My Armies

I love a good group shot.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about getting all of your miniatures for any specific project and arranging them together on a surface. It’s a reminder of all the blood, sweat and tears that it took to get to where you are. It lets those miniatures that you bought, assembled and painted for the sake of completion and fluffiness get some time to shine, outwith the confines of a realistically playable game.

And heck, it just looks really cool.

This is my complete set of full-sized ‘family photos’ that I have for my various projects for various game systems. The images will be downsized to fit on the page – if you want a closer look, you can click on them and it’ll take you to the image itself without any scaling.

I can’t promise that every one of these group shots will be 100% up-to-date (as some are either missing or out of date at the point of posting this), but I’ll try my best to keep them as up to date as I can. Note that this isn’t a complete representation of my collection either, and I may be missing a couple of older projects that I haven’t photographed yet, or any armies that I’ve since sold off without capturing in photograph.

I’ve tried to order these on the page by category with wargames at the top, skirmish games below and board games at the bottom. I don’t know why it matters, but I feel like I should say that the order is in no way indicative of my personal preferences or quality of paint job.

All that said, onto the armies…

The Horus Heresy

Space Wolves – 11,000pts+

My first army for the Horus Heresy, and still my bread and butter for the system – not to mention it’s still my largest army to date. It’s got flyers, super heavies, transports, jetbikes, Dreadnoughts of all shapes and sizes and a crazy amount of Infantry (there’s even been another 10 Grey Slayers added since this photo was taken).

This army was started towards the tail end of my Warhammer 40.000 Chaos Space Marines army, after I discovered The Horus Heresy was a thing that existed. While my CSM army was a classic homebrew chapter project, I found myself surprisingly enjoying the more historical approach to the Space Wolves – that, the nostalgia factor (Space Wolves were my first Warhammer army as a pre-teen boy) and the abundance of high point super heavies available in the Horus Heresy eventually led to it becoming my main army project.

Iron Warriors – 7000pts+

My second Horus Heresy army, and a deliberate counterpart to my Space Wolves in almost every way. Where the Space Wolves are combat-oriented, infantry heavy and with lots of transports, flyers and fast tanks, the Iron Warriors have a ton of artillery and long range firepower. Where my Space Wolves have an abundance of bare heads and exposed flesh, only a small handful of my IW minis are without their helmet. Where my Space Wolves are extensively edge highlighted, my Iron Warriors are predominantly drybrushed and sponged, with a healthy dose of weathering powders.

Probably the main reason that I went for Iron Warriors as my second Horus Heresy army was that they’re such a typical, almost Codex Astartes-esque Traitor Legion, which I just love. There’s no mutations, no psykers, no daemon engines, sonic weapons or Butcher’s Nails in this legion – just cold, hard Astartes. Given that my main legion, the Space Wolves are so individualistic in their approach for – particularly for a loyalist Legion – it made sense to play something more typical for my Traitors. As such, I’ve tried to include as many standard 30K Legion elements as I could – such as Javelin Land Speeders, Legion Terminators, Rhinos, 20-man Bolter-only Tactical Squads and generic Dreadnought loadouts – in addition to the artillery and unique Iron Warriors units. Down the line, I’d love to add some Predators and Land Raiders for more of that classic Space Marines vibe.

Daemons of the Ruinstorm – 3000pts+

The Creeping Scourge, my Daemons of the Ruinstorm was a project that was never really meant to happen. When the Horus Heresy Book 8 – Malevolence dropped with rules for Daemons, the idea crossed my mind to pivot my Age of Sigmar army into a Daemons of the Ruinstorm army, but the idea quickly faded. In fact, it was several months later when I was aggressively putting off painting another 10 Grey Slayers for my VI Legion that I got the idea to assemble and paint a box of 10 Plaguebearers as a means to ease myself back into painting.

Of course, it ended up being such a quick and fun project that I immediately started looking into the Daemons of the Ruinstorm army list again. 20 more Plaguebearers, another flying Daemon Prince / Shrike, 3 more bases of Nurglings and the amazing Cor’Bax Utterblight later, I had another Horus Heresy army under my belt.

In terms of the army list, I’m using the ‘Creeping Scourge’ list, and both the Plague Drones and Beasts of Nurgle (with old-style Great Unclean One ‘Champion’) as Brutes, while the two Daemon Princes are Shrikes. In the back, my ForgeWorld Great Unclean One is an Arch-Daemon. Somewhere along the line, I’d love to add a couple of Maggoths as Greater Daemon Beasts or add a Gigantic Chaos Spawn (if they ever come back into production) as a Daemon Behemoth just to fill out the Heavy Support slot.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles

Skaven – 8000pts+

An army for an outdated version of a discontinued game, built from a core of repurposed models originally painted for an Age of Sigmar army – now given new life and expanded into one of my flagship projects. A classic army that I’d always wanted.

Warhammer 40,000

Adepta Sororitas, 2000pts+

Adepta Sororitas are the embodiment of everything that I love about Warhammer 40,000. Power armour, Rhino-chassis vehicles and an unfettered, zealous-to-a-fault belief in the God Emperor of Mankind. I’ve wanted to build, paint and play a Sisters of Battle army for almost 20 years now, so this was a bit of a dream project for me, despite how often I found myself bemoaning what a chore they were to paint. I love the scheme for this army, and I love how they turned out. Expect to see this one grow in the future, as it’s already seen significant expansion since this photograph was taken. I wrote a whole series of posts on this army called The Emperor Protects.

I’d like to believe that this will be the last power armoured army that I ever paint, but somehow I doubt it…

Chaos Space Marines

My (now sold) Chaos Space Marines – my first foray back into Warhammer 40,000 with the release of 8th Edition, following the completion of my Stormcast and Khorne/Skaven army, but before my Maggotkin of Nurgle were a thing. There was also a squad of 5 Bikers with a few meltaguns in the army that are missing from this picture.

This was a fun project that I loved working on – I was really happy with the scheme, and I tried a lot of new things on the army. Whether it was getting creative with my basing, kitbashing the Cultists – my amateurish attempt at Blanchitsu – earning how to magnetise everything from Predator sponsors to Terminator arms, or reposing my Renegade Knight, I really felt like l made strides forward across this hobby.

Between my Space Wolves legion and later Iron Warriors legion projects though, I just didn’t have any need for a third Space Marine army – both from a gameplay and a future hobby standpoint. In the end, it was sold to make the funds and closet space for my Warhound Titan, which was a pretty huge step forward for me.

Middle-earth

Rivendell – 1700pts+

Rivendell! This is army is the reason I play Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game – originally intended as a one-off, 5-10 model Battle Company (I really “just fancied painting some Elves”), this project spiralled massively into a full-scale army with a bit of everything from the Rivendell army list.

The colour scheme was originally going to be as close to the movies as possible, but my tendency towards excessive highlighting on the cloaks ended up turning them into a scheme closer to my Stormcast Eternals army. This army is also the origin of my water effect bases – a visual effect that’s since made its way to just about all my Middle-earth armies.

Angmar – 1700pts+

My second army for Middle-earth, although very much conceived of, planned and built in tandem with my High Elves. While on the High Elves I wanted lots of bright layering and high contrast edge highlighting, I used a lot more drybrushing on these guys – the Orcs in particular – and tried to down down any edge highlights with washes. Even the basing is similar to the Elves – texture with tufts and a good amount of water features – but washed with Agrax Earthshade instead of Seraphim Sepia for a darker look, and using Highland/Wasteland Tuft rather than flowers, with snow effects to help bring context to the dull, dead earth, as well as bringing the overall brightness back up a little.

My idea with this army was to have the basic rank and file look really grim and monotonous while using the bright blue spirit miniatures such as the Barrow Wights, Dead Marsh Spectres and Shades as ‘spot colours’. Similarly, my monsters were given spooky ruins to stand on for the same effect.

Moria – 1000pts+

Moria were very nearly my flagship Evil force, but ultimately lost out to Angmar due to my preference of Orcs over Goblins. Still, with my Cave Trolls being entirely re-usable from my Angmar army, it was only a matter of time before I caved and got a Balrog to call my own.

This was a fun project, and surprisingly fun to knock out as long as you’re willing to make concessions on the quality of the individual Goblins. I like how the characters stand out in this force, and I’m pretty proud of how the flame effects came out on the Balrog. This was the army I decided to keep a cohesive basing style for all of my Good and Evil forces on, as it really helps with miniature re-use (those Cave Trolls in the back are straight out of my Angmar army).

The Dark Powers of Dol Guldur – 1000pts

Between the low model count and forgiving sculpts, this was easily the fastest full-size army I’ve ever painted – with the Necromancer and the Nine finished in a single weekend, and the Keeper of Dungeons on a single Saturday. I’m really happy with the overall look of these guys, particularly with how well the Necromancer came out – and I re-used a lot of the lessons I learned about painting robes quickly on these guys across my Nazgul for my Angmar army, as well as The Dark Lord Sauron himself later. As a really rather standalone kind of force, I broke the mould and gave them a unique basing style using a green stuff roller from Green Stuff World, which I’m pretty glad I did – there’s not a lot of space on those 25mm bases to do something interesting, and these miniatures definitely deserve it.

Grey Company – 1000pts

Ah, heck, these guys have a whole blog post to themselves. Go read that instead.

Fangorn – 500pts

The Last March of the Ents, the mighty Forest of Fangorn!

Okay, so it’s three models. Treebeard was my first – a thoughtful birthday present from my fiance. The other two came later when I needed a 450 point army for a doubles event. With the release of the War in Rohan supplement and new profiles for Beechbone and Quickbeam, I can now run this army as a 500 force with a heck of a lot more Might on the table, which is just brilliant. At least until Games Workshop release official models for Beechbone and Quickbeam, anyway.

Iron Hills & Mirkwood – 900pts+

Dwarves and Elves, together at last! Rather than paint more of the same, I thought it might be fun to expand my Iron Hills Dwarves with some allies from Mirkwood, including the stellar Thranduil miniature from ForgeWorld. Also the first appearance of the orange and ivory colour scheme that would end up on my Adepta Sororitas army!

Azog’s Legion – 900pts+

My second attempt at a Blanchitsu-inspired aesthetic in my painting on some of the sickest sculpts for Middle-earth. I wrote all about these guys in this post with a follow-up in this one.

Desolator of the North

Alright, he’s a single miniature, but Smaug is sort of an army unto himself. Check out my series of posts about building and painting the mini and his display board here.

Age of Sigmar

Maggotkin of Nurgle – 3200pts

Once upon a time, my Maggotkin of Nurgle had probably seen the most actual tabletop time of all my armies. I’ve got a lot of really good memories attached to this one; they’ve been to a good number of tournaments and – while never really winning me all that many games (my personal best being something like 3 wins, 2 losses) – they’ve won me my fair share of Best Army votes over the years. They were also the army that I chose to showcase at Armies on Parade 2018 with my Gutrot Spume coming ashore board, The Death of Hope.

Stormcast Eternals – 3000pts

My first step back into the hobby in around a decade was Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. It was supposed to be a one off – a simple little board game project with a finite amount of miniatures to paint that could be easily stored, transported and played with. Of course, by the time I completed the project I was well and truly bitten by the bug again. The rest, as they say, is history.

I knew that I wanted to continue painting miniatures, but I was at a bit of a loss as to what direction to go in. This was back before Specialist Games had returned with Kill Team, Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Shadespire and the like, so my only real options were Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000: Dark Vengeance. I remember being extremely torn about which direction to go in – Age of Sigmar was a little jarring for me to process as a fan of Warhammer Fantasy (and if I’m honest, still is a little), but the Dark Vengeance box set really sort of.. sucked. The miniatures were all pretty dated looking, and didn’t really do it for me at all. The Age of Sigmar box set, on the other hand, was filled with potential.

Around the time I bought the Age of Sigmar starter set, I had also bought my fiancé some Dragon Knights and a High Elf Dragonlord to have a play about with. Her engagement with the hobby was ultimately really limited, but she did leave me a whole bunch of High Elf bitz. This was the inspiration for all the High Elf conversions in this army – the swords on the Liberators, the head swaps, weapon swaps and ‘White Lion’ Decimators. Looking back, I don’t think that the theme and the conversions entirely worked 100% of the time, but it certainly helped the learning process along to have been ambitious (if a little out of my depth) at such an early stage.

I’ve got some real mixed feelings about this army – alongside my Bloodbound/Skaven army, it was my first full-scale wargaming project. The Bloodbound have now long since been sold off, which makes this my oldest remaining project. On the other hand, I find Stormcast as a faction to be unengaging, by and large, so they don’t see an awful lot of table time outside of demo games. Some of the paint jobs are really starting to show their age here, too – although it’s nice to be able to compare my early attempts at a Decimator compared to the comparatively recently painted Knight Incantor.

Blood Bowl

Orcs

TURGHALLZ TOOFSPITTAZ ARE DA ‘ARDEST TEAM IN DA LEAGUE!!

Yeah, so… They’re Orcs wearing pink. Okay. That said, their colour scheme also resembles a bloody, smashed up grin – which is pretty dang Orcy, if I say so myself!

These guys were the first Blood Bowl team that I fell in love with and – if the Orc Team Booster didn’t take so long coming out – probably would have been my main team for league play, despite my initial plans just to leave them as a demo team.

Thankfully though, the Orc Booster has finally arrived and the Toofspittaz have some new transfers in the form of Varag Ghoul-Chewer, a pair of Black Orc Blockers, another Blitzer and an alternate (and much better) Thrower sculpt to add to their roster – making the team just about complete now.

Skaven

Score-score many touchdowns, yes-yes! My Skaven team, ‘The Hellpitsburgh Squealers’ were and are one of my big passion projects in the hobby. In both aesthetics and play style, they were easily my favourite team in the game, and so they earned the right to bare my all time favourite colour scheme. I used the Skaven Booster from ForgeWorld along with a number of subtle conversions and reposes to ensure every single miniature in this team is entirely unique – plus I even added Star Players Glart Smashrip (I love that miniature), Hakflem Skuttlespike and the notorious ForgeWorld Rat Ogre (whose pose and aesthetic really does look much better in person than photos).

Humans

The Reikland Reavers, my first Blood Bowl team and the only one without a homebrew colour scheme. What you’re looking at is pretty much the human team out of the starter box with the plastic Ogre added – no reposes, no headswaps; just a couple of repainted shoes and that’s about it. On the whole, I’m not overwhelmingly smitten with Human’s as a team, but I did enjoy playing as them in the Blood Bowl II on PC – most likely the reason these guys got a box art paint job. I do plan on expanding the team to include a Team Booster and Star Player Griff Oberwald – I’ll get around to it one of these days.

Mordheim

Clan Eshin

My Mordheim gang, The Squeaky Blinders are another Skaven-centric passion project of mine, an experiment in Blanchitsu and a homage to The Peaky Blinders. These guys are mostly made from Spiteclaws Swarm, the Rat Ogre and Giant Rats kit, plus a whole host of conversions for the various characters. I wrote a blog about them here.

Inquisitor (28mm)

Inquisitorial Retinue of Sebastian von Dernbach of the Ordo Hereticus

In some ways the spiritual successor to my Mordheim warband, Sebastian von Dernbach and his retinue were my second big experiment in Blanchitsu. A lot of these miniatures were kitbashed on a whim with leftover parts from Inquisitor Karamazov, after utilizing a bunch of bits from his kit on what was supposed to be an Inquisitor for my Adepta Sororitas army. For the full scoop on these miniatures, check out my post Innocence Proves Nothing here.

As seen in White Dwarf #472!

Warhammer Quest

Silver Tower

Ah, hell. Here they are. The very first set of miniatures that I painted when I returned to this all-consuming hobby back in 2016 – boxed game Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. I remember at the time having mixed feelings about this set – it’s aesthetic not only a wild departure from what I remembered of the Old World in WHFB, but with the trippy Tzeentch aesthetic mixed in there to boot.

I was wildly out of my depth with some of these – the earliest skin tones on the Fyreslayer and Darkoath in particular were absolutely dire, while the fleshy engravings on the Ogroid were an absolute disaster. The basing as well is a weird, overly gravelly texture that really didn’t work either. Still, I think that I did a pretty good job with these guys as a “first project.” It had been over a decade since I had painted any miniatures, and I wasn’t even as good as this when I had stopped. I think you can see a clear progression with some of them – particularly the skin on the Acolytes, after discovering that ‘flesh wash’ was a thing. My next project that would immediately follow this one – my Stormcast Eternals – was not exactly a work of art either, but they benefited massively from this first re-introduction to painting.

Blackstone Fortress

My first Warhammer Quest in over three years. I felt pretty nostalgic painting this set – it was my first boxed game experience since that first set that started it all.

I wrote a three part series on painting this set, which you can read here, here and here.

Malifaux

Bayou – Ulix Turner

My first crew for Malifaux and my first ever real departure from Games Workshop (beyond simple conversion bits and proxy miniatures). Prior to getting sucked in by the unique lore and the fluid alternating activations gameplay, I found myself struggling to find a foothold in Wyrd’s catalogue of miniatures for Malifaux. The aesthetic is such a departure from Games Workshop’s design approach for both their own properties and Middle-earth games that I found myself struggling to emotionally connect with any of the miniatures.. until I discovered the Master Ulix Turner, a Pig Farmer with the keywords PIG and SOOEY.

Immediately, I felt sucked in by the possibility of playing a warband of pigs and fell in love with the diverse and amazing range of miniatures – everything from pigs with steampunky looking sonic amplifiers to mutated Gremlin/Pig hybrids that looked like something straight out of TMNT to three headed Sow’s that can quite literally birth piglets on the battlefield. Awesome.

Thanks to the low model count and uncluttered design of these miniatures, I had a lot of fun pushing my boundaries on these and really getting to grips with both using an airbrush as a useful tool for basecoating and glazing to create buttery smooth transitions. You can read what I wrote about them in greater detail here and here.

3 thoughts on “My Armies”

  1. Hey mate, that Rivendell army is super inspiring. Getting back into the Hobby after 10+ Years and I was hoping you could share the recipe to that colour scheme? That blue is super rich and beautiful, and that gold is equally amazing. Thanks!

    Reply

    1. Hi there – first of all, thanks for the kind words and welcome back to the hobby! It’s always great to hear about other people returning to it (especially when it’s to one of my favourite games).

      The blue is Magic Blue, highlighted with Electric Blue and highlighted against with Electric Blue with a bit of Elfic Flesh mixed in. The Magic/Electric is then smoothened over with a couple layers of them mixed to blend it. I used some Guulliman Blue Glaze in the recesses to shade it a bit, but since that’s discontinued you could sub that for Vallejo Blue Ink thinned down with some Water or Lahmian Medium.

      The gold, I believe, is Vallejo Glorious Gold, shaded with Riekland Fleshshade. Then, I use some Nihilakh Oxide with a little Waywatcher Green mixed in (a tiny drop of Biel Tan Green wash would work here instead) and paint that in the recesses. This is messy, so I then try and pick out the armour plates with glorious gold again, then highlight first with Glorious Gold with some Army Painter Shining Silver mixed in, and then finally again with Army Painter Shining Silver.

      It’s a lot of steps, I know. If that’s all a bit intimidating, you can definitely get an approximation using the same colours but with fewer steps. Magic Blue highlighted with Electric Blue over the folds and Electric Blue/Elfic Flesh as highlights across the sharp edges of the cloak would look good on the tabletop. Likewise, you can probably get away with going from Glorious Gold to washing with Nihalkh Oxide and a bit of green, then picking out the plates with Glorious Gold mixed with a little Silver.

      Hopefully this helps and welcome back to the hobby!

      Reply

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