The ETC is a hardcore team event where you bring your filthiest list or you go home. I played it back in 2009 with Team Ireland and this year I was invited to play for Team Wales at relatively short notice as they needed to replace a last-minute cancellation.  I thought I was lucky when the Welsh asked me to use a Warriors of Chaos army as it would mean that I could use an army that I already had rather than paint up a new one in a hurry. Unfortunately, the particular niche that my army was intended to fill in the Welsh lineup required a fairly specific build and I ended up having to paint up almost everything I needed anyhow. The only parts of my existing army that I could use were my Sorceror on a Disc, my Chaos Knights, my marauders and my Chosen (which were pulling duty as halberd armed Chaos Warriors in this list). I had to paint up 50 more Marauders, 11 Chaos Warriors with Halberds and a mounted Chaos Lord of Khorne to bring the army up to spec and this was bolstered with a Hellcannon borrowed from one of the other Welsh team members.

Somehow, and with significant assistance from my wife, that lot got painted up in the three weeks or so that I had before the event and I took off to sunny Montreux. That part of Switzerland is a beautiful place and Montreux itself is particularly stunning.  I was staying at a Youth Hostel just down the lake shore from the event hall and my walk to and from the tournament every day was just incredible. The ETC itself is held over two days with three games on each day. Our first game was against the Greek team who were a good tip for the winners’ podium and so we weren’t expecting to take much away from that. Sure enough we got destroyed – my game vs their Dark Elf player ended 16-4 against after a methodical demolition job. The Hellcannon did well to eat a War Hydra in close combat but that was the only real bright spot for me. Next up we played team Norn Iron and I was feeling good about this as every time I’d played them in previous events, I’d won. Sure enough, I blew through their Dwarf player and scored 15 points for the team. Our final opponents for the day were team Netherlands where I got schooled 20-0 by a Vampire Counts player.

After a hard day of wargaming we headed into the town where we quickly realised that Montreux is not for people like us. Unless you are fabulously wealthy your entertainment options are going to be extremely limited. We sat and had horrendously expensive pizza and then sat on the beach drinking spiced rum until the small hours. The whole weekend was blisteringly hot and, as the town is sheltered by the mountains, there is no wind so the air stays warm even at night.

The next day we were ready for more punishment and we were drawn against Team Belgium to kick off. I played against a Dwarf army that was practically identical to the one I’d murdered on the previous day except this time everything went wrong for me. Another 20-0 shoeing ensued. After the Belgians we were drawn against Hungary where an Empire army proceeded to pull my army apart and then jump on the bits. Some horrendously bad dice sealed the deal and handed 20 gift-wrapped points to my opponent. I don’t like to blame the dice too much in games because generally losing due to dice means that you are leaning on luck rather than good play to win, however this was about as bad as I’ve ever had and I’m not sure that I could have done things differently. My Sorceror failed 7 leadership tests in a row and fled off the table, 8 out of 10 Chaos Knights failed a strength test and were killed by a Dwellers Below, 34 attacks from halberd-wielding Chaos Warriors of Khorne scored 4 hits and no wounds on the Arch Lector, two hits from a mortar killed an entire unit of Marauders in a single turn. Stuff like that. Finally we were drawn against Team Scotland who ended up beating us narrowly and me handily. By this point there was nothing to play for for either team so we all kicked back and had  a relaxed game. I played another Empire army and, once more found that I had no way to protect myself from his magic and warmachines. Still it was a fun game and we’d hit our team goal of not coming last.

In the end we came 24th out of 28 teams and we were thrilled to win the award for most sporting team. We celebrated with more spiced rum on the beach then I bade farewell to Captain Matt and the rest of the lads and headed back to the hostel. I took a lot of pictures over the weekend; pictures of Montreux can be found here while pictures of armies and miniatures from the ETC itself can be found here.

After my adventure in Switzerland I had a couple of weeks before I was off on a real holiday to the US. In that time I managed to finish painting up an HQ choice for my Grey Knight army. The figure is Castellan Crowe but I will generally be using him as a standard Brotherhood Champion and attaching him to a Razorback squad. Following my experiments with the armour of the Grey Knight Terminators, I decided to try a different tack for Crowe. His armour is heavily shaded and highlighted with Charadon Granite and Vallejo Ivory respectively. Rather than leave the silver areas flat and highlight the edges, I chose to accentuate the curves of the armour plates by painting in the sharp reflections and then contrasting these with deep shadows in a non-metallic metal style – although I was using a metallic colour as a base. This was much more successful than the Terminators were although it was time consuming to achieve. Originally his sword was blue but I painted myself into a corner when I was doing the banner and needed a strong colour that would contrast with the blue field of the banner and so I repainted the sword yellow and repeated this for the chained blade on the banner itself. The runes on the blade were done in blue and a weak object source lighting effect was added by means of a blue glaze. The other detailing was done to match the Terminators except the cloak which was painted a pale yellowish brown to complement the sword and had a triple stripe painted on the hem with some freehand lettering added.

More pictures of Crowe are on the Grey Knights gallery page.

The first thing I completed was a squad of Terminators. In previous incarnations of the army, Grey Knight Terminators were the mainstay of the force. This isn’t as true as it once was but Terminators as a troops choice is still an appealing prospect. There are a lot of options in the box and the codex lists a bewildering array of builds for each terminator in a squad. I thought about magnetising them but figured that I was probably going to field them as a mostly vanilla squad so I gave them a mixture of free upgrades and left it at that. The arms were painted separately on some of the figures as the two-handed weapons are held in such a way as to make painting the figure difficult when they are attached.

I wanted to try and experiment with different ways to paint Marines and the method I chose for these wasn’t entirely successful in the end. To start with I airbrushed them all Chainmail, then I sprayed in some Charadon Granite/Badab Black into the lowlights. I’m trying to do a similar effect to non-metallic metals but using metallic paint while still keeping the extreme contrasts between highlights and lowlights. Once the lowlights were sprayed into armour joints and the lower facing areas of plate, I started to shade with Mithril Silver and Vallejo Ivory. This part was done with a brush rather than with the airbrush. I hatched Chainmail across the plates to smooth the lowlights a little and then built up the highlights on the upper surfaces before applying a glaze of Enchanted Blue to smooth everything out and to break the harsh silver. Finally I added the extreme highlights in white and ivory.

Next up were the Nemesis Force Weapons and I was pretty excited about being able to do these superfast with the airbrush. “Haha!” I thought, “no tedious blending for me!” I masked half of each side of each blade and went to work then repeated the process on the other half. Unfortunately the tape I used lifted the paint off which meant that I had to do so much tidying up with the brush that I ended up practically painting the entire blades by hand anyway. They started off Mordian Blue and then had Ultramarines Blue painted across the flat of the blades before the shimmer patterns were painted in with Ice Blue and Skull White. This is easier than it looks, it’s just time consuming. Very thin paint and very fine strokes in a diagonal hatching pattern are what you need with a few lines outside the main lighting area to provide some relief.

With the blades done it was time to finish off all the detail. The gold was painted with Tausept Ochre before a thin coat of Vallejo’s Oro Glorioso was applied over the top. Then a wash of Brown Ink defined the details before the individual letters and other details were then picked out with a Mithril Silver/Oro Glorioso mix. The Stormbolter casings and the pauldron shields were painted with Scab Red and this was highlighted with Tallarn Flesh mixed with a little Blazing Orange. Heraldic patterns were painted on in Skull White and Chaos Black. Someone senior at GW – I seem to remember that it was Alan Merritt but I may be mistaken – once explained to me that red, white and black are ‘good fascist colours which is why they are used so much for the Imperium’. Regardless, they provide a very bold scheme to make detail pop so I reserved their use for heraldry.

The bases are resin Ruins bases from Microart Studios. I bought a bunch of them in all the sizes I’d need for a Space Marines army so I have some at 25mm for power-armoured marines, 40mm for Terminators, 60mm for Dreadnaughts and a couple of 120mm oval bases for a Stormraven and a Dreadknight. As the army has a low model count and every figure is elite, I could justify putting everything on a special base. These were painted Charadon Granite and then drybrushed in Graveyard Earth and Codex Grey.

Next up was a Razorback as a way to test vehicle painting with the airbrush. Again, this was sprayed Chainmail and then the Charadon Granite/Badab Black mixture was liberally sprayed into the angles between armour plates. Successive thin coats of Chainmail were then sprayed in blend these lowlights in and I did a few passes with Mithril Silver over the upward facing plates. Then the recesses in the tside armour were masked off and Scab Red was sprayed in there as well as on the cowling for the lascannons. The red was highlighted in the same way as for the Terminators’ Stormbolters and then I wen to work with some freehand. I want the Grey Knight vehicles to look baroque and covered in battle-honours so I painted in a chapter symbol on one door along with some gold scrollwork on the red recesses. The gold was shaded by painting thin lines of black and white around it to make it stand out from the red background and I took the oppportunity to abuse my classical education with some cod Latin on the scroll and the side of the lascannon housing (‘Lux ex Umbra’ means Light From the Shadows). One front glacis was painted with heraldry that will eventually match a Strike Squad Justicar  and the other got a numerical designation in accented gold.

The lenses  in the cupola were painted in much the same way as for the Nemesis Force Weapons, thin hatching patterns of Ice Blue and Skull White over a Mordian/Ultramarine Blue base.  Some final highlighting on the edges with ivory and the tank was done. I didn’t paint the interior on this one but I may well do for future tanks. I have a half completed Stormraven which has got as far as a detailed interior and a basecoat on the outside so far, any Landraiders will also have detailed interiors for sure.

Overall I’m enjoying painting these more than I expected I would, the figures are gorgeous and by stretching myself with the ‘true-metallic metal’ technique I can learn more about painting through these. I haven’t got the technique down properly yet but I have a few more squads to paint and I’ll keep experimenting with each one.

You can see more photos of the finished Grey Knights as well as some work in progress shots on this gallery page.

To begin with I started from Lysander, Captain of the Imperial Fists’ First Company. This is a popular choice for Belial conversions as it’s an ornately armoured Terminator in a fairly dynamic pose. The first thing to do was to remove all the Fists’ iconography which was pretty straightforwards – there’s a fist on his gorget and one on each tasset. These are simple to remove. I also cut out the hand part of the fist shape that makes up part of the head of his Thunderhammer. One of the requirements was that the figure should have interchangeable weapon loadouts. As he’s a Terminator this is a piece of cake – all you need to do is have the relevant weapon arms and magnetise them. In Belial’s case he can have either twin Lightning Claws, a Thunderhammer and Stormshield or a Power Sword and Stormbolter. As I don’t collect Space Marines myself I don’t have a stock of bits to scrounge in so I also bought the Dark Angel upgrade sprue which provided the Power Sword, Stormbolter, Storm Shield and some other small parts. I was also sent a pair of Lightning Claws and shoulder pads by the owner of this piece. Right away I had a problem; I had three left arms and only two left shoulderpads – these are the ones that have the Crux Terminatus sculpted on. One was integral to the Storm Shield arm and the other was the plastic one that I was sent along with the Lightning Claws. I solved this problem by cutting the left Lightning Claw and the Power Sword arm off just below the shoulder, magnetising them and then attaching the shoulderpad to one of the orphaned shoulders which then received two magnets (one to attach to the body and one to attach the rest of the arm).

Originally the plan was to give him a hood but I couldn’t make the hood work with the Terminator armour no matter how I tried. It didn’t look right coming from inside the armour and it didn’t flow well around the head if it was outside. Eventually I scraped off all the greenstuff and left him with just the half-cape that’s part of the Lysander figure. I added some Dark Angel iconography on one greave and the gorget by taking some of the small icons from the Dark Angel upgrade sprue, filing them flat on one side and then gluing them on to the armour. I also Dark Angelsed up the Thunderhammer by sandwiching some greenstuff between two of the helmet wings from the sprue and sticking that on where the fist used to be. The wings on his back are from the Warhammer Fantasy Empire General set, there’s a standard top which is a robed and winged skeleton carrying a scythe. All of that except for the wings were cut away and then the two separate wings were greenstuffed together and moulded somewhat to match the back of the armour. The Empire general also gave up his two handed sword which replaced the one from the Dark Angels sprue.

Once the figure was built, it was time to get on with painting it. To begin with I painted on a thin basecoat of Snakebite Leather all over the armour. I like to paint bone as yellowy, old bone rather than bleached white as it’s generally done so I start with quite a dark colour and work up from there. In this case I highlighted up with various mixtures of Snakebite Leather, Bleached Bone and Skull White. The final edge highlights are pure Skull White but the blending in between is mostly Bleached Bone. The green parts started with a base of Orkhide Shade and went through Goblin Green, Scorpion Green and Sunburst Yellow while the red was a base of Mechrite Red with blood red and Golden Yellow for highlights. I’ve warmed to the foundation paints recently, previously I never used them at all but I’m liking the depth of colour I can get with them even though I almost always start from a white undercoat.

The main problem I had with this figure was working out what colours to do the details. Particularly things like the purity seals, which are generally done with red seals and parchment tassels. In this case the red seals would have been lost against the red eagle on the cuirass while parchment tassels wouldn’t show up well against the bone armour. Eventually I decided to do them gold with greyish parchment. The cloak was another area that got redone once I realised my original plan wouldn’t work. I had planned to do it green and cream to match the Deathwing and the Dark Angels primary colours however this didn’t go well. Cream on the inside was too close to the armour colour and it didn’t frame well as a border colour. In the end I painted the inside green with a red border to tie in with Belial’s old company colours (argent a bend sinister gules). This heraldry is repeated on his back banner, his left kneepad and on two of the right shoulderpads.

These problems are why I like to ‘sketch in’ a figure before I start to work on highlighting and fancy work. Very often something that sounds sensible in your head doesn’t translate well to the actual miniature or you’ll realise that you’ve overlooked some detail that requires you to change your plans. You’ll see that the work in progress shots from the gallery are quite rough, there’s no highlighting to speak of, many of the lines are wobbly and there may even be blank bits. Once I’ve got a better idea of how the final figure will look and I’m happy with the scheme then I’ll tidy it up, work on the shading and add in the fiddly detail.

I played around a little with some non-metallic metal effects on this model. The sword on the back banner as well as the Power Sword and the bayonet on the Storm bolter are all done with slightly different nmm techniques. The back banner is done as shading with a chrome effect – very dark areas next to very light areas to suggest sharp contrasts of light. The Power Sword and bayonet on the other hand use a hatching effect to suggest a shimmering reflection on the blade.

Finally the base is from the 40k basing kit. The large pieces are a shade over 40mm across so I had to trim it down to size, the feet are pinned into it and then it was glued onto the standard 40mm round base.  It was painted black then drybrushed with Graveyard Earth, Terracotta and Fortress Grey before small clumps of static grass were added to break it up a little.

It’s getting posted off to England on Monday, let’s hope the new owner likes it!

You can see all the in-progress and final pictures of this figure in the gallery.

Shortly before Christmas, my local game store received one of the new plastic Tyranid Trygon kits for display purposes. As it happened, I was in there at the time and casually mentioned that I’d like to paint one but wasn’t going to buy one just to paint. The manager told me that I was welcome to paint the display copy once he’d magnetised it and so I ended up painting a modular Trygon/Mawloc.

Jakob spent some time magnetising each of the different options to make them interchangeable and this is mostly pretty straightforward. Each arm has a magnet in the ball joint and there is a corresponding magnet in the sockets. It’s worth spending some time here to make sure that the magnets in the arms are at a good angle. Each arm overlaps the one above it to a degree and thus needs to be splayed out a little to clear it. If you put the magnet in the same position for each arm then they won’t fit properly. The tail has a pin as well as a magnet and each tail tip has a magnet and a hole drilled in it to accept the pin to ensure that it lines up properly and doesn’t twist. The complicated area is the head as there are a lot of optional parts in a relatively small area and these need magnets in different places. The mandibles can be attached just like the arms as they have a simple ball and socket joint on each side but the two jaws present problems. The contact area for each jaw is quite small and the Mawloc mouth part is pretty large so needs a solid connection to hold it in place. Jakob was able to make the regular Trygon jaw fit by putting a magnet in the cavity within it which connects with one inside the head. These are some distance apart but with sufficiently powerful magnets, the attraction is enough to hold the jaw in place. The Mawloc mouth parts however don’t have a convenient space to hide a magnet in as they are spread open with no solid sections. My suggestion was to not magnetise it at all and have two pins running backwards from the back of the jaw into holes drilled in the head section to hold it in place. Jakob however used flat magnets greenstuffed to the back of the jaw and the front of the  head. I still think my solution was better but Jakob’s works although it needs a bit of cutting and greenstuffing to make everything fit. There are also different carapace sections for the top of the head but there wasn’t enough room to fit yet more magnets in the head so Jakob picked one and glued it in.

Once Jakob had assembled and magnetised the kit, it was handed over to me for painting. I sprayed it white and then deliberated on a colour scheme. Jakob wasn’t a fan of the standard Leviathan colours of purple and white and I think the Behemoth red and blue scheme looks too busy so I compromised on a purplish-brown with pale green scheme as a good contrast using non-standard colours. Tyranids are composed of two main textures: chitinous armour and ribbed flesh, I chose to make the armour dark and the flesh pale. To start with I painted all of the flesh areas with Rotting Flesh. This was then washed with Thraka Green and then highlighted with Rotting Flesh again. Once that was dry I glazed it with Enchanted Blue before applying final highlights of a Rotting Flesh/Bleached Bone mix. As this is quite a large model and there are lots of extra bits, this took some time.

The chitin was painted Scorched Earth initially and then washed with Asurmen Blue. This gave a very dark and warm purple that was almost black. I highlighted this with Leviathan Purple in small amounts of Skull White before glazing it with Lich Purple. Final highlights were in Warlock Purple mixed with Tentacle Pink. Highlighting chitin is relatively simple although it’s time consuming when dealing with the number of separate plates on the Trygon (plus all the different claws, mandibles and so forth). To start with the highlight was pretty subtle and was applied towards the trailing edge of each individual plate. Then the lighter highlights were painted on very quickly in thin lines down from the middle of the plate to the trailing edge. As the highlights get lighter these lines become shorter and more closely spaced, this provides a smooth highlight while keeping the chitinous feel. Finally edge highlights were painted around the vertices. The flesh inside the jaws was painted Tentacle Pink and washed with Leviathan Purple before highlighting with Bleached Bone, this provided a sufficient contrast with the rest of the model without making it look unnatural. The eyes were done in blue and painted as gems instead of irises and pupils.

The whole thing took me a while due mostly the sheer size of the beast. Highlighting that much flesh and that many plates is fiddly and time consuming even with a big brush and thin paint. Still once it’s together it looks pretty impressive.

Check out more pictures including work in progress shots on this gallery page.