I faced some… not necessarily new challenges but re-visiting some old ones. I have, of course, been painting Space Marines for pretty much the entire time I’ve been invested in the hobby, even if most of them were Chaos. Tyranids have been less frequent though regular readers will recognise the aesthetic at least from the Space Hulk set. The only time I’ve ever done Space Marine Scouts before, though, was  nearly 10 years ago where I had the idea of building a scout army to represent the rebuilding of the Black Consuls chapter, and I’ve painted Human faces intermittently since then (I tend to prefer helmets.) I didn’t do a terrible job but my lack of experience with painting faces shows, I think – some of those eyes are very sloppy indeed! If painting is a skill I’m looking to develop, I might consider doing an army with exposed faces to give me a little more practice! Elsewhere, the Scouts were painted in Blood Angels colours, which was nothing new to me since I’d painted the Space Hulk set in the same way and my Word Bearer army is roughly the same colour with different trimmings.

And painting Genestealers this way is a
quick and effective paint scheme.

The Genestealers were interesting. As presented on the box art and the photographs on the back, they appear to be a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Kraken; largely a bony white colour with red claws. With Hive Fleet Kraken, the carapace would usually be red, and the flesh would be more of a sepia-colour, but this way gave them a more skeletal appearance that would be terrifying in large numbers. After watching a video guide on Youtube and buying a red wash, I was struck by how little time it took to get an effective-looking set of models – to game standard, at least; I wouldn’t expect to win any painting competitions with this – and decided that if I ever chose to paint a Tyranid army in any significant numbers, this is how I’d do it. I’m pleased with the overall result, and I’m glad I now have an idea of what a large Tyranid army might look like for me, should it become an option to paint one.

I think what’s great about these boxed sets is that it gives you the opportunity to try painting models you wouldn’t normally paint. I wouldn’t normally choose to paint Tryanids but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed painting the Genestealers from Space Hulk and Lost Patrol – and expanding my horizons on where I can take my painting can only be a good thing. I’m not short of them but don’t know what the next one will be yet, we shall see…

Last Month's Painting: Completed the Space Hulk set

Finally... the set is complete

This week I finally came to the end of my journey to completely paint my Space Hulk set. For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you’ll know the story already: I obtained Space Hulk when I worked for Games Workshop in 2009, and even though I opened it and played it a few times with my mate Dave, I never got around to painting it. The reason for this is that I played the vast majority of war games in what was then Games Workshop, and what is now the Warhammer stores (though I’ve yet to play a game in one of those!) where there is a certain expectation for your models to be painted, or at least have some sign of progression, if you use them in the shop. The problem is that Games Workshop stopped supporting Space Hulk after the month it was released, so as I wasn’t going to play any games in the shop, it wasn’t a priority to paint them – not at the point where I perpetually had a tonne of Chaos Space Marines, Empire and Haradrim (one army from the three core game systems that it was expected I would have as a member of staff) that I needed to be painting! Dave, of course, didn’t mind the models not being painted, so even though we’ve really enjoyed playing the game in the past, the models remained unpainted for eleven years.

All the Terminators were very highly detailed...

That all changed when Lockdown began, and I found myself with a little (though surprisingly not much) more than the usual amount of spare time on my hands. I’d painted all the Chaos Space Marine Raptors I had for the Black Legion army I was working on, and while I did get some more eventually, I didn’t see any sense in going to any of the hobby shops to buy them while we were in lockdown. I had some of the old boxed sets in the loft of the flat I used to live in and decided to get the Space Hulk set down and paint them. I started with one squad of Terminators, then painted the twelve Genestealers that looked the most straightforward to paint. Both appeared in previous editions of the blog. I then painted the remaining squad of Terminators – including the dead one – and the leftover Genestealers, these didn’t make it on to the blog because I didn’t know what to say about them without repeating myself.

...and the Broodlord was a lot of fun!

Moving on, I painted the Librarian and the Broodlord. Both presented an additional challenge for me: As most folks who play 40K know, a Librarian’s armour is always blue no matter what chapter they’re attached to so that was a break from the red I’d been painting hitherto. I also went into a lot more detail with the weapons, face and armour than I did with the other models, as this was the “centrepiece” of the Terminator force in Space Hulk. With the Broodlord, this was much the same as the Genestealers I’d been painting up to that point but with an extra layer of colour on the flesh and carapace. There was also a lot more than the usual number of skulls and Terminator helmets that needed painting, and it took me a while, but I’m pleased with the result.

The finishing touches.

Finally, I painted the last little bits – the Artefact and the C.A.T. I didn’t spend a huge amount of time on these, but it was a lot of fun doing the jewels on the Artefact.

I’ve bought quite a few “build and paint” games in the last 10-12 years and this is the first time I’ve managed to do both with a complete set, so I’m pleased with that. Both factions presented a fresh challenge: The colour I painted the Blood Angels Terminators was the same as the colours I’d been painting my Word Bearers, but with more of an emphasis on the gold than the silver. The Genestealers were an altogether different experience, as I haven’t painted Tyranids many times before, and when I have, it’s never been in any significant numbers. Space Hulk is a great set, and I’m glad to have completed it.

Last Week's Painting: Space Hulk, Terminators and Genestealers

This is the first in a new, hopefully monthly blog series I’ll be doing called Last Week’s Painting, where I’ll document what I’ve been painting over the last month. They’ll mostly be Games Workshop models; it’s extremely rare for me to paint anything else but I’m open suggestions! I’ll initially try to get these out on the first Thursday of every month but I’m already late for the first one, so let’s just say I’ll try to get it out at some point in the first week!

My painting for this month has focussed on the 2009 Space Hulk boxed set. I’ve owned this set for over a decade and even managed to play the game a few times as detailed in some very early editions of this blog, but I’d never quite got around to painting them. There were a lot of reasons for that but the main one was that there was no expectation that I had to. I acquired the set when I was a member of Games Workshop’s staff; they’ve released a few board game-style games over the last several years but rarely support them post-launch in favour of their core games. And in the shop, there was an expectation that if you were going to use your models in the shop, you had to paint them – or at least show that there had been some progress on them. So, when painting, I prioritised models from those games at the time, and as my backlog of models I need to paint has only grown since then, the Games Workshop boxed games haven’t been painted.

But when lockdown hit, I’d run out of models to paint for the Chaos Space Marine army I was working on, so I proceeded with the Space Hulk models I’ve been putting off for over a decade. I started with six of the Terminator models and tried as much as I could to paint to the reference on the back of the Mission book. For the most part it worked reasonably well, although I might try to mix the red a little thicker next time because it was a faff painting multiple thin layers on a black undercoat. (I’d never have known until I tried, and I’d like to do Blood Angels at some point so it’s well worth remembering!) Where I deviated from the reference was the Power Sword, which I’ve never been good at doing, and the gems, which I had idea how to do. With the sword, I painted it a deep blue to begin with and then tried a lightning pattern freehand across the sword. I don’t think I did a particularly good job of it, but by that point I hadn’t painted for over a month and wanted to finish them off without getting bogged down. The gems, under the advice of Steve from Warlords and Wizards, were painted silver initially then coated in the purple paint that I think is supposed to go in an airbrush. It seemed to work!

Here we see the Genestealers I’ve been working on in the last week or so. This has been an interesting challenge because I’m definitely not used to painting Tyranids; I tried it many years ago when I was still in school, and I think once when I was staff I painted a model for the shop, but I’ve never collected a whole army of them. I think that’s largely because their complete lack of humanity made them very difficult to relate to, so I wasn’t tempted to try. These days, of course, I know that’s the whole point of Tyranids – to create an unstoppable force of alien creatures to scare the life out of anybody unfortunate enough to have to face them; and the human element is the one they create – not the one they have. I’m following the guides available on Warhammer TV and painting them the classic Genestealer colours. The one at the front is the one where I’ve attempted to do the highlighting on the flesh; I ran out of time to do any more, but it worked relatively well and will probably take up a bigger portion of my time next week!