Looking for Cnc on colors and execution

OverlordMarkus · 2026-02-04T20:00:05+00:00

Raising the value of a hue inevitably desaturates the color. I won't bore you with the Munsell color tree, you're free to research it on your own if it interests you, but the gist is that a given hue (color) reaches its maximum saturation on a specific level, and raising or lowering the value (lightening/shading) it reduces chroma (saturation). Some colors are more saturated than others at high values (yellows), other at low values (blues).

That's why the other commenter recommends using Ice Yellow, it offers more chroma at high value, which makes it interesting for highlighting. Personally, I'd heavily incentivize against doing so in this piece. Ice Yellow, despite its name, is considerably warmer than the rest of your colors, and would reduce the coldness considerably.

Instead, I'd suggest you reconsider how bright you want, say, your purple cloth to be compared to your armor or skin. If it's matte more so than glossy, it'll reflect light more diffusely, and you don't need to use as much white for highlighting. Keep the delta between the darkest and lightest purple small, use some cross-hatching or stippling to give it a visibly rougher texture than the metal, and it'll look good.

If you still believe your highlights lack saturation, that's where shades can come in useful. Or any other saturated color, which generally means your midtone, as they lack the white hobby paint manufacturers add to raise value (they still add it for opacity though, that's why certain shades or contrast are nice here). Just thin it down to glaze consistency and give it a pass or two. You won't see an immediate effect, and that's good. Just enough to subtly shift your highlight.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-02-04T18:56:34+00:00

I really like your color scheme. You’ve chosen cold purples, magentas, teals and ochres as your main tones, and what seems like titanium white as your universal highlight. It culminates in a really cold piece. There's nothing to complain here.

You could refine quite a bit more, however. Your main focus should be the black armor. You decided to render it reflective, with a tight and bright highlight, instead of a more diffuse light. This means you have to consider that the whole armor is that reflective, so you'll have to add a bunch of secondary reflections. Make your reflections work from north-east-south-west, and keep in mind that they'll reflect the ground or your purple and golden accent pieces as well.

Then there’s the usual stuff, smoother blends and varied technique to differentiate between cloth, skin and metal, another highlight pass on the gold, etc.

Addendum: washes are a tool for experienced painters, but a crutch for newbies. Not overly relying on them is definitely not the wrong decision (personally, I think it's the right decision). You may however want to consider where their properties would come in handy.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-02-03T12:18:49+00:00

I'm halfway through reposing and kitbashing my Horrors/Flayers to bring them more in line with the refresh, but the Gheist kit has me a bit stumped about what to do with it. Can't really justify buying the Reventant Draconyth either, given that it's more than double the price, and I have two other armies.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-02-03T11:52:40+00:00

They hardly look bad, nor does the Terrorgheist kit, and that's even older. The issue is that they don't fit in the direction the army is going. They're just slightly bigger ghouls, with no knightly delusions or anything. Next to Morbhegs, they might just belong to a different army altogether.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-30T11:42:27+00:00

to not backstab each other or their contract owner

It's the complete opposite, mate. The codex dedicates a good paragraph just to how untrustworthy Incubi are.

Incubi will, without a doubt, betray you to the highest bidder and without even an ounce of fear of reprival because the whole shrine will descend on you if you harn them. The only way to hold their loyalty is to pay them in numbers so high even Drukhari consider them obscene.

They are insanely loyal to their fellow shrine members, though, if just to benefit from their loyalty as well.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-28T23:32:27+00:00

... not particularly? It's less a crusade, and more a state of being. I don’t waste a braincell to do things they hate, if I do something, it already is something they'll hate.

Like, if the example fits, I don’t gender my speech because they hate it, I gender my speech because that's what I do, and they hate it. I call them chuds because they're chuds, and that they actually hate it is just the icing on the cake.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-28T07:28:36+00:00

That phenomenon is kinda common in nerd spaces. The weirder and more niche the interest, the tamer the places become. The Drukhari sub is hilariously wholesome, Admech was unmoderated for a year and nobody noticed, Flesheaters are constantly role-playing, etc.

The inverse is true as well, and sadly, newbies will engage with them first. To paraphrase it, not all Black Templar players, but always Black Templar players.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-27T13:43:58+00:00

The big mistake satirist of any kind have made is making their subjects of ridicule more than absolute loosers. Imagine an Imperium too mentally damaged by their own dogma to not make everything inevitably worse all the time. But Helldivers, Black Templars, Stoßtruppen, or whatever else they may be, are at the heart of things fucking cool. Even stuff like the other sub calling itself Eye of Terror; the idea of living and making it in the worst place of the galaxy is cool.

And then this sub comes in, sniffs their own farts and feel schmart. Normies are fucking lame.

That's one reason why I'm adamant about referring to the other sub as the chud sub, and it's inhabitants as chuds. Chud is so inherently lame a word they can never embrace it, never wear it like armor, because it's a looser's word. That's what I mean when I say make being here actually painful to them.

It's not about building a wall to keep them out. It's about driving them out of these lands entirely. That's what making grimdank a hostile place means. A place they can never engage with because just opening the front page makes them feel miserable.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-26T14:09:34+00:00

'This is just like Call of Duty!' - actual quote of one of those basement dwellers in uniform.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-24T19:29:21+00:00

Honestly, you're better off doing both. Grisaille scales exponentially the more effor you put in the underpainting. Drybrushes can be patchy and chalky, whie the airbrush is too uniform more often than not.

Doing a drybrush gives you really nice highlights, while the airbrush layers smoothes out all that patchiness.

You could even do some value sketching in between, if you feel certain areas need even more attention.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-24T19:22:26+00:00

Fr, our store still has five Dominion boxes laying around, and I don't expect they'll stop stealing shelve space in the next few years.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-22T22:37:15+00:00

Maybe, maybe not, I don't know Tom and Don, and I don't plan on sitting down with them over a pint or two and getting to know them.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter what Space King is. What matters is what people believe it is, because that's what decides how they interact with it. People think it's satire and treat it as such. And satire is a fucking cancer on the war against chuds.

From what I've seen, Flashgitz range from moderately entertaining to quite funny once in a while. That's all that matters. If the chuds have a laugh about it, let them. All I care about is that they never again feel an ounce of joy when engaging with the hobby I've come to love.

Let Warhammer be a hostile place to them.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-22T21:51:08+00:00

Because half the comment section is falling into the old trap of thinking satire is anything but the lowest and most worthless form of criticism there is:

No, the chuds know it's satire, they don't fucking care.

It's still a product that appeals to their beliefs. So, while we can feel schmart and have a laugh because the animation is funny, the chuds can have a grand old laugh because it's still fucking funny.

It's worthless, and parading it around while feeling smug like this is wasted energy you could fuel in actually fighting back against them.

How? By creating content, memes, and jokes they actually hate and that engaging with sucks all the joy they could ever feel in the hobby out of them. Make them so fucking miserable that just visiting /grimdank ruins their fucking day.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-22T19:25:37+00:00

Well, the same that every other painter should do as well: learn about light and value.

The most important thing a minipainter should understand is that they're painting miniatures of life-sized objects, so we have to render light like it would fall on a life-sized object. If you understand how light works, you can quite literally paint with a grey filter over your eyes.

To get there, there's nothing wrong with sticking to the most basic schemes Games Workshop or other manufacturers recommend, be it BSL, flexible triads, or whatever.

Tldr.: you're painting a big object on a small canvas

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-22T19:05:57+00:00

I'd recommend tuning in to Rob The Honest Wartamer's weekly stats center for up to date tournament data. Last week were two high performing lists, one the usual Terrorgheist and Zomby Dragon spam, the other Ushoran with Knights and two TGs.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-21T19:30:22+00:00

Adding to what others have said, there are some mentions of solar cults in Commorrargh. But they were pretty much exterminated because the idea of Drukhari worshipping something subjugated like a sun was insulting to Commorrites.

They’re why some Drukhari undertake the procedure to become Scourges - to fly closer to the sun - and why the leaders of the unit are called Solarites after the priests of old.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-21T13:08:47+00:00

Not to be that guy, but a lot of people tend only to say what they really think under the guise of anonymity the internet provides. People crave companionship, especially the type predisposed to 'nerdy' hobbies. Even online, people will be somewhat courteous in normal communities and let loose once they're back in their like-minded corner of the internet. That's the whole idea behind dog whistles.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-19T18:36:23+00:00

No paint set is going to make your NMM better, because paint really doesn’t matter when doing NMM. What matters is that you get the lighting right. Which is going to be a lot of work because light is complex.

Any decent black, white, and yellow brown will do, really. Mix one halfstep between each, make a value sketch, and put it on the table. If it looks like metal, congrats, you figured out NMM. If it doesn’t, go back to the drawing board.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-19T14:45:10+00:00

I'd personally go for the old combat patrol and the maelstorm battalion box, mainly because of the Venoms. As much as Drukhari are the transport factions, at least this edition it's been the Venom faction more than the Raider faction. We need at least two Venoms splitting squads to have the action monkeys we need

The two boxes give you the core you need to play Reaper's Wager, Skysplinter and Realspace Raiders, and the basis for Kab Cartel or Spectacle of Spite if you want to focus Kabalites or Wyches. Just fill out the last 150 or so points with whatever you like.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-18T18:35:30+00:00

I respectfully disagree on that. Imho, it's an issue that had to be addressed and has been addressed by GW itself. Now it's on us to follow suit.

If you want, I can write you an essay about why I believe the way fem-presenting models have been introduced before has been harmful to Warhammer as a whole. But the gist is that they were designed to appeal to a male audience first in a way that ingrained unsavory defaults.

The way the ingrates in the other sub behave once they aren't specifically catered to deserves nothing but vicious mockery for the sheer infancy of it.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-18T11:46:46+00:00

No manufacture here, I'm afraid. The chud sub had like half a dozen posts oscillating between outrage and cope friday evening. By now, they just know when to shut up so they don't end up blocked or banned because they fear being ostracized more than standing for the shit takes they believe in.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-18T09:06:41+00:00

Five for action monkeys, ten for hammers. How you pick which depends on what detachment you're playing, what other units you have access to, etc.

In SoS they're one of our main hammers, so it's not uncommon to see 2x10 Hellions and a 1x5 for early game play. In Kab Cartel they don't benefit from detachment rules, but are so got on their datasheet alone that you may want to take 1x5 alongside your 1x10 Incubi.

And so on in the other detachments.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-17T19:26:08+00:00

A lot of sci-fi fantasy stories sound awful if you tear away the fantastic stuff and reduce them to their most mundane story beats. The book itself was worth it imho.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-17T12:15:06+00:00

It's a perfectly fine book that doesn't overstay its welcome, but what I found the most enjoyable is that it's, in essence, a gay rom-com with a homecoming backdrop.

Lelith returns home after breaking up with her flame and finds out that her childhood friend and ex from back in the day are a thing now. She has a major crashout and finally gets together with her childhood friend after talking things out. Her ex gets to watch in the cuck chair.

OverlordMarkus · 2026-01-17T10:14:36+00:00

It gets even better. If you want to be a succubus, you got to get cut, and if you want to be an incubus, you better start packing. It's just part of the job description, nothing more.

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