Mum and Dad were having a clear out, and came across this miniature, which is now the only known surviving model I painted back when I was a kid. I vaguely remember painting this, probably some time around 1996/97 as I appear to have base-coated it using the old Ultramarines Blue spray, likely to help Young Me with the white. I must have run out of Chainmail Silver, as all the metals are painted gold, except the sword, which is still blue!

I’ve no idea where this model actually came from, and I’m pretty certain it’s not by Citadel. I think it might’ve been randomly found at a car boot sale, and given to me as I was going through my “Bretonnian Period,” so people knew I was painting knights.

I should put it somewhere safe, as a bit of nostalgia. It’s the closest I’ll come to “my first miniature.” Part of me is tempted to strip the paint off it and repaint it though… hmm, decisions, decisions!

Warhammer Conquest was a big topic of conversation this week. Knotley has two excellent posts breaking down the cost and value. I’ve subscribed, at least for now. £32 per month, to have something delivered regularly might actually help me cut down on impulse purchases. Plus, more Marine bodies and paints are always welcome. And there’s an exclusive Primaris Lieutenant/Sergeant with issue 5 that I really want to get.

Warboss Kurgan had some excellent Endless Spell conversions to show off, to fit his “Blanchitsu” style Age of Sigmar creations.

Meanwhile, Bear was showing off his lovely Stardrake and Celestant Prime.

Over at The Aaronorium, theactualcolin posted his Lord of Contagion, which he hopes will do better in games, now it finally has some paint on it.

Iron Sleet have the first two battle reports from their amazing looking “Thorn Moons Crusade” collaborative narrative campaign. The conversions, painting, and story-telling are all first class, so I highly recommend you check out the reports from the 7th Moon and 15th Moon. Then read everything in the archive. Also at Iron Sleet, Migs talks about what’s coming next from him.

Dave at Quietly Raging is making some real-world inspired, very Imperial looking Church Tanks. Yes, churches on tanks. He’s only posted the inspiration on his blog for now, but if you follow him on social media, you’ll probably have seen WIP pictures of a very gothic looking Baneblade.

Mordian 7th has finished an Orlock gang and some characters, for Necromunda.

Curis has posted some more of his Classic Citadel miniatures, this time some excellently painted “Blandford Warriors” from 1988. I was 5 when these were released. The Lions Rampant on the shield/tabard of Owen of Wales are probably my favourite bit of the 3 miniatures.

Tyler Mengal has some words on using Cheat Sheets to keep you right. These are something I should definitely make more use of.

Sprews & Brews ponder on what they’d like to see from the rumoured Battletome covering the various “The Lost and The Damned” factions in Age of Sigmar, i.e. Beastmen, Darkoath, Slaves to Darkness, and a host of other minor Chaos factions. Also over there is part 2 of Dave’s Legion of Nagash vlogs.

Part 4 of CadianShock’s guide to getting started with Astra Militarum has been posted. Fall in, Guardsman.

Pike’s Miniature Painting and Bolter & Brush both posted some good “How To” videos, on Mortarion and the Lord Celestant, respectively.

Frontline Gaming have an article from (the world’s only?) professional Warhammer 40,000 player, Nick Nanavati, about studying smarter, not harder, to avoid “gotcha” moments in games.

Finally, Forge World rolled out some big changes to pricing and shipping. In the UK, this generally means cheaper, faster, shipping. The reaction from those outside of the UK has been far from happy though, as the faster shipping has been offset by 15-40% price increases in some cases.

That’s all for this week. Did you find this round-up useful? Should I make them a regular thing? Let me know in the comments, and share this post with your friends ?

Mike Monteiro has written some of my favourite articles on about Twitter, most written from a place of frustration, sadness, and anger at the avoidable decline and lack of leadership. I wanted to bookmark them here so I had one simple place to refer back to them from, and to share them with any readers who hadn’t yet come across them.

Continuing from yesterday’s Ancient, I figured that if this ends up becoming my Armies on Parade entry, I’ll need an HQ, to give the force a sense of purpose.

This model was much less work than the Ancient. The only time consuming bit was removing the sword hand without wrecking the wrist armour, and replacing it with a Forge World power scythe. Other than that, it was just a head swap and attaching a couple of suitable bits to decorate.

I should probably add some Troops next…

I’ve wanted to enter Armies on Parade for several years now, but I’ve never managed to get myself organised in time. This year might go the same way, but I’ve at least started on the display board, which is further than previous years!

I have a unique constraint on my entry: for logistical reasons, my entire entry must fit in a carry case. Assuming I use the largest I have, the Battlefoam P.A.C.K 720, that means my entry has a footprint of 12″ x 15″, give or take. The standard size for Armies on Parade is 24″ x 24″ – so I have roughly half the space available to me of most other entrants!

I’m not 100% set on which army I’ll be taking. Most likely it’ll be Space Marines of some order, for 40K. If I enter for AoS, it’ll be the Deepkin army I started through a Path To Glory campaign. I have the clearest idea for a 40K board, so that’s where I’m starting today.

I ordered 2 custom cut pieces of plywood to serve as my base board. This saved me the hard part of betting my edges straight. I’m only using 1 for now, so the other is on standby, just in case.

With my base sorted, I needed to figure out a theme, and how I was going to build it. Kill Team is providing the inspiration this year, so I figured the Sector Imperialis look is the perfect place to start. I could also cheat a little bit here. I had a solitary tile from the Sector Imperialis Realm of Battle board lurking at the back of a cupboard, from a previous planned entry. Obviously, it’s too big for my diminutive board, but that’s why Man invented power tools! I laid the board on top of the tile, where I thought I’d get a good mixtue of details, traced around it with a sharpie, and then set about it with a jigsaw. 5 minutes of cutting with a blade rated for aluminium, and I had a section of the tile roughly cut to size.

Which when laid over the board looks something like this:

You might have noticed one of the corners is bare, due to where I cut the tile. That’s fine – I’m going to fill it with rubble or something similar, so it won’t be noticed once everything is complete.

You might also have noticed all the edges look a bit wierd. That’s because when you cut using a powertool, it usually generates enough heat to melt the plastic. I’ll be tidying that up when I get around to filling and sanding the edges – but that’s a job for another day!

I finally got these up on the wall, after what seems like forever. Despite some careful planning and marking out where the pins were to be placed, Dhalsim still ended up slightly out of position. I’m going to chalk that up to manufacturing tolerances in the frames…