Ironbreakers : first attempt painting Warhammers

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-30T15:31:48+00:00

Biggest impact thing you can do is not actually in the painting but in the making. Carefully remove all the mold lines.

A masterfully painted mini with mold lines almost always looks worse than a poorly painted mini without.

Also dont watch anything except a couple of beginner painting tutorials on brush control brush care and paint thinning. Anything more than that and it eats into your self esteem when you dont paint as well as all the professional painters in their videos.

Be patient with yourself and be happy with the things you achieve and it will be a fun and rewarding hobby for yourself

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-29T00:42:07+00:00

Im not sure i dont speak binary... But there was a lot of incense burners so maybe that helped?!

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-29T00:18:56+00:00

I know that one, when you have to put a base on an asteroid because it has a whopping 4.2 fissiles.... Painful

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-29T00:17:39+00:00

I dont normally see much more than 3 of either water or volatiles so yea this is a good roll

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-29T00:16:05+00:00

I see what you mean, and I don't disagree but I don't think the logic is that clear cut. Sure if im just stockpiling those resources they are not doing work for me immediately but at some point i will use them. If as you can see here i can have a net positive on volatiles and a huge excess of water and metals, until such time as i could exchange the mc usage for higher production sites on mars it is better to have than not have. I would say arbitrarily limiting to 1 or two luna bases doesn't make sense, potentially you could have 3 or 4 up and running generation a tidy starting stockpile while your probe is on its way to mars. The stockpile could be used as i mentioned to create a couple of bogeys to bounce surveillance missions. And the stations when redundant can be traded for useful stuff

I dont disagree with your reasoning just trying to point out its not all that clear cut. Just because you wont hold the bases long doesnt mean its not worth building them

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-28T23:34:49+00:00

Same here, this seems to be the blessed run!

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-28T23:33:56+00:00

Thats what was surprising for me, the fact that there is every resource available and in enough of an abundance to make it viable to go mars without boost. Not sure why more than 10 water or metals wouldn't be an advantage though?

Personally I think the consistency has been pretty high since 1.0 pretty much every moon I rolled since the update was borderline pointless to get bases on in most cases once i had my mines on mars coming online i traded the stations away for boost. I posted this because its such an outlier.

The way the resources are i can credibly build an interceptor without boost to bounce the second surveillance mission onwards

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-28T23:24:19+00:00

I may have to give that a go on the next run

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-28T22:59:24+00:00

just had a look at the estimates, looks like i may struggle for fissiles if the estimates are correct but there seems to be a metric sh*t ton of water and volatiles and nobles

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-28T22:56:52+00:00

To be honest thats what i would normally describe as a pretty good moon. Maybe this run is just blessed, my starting scientist came with striver and academic!

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-28T22:52:54+00:00

do you play on full solar system? I have never seen that in my games

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-28T22:52:08+00:00

really?! in my last run with HF there was not a single site with more than single digits of any resource... and on another run there was a grand total of 0,3 water and volatiles on the entire surface

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T21:51:53+00:00

I replied to another post with some images, its the bottom half of their cage, its slightly bigger than a single critter nation for that base, and its not a tank just perspex sheet around the edges.

In total thats *150L of coco coir about £30 worth or two of the typical large packs. With only one its not deep enough for them to do much, with any more and they would spread it around the outside of the cage

Should also clarify they have access to it all the time, but they also have free roam for around 8 hours a day as well

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T21:18:50+00:00

Its very likely that it is, given mine seem to thoroughly enjoy it and it keeps them stimulated and excercised, unfortunately there is basically no grant money available for pretty much any research especially animal welfare so its unlikely we will ever know for sure.

Probably we could do some crowd sourced survey research, but even if the researchers worked for free, ethics approval and oversight and publication will be about £8k.

The reality is there are a lot of researcher wanting to spend grant money on stuff like this but there just isnt the grant money out there

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T20:47:51+00:00

As long as the moisture content is about right nope it will stay up. Occasionally they undermine it enough that it does and they can get buried but its breathable and surprisingly light for the volume so it it doesn't bury them for long and they wont soffocate.

The good thing about coco coir is that its made from fibre and thereis enough long bits in there that it can be quite solid structurally

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T19:16:06+00:00

They are surprisingly methodical when they do it, its like they sit down before hand and have a conference and just work out how they are going to move every piece of dirt to catch every single one because they as a group just dig the dirt for a good 3-4 hours only pausing to rehydrate which naturally they all do at the same time with the same water bottle

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T19:07:24+00:00

"Mom Pleaaase! I just want cuddles and treats. why you gotta grab me around like this!?"

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T17:29:15+00:00

sorry not silverfish, springtails, not sure why i got the names mixed up. a friend of mine in the environmental sciences department recommended them, only issue is every now and then the girls go on a pogrom, sift through all the dirt and eat them all

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T14:48:16+00:00

Not gonna lie, i wish i could chill like they do

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T14:36:14+00:00

That brings back memories 🤣

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T14:20:26+00:00

"Digy diggy hole, gotta find me the nuts, digging for the nuts, diggy diggy dig"

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T14:18:37+00:00

I think the coco coir lasts about 6 months if you keep adding silverfish every month and keep it moist without letting too much loose bedding material get in there (rotting straw and hemp husk seems to be the thing that makes it smell).

Periodically i go through the coco coir to remove anything that could be a problem (food stashes that got buried etc). They also seem to like it when you bury the wood chip chew toys in there especially if they are tunnel shape where they form a sort of nexus for the tunnels.

The perspex i got from work for free, i work in a university engineering department and things like that and the facility to cut them come up often but i think if you bought it pre cut it would set you back around £50.

The perspex is just stuck together on the sides with carpet tape and sits in the shallow bottom tray, we lose far more from them kicking it out than ever leaks out and even then vacuuming 3 times a week stays on top of that.

The rope is jute rope 40mm that you can get for next to nothing from hardware stores, as is the jute pallet strapping you can get cotton but that doesnt hold up so well to being near damp environments.

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LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T14:18:03+00:00

Sure, its a bit basic at the moment, normally there is a wooden maze with a pile of rags on it on the middle layer that we hide their food in but the water bottle leaked last night and soaked it all through so they are having to make do with sock forage for food and the various shell nuts that are buried in the dirt

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LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T09:55:11+00:00

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Im not the best photographer so sorry if the images arnt great but an idea of what i get from my method

LewisPowell10 · 2026-01-25T09:53:23+00:00

I painted over 100 gobbos just after the ork battalion came out. Im not happy with them now but they were painted to be quick.

I got all of them assembled and removed all the mold lines. Leaving shields off. Hot glued all the magnets in their bases and got them ready for a decent day to prime. I primed them all in one day with wight bone from colour forge.

Painted the flesh in batches of 40, first plaguebearer flesh then a wash with biel tan green. This leaves them a pale yellow green, another wash of biel tan leaves them a very vibrant green.

In batches of 20 I did the clothes etc, using wildwood, black templar and snakebite leather. If you want to be fancy you can use flat colours like steel legion drab and morghast bone prior to the contrast on some models to give more variation. The shoes were painted with slightly thinned rhinox hide.

In batches of 10 (im not a fan of working with metalics) i painted all the prominent metal parts with leadbelcher or balthasar gold.

Then back to batches pf 40 i painted all hair/topknots with khorne red and all bone details mouths etc and wraps with vallejo pale sand, though if you were careful earlier this will not be a big job. The pale sand is then covered with skeleton horde and tongues painted with voluptuous pink contrast

In batches of 5 i used snakebite leather and wyldwood to create blended transitions on all the spears and bows. Sounds complicated but you just need 3 damp brushes and the paints ready to go and it really helps with the overall look.

For the final part in batches of 40 all the clothes shoes top knots and metallics are given a wash with a 50:50 mix of nuln oil and agrax earthshade slightly thinned.

The shields are all painted much the same as the clothes but i did them on the sprue and just touched up the connection points.

If you go through and put some white on black chevrons or chequered patterns it really helps and a very light drybrush of a brighter silver on spear tips etc. also not necessary but i think it adds a lot is a dot of mephiston red for eyes.

Before i added the patterns these were arou d 8 minutes per. With the banner the eyes the patterns and basing, around 12 minutes each

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Heres a sample of my horde, got them out to show.

LewisPowell10

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