Painting table update: October 2025

The past month saw a burst of activity on my Stormcast Eternals Blood Bowl team, while I’ve since slowly begun to switch to some new areas of my collection.

I wrote articles about the Stormcast conversions so won’t cover them too heavily here, but I tried a lightning effect and finished 6 more Stormcast players before writing a big update on my custom team.

There’s been a bit of other activity over the past month too, with a couple of bits of progress on modelling/painting minis and some more 3D printing.

More 3D-printed paint racks

In August I spent a chunk of time designing and printing custom paint racks for all my Citadel paints. I had also then created a version of the racks for dropper bottles, though they weren’t ideal and so I had paused for a while.

Then I watched a Ninjon video on hobby tools and saw the What’s in the Box racks which prompted me to try a more upright approach for dropper bottles again. Green Stuff World sells a very similar wood rack system, as do others I’d seen before but for whatever reason I got intrigued enough this time to look at a version to mount on my IKEA Skadis peg boards.

After a bit of maths and some trial-and-error in Shapr3D, I came up with a ‘hanging’ shelf that could mount to the Skadis pegboard and handled the angle correctly for the 40mm spacing of the peg rows. 

I decided to copy the alternating shelf design to get bottles showing between the gaps of the row below on the dropper version — hoping to make it easier to read the labels — although it loses one paint space every other row. I’ll see how this goes but the variance in where manufacturers label their paints probably means I’d just go for maximum paint storage next time and use uniform 8-bottle rows.

Citadel holders v2 

The racks I designed for the Citadel pots are working really well, so I had no need to re-design or re-print them, however the larger Citadel pots (18ml and 24ml) did struggle in that system a little and I hadn’t made time to iterate. 

This new shelf design was so simple though, I gave it a go for the Citadel pots too (it just needed a steeper angle to fit the pots without complicating the shelf design) and they work really well, even for the bigger pots. 

Next steps

With a solid system for all my paints now, next on my list is to look at better storage for my brushes and other hobby tools. I’ve got a few brush holder racks which are fine, including a ‘samurai rack’ for my Artis Opus brushes but am convinced a better solution is possible.

The Artis Opus rack is good in that it holds the brushes horizontal to protect the ferrules, but I regularly knock other brushes loose when trying to take one out so I want to work on some options for more secure but still-accessible brush racks.

Nighthaunt

On first getting back into the hobby I had very little interest in Nighthaunt as a faction yet I tended to end up acquiring minis in ebay lots when buying Stormcast Eternals as they so often got packaged together in the early box sets.

The standard, pale official paint schemes translate to lots of people doing basic washes of Briar Queen Chill or similar over a white-primed model and calling it done, so I never found them very inspiring.

That changed when I happened across a link to a really cool colour scheme from an Instagram user, sneakystabbinz.

On seeing their minis, I actually wanted to paint some Nighthaunt although it remained pretty low on the list of priorities and — because all my Nighthaunt minis were incidental ebay purchases — they had often come already painted with the afore-mentioned blue-green wash. Still, my new-found enthusiasm did lead to jumping on an absolute steal last year: getting a whole army off ebay for just £46.

And then they sat in a box for another year.

Finally attempting to paint one

Having wrapped up those six Stormcast players for Blood Bowl though, I finally decided to do a quick test on a couple of Nighthaunt minis and pulled out a Glaivewraith Stalker and Grimghast Reaper that had both arrived already primed in (I think) Wraithbone.

First up, the Glaivewraith Stalker and I have to say, I really enjoyed painting this scheme!

As it’s largely about mucky rags and blurry ‘energy trails’, working quickly and not blending paints into each other works well so the model came together incredibly quickly. I’ve only painted it to tabletop standard so far, but I think it already looks great for the level of effort required and it’s a nice difference from the stuff I usually paint.

A few days later, I also worked up the Grimghast Reaper, this one spending even less time although I think that does show:

I did go for a pale blue wash on the ‘flesh’ this time and I still don’t really like it. I plan to go back and highlight it up with a more neutral colour to knock the blue-green back a little. The green energy wisps also lack contrast compared to the first and need work.

For both, I also want to go back with the airbrush to create a green glow OSL effect on the base and in a couple of areas on the minis themselves.

Again though, these look great for the tabletop and take so little time to do.

Finding a ‘Stormcast ogre’

With more than enough Stormcast miniatures converted for Blood Bowl now, I ended my update on that team talking through options to use as an ogre.

Because the Stormcast themselves are so huge relative to normal BB players, finding a model to work as an ogre proxy is proving really difficult. I’ll write up my thinking and progress so far in a separate post shortly, but current front-runners are either Rostus Oxenhammer from the Blacktalons set (the biggest actual Stormcast Eternal I can find) or a gryph-charger rearing up over a felled opponent.

Another Howling Griffon

Back in July I painted my first Howling Griffon: the Captain Justian model from the Kill Team starter set (and previously the Warhammer Heroes blind box line). Since then I had picked up a squad of infiltrators on ebay that were already primed red and, keen to work up some more Howling Griffons, I’ve just started painting the sergeant.

Something I’ve noticed a few times while painting — and especially with this one — is that a strong prime/undercoat colour can really affect my impression of the model while still building up base layers.

With this one having been primed all red (including the base), by the time I had used the pink trick to add the yellow quarters of his armour and added a Mephiston base layer with shade wash of Berzerker Bloodshade, the model still felt barely touched and didn’t feel like progress was being made.

Realising that the red undercoat was affecting the overall balance, I quickly splashed some Abaddon Black over the base to reduce the overpowering red effect and it instantly helped me assess the model better. 

This is a trick I’ve had to use on myself a couple of times. Usually basing comes last, but every now and then I’ve found it’s worth a quick layer of a neutral colour just to counteract a distraction from an unfinished-but-high-contrast block of colour on the base.

Stalled progress

Started all the way back in June, I still haven’t made any real further progress on the new Space Wolves battle leader, Wolf Guard Headtakers or Wolf Priest that I began. The Headtakers and battle leader in particular are in a decent place if I could just sit down and get on with them. I’ll try…

Similarly, the off-white Grey Knight I started needs attention at some point.

Looking forward to…

Games Workshop has made some pretty cool announcements recently, which I’ll need to budget for over the next few months.

Kill Team: Dead Silence

James Bond-sounding title aside… new Kill Team box with Space Wolves! From what’s been revealed, there doesn’t seem to be any terrain included, just a couple of kill teams and rules bits so I’m hoping (optimistically) that this one won’t be too hideously priced.

The new wolf scouts-as-veterans is a cool idea and adds further differentiation to the Space Wolves as a chapter. The T’au kill team also looks pretty cool, although I struggle to get massively excited about T’au stuff aside from some of the Kroot models.

Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition

A while back I picked up the old Tomb Kings of Khemri metal team for Blood Bowl, as well as a 3D printed resin proxy set from UGNI. So I was very pleased to see a new edition of Blood Bowl announced, with Tomb Kings as one of the teams in the box.

The other team being Bretonnians was a surprise. I’ve always struggled with some of the Bretonnian designs purely on aesthetic preference but I do quite like this new team so maybe it’ll be my gateway into liking Bretonnians. 

I'll be in line to get my pre-order down for this one.

Warhammer Quest: Darkwater

Another surprise, and one that feels like it’s following a recent pattern of the Warhammer Community team feeling the need to get back in front of leaks of upcoming releases. Basically no information on this other than the cover art, which suggests it could still be some way off from release yet.

Warhammer Underworlds: Spitewood

The only one actually available for order so far and, while it’s honestly the one I’m least enthused by, I found it at 25% off so I did pre-order as a good deal for 2 warbands, new decks and a new playing board.

Things to paint

Setting aside all the cool new toys tempting me to further purchases, I should of course paint some more of the stuff I have.

Being ‘Orctober’, it would be good to paint an Orc/k or two if I can get round to it. Varag Ghoul-Chewer is still tantalisingly close to tabletop ready so I should try to finish him off. I’ve seen some really cool colour schemes for Blood Bowl orc teams so would like to think I could make progress on some of them but I’m really not sure I’ll get to it. There always seems to be something else that enthuses me more when it comes time to sit down and paint, even though I know I’d enjoy the orcs once I get started.