I did a glowing monofilament in a turquoise to pop out from the oranges.

Here's a better view of the muddy swamp bases. I shaded the recesses and pooled gloss in them to give them a puddly finish. The reeds are made from a decorating brush.

And some good ol' Tamiya Clear for the Aswuang's entrails.

"Why the scowl Gustav?" asked Colt, one of the squad's veteran troopers. "Your brow isn't hairy enough to pull off that sour expression."

"I'm troubled we're fighting Astartes Renegades so much these days. It's as though the entire galaxy is populated by Space Marines. And I'm troubled by today's choice of allies - Dark Eldar and Necrons."

"We're a pragmatic race Gustav, we do the job with whatever's at hand. Anyway, that's not what we called them in my day." Colt sighed. "To us they're Eldar Renegades and Chaos Androids."

********

With the Golem Impressive Miniature Painting Syndicate in its third month we set aside an evening for a celebratory parade game. With uneven numbers we drew teams along the Golem/non-Golem lines. Matt Turpin (Blood Angels) and Si Jenkins (Shadow Scorpions) were on Team Collar - look at them with their proper jobs and fancy dress codes.

Team Golem was Chris "Curis" Webb (Squats), Luke "Hand Cool" Jordan (Dark Eldar) and Mike "Turbodanger" Mee (Necrons). You can tell they're commission painters based on the hearty caffeinated drinks.

With uneven numbers team Golem slimmed their 750 lists to 500. We placed six objectives across the field and assigned them random points (1-3) which we decided to leave hidden until the end of the game for maximum excitement. As we've all been painting Fast Attack this month, we decided Fast Attack choices would be scoring as well as Troops.

With Mike Mee in charge, Team Golem elected to set up and go second. The Marines drove a tanky spearhead forward.

But instead of chewing up the Dark Eldar and Squat infantry immediately in front, the Baal picked on the Necron Wraiths on the right flank - to Luke's delight.

Simon looked on unimpressed, taking the game all very seriously.

Mike Mee's Wraiths weathered the storm and were ready to mete out some vengeful destruction.

The Squat gunline blew up its plasma gunner trying to harm the Baal.

But the Wraiths were unharmed and charged the Baal, blowing it up in a way that was meant to look smokey and fiery but just looks orange and fluffy.

Shadow Scorpions reserves arrived with outflank, and the Master Jeridian's personal Rhino proceeded to crush trees and add Friend of the Earth to his long list of enemies.

The Blood Angels counter-counter-charged with their Assault Squad, wanting control of this central objective (blue barrels and green fuel can).  But the Squats counter-counter-counter-charged with their Command Squad. And then the Death Company counter-counter-counter-counter-charged and it became a big ruck in the middle of the table. Ahhh, 40K.

Jeridian's Rhino had decided to join in, but unable to disembark and assault he felt very left out (you can see it in the corner in the above photo).  Jeridian's Rhino was counter-Rhinoed by the Squat Berserkers and their plethora of special weapons. Melting, burning and shurikening Marines down, they dared the Command Squad to charge into them so they could take some overwatch fire with their arsenal.

Luke's Eldarites mercilessly gunned down Simon's lone Chaplain.  This Chaplain has a long history of getting caught out while running around unaccompanied.

Meanwhile, Luke's racks were being slowly mangled by Captain Games Day Captain in the Forest of Colour.

Mike Mee was failing Reserve rolls for his Necrons something chronic, and his Lord and Immortals in a Night Scythe had yet to appear. These Jonny-Come-Latelies attempted an eleventh hour push to battle Jeridian's Command Squad off the corpse-strewn barrel objective. A challenge was issued and the opposing commanders duelled atop the tree-crushing Rhino.

Sadly, the Necron Supreme Commander was killed and his Immortals lost the combat and were mercilessly chased down. The Night Scythe, in hover mode, was then taken out by a lone Death Company. Team Golem were looking thin on the ground with just Chris' Exo-Armour to cause objective problems.

With few models left, Chris used his time to construct a Keytar (half keyboard, half guitar) to intimidate Simon.  Unfortunately he got a bit mixed up with the name of this hybrid instrument and labelled it a Keyano (half keyboard, half piano).  Simon adopted an ignore strategy.

These Hearthguard wiped out the Angels Tactical Squad on the objective, meaning at the end of seven bloody turns (damn those random game lengths) there were no Fast Attacks and no Troops anywhere on the board, with the exception of a solitary fleeing Shadow Scorpion. No primary objectives for anyone.

Chris was massively proud of his paintjobs so that's why there are loads of photos of them.

So with nothing left alive to claim primary objectives it came down to secondary objectives.  Team Golem had killed the Shadow Scorpions Chaplain (1), Captain Games Day Captain (1) and had got First Blood with the Baal Predator.

Team Collar had killed Squat Warmaster Curiz (1), Luke's Dark Eldar Warmaster (1), Mike Mee's Necron Warmaster (1) and had also had Master Jeridian's Command Squad in the Golem deployment zone. Victory for Team Collar 4-3. Cue Captain Games Day Captain from Matt and Simon sighing at all the energy and idiocy he's been enduring while trying to play tactically.

This model may've been influenced by the famous Sutton Hoo helmet. It's as though the Perry that sculpted these models saw it and thought "Hey! That would look great as a robot - all it needs are hands and feet."

Eagle-eyed amongst you would've noticed that there's a discarded RTB01 helmet on the base. This is to commemorate the Squats' victory against Mark's Storm Giants in our ongoing Golem army challenge. So great was the massacre of these green Marines that Mark has switched to collecting Ultramarines.

Next off, let's round these chaps out to a squad with all the variants.

"I loved that game as a kid!" smiled one of the other playtesters.

"ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!" somebody chimed from the back, making those with memories of the classic Amiga game smirk. Veteran game designer Jake Thornton had no idea why we were giggling about frozen desserts.

Lucky Logan's playing for the Trontek 29ers - his vintage battered plate in complete contrast to Trontek's hyper-polished alloys.

With Jake oblivious to the violent sporting game, and resistant to my straplines referencing Brutal Deluxe (Brutal Influx? Brutal Bollox? Brutal Haddocks?) I thought I had to throw in a homage somewhere. That opportunity came with the Season 1 MVP Lucky Logan. I decided to recreate the 16-colour pallete of the classic Bitmap Brothers game with the official paintjob.

Hence mucky turquoise shaded with purple and cross-faded to grey.

This ties nicely to the background for me - Logan is allegedly one of the original DreadBall players from many years back.  What if "back then" was 2095 - the year when the original SpeedBall was founded?  (And maybe even this 2095?)

At Golem we're painting a huge influx (a brutal influx) of DreadBall for the Mantic's Kickstarter, including a number of Logans. If you'd like me to paint you an exact copy of the studio paintjob, get in touch.

Anyway, Tom recently commissioned a pair of his towering new Exodus Wars Behemoths from Golem.  As the resident 6mm enthusiast I pounced on these robot beauties.

To give you an idea of scale, here they are with a Blood Angels Dreadnought.  They weigh about a third of a kilo each.  Put one in a rugby sock and you've got a murder weapon.

Rather than paint them as one assembled piece I broke them down into sub-assemblies and stuck them to bottle tops.    Finding this many caps in Golem is very easy as the amount of soft drink is directly proportional to the ability to paint.

The torsos had large holes drilled through them and were glued to old paintbrushes.  Any handling of metal models results in paint wear and finger-grease transfer.  Of course - you do end up fingering the model - but you agree with yourself a limited number of contact points - and only paint them when you've finished everything else (Thomas Moore had a similar approach to painting his Khorne Lord on Juggernaut).

So here's the Marcovian Behemoth.  This had the brown base-coasts airbrushed to ensure a smooth finish to the armour panels.  I particularly enjoyed the markings on the left arm, and the nuclear symbols on the tips of the missiles.

In order to stop people thinking these were 28mm miniatures I added trees to the bases.  It really gives them a sense of scale.

And here's the Zho Behemoth, clad in slick black armour plates.  Notice how all the fades get lighter towards the bottom rather than the top for extra coolness factor.

On the top of the carapace is a large freehand Zho faction symbol.

Chuffed to have done these studio jobs.  It makes Steel Crown the latest in a long line of companies that head to Golem for their studio paintjobs.

Slippery Joe's the Goblin MVP from DreadBall Season 1, and it fell to me to bring this Naismith sculpt to life.  The brief was "suave" - how to execute this?  Joe's defining feature - a fake moustache - is the key.  This is a goblin aping an evil vaudevillian, so I should paint his DreadBall armour in a classy fashion - a mock dinner suit, like those comedy shirts you get.

My first attempt was a black suit with a white v-shape on the chest.  I base-coated the model to see if it would work. Answer was no - the complexity of the model's chest meant the shape was lost. I added a red cummerbund to help break it up - but it wasn't obvious what was going on.

But take off the black jacket revealing the white shirt, and paint part of the DreadBall armour detail like a pinned rose and it comes together. Brief of "suave" executed.

We're going to be painting quite a lot of DreadBall for private clients at Golem Painting Studio.  Get in touch if you fancy commissioning me to produce an exact copy of the MVP, or any of the of the DreadBall.

First up is the Furnace Valley Brotherhood Command Squad.  Brotherhood Lords are in charge of their Stronghold at a tactical level, leading the Warrior Squads in the thick of the fighting.  They're one step below Warlords who I'll model later in the project with ornate carapace armour.   On the left is Commissar Gustav (kindly donated by my friend Luke), who is acting in an advisory rather than disciplinary capacity.  This Mark Copplestone classic is the only non-Perry miniature so far.  The Powerfist and Power Sword is quite overkill, but the model's too damn awesome to kit out otherwise.

Left to right: Commissar Gustav, Trooper Stoner (Bolter), Medic Faunts, Warmaster Curiz, Trooper Sterling (Stronghold Standard) and Trooper Gast (Battlesynth).

The first Warrior Squad is composed entirely of Perry-sculpted Squats.  I picked all the models with photochromatic visors as the translucent red looks gives the squad a visual kick, and also satisifes my pedantic side where in Rogue Trader squads were either entirely with or entirely without the eye protection.

I'd have liked to've avoided using the metal/plastic hybrid Squats in this squad (and make squads of entirely hybrids later) - but the Plasma Gunner is festooned with Heavy Bolter pouches and I've no oldskool Heavy Bolters from White Dwarf 97.  I'll split the squad up later - and might even split off the Squats with AK47s from the Lasguns.

Here's the whole 250 points altogether.  It's a nice nucleus to grow the army around.