The Average Gamer

There are plenty of how to guides about how to paint space marines, they are after all the most popular faction in Warhammer 40k, and they come in a large variety of flavours each with their own unique colour schemes, and you can of course decide to paint them with your own unique scheme. Here is a guide to how I paint my Ultramarines. However you are going to paint you marines, there are a few steps that I find important with any miniature before I put brush to model. Step 1 Look at your miniature and identify the different areas that require different colours. If we look at this Primaris Lieutenant from the Dark Imperium boxed set, you can identify several distinct areas. The armour obviously makes up the majority of the miniature, however there are pouches, weapons and the armour trim to name a few areas. Once you know what is on the model, you can... Step 2 Pick your colours. It's important before you start painting to know what colours you are going to use. If you are painting...

How I almost Quit Painting Miniatures I made a mistake. I'll own it because it was unforced and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I agreed to paint a Death Guard army, in exchange for quite a few (metal) Sisters of Battle, and a small amount of money. I thought at the time that this was a good deal, how hard could it be? 18 months later and I'm just putting the finishing touches to the last few models that I had agreed to paint. I had meant to spend the past week painting a few smurf  Ultramarine characters but a quick glance at my pile of shame reminded me I still had a few Plague marines left to paint. My main mistake was overestimating my ability to paint quickly. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I will paint things to the best ability when 'OK' is good enough, and my 'OK' seems to be better than a lot of peoples best. I do know that currently my best wont hold up against a lot of peoples, but i'm not painting for competitions (at the moment). My w...

Aggressors are my favorite Space Marine Primaris unit both in terms of the miniatures, and also their rules. The miniatures are not quite fully painted, the edge highlighting took a lot longer than i had expected, there are far more details than on a regular Intercessor, but there are only a few details left to complete. I'm quite happy with them so far. I just have to finish the helmet visors, the basing, a few of the details, and add a few more transfers. Unit Overview Aggressors are an Elite unit in a space marine army, meaning they will not fulfill any of the compulsory choices you have to take in most detachments. This also means they lack the 'defenders of Humanity ability' which is restricted to troops choices only. They are equipped with Gravis armour which increases their toughness to 5 and their wounds to 3 each, making them much more survivable against most units than normal Primaris units who have toughness 4 and 2 wounds apiece. You can take them in units of 3-...

Its quite a sobering going through your miniatures and coming to the conclusion that you have far more of them than you really should. It can also be difficult to know where to start and get overwhelmed by it all and end up not doing anything. I've spent the past few days putting as much as I can in boxes and therefore out of sight, made sure that my painting desk is (almost) clear and decided how i'm going to go about getting a fully painted 40k army on to the tabletop for what will probably be the first time in 20 years, while at the same time working on Infinity and any other projects I start just for fun. Warhammer 40k As a starting point for Warhammer 40k I have precisely 965 points of fully painted Ultramarines (this is using 8th edition points values) and although the bases need to be finished I ran out of grass tufts. This is out of a total of around 14,000 points which is about 300 infantry models and 25 vehicles of all persuasions. My intention is to get up to 2000 po...

Greetings all,  I've been a war-gamer for over 20 years, and it's safe to say that I have been a little too enthusiastic at times, overestimating my ability to paint what I buy, leaving me with a massive collection of miniatures and games, the majority of which have yet to see a lick of paint. This is something I've recently made a massive effort to remedy and i'm making good progress. I prefer to play games, but obviously that's not been an option for a few months. My Latest Work I'm very fortunate to have a lovely wife who encourages me, even if I have to sneak things past her from time to time. I often bring a smile to the face of the staff at my LGS when I turn up and start another project which is doomed to meet the same fate as most of my past ones. A broader smile is elicited when my wife comes with me. She's not a tabletop gamer like me, but she does like her board games. and we have spent many a pleasant evening playing with friends who are equally ...