Warhammer (with the models and everything)

I can see how it happened, not great communication sorry.

Dark Angels are already gone at Warhammer website.

It’s spurred me on to set up to paint anyway.

Price of the new battle force boxes on non-GW websites at pre-order.

No problem. Every year there are Xmas Battleforce boxes which theoretically bundle a mix of big/character/infantry models at a discount to buying separate units, for 40K and Age of Sigmar.

You’ll also generally get similar sets through the year to tie into the release of Codexes (faction rulebooks) and for example this year said boxes have been released for Dark Angels, Adepta Sororitas (I got that one), Imperial Agents, Blood Angels, Chaos Marines. You’ll sometimes get a couple of different army boxes in these - Imperial Agents got three, Chaos got two.

The Ratlings model is a ‘commemorative’ model meaning its primary function is to paint and display.

Apologies if any of this is already known no patronising intended. I stopped myself short of explaining to you what a Ratling was at least 😂*

*Space hobbit

Yeah it’s great lol.

If the bug sticks with painting Killteams you will find yourself collecting multiple 40K armies and spending hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It’s just a matter of time. This is how they get you.

Specialist Games books are painful to read at the mo. Well Legions Imperialis, their way of writing fluff is just really jarring.

The 1 10th Edition Codex I have and Old World are fine, much more general background writing. Ditto Blood Bowl, though that works differently as it's all meant to be a sports journal. The Imperialis ones are written in a pseudo military history narrative form. But it mostly reads like a bad sci-fi or fantasy novel.

Just a rando example: "Upon the Typhon Causeway, The Taghmata Melgator had ground their way through the Thallax and Ursarax maniples hurled against them, and stood close enough to the Vulkan Gate for the Scintillax and Serperos stalkers at their heart to begin bombarding the vast edifice with fusillades of aetheric energy." Which is quite the fucking sentence. It's just all fucking nouns.

There is no description or even a map of Magma City. So the place names are all just random disconnected nouns. Is this the north? The main assault? A side thing? Not a fucking clue. Who the shit is Melgator, it's just a name that pops up occasionally. That's just the total lack of decent scene setting. I take it the Scintillax, Serperos, Thallax and Ursarax are all kinds of Mechanicum robotic things, again there's no description of them first. But they dementedly just add the proper nouns of models they want to sell you so there's just mini lists of kinds of models mid sentence. 

Gah it's just awful prose with no flow at all. Jervis Johnson/Andy Chambers/Rick Priestly actually could write prose that flowed properly back in the day, it's not Shakespeare or anything but it's readable.

Oh and the other thing vs the good old days. You keep going on about a) Magma City, b) an Imperator Titan and c) Ordinatus. Is there a picture of any of these things? Is there fuck because they don't make minis of them. Fucking cowards. Though this complaint is true of 40K codices a lot of the time as well. Let the artists cook ffs.

Bring back 3rd Edition 40k, 1st Edition Epic 40k and 1st Edition Necromunda, I say.

drakeypoos yeah I'm dyslexic so just reading this stuff that's nouns, nouns, nouns with no flow, is just aggravating. Constantly having to scan back and forth. I get that I can just whiz off to Lexicanum or read a novel to find out who Blokey McMechface is, but I paid £30 for a book and kind of expect it to be self contained (well plus the main rulebook). It just grates a bit, plus the release models of refusing to put rules for anything that's not on the short term roadmap is annoying, but that's a general thing outside of Old World.

I just really miss the books having pictures of stuff you can't buy. Like pictures of Navigators or space ships etc. Made the whole thing feel like a bigger universe.

Blue_Mike
If I were to pick editions...
Necromunda/Blood Bowl/Old World(it's basically the same as the last edition of WFB) are all in a good place.
Epic, I'd go for Epic 40K or Epic Armageddon, they're both great wargames. Imperialis has gone back to 2nd edition Space Marine, which is just a bit too gamey for my taste. I love all the stuff about suppression and black markers.

40K is tricky. Part of me wants to say 2nd, as I miss the mad bollocks. A tank flipping over and crushing a general instantly was always fucking hilarious. Modern 40K is too much like a deck-builder to me, all about synergies and working out stratagems before you even play. Probably due to the competitive scene, but I've always played 40K as a just ram all your models on a board with your mates kinda game.
3rd stream lined things, but retained some totally silly fun things. 4th mostly improved it, but it started to get too sensible. Also the armour modifier rules back then were fucking dumb and made Space Marines real boring.
The new ones where vehicles, characters and large monsters are all just big wound counters you chip off are especially annoying. There's no reason to try get back behind a slow vehicle and shoot it up the arse any more. Like the actual moment to moment tactics are gone.

Tomo, firstly, bin off spray varnishing as a thing. It’s fraught with difficulties and is very dependent on almost mythical atmospheric conditions.

I have heard that a brush of Lahmian Medium (a Citadel product which thins down non-contrast paints) and I’m sure I’ve read Olive Oil can work too for sorting this cloudy varnish thing out. The Lahmian at least should not harm anything.

I use a mix of AK Interactive Ultra Matte varnish and Citadel Contrast Medium, brushed on, which takes approximately ten-fifteen seconds per normal sized mini and dries without brush marks and a fantastic texture and consistency. I learned this from Zyrr who I believe learned it from Duncan Rhodes, both hobbyists you can trust lol.

Starting with my Killteam stuff, I’ve actually been doing a coat of gloss varnish too, for which I’m using Citadel ‘Ardcoat - as I had some knocking around which I experimented with for wet look brains and lenses (I gave up on that). Again, this is just painted all over the mini, and then the matte mix applied when dry.

The matte completely takes away the gloss, but the underlying gloss gives much better protection. Matte varnish gives much better protection than none, and looks best, but gloss is king for protection, so this is a belt and braces approach.

You can obviously do either of these in any weather condition too. Serioslusly, I recommend for your own sanity and to not risk your hard work, just put them safely on a shelf whilst you wait for some new stuff to arrive. Get a couple of cheap brushes to do this.

So, I'm going to dip my toe into the shallowest end of the airbrush pool - I've asked for a usb airbrush for Christmas in the family secret Santa - it's £34 discounted to £28 on Amazon. Main use will be priming minis, I may do zenithal highlighting too if I get adventurous.

I expect it'll work once then explode, but as it's a present I figure it's worth a try. I'm planning on being very high tech with it too - I've picked the cardboard box I'll be using as my spray booth and everything.

You'll find that on Temu at half the price tbh. Has started to become my goto for cheap bits like tools/scrub grass/impulse buys.

Boo, my dark angels box got cancelled. Not to worry as I could do with not spending the money on models I wouldn’t paint for around two years lol. Will have to see if those particular ones come out in a discount box again, m sure they will.

Nah the dark angels was mighty lancer. Sisters was thru Goblin and that’s fine as far as I know, never had any problems. Their dark angels was sold thru by ten (before so!).

Think the mighty lancer games might have been for in store only or something.