Spoiler
First, here are the past miniatures:
Well, for the first official Miniature Monday, I thought I should start at the top - not in terms of painting quality, but army size. This is Major General Grafin Agrafina, the commander of my largest currently active army - the all-female Vostroyan 169th Armoured Regiment. I started them around fourteen years ago, but only got around to painting her four or five years ago. I have yet to use her directly in a battle, as she is more a marker than anything else (since the regiment is entirely composed of tanks), but I have used the army many times, sometimes with success but often with catastrophic and hilarious failure.
For Miniature Monday this week we have the Chapter Master of the Dawn Knights, part of my Astartes Turbidus collection - metal Space Marine models I repainted in the colours of chapters I had thought up while bored. Unfortunately, the paint stripping of many of them was not wholly effective, hence his somewhat mutilated face. I came up with the colour scheme during a challenge where I had to paint a miniature in under 45 minutes with only five random paints (I won), and it was in fact this that inspired me to start this collection in the first place.
It is Miniature Monday again, and today we are heading back to the tail-end (pun not intended) of old Fantasy for one of Malf's beloved rats. The Stormfiends were the only End Times kit I purchased, as I loved the idea that they were the combination of the best (worst?) works of two clans of mad scientists. I thought that their large armour plates would work well with the rust scheme of my Clanless army, against which the electrical generators of the shock gauntlets stood out nicely.
For this Miniature Monday we have one of my most recent projects, the XV8 Crisis Battlesuit team for my Tau Pirates. While I found that the black part of the scheme worked well on large surfaces with prominent edges, painting the bone-coloured segments was a real challenge, as reaching a consistent tone required many more thin coats of the paint. Tau are often considered to be naïve and pure, so for my pirates I wanted a far more malevolent feel, and the poor unfortunate on the Shas'vre's base serves that purpose. The skulls on the cockpits were originally just thematic, as part of my army's design was to replace the Fire Caste symbols on their shoulderguards with skulls, and these models had those same symbols on their cockpits. By chance, they worked out far better than I had thought - with the skulls angled downwards, it makes it look like they were designed to be face-on when their foes look up at them, which would be quite intimidating. They are each armed with two flamers and an advanced targeting relay, and though here they are accompanied by two Shield Drones, I no longer use those in the actual list.
It is Miniature Monday again, and since it is a Monday the 13th, it is time for some Skaven! I am jumping from one of my newest miniatures to one of my oldest, the Skaven Warlord Queesus, leader of my clanless army. Queesus is the wealthiest of all Skaven, so rich in Warpstone he wears it as armour. I am mostly ok with this miniature despite how long ago I painted it, aside from the awful looking cloak and my poor attempt at a glow effect.
For the 6th Miniature Monday, it is not a character or a unit but an army. The Scribes of Oblivion were not the first Space Marine army I created, but they are the one I have put the most work into so far. I was inspired by Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords novels, in which the main characters skipped forwards in time ten thousand years while travelling through the Warp. It made me think of the idea of a ship from before the Heresy undergoing a similar jump. I pondered what would be the most interesting Legion to go with and when would be the most interesting time for them to have left, and I decided on Word Bearers and immediately after the Monarchia incident (just after the Emperor made it clear to them that he was no god, but just before they fell to Chaos). Thus, when the shipful of loyal Word Bearers arrived in the 38th millennium, they were (eventually and under constant inquisition surveillance) allowed to create a chapter.
Their chapter badge is an inked quill over a pumice stone, symbolising their intent to erase the Word Bearers from history. Their colour scheme is primarily bare metal, representing blank parchment, with a black helm and white mask symbolising the chaplaincy at the heart of their old legion, and a black right hand symbolising ink and a grey left hand symbolising pumice (which was used as an eraser centuries ago). Sadly I made the mistake of combining this with my idea for an army fighting on the outer hull of a space station, and as a result I had silver models on silver bases. The rivets on those bases were designed to line up with the board I made for them and entered them into Armies on Parade with, but I did not get anywhere due to how little they stood out against it. Whoops.
For today's Miniature Monday we have my Ork Kommando kill team (minus one very special member). Five of these were from the lovely but expensive Ork Kommando kit, and the rest were conversions - I chose to add scopes and suppressors to the Sluggas, the latter of which were either the barrels of Shootas or the body of Rokkits. In terms of painting, my Orks have a varied green-turquoise skin tone from exposure to the toxic environment of the planet they inhabit, which is covered in pools of vibrant blue and green toxic waste, hence the camouflage patterns. These pools formed from the fact that they inhabit a colossal waste dump and scrapyard full of rusting metal, so their armour also forms part of their camouflage. Their weapons have been blackened to aid in stealth, and their boots are purple for the same purpose - the joke in the community goes that purple is sneaky because no-one has ever seen a purple Ork, and when Orks believe something like that, it becomes true, so painting their boot-caps purple makes them better at stealth. I will likely return to look at the models in this unit individually at some point, as they are on the list I draw from using a random number generator.
For today's Miniature Monday we have a Trade Federation Tau Devilfish Hover Transport. Painting such wide surfaces without sharp edges is always a hassle, especially in cases like this where the surfaces are curved. The large bone-coloured sections in particular were a hassle, requiring many layers to get a smooth result, so many that i was very concerned about the resulting paint thickness, and it encouraged me to find an alternative solution when painting my Tau Commander. I was inspired to give the Tau in the cupola a Bonding Knife by a well-known Warhammer 40,000 meme, and the fin and spikes on the front were intended to give it a more savage, brutal appearance. It of course has the skull insignia, tying it in with the rest of my Tau pirates.
For today's Miniature Monday, we have the model that was left out from a fortnight ago, the final member of my Ork Kommando Kill-Team - Gitsnipe. I created it as a joke, the lore being that it had heard the legends of the 'Ork Sniper' responsible for almost wiping out the Celestial Lions chapter (which was in fact a Vindicare Asassin hired by the High Lords, funny story) and was inspired to achieve the same. In games of Kill-Team it is just an Ork with a Rokkit Launcha, and I was expecting it to be horrendous (I even had the joke excuse that 'the weight of the sight causes the shots to stray' ready for its paltry Ork accuracy) but though I have not used it in many games yet, it has yet to miss a single shot and its shots have yet to fail to kill. It is actually quite unnerving. In its first game, it killed a Tyranid Warrior with its first shot and pretty much won the game for me there.
For this week's Miniature Monday, we have a miniature I have only just finished - the Command Land Raider for my Space Mammoths chapter, the Guyuk. It is a model I have owned for a decade and a half and repainted several times in that time, so it may be getting a bit thick, but I think it turned out decently. I decided to try quite a bit of freehanding, as I still consider myself terrible at it. They have the Chapter Trait 'Warded', so I painted apotropaic runic names over the hull.
Three of the designs are campaign markings, with the names beside them, in honour of three of the greatest battles the 1st Company in the past few centuries - the Siege of Zalathras where they held the gates against an overwhelming force of Orks alongside Marneus Calgar for a night and a day, the Battle for Orar's Sepulchre where the 1st Company Captain broke the Wailing Doom of an Avatar of Khaine at the cost of grievous wounds, only to be saved by Marneus Calgar, and the Battle of Barathred where a traditional celebration with the feudal natives was interrupted by the crash-landing of Marneus Calgar's ship followed by a mass invasion of hundreds of Night Lords. In all three cases, their contribution was forgotten to posterity and so it was assumed that Marneus Calgar won alone (a little gag taking advantage of some terrible writing by Games Workshop).
The other freehand design on the side-door is their culture's image of the Emperor. The chapter's homeworld was rather hastily incorporated into the Imperium during the Great Crusade, so they did not bother with the Imperial Truth and just slapped the Emperor on top of the culture's solar deity (who happened to be female, but no-one bothered to check). Even when they become Space Marines and thus learn what the sun really is, this does not change their view, as they also learn about the Astronomican and decide that while the Emperor is not their sun, that just means She must be a different kind of sun.
For this week's Miniature Monday we have one from a fair few years ago, First Captain Menoetius of the Scribes of Oblivion. It is in pictures like these that you can really see why I got nowhere when I entered this army into Armies on Parade with a custom board I had put much work into - designed like the outer hull of a space station, it had oxygen tanks, missile silos, hatches and hull plates with rivet lines that I placed the miniatures on in such a way that they perfectly lined up... but it was a silver board and silver bases for a predominantly silver army. I am planning to re-base them on a Mars-esque red planet at some point. This model has two conversions - the first was replacing the bare head with a helmet (because, after all, he is out in space) and the second was swapping out the chainsword for that power sword attachment, which I am still quite proud of.
The Space Marine from last week's Miniature Monday did not seem to go down very well, so I hope that some blue Orks will have better luck. This is a squad of Deathskulls Boyz from Waaagh! Ugerekka, who are set on a toxic scrapyard planet that is slowly poisoning the Orks, giving them a bluer skin tone. The squad's leader is the easily-replaceable Gitgit, due to the fact that Warboss Ugerekka is terrible at remembering names and unimaginative when thinking up nicknames. To make them look more 'Orky', I came up with three different colour schemes for each component of the models (armour, skin, cloth, etcetera) which I applied randomly, hoping to create a less regimented appearance. The most fun part was painting the weapons, as after the basecoat I just lined up every wash I had and used them one after the other as I went through the unit, switching up the order of pots once I reached the end to reduce the chance of one model having the same combination on its two weapons. I then drybrushed them with a lighter metal colour. The resulting variance across the unit was overall subtle, but I like it.
For this week's Miniature Monday we have the first completed unit of Terminators for my new Space Mammoths chapter. I have already talked about them quite a bit, so will keep this part brief. Unfortunately none of the chapter symbols went as smoothly or turned out as well as the one I did for the test model, and the gloss applied to the weapons obscures some of the detail in photographs due to the reflectiveness, but I am overall pleased with the result. I plan to do the rest of the power weapons in the army in a similar scheme, but am undecided on whether to paint the power fists in such a way or leave them white (and if the former, how to paint the designs that are sculpted onto some of said fists).
Anyway, speaking of Terminator characters, it is Miniature Monday time and today I am showing off my newly-completed Space Mammoths Chaplain! His name is Haulbaatar, from the Welsh name component 'Haul' meaning 'Sun' and the Mongolian 'Baatar' meaning 'Hero', giving it the same etymology as the Mongolian name 'Naranbaatar'.
I was certain that I possessed a spare skull helmet from my old Chaos Warrior kits, but could not find it anywhere, so just decided to paint one on (getting the teeth right took a while, but I like how the visor looks a bit like a mammoth skull). I tried to tie in the Crozius Arcanum with my other power weapons, but it was trickier given that it was not an even surface. In addition, that arm is metal (a fifteen-year-old spare part) while the rest of the model is plastic, so I had to build up the base a bit on the other side to stop him from tipping over.
I used a hint of red when painting his black armour, though given my partial colourblindness to that particular colour, I cannot really tell if it makes a difference. Finally, I converted the haloed skull back ornamentation into a sun, to go along with my chapter's solar religious beliefs in regards to the Emperor.
For today's Miniature Monday I would like to present my newly-completed Space Mammoths Dreadnaught. I decided to go for a somewhat 'subtle' conversion on this one, and I adore how well the tusks (originally from Kroq-Gar's saddle/throne, I believe) fit on the Dreadnought. The best conversions look like they were always part of the model.
For my Venerable Dreadnought I was... not so subtle, so you can look forward to that next week.
Well, the wait is over! For this week's Miniature Monday, we have the centrepiece of my Space Mammoths chapter and (due to a technicality of a ten-thousand year old tradition preventing him from being removed) their current Chapter Master, the Venerable Dreadnought Rhystrym.
He was a superlative warrior before his internment, the first Space Mammoths Chapter Master in their history to survive a duel with an Avatar of Khaine, and during that duel he even broke its sword. Marneus Calgar then finished it off and received all of the credit while the contribution of Rhystrym and the Space Mammoths was forgotten.
He finally fell during his fourth duel with the Necron known as Imotekh the Stormlord. Imotekh won all three previous encounters, cutting off Rhystrym's right hand each time as was his habit when facing a worthy foe. However, he then completely forgot about Rhystrym each time, and so did it again the next time. The first time, Rhystrym had a new hand grown. The second time, he fitted an augmetic. The third time, he had a new augmetic made with a built-in and very powerful bomb, so the fourth time, Imotekh's habit blew up in his face. The duel was thus a draw, both combatants heavily damaged, and Rhystrym started his new life as a Dreadnought.
That was when the rest of the chapter remembered that Chapter Masters could resign but not be deposed, and that resigning involved a ritual baton-pass in a jetbike race. Thus, while the 1st Company Captain has taken on most of the responsibilities of the role, Rhystrym is still in name the Chapter Master.
For this week's Miniature Monday, to go along with our recent discussion, here is the leader of my Tau Pirates - the Ethereal Aun'Rakam. He held his fleet together when the Cicatrix Maledictum opened around them, and when their vessels were absorbed into the Space Hulk they had been investigating beforehand, he led them in making it somewhere they could survive. Within the depths of that vessel he found the Paleblade, which only one of his dazzling martial skill can wield, and with it he has slain enough foes to adorn all of his troops in their skulls, a grim but necessary message of what they must do in order to survive. At least, that is how his subordinates see him. In fact, he was a glorified clerk sent on an easy mission that went horribly wrong, he only looked out for his troops because he needed them in order to survive, the Paleblade he found is a sentient weapon that controls the arm that wields it, he does not even know how to fire most of the pistols he strung on his belt to intimidate people, his eyepatch is unnecessary, he wears a shield generator as a hat out of paranoia, and is constantly terrified that his troops will see him for the fraud he is and turn on him.
I do not know what to say about the paint job other than that the sword idea came from a failed attempt at non-metallic metal that I nonetheless liked the look of, and I still struggle with muscles.
Another Miniature Monday and another Monday the 13th, which means it is time for another Skaven - or, in this case, a bunch of Skaven. This is my primary unit of Clanrats for my Clanless army (Clanlessrats?). Including my other unit, I have Skaven from three generations of the kit, and I find it amusing that they became smaller each time. Though 'rust and rags' might seem like a very drab scheme, I still consider it one of my better armies aesthetically. If you look carefully at the bases you can see a few small green stones - chips of warpstone, as the army is set as an invasion of Mordheim looking for loot.
For this week's Miniature Monday we are back to my ongoing project, with Squad Aangri of the Space Mammoths. Painting these fellows was far more of a pain than I expected, and I think I will stay away from white on my next army as a result. For the Power Fists, I was stuck between keeping the white which was a core part of the scheme or painting them energised like the other power weapons of the army. In the end, I attempted both. I cannot say I feel it turned out very well, but it is better than I feared at least.
It is Miniature Monday again, and this time we have Apothecary Odrest of the Space Mammoths, a miniature i feel reflects my emotions - specifically, at having to paint a fully white-armoured model after all of the frustration I went through with the white on the other Terminators! However, painting it reminded me of an important rule of painting white that I had (infuriatingly) completely forgotten - careful recess shades, not full washes! Thus, this one was much more straightforward to paint than I feared.
There are no rules in the game for a Terminator Apothecary (except for the Dark Angels and Grey Knights), so I had to improvise. The Artificer Armour relic gives the same saves as Terminator Armour, but does not give Terminator wargear, leaving him with a Chainsword and Bolt Pistol. Neither of those are Terminator weapons, so I decided to improvise.
I decided before starting the army that the different tusks would reflect where on their home planet the individual was from - what species of Mammoth was most prevalent there. Odrest is from a remote tribe near the place where a Daemonic incursion assaulted the planet, and I think it shows. Certainly not your average medic.
A more sedate Miniature Monday this week, here is Squad Bjoris of the Space Mammoths 1st Company. I think the Power Fist effect works decently well in yellow and green, but just looks rather messy in blue. I went searching through some old tubs of spare bits for things that would look neat, and that is where Sergeant Bjoris' lantern came from.
For this Miniature Monday we are still on some of my most recent completions - this time, the Space Mammoths 1st Company Standard Bearer, Cinhrd. Converting him was tricky, as the banner I decided to use was an old one from the Forge World Red Scorpions Librarian Command Squad kit, which carried the insignia of that chapter in two places and was as shoddy as many products from them. I had to carve it away very carefully (as it was resin), then find a suitable haft to pin between a Thunder Hammer haft arm and the standard. The result was a little wonky, but acceptable.
For this week's Miniature Monday, we will be taking a break from my ongoing projects to look back at one from the past. My Deathskulls Ork Army, Waaagh! Ugerekka, was set on a battlefield which had seen the clash of Eldar, Mechanicus, Necron and Death Guard forces some time ago, leaving the region looking like a polluted scrapyard - something the looting Deathskulls would be very interested in. They are not immune to the toxic pollution, which has the odd effect of altering the pigmentation of their skin by reducing its yellow component, making them bluer. It is far more prominent on the Gretchin, as they are smaller and less resilient. Despite the fact that it is killing them, they welcome the change, as to the Orks, blue is lucky. This unit also displays my fondness for three skin tones in my armies. In battle, I take advantage of the rules for pistols in combat and open-topped vehicles to put these fellows in a Battlewagon and charge it into the enemy, where they can still fire their weapons. A gimmick certainly, but I love it.
This will likely be the final Miniature Monday on discord, as I will be moving them elsewhere after this. To mark the occasion, here is the oldest miniature I have (though with company) - King Borgdai of the Broadshields clan. I converted all of my Broadshields to live up to their name (using large carpet tack heads sprayed black with a printed design glued onto them), but ran into an issue while painting the models - my white spray left a disastrous crusty texture over the models, so trying to paint them caused the paint to soak and blot over the model rather than form lines, hence the very simple scheme without much highlighting. It is especially a shame in this case as the king here is a miniature that predates Warhammer 40,000 entirely (which also means that he used the Ultramarines symbol before the Ultramarines did, if you look at the guard of his sword).
This model will be the focus of this week's Miniature Monday, sadly not moved to the forum yet due to technical issues. This is the Chapter Master and Chief Librarian of the Sun Lords, part of my Astartes Turbidus Chapter Master collection (when I decided to paint my old metal Space Marines as the Chapter Masters of the various chapters i had invented). I used the blade of a Tomb Kings khopesh to give the staff a more Egyptian feel, as this chapter is intended to be a loyalist successor of the Thousand Sons. Though it is difficult to make out, there is a patch of clear ice in front of him. I had a lot of fun making the base - I painted him separately from it, and started by putting a layer of clear plastic on top of it. Then, I created mounds out of green stuff, which I painted white just in case it showed through. Then, I added a layer of grey texture paint, painting it up to a very pale grey. Then I added a layer of white texture paint - these were meant to represent layers of compacted snow. To finish it off, I applied some snow flock with PVA glue, to create a fresh snow effect. I was and still am very happy with the result.
Technology willing, next week's Miniature Monday will be in the forum, and I will put a non-ping link to it in the announcements channel.
This is Ahtorus, Overlord of the Nekhet dynasty. I wanted to create knightly-looking Necrons, an elite army who believe in saving the weak and fighting evil (much to the chagrin of their Triarch minders). As paladins of righteousness, gold and blue seemed an appropriate colour scheme. The cloak looks nice and complex (if I do say so myself) but was actually quite simple to paint - starting with the darkest paint, I painted the panels at the top and the orbs at the bottom. Then swapping to a slightly lighter paint, I did the next levels down and up respectively, and on until done. More complex were the weapons. I have always struggled with blending, but I have done a lot worse. Both weapons are converted quite heavily, and I used two copies of the kit to be able to pin the arm to swap between them. The sword is called Kharedfhor and the spear Rahgemanat, and just as Ahtorus is inspired by King Arthur and bears his blue heraldry, the sword and spear represent his legendary weapons, Caledfwlch (later called Excalibur) and Rhongomiant. If you look closely, you can also see a dagger, representing Carnwennan.
