From the Archives: Chaos Cultists

As I don’t have any new finished work to show this week, I’ll start bringing in my older, “pre-blog” minis. I thought it would be appropriate to start with the first group of minis I painted when I got back into the hobby in the summer of 2017.

Actually, let’s start with how I got back to the hobby, the sweet plastic crack! Like many, I first got into Warhammer (40k) when I was about 11-12, did it for a couple of years and lost interest. In the recent years, I had been occasionally checking out the local game shop and admired the GW miniatures on display, but the price of the minis was just too much, as I just wanted to try my hand at painting a few models again. Then in the summer of 2017 I was at a flea market, looking for old toy cars, when I spotted a cardboard box with some Warhammer art on (someone had also written “tin soldiers” on the side:). I thought it would contain someones badly painted first army, but to my surprise there were four boxes of brand new, still shrink-wrapped minis from various factions. The old guy selling asked me if 20€ would be a fair price, and I had no choice but to agree and purchase the lot!

Having gotten the models basically for free, I thought that it would be cheap to get back to painting. Then I went to the local game shop and bought about 100€ worth of GW paint pots! So much for pocket change hobbying.. But, after watching a whole lot of WHTV’s Duncan’s painting guides from Youtube, I painted my first models in roughly 15 years.

These Chaos Cultists were very much practice models, as I had/have no intention of starting a collection around them. I did learn a lot of new stuff with these guys, such as using primers is important especially without a painting handle (these guys are “primed” with Abaddon Black), thinning paints is good and that washes are talent in a bottle. Also I varnished these with an AP can, messed it up (most likely my fault) and haven’t dared to varnish any of my good models ever since..

Painting-wise, I was very happy with the red and most other colors, but the black looked very unfinished with just Abaddon base and Eshin Grey highlights. For the last two guys (on the left in the picture), I tried Eshin base and two coats of Nuln Oil, followed by Eshin highlights. This seemed to work better, and I’ve used that recipe ever since.

Right, that’s probably enough rambling, and not enough pictures. I only have that one picture of these guys though, and as they’re not anything special I did not bother taking new shots. The next post will most likely be more old stuff, but hopefully I’ll also get something new finished before too long.