SRM's 2025 in Review

Another year, another trip round the block on spaceship Earth, another 365 days closer to good times, bad times, or both times, dealer's choice. The curse of years is living long enough to see Funko Pops die only to see Labubus birthed from a new vinyl chrysalis. Of the things fending off these horrors are the legions of plastic warriors amassing in my hobby closet, awaiting the day when they can crush me to death in some form of ironic punishment for my hobby hubris. Let's see if we made a dent in that plasticene edifice:

Acquired 436 models
Built 169 models
Painted 91 models
Played 72 miniatures wargames over 5 game systems (40k, Age of Sigmar, The Old World, Trench Crusade, and Battle Tech Alpha Strike)
Completed reading 4 Black Library or other Warhammer-related publications
Attended 4 tournaments/events
Recorded 23 episodes of my podcast, The 40k Badcast, plus:
- 17 bonus episodes for our Patreon subscribers
- 3 episodes of The Independent Characters
- 1 episodes of HAMS Radio, the Goonhammer Patreon-exclusive podcast
Wrote or contributed to 52 articles right here on Go On Hammer Dot Com
Created 128 videos and 5 shorts for the Goonhammer YouTube channel

Oh those aren't good numbers at all. They're also approximate, as some amount of these articles, videos, models and more either start or end outside this narrow 365 day window, but we're all just doing our best over here.

If you're collecting these to publish a hyper-specific autobiography of one extremely average dude's journey through plastic soldiery, I also wrote articles like this in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

January

Rogal Dorn Tank Commander. Credit: SRM

I thought I'd start this year with a bang, and as no stranger to the competing spectres of ambition and distraction, you'll see a load of Imperial Guard at the start of the year. My extremely slow-growing Guard army was largely stalled by not knowing what to do with the vehicles until the end of last year, when I knocked out my first Sentinel. Payback Pig here is the fruits of those labors, and definitely the furthest I've gone with weathering in my hobby thus far. Loads of reference images of both model and real tanks from the 20th century gave me ideas on how to make the mud chutes, track buildup, and muzzle burn look relatively realistic, at least without diving into true Scale Modeler Sicko Shit. This tank was absolutely a labor of love, obsessively streaking thinned paint off of every rivet and in every crevice, but she's pretty impressive on the table - or she would be if I could actually paint a usable number of Guard models in any realistic period of time. Mostly, she just got to take up valuable screen real estate in our Astra" frameborder="0"> Militarum videos. It got a Silver award at the Tacoma Open later in the year.

Cadian Command Squad. Credit: Campbell "SRM" McLaughlin

I was still firmly on the Guard train, and after a game with my buddy Alex where he had some big squads of Cadians with attached Command Squads, I knocked out one of my own. I went largely out of the box with this crew, save for a few bits from the Cadian accessory sprue. I figure an injured trooper with a bionic arm would be a respectable enough veteran to hold the banner of the Cadian 617th. I freehanded the text on the flag and went for a non-metallic metal look to really make it look special. He's still just a T3 bozo who will die extremely quickly, but a brief look in the mirror will confirm the same for any of us.

February

Death Korps of Krieg Heavy Weapons Squad. Credit: SRM

My first model review of the year was for the Death Korps Heavy Weapon Squad, who dropped alongside a command squad that is, at time of writing, commanding my backlog from a sprue in my closet. I was still very happy to traipse along on the Guard train and get a little bit more of that weathering action in on the gun shields, and was excited at the potential use case for this unit - one confirmed when I ran into the same unit at the Tacoma Open some months later. Scratching that vehicle painting itch without committing to a big stupid tank was definitely a case of having my corpse starch and eating it too.

March

Ursula J Creed. Credit: SRM

While I painted Ursula J Creed at the same time as her compatriots below, she stands apart somewhat so I thought I'd give her some focus. I had always admired the Ursarkar Creed model for his Churchill-esque stoutness, and while doing some research, found that his daughter had her own reference to that old British bulldog. While I didn't use her (admittedly silly looking) helmeted head option, that was a reference to a photo of Churchill visiting the French lines in WW1 and wearing one of their Adrian helmets. I went with the bare head and painted this model in subassemblies, as the somewhat overdone base would make getting the back of her coat difficult. Large swathes of cloth are genuinely one of my favorite things to paint, and as a result she moved along quickly. I painted the interior of her jacket a richer, more saturated green than the typical drabs of this army, and I think it gives her some distinct color while not looking out of place.

During my FLGS' annual Dings and Dents sale, I picked up a somewhat beat up copy of Darktide: The Miniatures Game. Fowler liked it when he picked it up last year, and this month was clearly the one for Imperial Weirdos, so I knocked out the heroes from the set. It's a genuinely bizarre product; the Psyker and Priest are the same as those found in standalone blister packs, but the exact bits to build an Ogryn and Kasrkin from their respective squad kits are crammed onto their own unique sprue. I checked with my own bits box, and these are genuinely the exact same assets from those existing sprues, dragged over here and cast in colored plastic. I made a Demo Trooper out of the Kasrkin, as back when I painted that squad you still had to pay points for the landmine, but otherwise went pretty much down the middle with the painting and modeling on this quartet. Batch painting characters is always an odd experience, as even with a consistent color scheme, each has different details, textures, and challenges to work around. As I took a two-week excursion to Scandinavia in the midst of painting this crew, I had to take detailed notes so I knew where to pick back up. This usually looks like a smattering of Post-Its with various checklists for skin, cloth, metal, and the like, plastered over my painting area. On my return I jumped back into them, the first few weeks of work already a distant memory as it felt like picking up on someone else's half finished project.

Sanctifiers Missionaries, Confessor, Cherub, and Miraculist. Credit: SRM

Clearly my thirst for weirdos was not yet sated. I volunteered to take on the Sanctifier Kill Team as, in my estimation, weirdos are what make Warhammer, well, Warhammer. I contributed a few words about them to a model review, but definitely bit off more than I could chew, as I didn't have time to paint them all to the standard I would have liked. Instead I put my all into half of a squad, and left the rest to their fate as in-progress "some day" models. The rub is that I've already painted the most detail-intensive figures in the set, so I could knock out the regular jamokes pretty quickly if I felt the need to paint some magenta again. I'd return to that unfinished half later, though the back half of the year would be too loaded with Marine stuff to do more than add a few layers to them.

April

The SRM Cup at Adepticon 2025. Credit: SRM and Craig "Masterslowpoke" Sniffen

It barely feels like it happened this year, but Adepticon broke the suburban shackles of Schaumburg, Illinois, and made the move to Milwaukee. I attended, and wrote several thousand words about it, as one would expect. I cannot imagine complaining about the new location unless you happened to live in Schaumburg before. It's rare that "bigger" coincides with "better" despite marketing's best efforts to tell you otherwise, but this new version of the con felt like a true evolution of its predecessor, with more space, more events, better food, and a far more vibrant locale. My enthusiasm for tabletop gaming and its relation to my life and work had its up ands downs over the course of the year, but after Adepticon, I was positively buzzing.

New Antioch warband. Credit: SRM

Part of that buzz was centered around Trench Crusade, and I promptly painted up a New Antioch warband in an Irish-inspired color scheme. If you want to read more about this warband and check out some closeups, I wrote a little warband showcase article about them. I changed up my normal painting process to both get these done quickly and paint something distinct from my norm, working heavily with brown primer, pigments, and a limited palette. By only using my stock of Pro Acryl paints, largely from the starter set, I had to approach the models differently. I also left brown in all the recesses as a shade, expediting the painting process and giving them a warm, dirty look even before weathering. It was a fun change of pace, and I'd paint more pals for them after playing a few games.

May

In May we moved all of a mile down the road from our previous home, finding a new place with more room, more personality, and far more home improvement projects than our cookie cutter condo ever afforded us. This new locale also afforded me a better recording space, letting me film videos for the Goonhammer YouTube channel in a spare room dolled up as a filming set. Understand that were the camera to pan up, down, left, or right a few inches, you would see stacks of boxes, piles of cables, and the other bric-a-brac of a glorified closet, but I won't wholly spoil the Cinemagic for you. As each video before this involved a laborious setup and teardown process that often involved taking apart a cramped office only to put it back together an hour later, this made my professional life easier as well.

Death Korps of Krieg Artillery Team. Credit: SRM

I'd started this big honkin' cannon before Adepticon, as my Trench Crusade hype was growing and I really wanted to work on something with the Weird War 1 aesthetic. As I unpacked the majority of my house in an Adderall-fueled week of hustling and bustling, I unearthed this in-progress cannon and got back to work on it. Much like the Guard characters a few months before, this felt again like an Exquisite Corpse exercise with my months-removed self. It's a great little mini-diorama, and I strewed a few bottles, skulls, and other scale modeler doodaddery about it to set the scene. The gun's swappable for the mortar barrel, but by and large this just stands sentinel over my dining table from a display cabinet, as I am far, far from a playable Guard army.

Dawn of War-inspired Ultramarines Heavy Bolter Turret. Credit: SRM

One of these comes up every year or two - Develain occasionally makes these Dawn of War-inspired resin cast terrain pieces, and I'd had this heavy bolter turret primed for several years. After spending so long working on that cannon (a month barely painting is still a month thinking about painting) I wanted to knock something out fast, and this already primed terrain piece was calling to me like the Green Goblin mask. Over two sittings I drybrushed, weathered, and slapped transfers on it, all trying to aim for as game-accurate an end product as I could. I feel like I got pretty close, and I've got some plans for narrative scenarios using all these sundry buildings somewhere down the line. Pretend it was Dawn of War: Definitive Edition hype if you'd like, but speed and simplicity were more important factors here.

June

Black Templars Assault Intercessors. Credit: SRM

Sometimes in a time of general dismay and upheaval, you want comfort food. While my slowed output trended towards weirdo characters and models that toe the line between unit and terrain in their footprints, I wanted to return to something simple and straightforward; a solved problem that still served a purpose. One of the stickier strategies I'd dreamt up was running 10 Assault Intercessors with Chaplain Grimaldus, potentially rerolling all hits and wounds into a target on an objective. Equipped with this idea, I converted up a few more Assault Intercessors from Space Marine Heroes models and got to work. They're nothing entirely too special, but the pointing guy with the chunky gauntlet and the chainsword with an Imperial bumper sticker on it is lowkey one of my favorite models in the army.

Black Templars Drop Pod. Credit: SRM

Here's some inside baseball for you; a peek behind the curtain into the Goonhammer offices. When a new model gets announced, revealed, or otherwise makes its presence known for the first time, you'll often see one or two people sheepishly ask to paint it for an article when it eventually releases. When it's a Marine unit, the team descends like a pack of piranhas; painters heretofore unseen saying "yeah I'd like to edge highlight the new grimdark hypercube" or something to that effect. As part of the team reviewing the Drop Pod kit, I got in on the action. Let me tell you: I actually kinda hated the Ballistic Space Artichoke. It sucked to hold, the details were muddy, and the whole process was repetitive as hell, since you're basically painting the same chamber five times. I wouldn't paint another one, but as someone who has never had a Drop Pod, it's good to have one for completion's sake. Well, I guess I have had a Drop Pod before, of a sort.

SRM's DIY Drop Pod Circa 2005. Credit: SRM

Back in 4th/early 5th edition, there wasn't a plastic Drop Pod model at all, and at 14 years old with a limited budget, I could hardly justify a Forgeworld product that cost all of 35 points. In lieu of this, I grabbed a plastic cup, flipped it upside down, daubed "DROP POD" and a hasty Dark Angels icon on there with Skull White paint, and glued a Stormbolter on top. I used it more than once, and found it at my folks' place when I was helping them move several years ago. This is the only photo I have of it, and if I haven't used it for Badcast episode art yet, I will soon enough.

July

Black Templars Crusade Ancient and Execrator. Credit: SRM

Naturally, the nanosecond the new Black Templars models were revealed, I loudly hammered "DIBS" on my keyboard, likely alerting my neighbors and/or the authorities to my location. I wrote a review of the new Execrator and Crusade Ancient if you want to read all the words about them, but the short version is that these are two Black Templars-ass models, and great ones at that. They've been largely absent from the tabletop, as their use cases are fairly niche in what is already a character-heavy army.

Cities of Sigmar Freeguild Fusiliers. Credit: SRM

If ye pride yer life

Then don't by Christ

Paint them Freeguild Fusiliers

In a recurring theme this year, I kept starting units, having something else come up, then returning to them later, making the entire process feel interminable. While my time in the saddle might only be a few weeks, they lurk in the back of my mind for months. That extended to the Freeguild Fusiliers, who are likely the roughest effort:points ratio in the entirety of Warhammer. I'm no stranger to this range, having previously kvetched at length about the Freeguild Cavaliers, who also took entirely too long to paint. Figuring every model contained no fewer than ten textures (yellow wood, red wood, white roundels, wrought iron, steel, skin, black cloth, yellow cloth, brown leather, green leather, rope, and then model-specific details like fire, Gargoylians, or brass) it's no wonder these guys took so long. When I painted my Empire army some time ago, I liked the result but lamented that my guys weren't painted to a higher standard, as a meticulously painted Empire army has a pageantry and vibrancy that's unrivaled when all arranged on the tabletop. These Freeguild models are the punishment for my ambition. I love how they look, enjoy playing them, and enjoy much (but not all) of painting them, but the maximum effort for minimum points formula continues to not work out in my favor. Someday I'll have a 2000 point force of them, but that would not be this year.

I did attend the Tacoma Open, the TacOpen for short, or The Event Formerly Known as the Seattle Open if you're not into that whole brevity thing. I had designs on writing one of my typical travelogues for it, but honestly, there wasn't altogether too much to say. While the event was run like clockwork, the hangs with my Goonhammer co-conspirators were excellent, and the Righteous Crusaders' Last Crusade gameplan put me into the 3-1 bracket only to go 1-3, I've written it all before and you've heard it all before. That's not an indictment of that event or the GW Opens in general though - you absolutely should check one out if you haven't, they're just all pretty similar. If you want to hear me yap about it for a while though, we did do a Badcast about it.

August

July through August felt like I was on a press tour for a book I didn't write, as Big Knight Summer gave way to Templar season. My previous notions of bringing Knights to NOVA; something that didn't inspire much joy in me to be honest, were swept aside as the new Black Templars codex dropped. Hell, I" frameborder="0"> made a whole video about it. As Goonhammer's resident Templar Guy, I even got to show up on our podcast, HAMS Radio to yap further.

Black Templars Infiltrators. Credit: SRM

In my final game of the Tacoma Open, I got soundly bodied by Daemons. My opponent had Deep Struck all matter of giant monsters practically on top of my poor, innocent tanks, and as I sat there, drumming my fingers while my opponent worked, carpenter-like, on the exact placement of two 45 record-sized bases, I imagined a brighter future where Infiltrators prevented just such an occurrence. Fortunately, my Raven Guard playing co-host Dan sent me a bunch of Infiltrators some months before, and while they arrived loose and broken in several drugs bags simply labeled "DUDES", I was able to patch them up and press them into service. As they were already primed, the only converting I did was slapping a Crusader Seal on the Sword Brother's chest plate. Their basing is slightly different than my normal guys, but I don't mind too much. I'm just glad I could save them from their fate of being meticulously edge highlighted black power armor by meticulously edge highlighting their black power armor.

Kitbashed Black Templars Marshal. Credit: SRM

As no stranger to the Lethal Sussy Five Plussy lifestyle, I read the new Marshal rules and got excited. Critting on 5+ gives them a distinct role from a regular Captain, and means they actually have a home in an army list. To celebrate this, I kitbashed together this Marshal using parts from my deep Templar bits box on top of the Space Marine Heroes Captain that Fowler sent me some time ago. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't get a tilting plate on there successfully. Like a flower growing from the pavement, however, heraldry finds a way, and I managed to get a sort of black widow pattern on both his hip plate and backpack. He would go on to fight in nearly every battle my Templars waged for the rest of the year, usually kicking an outsized amount of ass for his points.

Black Templars Execrator. Credit: SRM

While the new Execrator kit is genuinely lovely, I wanted to expand my own personal Reclusiam with something unique. I picked up Asmodai from the Dark Angels range, cut and filed off the Dark Angels icon from his necklace, smoothed it out with green stuff, and put a little Indomitus cross there instead. All of the Templar-specific bits I had in mind were oversized, and I wanted to save him from that Flavor Flavian threat of neck strain. I still worry that he doesn't look distinct enough from Asmodai, but I'm pleased with the final result. Also, he's got some of my favorite heraldry in the army, based on some French shield or another.

Black Templars Crusader. Credit: SRM

While my Discord was lighting up night and day with people fretting over getting everything done in time for NOVA, my planned list only required a single model to work. My pair of 10-man Crusader squads both had Sword Brethren leading them, and I needed one dude on a 32mm base to fill in for when I stuck them together into a 20 man squad, in the latest incarnation of the Helbrick. Hell, I could have just stuck an Intercessor in there and nobody would know. He'd been built for quite some time and was simple to knock out, repeating a process established years and years ago when I started this army.

The 40k Badcast live at NOVA

Another August brings another NOVA, and that means both another trip to DC and an entirely too lengthy travelogue from yours truly about it. As ever, recording a live show with a room full of loveable dweebs was a joy, though I found my enthusiasm wavering by the end of the con. I circle around this point in my recap article, but the competitive 40k grind wasn't doing it for me, even if only a month prior I was having a grand ol' time with it.

September

Post-NOVA, I was feeling directionless. After a a nine-game Grand Tournament of which I enjoyed maybe a third, I wasn't really feeling 40k. Conversely, my enthusiasm for the community around me was higher than ever, and if I go too long without painting, I will probably die. I have not tested this theorem but were it to prove true, the results would be catastrophic, so back to my painting table I went. I started off with a bushel of Trench Crusade weirdos, waiting for just such an occasion.

Communicant Anti-Tank Hunter. Credit: SRM

I came up with this Communicant scheme while watching Barbarian (good flick!) because mine is a mind incapable of resting. I accidentally reverse engineered my Stormcast scheme for the armor, but I really liked the grody magenta skin I painted for him. If I paint another, I'll probably do something different for variety's sake.

Observer. Credit: SRM

The Observer is definitely the most Necromunda-coded model in the Trench Crusade range, and I had a load of fun painting him in a fun one-off scheme. Keewa had asked me what my favorite teal paint was, and I was sad to report I almost never paint in those blue-greens, so I whipped up something on the spot for this guy. The fun thing for me with TC models is that I mostly limit myself to just the Pro Acryl paints in my collection, and that limited palette is oddly freeing.

New Antioch Combat Medic. Credit: SRM

The most traditional of this lot is the Combat Medic, who I painted in my standard New Antioch scheme. I'm glad I could use some of my little Templar transfers on her shoulders too. It's as close as you get to a restrained model in Trench Crusade, and there's not much I can add here that I didn't already cover in my warband showcase article.

Witchburner General. Credit: SRM

My favorite of this crew was the Witchburner General. The few games I'd played proxying my Ministorum Priest for him were exceptionally fun, and this model was too fun to pass up. I based his inner clothes on Catholic priest robes, and his outer cloak on the robes that Cardinals wear. Where I went a bit out of my comfort zone was in using gloss varnish on all of his armor, which I think kind of worked. I wanted to sell the ostentatious image of his office with that texture and the addition of more gold and personal heraldry, and I think it worked reasonably well. He's definitely drawing from the same sources as any 40k Inquisition model or artwork, but I like that he's got his own identity.

Mendelist Ammo Monk. Credit: SRM

Still left over at the end was the Mendelist Ammo Monk, another fairly reserved weirdo from this set. I wanted to give him humble robes, but also liked the idea of him worshipping ammunition and treating magazines as relics. To sell this, ever so slightly, I gave him an olive drab outer cloak, with the idea that it would bring him closer to the colors of a sacred ammo can. I also made his skin look a little fucked up, as I imagine he's digging for hot shell casings or empty magazines from the bloody and muddy trenches. Of all the models in this initial Trench Crusade run, I find him to be one of the weaker ones, as his robes are just so thick and flat, without much in the way of fabric folds or motion. He doesn't need to be bedecked in gothic baubles and doing a pirouette off a piece of rubble or anything, but he's just kinda bland compared to the other models in the range. Still, an easy addition to the "painted" column of my spreadsheet.

Black Templars Repulsor Executioner. Credit: SRM

For me, painting is one of the most relaxing activities I take part in. Painting for an event is motivating. Painting for an event in ten days is harrowing. This was the saga of painting a Repulsor Executioner in time for the Challenger's Cup. I had a flight booked for the 25th. I placed an order with one of my regular online retailers on September 6th; figuring that it would arrive in under a week, and I'd have two full weeks to paint this tank. On the 10th, I realized it hadn't shipped yet. On the 15th, I realized that Lysander was in that order, and with my perspective skewed by Goonhammer painters getting preview models of him done already, I thought he'd been released. I promptly got in my car, drove to my FLGS, grabbed their lone Repulsor Executioner off the shelf, and built it that day in a single 5-hour session. I primed it that night, and 8 days later, the tank was done. That did mean painting this dumb thing like it was my day job, and I don't want to think how many hours that involved. I hated it until it was done, but now it's one of my favorite tanks in the motor pool, and a mainstay in my Black Templars lists.

As for the Challengers Cup, I did exceptionally poorly, but had an absolute blast. As is tradition, I wrote probably too many words about it already, but I learned a lot. Returning to that ongoing theme, I figured that the problem was less competitive 40k, and more the lack of time around it. Despite being an event where some of the world's best 40k players were duking it out, the vibes for myself and the Goonhammer crew were chill as hell. You see, this was a teams event, so that camaraderie I was missing during NOVA was already built in. Better still, we spent every evening chillin' and grillin' in that exact order, and I came out of the event more jazzed about 40k than I'd been all year. With a competitive 40k league starting the week I got back and a bushel of new Marine releases right around the corner, it was time to get back to edge highlighting.

October

This month saw my 35th birthday; a day I spent playing Warhammer, hanging with my childhood best friend, and cooking dinner with my wife and our very loud cats. I couldn't ask for much better.

Black Templars Invader ATV. Credit: SRM

My main takeaway from the Challengers Cup was that The True Prize Was Friendship All Along. My second takeaway was that my army needed more of those fast moving early scoring pieces, as I lagged behind on primary score in every game I played. After a single test game using my Ultramarines Invader for just such a role, I was satisfied with its performance and got to building the one I received in Imperium some time ago. While I seldom miss writing a weekly column after three solid years of it, I can't deny that it gave me plenty of stuff to work on. I could tell my brushes were crapping out on me at this point, as the highlights got more raggedy and the paint less even. It's not an especially interesting model to remark on, but I'm glad I could give it a smidge of Templar personality with the transfers, Crusader seal, tilting plate, and a little headswap on the gunner. I will say I don't want to highlight any more tires anytime soon though.

Black Templars Captain with Jump Pack and Relic Shield. Credit: SRM

A deluge of new Marine models dropped this month, and the first I got to review was the Captain with Jump Pack and Relic Shield, a mouthful of a name for the colloquial "Smash Captain" or the more Blood Angel-specific "Slamguinius." I kept mine in Templar colors and was rushing to finish him until the evening the article had to be ready. I like him and was glad I could give him some unique heraldry, even if I don't see myself using him all too often. Maybe I'll paint a horde of Jump Pack Jobbers to run with him, but the five man group I've got are pretty squishy to commit a character like this to.

Ultramarines Assault Terminators with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields. Credit: SRM

I could have presaged this next section instead with "Lord forgive me but its time to go back to tha old me", but I figured I'd play it marginally straighter. Save for some bits of terrain over the years, I hadn't painted Ultramarines since 2021. I look back at those models and wonder how I lavished so much time on personal heraldry for Intercessors and other points-light jobbers of their ilk, even as I'd leaned harder into maximum effort for minimum points as a personal brand over the years. With this month's belated birthday gift of Space Marine releases, I got back to my Ultramarines, consulting my own painting tutorial for a refresher. First up were the Assault Terminators, decked out with Ultramarines iconography and transfers from the new upgrade sprue. I figured with that I could show off multiple kits at once, even if punchy Terminators is something my Templars would probably appreciate a smidge more. As usual, read the review for more in-depth thoughts on the kit, but I had a generally good time with it. It goes together cleanly and easily, with maybe a smidge too much wiggle room on the arms and slightly too fiddly hip plates. Painting the models is an exercise in seeing just how many edges and panels one can comfortably highlight, and the shields are a bit of a chore, not gonna lie. My immediate plan whilst working on them was to buy the Crux Terminatus box and double down on these idiots, a purchase which I - and I'm writing this part in October so consider this a fully called shot - will not finish by the end of the year (December update: I was correct). These guys took two weeks of painting at such a pace that I actually developed a flareup of my chronic wrist injury, but my eyes remain firmly larger than my stomach and my ambition knows no bounds.

November

Fortunately that wrist injury didn't set me back too far, and a brief trip to Las Vegas gave me some enforced break time. Someday I'll write more about that sensory overload given a ZIP code straight from the pages of Neal Stephenson, but for now, I'll just say I didn't much care for it. Hoover Dam rocks though, and got me excited for Fallout stuff again, but the clarion call of blue power armor rang louder than the roar of the two-headed bear.

Ultramarines Cato Sicarius. Credit: SRM

Whilst he was only primed by the time we wrote our review, I got to paint Sicarius in early November. This model was a genuine struggle throughout; construction is finnicky, mold lines are rough, and physically reaching various parts of the model is difficult in a way I rarely experience. There's more trim and filigree than you'd expect on a Chaos Marine, and the overlapping detail of his helmet, aiguillette, and so on made every part of the model more difficult than I was expecting. By the time he came together though, I was absolutely in love with the paintjob. I gave him a headswap from the Ultramarines upgrade kit since the normal Sicarius head looks like an absolute prick, and I liked the idea of the captain of the Victrix Guard actually being a stately, older warrior who has learned from his life of combat. A commenter on the Badcast Facebook page also referred to this head choice as "Santa Claus Stephen Lang" which I find both fitting and very funny.

Ultramarines Lieutenant with Combi-Weapon. Credit: SRM

There was yet more blue to paint, as I finally caught up with the meta of two years ago and painted my Ultramarines Lieutenant with Combi-Weapon, in the scheme I used on some Phobos Marines long ago. I like integrating the black into the scheme to echo the Destroyer Squad coloration that Ultramarines would use in the Heresy. It also gives a sneakier vibe, and lets me write them off as 10th Company duders loaned to my 2nd Company army, mostly so I can avoid redundant squad numbers. I've spilled a lot of words about this sort of thing before. I had a good time working up a different skintone for this head from the Ultramarines upgrade kit, and it was fun coming up with unique heraldry for him, as it so often is. I've enjoyed returning to my Ultramarines after a few years away, working familiar plastic with new techniques learned in the intervening years. Man, I didn't even have a wet palette when I started this army!

Black Templars Lieutenant with Combi-Weapon. Credit: SRM

I actually painted this second Phobos Lieutenant for my Black Templars at the same time as his cousin above, as they're largely painted in similar colors. Stretching my hobby dollar, I converted this one from the Eliminator in the Kill Team starter box. I gave him a Sternguard combi-flamer and an appropriately scarred head and got to work. While I love his heraldry, weapon, and armor, the camo pattern was unfortunately pretty chalky and chunky, requiring way too much paint to get decent coverage. Should I do more camo cloak-wearing Templars, I'll probably just default them to red or something. Still, this guy's a useful piece, and it was good to fill this gap in the collection with something that didn't feel quite so Ultramarines-coded as the standard Combi-Weapon Lieutenant model. I'm sure Templars have all their own reasons to hate Tyranids, but it just doesn't feel right to throw the Emperor's greatest heels into something they can't hate on an ideological level.

Ultramarines Apothecary Biologis. Credit: SRM

Catching up to the red-hot Summer 2023 meta, I finally got around to painting an Apothecary Biologis for my Ultramarines. The intervening years mean I've had the bits to give him an Assault Terminator's tilting plate and some of the new transfers, plus a place to finally use Gravis Calgar's helmeted head. I still think he looks like he's carrying around an Instant Pot, or at best a vat of chili to be spilled akin to the only reference to -5b7448">The Office you'll see me reliably make. I still like this model quite a bit, even if painting around said geneseed/biophage/chili tub is kind of a pain. This is also the model where I really had to come to grips with the fact that the Ulthuan Grey recipe changed between 2019 when I started my Ultramarines and now, and it just doesn't cover like it used to. I'd switch to Grey Seer (as my Black Templars already have) but I'd rather keep it consistent and grumble about it, as this army started as nominally even more of a painting project than my Templars did. Looking back, it's hilarious to see those Templars as my "just get shit painted" army.

December

Last year, Games Workshop released an advent calendar under the guise of Grotmas. Think what you will about rebranding Da Red Gobbo, communist-adjacent revolutionary as a goblinoid Saint Nick, but it was a good time for players of Warhammer 40k. Detachments dropped every day, livening up armies across the entire game. Unfortunately over here at Goonhammer, it was an absolute marathon to keep up with that deluge of content, and on my side it represented working 21 days in a row without any breaks just to keep up with it all. This year was far, far more chill, with half a dozen detachments, a Dataslate," frameborder="0"> and some other bits and bobs. This meant I got to enjoy the holiday season and actually get some painting done.

Ultramarines Terminator Assault Squad with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields. Credit: SRM

First on the docket was finishing the Assault Terminators I'd started some time before Thanksgiving. In a theme for this year's painting, the week traveling to and fro made the painting process feel drastically longer, as three weeks with a brush equated to four weeks on my mind. My thoughts aren't drastically different on these than they were on the first batch of five, though I did make a slightly blingier Corporal to stand in as a sergeant should I run a pair of five man squads. He's the guy in the middle with the Ultramarines chest piece, no helmet, and ever so slightly more involved heraldry than his buds.

Marneus Calgar in the Armour of Antilochus. Credit: SRM

Despite looking like an exceptionally busy model akin to Cato Sicarius, I found the experience of painting Calgar to largely be a joyful one. Maybe it was just the comparative slog of batch painting five Assault Terminators, but working on a single Terminator-armored model afterwards was a genuine relief, with visible progress happening every time I sat at my painting desk. Even then, I didn't sit at said desk too many times, knocking out this big lug in like three days. He's also an update of my paintjob on the Gravis-armored version from 2019, back when I committed to Ultramarines (again) for my Primaris project. Hazard striped gauntlets and red bolters worked then, and by gum they work now too. This is also the fifth time I've painted a Calgar comma Marneus, and I'm happy to say each one has been better than the last. Here's to 2029 when the next one comes out.

That would be the last model I paint this year - at least so far as I can talk about here - as my year's end would involve mostly building the models from Warhammer Quest: Darkwater in anticipation of my dad coming to town. He'd ordered the set as an early Christmas present for me, with the notion that we'd play when he visited us for the holidays. We played a campaign until our party drowned, played through both campaigns of Star Wars: Battle of Hoth, and played games of Age of Sigmar and Battletech Alpha Strike. Despite those not being "his" games (he's a historicals guy for the most part) it was easy enough to come up with a quick scenario and hand wave a few rules for ease of play. I count myself lucky that I have family who I actually want to spend time with, even with the occasional uttered boomerism that forces my eyes to do a full backflip in their sockets. It was good to see him after two and a half years, and I hope it won't be so long until next time.

Final Thoughts, The Year Ahead, and What Have You

While I find New Year's Resolutions to be an annual exercise in self-deception, I do generally try to set some sort of goals for the ensuing annum to guide my way throughout. While these are seldom particularly exceptional (I will not, for instance, say this is the year I return to and finish my comic, if it happens, it happens) I like having something to gauge myself against. For my hobby, these tend to be based on the output of previous years - a certain number of models painted, games played, and what have you. This is my lengthy way of saying that I was well behind of where I had intended to be. I aim for around 150 models painted per year (nothing compared to Goonhammer's batch painter extraordinaire, Bair) but for the first time since I started tracking my painting numbers in 2013, I didn't hit triple digits. Turns out that pivoting to extremely labor-intensive models like tanks and bulky Space Marine characters slows you down, as does packing your entire life up and moving it, even if it's only a mile down the road.

So what's the takeaway here? That sometimes you just won't hit your marks? Anybody with a mirror should know that. Sometimes you'll get tired of the things you love? That's the sadder first part, but the sequel where you fall back in love is where the real heat's at. The world's a terrifying place and its people are capable of both terrible cruelty and towering acts of kindness? Man, I didn't even talk about politics this time. The backbone of all these experiences are the people we choose to share them with, with all the laughter, frustration, and love that entails. Even if the only person holding us to account on any of these goals is ourselves, we've gotta live with them one way or another. So here's to another year, another unrealized goal, another horrible shock and another wondrous surprise. Maybe some of those will even have something to do with Warhammer.

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Tags: 40k | Year-in-Review