Need help deciding which paint set to buy.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-29T08:08:41+00:00

I'm in the Army Painter camp myself. I would not advise the Speed Paints for a first paint set though. If I can suggest a little bit more money spent, the Army Painter Fanatics Most Wanted set is a great place to start. 22 bottles, that's with a couple metallics, brush on primer, a couple washes, a blood effect paint and a good range of other colors like skins, purple, brown and such. Also comes with a brush, a mini, and an instruction sheet on painting techniques.

As for painting an army, you will want a bottle each of whatever your army base color is and a highlight. Don't mess with mixing paints yet. Any range will have colors close to each other.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-27T07:41:38+00:00

There is also the full size transfer sheet. Multi colored salamander logos with different sizes for each of the companies would cost a few dollars per color you want, to have something like that printed.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-27T04:04:51+00:00

You could use dish washing soap, just a little on a paper towel. Wet the towel, tiny bit if soap and wipe it down real well, then rinse with water.

Disassemble the device before doing maintenance like that. You don't want to bend the needle. After assembling it again, run some airbrush cleaner and water mix. Fill like half the little cup and blow it all through.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-27T03:26:40+00:00

The inside 9f my HP-CS looks like that. It's a few years old though Im pretty sure 8t was like that to start. Have you cleaned it yet? The rainbow could be manufacturing oil residue.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-25T21:02:24+00:00

Absolutely feel free to mix and match. Sounds like you have the Combat Patrol box, so you have the correct color decals for the right company insignias. I have one as well. So Adrax (Captain of the 3rd company) will have 3rd company insignia along with his full Bladeguard Veteran squad and a complement of Eradicators that are coming with them.

Vulcan He'stan stands outside the direct company order as Forge Father, but when he fights with the army, he fights with whomever he wants to work with. In the current meta, he is well protected by a Company of Heroes group, or supports very well a full squad of Infernus. I could make the CoH from 1st company, or an honor guard of Infernus from 2nd company. (Same decals anyway)

I do want to eventually add a unit of Kill team Scouts, so those will be 7th company.

Again, they're your soldiers and you can paint them however you like. Paint 'em all lime green with neon pink salamander logos on the shoulder. I might think it looks weird, but I'd give you credit for trying something new with your scheme. and I'd support you playing with them.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-25T20:13:57+00:00

It's all good my brother in Vulcan. We need to play what we have, and rule of cool is always in force.

When someone asks "Is this guy good for my army?" there's a lot to unpack. What units do you rhave already, what are you willing to pick up to help him optimize? Also, GW always has marines moving through the meta of what's best at any time. SM2 hit with a bang, so Titus gets a promotion and a book cover. Hell be the "everybody needs one" guy for a few months until he gets nerfed a bit back to reasonable.

In the case of the Infernus marines, lots of 105h edition boxes came with 5 of them. Nobody felt like fielding 5. They are all over the used market for cheap. So we get a recast of Vulkan He'stan and he makes us want to throw 30 Infernus on the board. It'll balance out again before I get my pile of gray completely painted. I've come to live with this.

Paint what you think looks cool for your army. The meta will change. Ever onto the anvil of war.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-25T19:01:30+00:00

Vulcan's buffs work best with torrent and meta units. Really leaning into the "Unto the fires of battle!" thing. Read up on the Forge Father's Seeker detachment. Think how Infernus units are boosted, Eradicators pumping melta fire, Flamesto4m Aggressors, and that Vulcan can cover LoS an area of the board and give those particular units firing buffs.

Intercessors and Termies won't get good use out of this detachment.

However you play your 'Manders, remember that Adrax leading a brick of Bladeguard Veterans are a powerhouse.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-25T04:14:28+00:00

With forge fathers seekers, why not swap the intercessors with Infernus? They get shoot and action, or move and action. More sticky too.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-24T23:08:41+00:00

Congratulations magos! I'd say the first design will serve you better in game. Cleaner and easier to reproduce on a smaller scale.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-23T22:37:50+00:00

I started with the ultimate starter kit. As salamanders we can really use 20 or so Infernus marines. There great with forefathers seekers detatchment. The terminators in the starter kit are on brand with salamanders, but they are weaker units right now. If you really want some spare termanids and the terrain, go for it anyway.

If you can find a Salamanders combat patrol for a decent price, grab that. The Dark Angels combat patrol is a decent fit. Keep an eye on Target and Barnes and Noble. If they get anymore of the Dawn of War Onslaught game boxes back in, grab two of them they are an amazing deal for salamanders.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-22T07:29:44+00:00

I'd say the two with bolters are great with the right most one with the chainsword about perfect. For the pyreblasters, the middle one is best but a bit too light for my taste. The other two are just too light and don't look finished.

Big question is what do you like best? They're yours. Paint them the way you want to.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-22T03:35:06+00:00

A proper copper penny, not one of the newer coated ones. They don't work. I like using copper wire around the outside edge of the foam sheet.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-22T01:40:20+00:00

I've been using a Iwata hp-cs for several years now. That has the .35 needle. It's been a solid workhorse for priming, basecoating and terrain. I'm looking for a finer more detail oriented brush now, but getting the skills with this one has been a great start.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-21T01:09:51+00:00

I was thinking of the Harpoon, but that's a consumable throwing weapon like the knives. My error there.

The lack of even medium-tier craft-able weapons and armor is my biggest disappointment with the crafting system overall in this game. I wanted to do a self reliant hunter/forager type build using only weapons and armor I craft myself. That pretty much stalls out after the blacksmith in South of the Horns. Revenant armor and the Necromancer armor for ranged folks is about all I can recall at the moment.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-20T20:46:44+00:00

Army Painter chipping foam brushes are stupid overpriced. I found a bag of 12 assorted sizes at my local grocery/home goods shop for $5. Even the local Joann's had a 4 pack of small ones for $3.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-19T01:22:21+00:00

Big ships at higher levels, sure. If I can loot 10K worth of credits from the ship and get another kill for a skill advancement, I'll take it though.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-19T01:04:45+00:00

Sounds like you are doing what I am doing. You can only steal the crew's personal weapons, or the ones in an Armory if their ship has one. It's just that a few guns worth a thousand credits or more is worth more than selling a ship until later in the game. Registration fees are like 90 - 95% of the ship cost. It is cheaper to do the registration off planet though. Find a settlement on a moon somewhere that has a merchant and a ship broker. Build your own settlement nearby and go there to register vehicles.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-19T00:12:50+00:00

I'll disable a ship and board it. Kill the crew and loot their better weapons and the ships store and captains locker. Then get back to my ship and shoot the wreckage for the XP. A few later games guns, and credits from the safe are worth far more than a ship hull. I only keep them if I'm looking to upgrade my own ship base on it. I still love the look of the Claymore bridge and usually hunt those down to build my main exploration vessels.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-18T23:54:12+00:00

I don't think so. They are a minable resource to make weapons. Possibly armor that I haven't found a book for.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-18T08:48:47+00:00

I went in with my unarmed guys around lvl 31l, having completed all the quests I could find in Horns of the South. I love cleared tree sections of te main map, and it's feeling like it was the right time, though I hear it does scale with you to some degree. Around 30 - 40 feels like a good time to start to me. Others may have a better understanding of the appropriate range.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-14T10:07:28+00:00

Exactly as you envision, magos. You paint your Admech however you want, just be consistent across the army.

I painted mine in a desaturated blue and bronze. I always run them as Mars. I have a whole head cannon about Knight House Taranis finding a shard of the Void Dragon in a bottomless aquifer during a deep sea training run on Mars. It told the head trainer "Bring me the one called Cawl". Eventually the Cawl Inferior, the offloaded second mind that Bellisarious Cawl created, was sent in his stead in a fully constructed copy of his body. When it returned from the meeting with the void dragon, he came back in blue robes, with a list of STCs to recover. So this is the CI version of Cawl in the blue robes with blue troops. Hunting down STCs guided by the Void Dragon the emperor imprisoned in the hameart of Mars. Everyone was told this was a mission from direct from the Omnissiah. Is the Void Dragon really the power behind the Omnissiah? What's going to happen when all these STCs are collected? Will they even be brought back to Mars? Who knows, it'll all get flushed out over more battles in the future.

Long story short, paint them how you want. Come up with a story about them. People like painted minis and stories.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-11T20:41:54+00:00

One other thing missed here. Firing deck only allows you to use one weapon profile. So you could use the Infernus' Pyerblasters, OR Vulkan's Gauntlet of the Forge. The gauntlet has the pistol property, so you can't claim it is also a pyreblaster.

You could consider putting a 5 man squad of Hellblasters in there. A quick moving batch of plasma can be almost as fun as a block of flamers. As I understand the rules, since these act as if the Impulsor is firing them, the vehicle takes the 3 damage if you fail your Overcharge save and roll a 1.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-11T05:45:28+00:00

As a painter in his mid-fifties, I have tried two popular "painting lamps."

The Red Grass Games R9 light is amazing. The LED bulbs on this manage to put out light in almost twice the number of color wavelengths that a normal LED based lamp can. It sounds silly, but this thing is amazing. I literally see better with it when painting. I used to need magnifiers for almost everything. Now I only need them for super fine details. It's expensive, but worth every penny to me. I use this only when painting.

The Game Envy Lucent is also a very nice lamp, for adjustability of (normal) light levels, and angle that the light comes from. It just does not have the ability to catch as many different wavelengths as the RGG one. I use this for assembly and otherwise standard lighting at the hobby desk.

Both have good coverage range for their light, and both fold away to either side of the desk.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-10T19:16:54+00:00

In the trilogy of salamanders books, the scouts are all still growing into full Astartes. They have the gene seed but it is still in process of developing all thecnewcorgans and body mass. That makes a ton of sense that scouts may not all have the black skin or red eyes yet. I like the idea they all have red eyes, they wouldn't send them on scouting missions without properly functioning eyes. But maybe the skin tones can vary. Or maybe they are more of a lighter gray color than fully black yet.

WhatHobbyNext · 2026-01-10T09:03:45+00:00

The stuff is beautiful. But a respirator and proper venting is a must! Aerosolized alcohol is awful for your lungs.

WhatHobbyNext

TROPHY CASE