Chaos Space Marines - Blackstone Fortress completed !

So with the release of warhammer Quest : Darkwater, my butterfly attention got back to Blackstone Fortress which we started playing with the kids. Having cleared a few runs, I could feel the impending need to have all the villains available soon.. Luckily, I only really had 3 left to do : the 2 chaos space marines and the chaos Lord Obsidius Mallex.

Rein and Raus - Blackstone Fortress

Hey all, so I recently got a box of the new Warhammer Quest : Darkwater like many I guess but that triggered a wave of guilt from the few models I had left unpainted for Blackstne Fortress. Since I'm easily influencable, I decided to just get them out and finally finish 100% of the heroes and later do the last 3 marines I needed to complete the whole set (and hopefully play some games)

Space Pirates !

 

Hey everyone ! Happy new year and best of everything for 2026 to you all !

2025 ended with a little group project with my friends and I decided to make it this particular band I've had in mind for a long time but only just finished now after starting it 2 years ago (see HERE).

Now since I wanted my band to be mostly made of overweight untrustworthy idiots, model selection was pretty fun.

Warhammer 40k Boarding actions set

 

So when The boarding action set was released (decides to not look for the date to reduce guilt), I was really excited about it like many I guess. It's quite an impressive set though and a huge task which I dreaded.

So I took it in baby steps and first started clipping and sanding every bit off the sprue to organise them in zip bags. That took me the three Hobbit movies with the kids to get every bit sorted and prepared.

Fast forward a year and a half and I started last summer with the idea I could paint this set within the holidays. No kids around, good spraying conditions, if there was ever a time, that was now.

So I set a space in the basement and proceeded.

The first coat was a dark red undercoat from below:

Followed by a Zandri dust zenithal to give a nice preshading

The rest was mainly blocking metal parts and an oil wash on everything with a mix of burnt sienna and black. 
Then a cream drybrush and the basics were done, followed by details, one colour at a time, methodically, using contrast paints whenever I could, trying to be really focused on completing the same colour over all the parts before switching to another. 
WHat I thought would be a tedious mind crushing exercise actually became a soothing mindful moment everyday, using like 20 minutes here and there to complete one task until it all added up and the set was taking shape so rapidly.

If you're ever gonna paint that set or any similar from GW, I STRONGLY advise you to mask the pegs and parts supposed to go into others, the tolerances on those pieces ar eso tight even just a prime coat will make them difficult to assemble and two will make them a nightmare.
I learnt it the hard way and therfore masked those parts before spray varnishing :

Now here's the fun part, I won't detail all teh bits I painted since they all come in 4, there are a few variations between the same bits but it's just minor stuff

I got to say this wall section (and the other 3) is probably the one that took the most attention from me, the screens just demanded it and were the occasion to do cool stuff. It really adds a level of immersion to paint stuff on them so I took the time to make them nice. 

Now the big screens really are where I had teh most fun, can you spot the 5 easter eggs amongst them ?

The power device wall are the ones I dreaded the most and probably the ones I have more mixed feelings about because of the OSL. I tried to follow Artis Opus's tutorial and it honestly went quite well until the last stage where (despite the warning in the video) I tied to rush it and sort of messed it up. It's still OK enough for terrain and at table distance it does the job but I reckon I could have achieved that WOW effect if I had been careful enough.

The rest of the sections are more dull which is a good thing, several pieces are a little too busy in my taste and the copy/paste of details tends to show on some parts

Like often, it's tempting to try and paint every detail you see and that can make things blurry and hard to read. I've tried to keep some stuff undetailed and just let the sculpture do its thing.

The set also comes with a lot of doors on a lot of walls, like A LOT

I said A  LOT

After the attempt with the power devices, I decided not to push my luck trying OSL on every light source so kept things simple with the ligt, I was also afraid it would make the set too gaudy which I dislike in general. I like model to stand out so I generally want the scenery duller.

You can see on the sides where I had to sand the parts back to plastic to make them fit easily in the other parts.

For some reason, I particularly liked the wall ends, don't ask me why

The pillars (all 32 of them), were simple enough to not take long and I kept the tiny control panels you're suppose dto attack on them for ater projects and keep them simple.

And then you have the 60 connectors where just sprayed metal, with a couple of black and brown washes, a silver drybrush and a bit of rust washes.

The whole set takes far less time to assemble than I feared and covers quite a juge area even if you've not really thought things through. There are definitely several uses in the near future where I'll need those.

So here we are, if you count the preeping phase out, the painting stage of this set took me about a month with small sessions done at lunch breaks and in the evening, nothing excruciating, nothing tedious. Some will look better or woll have been faster to do but against all odds, I had a lot of pleasue doing this, up to the point I'm now looking forward to other sets of the genre. That in itself is a great reward !

Happy painting to you all !

Ork Stompa

 

Hey everyone ! So somewhere last orctober, I as obviously in a greenskin mood and somehow decided I needed a huge piece in my ork collection (probably because some of my gaming buddies were getting big pieces for their own armies).

So I went looking around and remembered those fansculpts inspired by the epicast and epic lines and starting looking for a Stompa and perhaps more....

This is when my mate Goulven, who has sworn heretic vows to make me paint armies for 2nd ed 40k when I only want a skirmish force, showed me this :

As much as we'll agree I won't do much with a yellow plastic tube, I might be able to save that little fella in the back from gathering more dust...

So when the stompa arrived at home, I took it apart for some preparation, careful sanding and everything.

I started playing around with bits but the very first thing I as sure of was that I wanted it to sport a large grinning bear trap jaw like any ork robot should, I also went looking for a different eye because it's also a graphic staple in my mind.

I'm not gonna lie, the casts were far from good on some parts so there was a lot of bubble filling and resculpting involved, using milliput and milliput juice. I didn't fix all the spots though as some parts were suitable texture for corroded metal and were thus working my way.

After all parts were cleaned, sanded and fixed, I also scraped the joints beteen the armour panels clean for some better definition and started ading a belly gun to echo the shape of the great gargant (and because what's more orkish than more guns right ?)

The next parts was to add impacts, scratches and damaged edges to give a bit more details to the flat surfaces and to start detailing the parts with glyphs and cables

At this stage I was ready to prime the whole Stompa in Zandri Dust and that was a huge relief, everything as silky smooth and blended together nicely like I intended, all the preparation effort really paid off at this stage.

Now it was time to build the base colours so I took the airbrush out and built a nice top/down gradient on each section :

Then can the time to add the mandatory checkers EVERYWHERE (avoid circular checkers if you care about your cortisol levels) and flame, dog teeth and orkish patterns everywhere (everywhere).

Weathering over those really nice and smooth panels was kind of heart breaking and frightening but it had to be done and despite my tendency to overdo this part, it ended up pretty good or at least right like how I meant it to be for once.

Not gonna lie, by that time, my left arm was like Hulk's at that point, despite making both arms sub -assemblies, I still hd to hold the whole body while painting and this thing isn't a lightweight.

It might not be as big as titans or gargants but I find it's already quite a good size and certainly quite a leap from the rank and file which should make it stand on the battletop.

I cannot thank my mate Goulven enough for this kind gift and I hope I did it justice, I certainly had a lot of fun working on a very unusual project for me.

Happy painting to all !

Squat medic from Red Bard Games

Hey all, the other time while I was painting my latest Rökthane, I took the opportunity to paint another space dwarf I had lying around and that was a Red Bard medic a friend kindly gave me.

Rökthane Schiltron Toothcutter - Röknaut Highander

 

So my friend Curis from Ontos Games has kindly offered me to paint one of the new Röknauts he's designed for Salute this year and true to tradition, the model is a Proud Highlander.

The sculpt is a variant from the original Rökthane hich is fun as spotting variants in old Citadel catalogues was a source of joy in my younger days.

Röknauts Revolution - Bikers and new units

 

Hey everyone, hope summer is going well (if a little warm for those in the northern hemisphere), I'm only just on holidays with house works stalling (including the long awaited gaming room) but I've had the delightful surprise to be offered a set of Ontos Röknauts after painting the first set a couple of years ago.

Rogue Trader Scouts

 

Hey everyone ! This is one of those days when I can proudly say I've completed a project ! If you scroll back in time to 2019, I painted a force of terminators for Space HulkI painted a force of terminators for Space Hulk.

Reading this and looking at the powerful illustrations, you know the scouts were just waiting to happen ! Well 5 years later they did ! 

See how the scouts proudly feature along their heavy armoured brothers !