Bernhardt: Soggy wanted me to put a quip here about Q1 having already gone by, and so it has. I'm more of a "grim witness to the inexorable passage of time" guy myself, but over the last month the hobbyists here at Goonhammer have put together a bunch of models that are a lot more fun than I am. There's a bunch of absurdly cool-looking stuff in here front to back and top to bottom, so let's get started.
Rockfish
I've been away for medical reasons for a bit but I've managed to get back into painting this month! Uh rather a few things already some how, starting off with the twin lance!
The Twin Lance. Credit: Rockfish
Beyond that in the 40k realm it's been a wild mix of things, a warboss, venom crawler and even a couple of Taurox!
Warboss in Mega Armour. Credit: Rockfish
Venomcrawler. Credit: Rockfish
Canoptek Doomstalker. Credit: Rockfish
Taurox. Credit: Rockfish
Taurox Prime. Credit: Rockfish
Last week I did a quick detour into AoS to paint up a tree!
Grove Guardian. Credit: Rockfish
Plus I did an assortment of mechs of course!
Magos Sockbert
Primed to painted in 20 days. That's the top level headline for my Emperor's Children, 2000 point army fully painted in 20 days, ready to get smashed at SydGT (event recap coming soon!). I had a fully painted EC army shortly after launch, all covered in mud and rust and fun weathering effects (an Eidolon example below), but when you put it all down on the table to play it just looks... poopy. Up close, great. Tabletop view, smear of brown. So, they all got stripped, and they'd all come back in beautiful Third Legion colours, so sort of vaguely imagining they're Scouring era - still all messed up from Chaos, but early enough on they're still beautiful purples and whites and golds, rather than icky pinks and blacks.
That would be enough, I think, for one month's work. But it's not all I did. Because I have a problem. As I write this, 87 days have passed in hell-year 2026, and I have painted:
- Four C'tan, two Crypteks, a Cryptothrall, two Canoptek Doomstalkers, one Canoptek Reanimator, six Canoptek Wraiths, a Hexmark Destroyer, a Skorpekh Lord, two different Overlords, Ammentar, 12 Scarabs, five Flayed Ones, 10 Lychguard, six Skorpekh and three Ophydian Destroyers, a Royal Warden, and Illuminor Szeras for my Necrons (59 models)
- Sanctifiers, Hierotek Circle, and Canoptek Circle for Kill Team (27 models)
- An Impisi Force for BLKOUT (coverage coming soon, 9 models)
- All the villains of the Darkwater box (41 models)
- Five Palanite Justicars, six Subjucators, six officers, 10 Enforcers, and three doggos for my Palatine Enforcer gang for Necromunda (30 models)
- A Great Unclean One and three Nurselings, as the start of a Maggotkin force (4 models)
- Six Old Dominion characters for Conquest: Last Argument of Kings and one Wadhrun Predator (7 models)
- Fulgrim, three Lords Exhaultant, three Kakophonists, Lucius the Eternal, two Slaangor as Spawn, two Rhinos, 15 Infractors and five Tormentors, 18 Noise Marines, six Flawless Blades, and three Winged Demon Princes (59 models)That, if you're keeping count, is two hundred and thirty four (236) models in 87 days. Yes, I have a problem. Yes, a lot of that was basically some form of therapy. But damn son, I'm GOOD at this. Sure, they're not going to be 'Eavy Metal quality, but I'm truly happy with them. Here's to the next three months![pics to follow]
Bair
At some point this slump will pass, as all things do, and I'll be back on the painting-horse. Minus any actual horse. But I did paint some horses this month! March for me was receiving two review sets from Victrix and painting at least some models from each set relatively quickly.
First up their medieval
crossbowmen and archers set, which I built a dozen crossbowmen, painted eight of them, and need to get back and build up a bunch of archers next. The review says it all and I'm going to probably just be very positive about Victrix all the time because their stuff is just
fantastic every single time.
Victrix Medieval Crossbowmen - credit Bair
Then I had to get to some horses. Many people are always saying how much horses/cavalry suck to paint and I just really don't get it, I got these done across two hobby sessions with maybe about 6-7 hours total work gone into them. I'm not really pleased with the skin on them, the wash really messed it up and I'm not (yet) very good at painting skin that's not extremely white, something to practice. With my upcoming Numidian project I'll need to figure that out. Just like the crossbowmen this kit is wonderful and a full review will be out at some point soon!
These will be played as Turcopoles for my Milites Christi, Knights Hospitaller, force and I was really glad to be able to add a nice bright splash of colour to the otherwise sea of silver and black of that army! I really enjoy painting these brighter colours, like I did all across my Vikings, and might even pick up a Persian project this year simply for the bright tones.
Victrix Islamic Horse Archers - credit Bair
Jackie Daytona
I’ve got a bit of catching up today since I missed the last update. Finishing up the British and Native Nations troops means I now have a completed French Indian War project, and I can now focus on 28mm American Civil War for Muskets and Tomahawks’ upcoming expansion. I absolutely love the chunky look of these models, they’ve got a ton of character.
Credit: Jackie Daytona
Credit: Jackie Daytona
Credit: Jackie Daytona
For Tribal Conquest I finished up two warbands. You can expect a review on this game in the next week, it’s got a great theme and plays rather excellent. The models paint themselves really, a proper fantasy/paleolithic look.
Credit: Jackie Daytona
Credit: Jackie Daytona
I also finally finished up my guards for, err, Guards of Traitor’s Toll. A nice bright set of Guards so they stick out in the crowds of the city.
Credit: Jackie Daytona
In Other Scale News, I have been steadily plugging away at my Full Spectrum Dominance forces. I finished up two standard 60 point armies of Reclaimed and Enlisted to get some games in.
Enlisted faction Credit: Jackie Daytona
Reclaimed faction Credit: Jackie Daytona
I also fully finished the Union faction, pictured here without infantry.
Credit: Jackie Daytona
Credit: Jackie Daytona
The Corsairs faction doesn’t have infantry, as it's the big mech faction.
Credit: Jackie Daytona
I look forward to painting and playing the rest of my full spectrum dominance stuff (and hopefully providing some content) and finishing up the scenery. The sculpts are amazing for the scale, and don’t need much to look great. From the very different looks of all the factions you can see that every army has a certain playstyle and diverse ways of winning the game. Spoiler; it’s pretty great!
NotThatHenryC
This month I've made a start on a Custodes force for 30k. I got hold of some of the new-ish Vallejo true metallic paints and first tried them out on a Dawneagle Jetbike as a test model. I've had three of these undercoated for years so it was nice to finally finish one - or nearly finish it anyway. Lots of work though! I'll get round to the other two soon, I hope.
Dawneagle Jetbike. Credit: NotThatHenryC
I was lucky enough to get sent a new Shield Captain to work with. This is a very cool model but I wanted to change its pose, since every Custodes player will have at least one of these in their army. That required quite a bit of chopping up of oldstodes arms and a little green stuff - it's not an easy model to alter.
Custodes Shield Captain. Credit: NotThatHenryC
The other reason for changing the pose was to bring the hot sword nearer the rest of the model, where some OSL could happen. That's come out quite well I think. I'm happy with the result and now all I need to do is paint an army for her to lead!
A slightly more modest goal was turning a semi-retired set of 30k Raven Guard assault marines into a Murderwing Kill Team. I realised I could make the team fairly easily using the 30k weapon sprue, which I had available. It's a pretty good way to get a full roster, which would have been pricey to do with two boxes of Shadowhunt.
Raven Guard Murderwing. Credit: NotThatHenryC
I've already played a few games with them and done... kind of averagely. I got drawn against a couple of excellent players (including one ITC #1 in his faction) so wasn't unhappy with 2:2 out of my first four games using the team. It's certainly a quality of life upgrade to be able to move without caring too much about terrain being in the way.
Jefferson Powers
This month I wrapped up one project and got a good start on my next. I've been working on plugging some of the holes in my collection of the Doctor Who range of miniatures released by Harlequin in the late 1990s. I found this set of 1970s UNIT Troops -- they may look like generic army guys, but I assure you these are "official" Doctor Who characters...
UNIT Troops from Harlequin's Doctor Who range. Photo: Jefferson Powers
With that done, I've moved on to
Guards of Traitor's Toll. I haven't done a lot with customizable sprues, and normally I don't particularly enjoy assembling multipart miniatures, but I've been having fun with these. For the guards I decided to stick pretty close to the game's card artwork so it would be easy to tell which model goes with which stat card.
Guards of Traitor's Toll. Photo: Jefferson Powers
More guards. Photo: Jefferson Powers
Suspects...er, I mean innocent civilians of Traitor's Toll. Photo: Jefferson Powers.
I've only got a couple of civilians done. The dwarf was a single cast promo figure (so no assembly), but the other one is from the multipart sprue. I've got about 10 more civilians in various stages of assembly and painted-ness (is that a word?), so I should have more to show off next month.
Valk
Longtime reader, first time poster.
March has been an exceptionally difficult month in an exceptionally difficult year for me. I've been slowly plugging away at rank after rank of Jade Warriors for an Old World commission, and getting another three of them across the finish line felt good...until I looked in the box and saw another fifteen staring back at me.
Cathay Jade Warriors. Credit: Valk
They're not based or sealed yet (I'm planning to do all thirty at once), but they're done and my client has paid for them, so I'm happy to move 'em along into the "complete" box.
To avoid burning out on painting ancient Chinese infantrymen, I'm trying to move to a "tick-tock" pattern of painting, so my next project is, of course, BattleTech. This month almost all of my painting energy for BattleTech projects went into what I had intended to be my Adepticon BattleTech Painting Competition "Solaris" entry...and then I showed up to Adepticon to find out the contest wasn't being run this year. That's...fine, I suppose, but the deed is done, and the Automaton Marauder is ready to stalk the snow-covered fields of wherever the hell Cyberstan is in the BattleTech universe.
Automaton Legion Marauder. Credit: Valk
I put a lot of effort into trying to improve my NMM for this model, as well as fine-tune my black recipe to keep it from looking too blue. I'm willing to chalk it up as a learning experience, and I'm pretty happy with how the OSL and NMM came out.
Automaton Legion Marauder (rear). Credit: Valk
Both techniques are "blind spots" for me, and OSL is something I've only recently begun to dabble in, so whatever I turn out for next year's competition (whether or not it happens) will hopefully show some good improvement over this iteration.
Sam Isaacson (not Josh)
Thanks to an ongoing battle in the family at the crossroads of mental health and trauma it has been months since I picked up a paintbrush, so I was finally pleased to get to my Mimetic Assassin from Para Bellum's Conquest. As a unit I always really want to include in an army but too easily overlook because of its lack of colour, that's a small bit of progress that will make a big difference! Now to get to the 24 Bound Clones that have just arrived in the post...
SRM
Ultramarines Victrix Honour Guard. Credit: SRM
Have you ever batch painted what is essentially six hyper-detailed character models at once, plus a huge fuckoff flag? Well I have, and lemme tell you, it takes a while. Painting this six-strong unit of Victrix Honour Guard was an experience oscillating between "this is easy, it's just Space Marines" and inventing new curse words for the experience of painting behind the aiguillettes across their chests. Would you believe there's actually space behind those where you need to jam a brush to paint their aquilas? It's true! The banner alone took the better part of a week, but I'm so, so damn happy with how this entire unit came out. I wanted them done by Adepticon, and had some other goals in mind for the event as well, but a number of health crises and the loss of my sweetest cat took precedent over painting toy soldiers for much of the month. I'm back from Adepticon and somewhat over the emotional hill though, so I'll be getting back to it in force now that April's rolling around.
Mike Bettle-Shaffer
It's been a very long time since I've been organised enough to jump in on one of these, and I wanted to share some of what I'd painted in the past month or so. I won't be attempting to photograph all forty Swiss Pikemen. I value my own health too much, as the majority of them have scale appropriate brass pikes. Even photographing 8 was hard enough, and I'll be honest, they're not nice enough for me to sit and focus stack them so it was a one and done.
Swiss Pikemen. Credit: Mike Bettle-Shaffer
Cannon. Credit: Mike Bettle-Shaffer
I've also included a couple of pieces from recent classes and workshops. I attend fortnightly classes covering specific topics with
Tesseract Minis, and recently he ran an introduction to bust painting workshop. I encourage everyone to give a class like this a try, you'll learn a huge amount and a lot of it is applicable at the scales we usually work at.
Connor sculpt by Ivan Mata. Credit: Mike Bettle-Shaffer
Connor sculpt by Ivan Mata. Credit: Mike Bettle-Shaffer
Katana sculpt by Ouroboros Miniatures. Credit: Mike Bettle-Shaffer
Last up is the BLKOUT starter set, UN 3rd Battalion and Task Force Boone. I knocked these out fairly quickly, as I just wanted to get painted models on the table. I took a little extra time to experiment with oils in my workup process, and it didn't quite go to plan. Still, that's the nice thing about going in knowing it's an experiment and a chance to practice, it's still a value learning opportunity and a chance for a different type of creative expression.
UN 3rd Battalion. Credit: Mike Bettle-Shaffer
Task Force Boone. Credit: Mike Bettle-Shaffer
Variance Hammer Eric
The last few months have been very assembly focused, rather than painting focused. I did get some one-offs done. The first being Bad Squiddo's infamous Turkeyman, painted up in my black and white, scheme for my Silver Bayonet monsters, which has the dual benefits of being very fast to paint up and also gives the whole thing a slightly unreal feeling.
The Turkeyman by Bad Squiddo. Credit: Eric Lofgren
Alongside this is the Spectral Warrior from the
Sinister Citizens expansion for
Guards of Traitor's Toll. This let me test my basing scheme while knocking out a quick ghostly figure.
The Spectral Soldier. Credit: Eric Lofgren
Last up is some Saxon Houses from 1st Corps, shown here in situ being used to run demo games of a Rohrrim vs. Uruk-Hai scenario using the rules for Pillage.
Saxon Houses by 1st Corps. Credit: Eric Lofgren
"Contemptor" Kevin Stillman
March 2026 was a travel month for me, with the first day being a GoFest Global day. This meant that trying to find time to actually paint everything and write everything was a challenge. But having a weekly column is a wonderful way to keep the focus.
I started off the month by finishing off five of the new Multipart Terminators for my Ultramarines. For these guys (and my veteran Space Marines going forward), I decided to give the shoulder pads a marble effect. For shoulder pads, this is actually a pretty easy experience to make work.
Ultramarines Terminators. Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
After that it was time for my first trip, and so I flew across the country to paint the first squad of 2021 Orks in a Courtyard Marriott hotel room.
Ork Boyz (2021). Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
After them, I worked on two projects at once. The first project was an indulgence for my miniature photography and for my Warhammer Store's Million Miniature challenge, and so I painted up another mini I purchased in 2026: a Realm of Battle Tile. This was done mostly with rattlecans, varnishing, and airbrushing. The only brushes to touch this model were one with a thick oil wash and then a drybrush to bring out the highlights on this plate.
Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
At the same time, I wanted to finish of an Age of Sigmar Regiment Renown for my dear friend Alice. Since I had painted the Ossifector as a test model for OBR and had a blast, I decided to give the Mortek Crawler a try after picking one up from the Warhammer Cafe in Monrovia California.
Credit: Kevin Stillman
After that, it was time to deliver the OBR models to Alice within the Baird Center in Milwaukee for Adepticon, where I spent a non-trivial amount of time painting miniatures. I finished three at the Con:
First was from Will Hahn's Warhammer vehicle armor masterclass. I actually had previously taken this class in May of 2024, where my initial attempts to paint a Blood Angels Ballistus Dreadnought went off in a
more avant garde direction. But in March of 2026, with the Armageddon reveal fresh in my head and on my torso (clean clothes are clean clothes, thanks GW), I stuck to the assignment.
Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
On Friday, I spent most of the day at the Adepticon Hobby Hangout. There, I finished up my new Roboute Guilliman. For Guilliman, I reposed the right leg so he does not have as wide a stance as the stock model and does not need to stand on an enormous and unsightly hero rock.
Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
The final model I finished in March was the
preview Ork Boy from the Adepticon Preview.
Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
April, which only has one trip planned, will be a month more conducive to hobbying. I've got loads planned: Starcraft, Warhammer 40K, and even Star Wars Legion thanks to a fortuitous acquisition in my Swag Bag.
Ezekyle Catbaddon
I started a teaching job in March, so it's been a bit hectic in terms of actually painting. However, the announcement of the fancy new Red Corsairs models inspired me to actually speed up my painting! Last year I built the Kill Team Scout Team with some fancy chaos bits added onto it, and with alot of sweat and blood and tears, I managed to somehow finish them with minutes to spare for submission for this article!
Red Corsairs Scouts. Credit: Ezekyle Catbaddon
Boy, it was actually pretty fun to do it! Red is always a nice color to paint. Thankfully the individual models are still easy to tell apart, I didn't wanna do too much Crazy Chaos Shenanigans. I haven't actually used this Kill Team yet, and I'm excited to play a game soon!
Chaos Scout Sergeant. Credit: Ezekyle Catbaddon
I tend to use the Citadel (or Warhammer Paint now) when I am painting my models, and they almost always come out very well. The only real exception is the metallics, which I like to use P3. I just think their silver and bronze looks good. Trust me, the Sergeants helmet looks alot better in person than in the picture above.
Scout Hunter, with Scarab Terminator apparatus for extra protection. Credit: Ezekyle Catbaddon
Overall, I had just the right amount of chaos bits on them, in my opinion at least. I love Chaos-ifying models, and even though it takes me a long time to paint, I greatly enjoy the process of laying such meticulous detail onto my models. I can't wait for when I get to share my Blooded team!
Scout Warrior with Shotgun. He's got a bit of a headache. Credit: Ezekyle Catbaddon
Roxin
Recently, my buddy bought Warhammer Quest: Darkwater. It's a blast! As we've done with previous WHQ releases we split the models between us to paint up, so I took Inara Sion and Drolf Ironhead. My friend Dave already did amazing work on the bases (thanks Dave!) so it was just a case of trying to get the minis to match how the bases already look.
Inara Sion from Warhammer Quest: Darkwater. Credit: Roxin
Inara was a chance for me to experiment with lots of blue glazes. I'm particularly proud of the water effect I managed to get on her magic water sword, which hopefully sells it as, uh, wet.
Drolf Ironhead for Warhammer Quest: Darkwater. Credit: Roxin
Drolf is a bit more straightforward, as befits a doughty duardin. To be honest I didn't enjoy painting him as much, as he's just a lot of muddy browns and greens. At least the beard was fun!
Beanith
Continuing my #AussieWarhammerCombatPatrolStreak this month I managed to get through some random Tyranid and Space Marine models.
Von Ryan's Leapers - Credit Beanith
Hobby streaking smashing out the Von Ryan's Leapers to achieve my standard of "Good Enough From Three Feet Away"
Infernus Marines - Credit Beanith
These were actual nice push to fit models to assemble compared to the much earlier primaris Marines from previous editions.
Infernus Marine Sergeant - Credit Beanith
The Primaris Infernus Space Marine Sergeant limited to this magazine series (ignoring resales of course). He was fun to paint, only slightly annoyed that he leaves me with an odd number of Infernus Marines in my collection. #FirstWorldProblems
Barbgaunts - Credit Beanith
My BarbieGaunts from a BarbieGaunt world made of plastic... Also trying out just using a red wash on just the pink chitin so the green stays a bit more vibrant which I do like.
The Stampeding Herd - Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl Team - Credit Beanith
I've also signed up for a Blood Bowl league being run at a local FLGS starting in April.
Someone has to get that wooden spoon I suppose.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don't forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website, and subscriber-only content covering competitive Warhammer 40K!
Thank you for being a friend.
This website uses cookies. Learn more.
Ultramarines Victrix Honour Guard. Credit: SRM
Infinity N5 First Principles: Understanding the Outcomes of Face to Face Rolls
Tactical Feedback: Timing the Go-Turn
SRM's Roundabout to Adepticon 2026: Curd Is the Word
