Hey, hey, hey.

It's the TTP Field Manual.

A very Warhammer pilled podcast.

We do not have a sponsor to shill to you, nor do we have merchandise to nudge your way.

Thought I'd get that out of the way.

If you do not know TTP stands for Trust the Process.

An almost inside joke or perhaps slogan for our game group.

When I say our, I mean myself.

I'm Joshy.

With me as well is my dear friend and confidant, Johnny.

Hello, how are you, Johnny?

How has your hobbying been this week?

Oh, I mean, I've been Warhammer adjacent this week, but no, it's been good.

Good to see you again and hear from you.

Yay.

We did do something Warhammer adjacent this week, didn't we?

We managed to play an RPG that.

Wasn'T Warhammer related in any way, shape or form.

Hey, eventually we'll talk about things that is not just Warhammer.

Today's episode will be about Warhammer, but this week we didn't play Warhammer.

It's all just.

It's all just Warhammered me out.

I guess I needed a little bit of a break between listening to us talk about Warhammer.

Looking at all the Warhammer community articles, building and painting models for our games, a little bit of an RPG was a nice distraction.

But hey, did you.

Did you manage to get your fun new model built?

What fun new model?

Are you talking about the one you.

Need for this week's game?

No, I have not built Illumina Zerus for our boarding actions game on Tuesday.

No.

Yeah, don't worry.

It's.

It's a hell of a kit.

Ah, I've kit Bash stuff that seems just impossible.

So, you know.

But you haven't met Zerus.

I haven't met Zerus yet.

He's probably the most difficult model I've ever built.

Is it his swirly staff thing?

It's.

That is definitely part of it.

It's that whole swirly ball of blood that's connected and not connected by like four different pieces that all float around each other in a very specific way.

This company, like puts so much effort into monopose kits that are just so tricky to put together.

But they can't do like kits with multiple options very well, can they?

Yeah, but their monopose kits do look very nice.

They have good structure and shape.

They do.

Look, if you can't tell, this episode is going to be quite casual.

We needed a little bit of a casual, I guess a decompress of topics.

If you are just joining us in listening to our podcast here, our first episodes, our test runs into podcasting, was to gloss over all of the Warhammer 40k playable factions.

Playable meaning that the faction must have official models to purchase and have official rules to play with in the game's current 10th edition or 10th iteration of the ruleset dating back to the late 1980s.

Yes, we broke down the 30ish factions using our own not yet patented slag method, a rather crude title symbolizing style, lore and accessibility and gameplay.

We discussed the factions briefly and objectively before offering our quantifiable and therefore subjective score.

We went through the Space Marines, we went through the Imperium, we went through the Xenos, we went through Chaos, we went through every faction in the game.

You can listen to those first four episodes if you want more about that Today.

I want us to be less PowerPoint presentation and more casual roundtable in our discussion of what armies we do actually collect and also play.

I want to talk about our experiences of the hobby and at the end, what are our next steps within the hobby overall?

With that said, I think we should take it back to basics and give a little background to our hobbying journey.

Our Earliest Days Johnny, do you want to take us away with your earliest days in this hobby?

Young Johnny's First Steps into Warhammer oh.

Johnny's first steps into Warhammer started through dawn of War, the video game franchise.

To this day, I still go back and play it every now and then.

It was where I fell in love with Warhammer and specifically the Necron faction.

Really enjoying the vibes and the robotic menace and the very energy focus and their huge floating monoliths.

They didn't have much else back then for the most part.

I spent most of my teenage years adjacent to the hobby.

I had friends who were in it.

Occasionally I'd pop into the store.

I played a game or two here and there, but never really got invested in the world of Warhammer until a few years ago when you, Skull, dragged me into the hobby.

Through Skull.

Dragged?

That's a bit of a harsh term, but yeah.

No, it was definitely more of finally having someone to commit with.

You know, you needed the thinnest of excuses to pull the trigger.

Yeah.

Isn't that the way with everything for me, though?

Yeah, I guess it is, isn't it?

Yeah.

I mean, I've bought video games off of a TikTok before, so it's fine.

But I spent like three months like thinking, do I really want that video game.

Finally getting into the hobby?

You and I ended up in this really interesting predicament where we both were playing Necrons, we learned how to play 9th edition with Necrons vs Necrons as the only gameplay we knew.

And the stalemates and all of this that we used to draw to as armies of unkillable robots fighting against each other until eventually one of us had to move out of Necrons.

So then I was searching through the world of all these factions and finding a model or something that would really resonate with me.

And I land with Chaos Knights, big stompy robots and you know, I love it.

It really started my love for chaos.

Going through the lore and the different factions and leaning into all this other source material and models.

I just fell head over heels for everything Chaos related to the point where I have four Chaos kill teams, my third army of Chaos.

I've basically gifted most of my Necrons to you at this point.

So I have hard shifted away from xenos.

And yeah, I've absolutely loved the journey of building, painting, growing this collection of Chaos goodies.

So that's where we're at now.

And you're getting back into the hobby.

Yeah.

What about you?

Where did it all start for you?

Oh mate, look.

All right.

So early days of baby Josh's hobbies?

Well, I.

You actually grew up south, but I grew up in the far north of Australia where it's scorching hot, it is uncomfortably humid like half of the year, and I was not really a sporty kid.

So I grew up almost exclusively on just games and other, I guess you could say like fandom esque things, you know, comic books, YA fiction, Star Wars, Marvel dc, mainly video games.

But you get the point, right?

I think I was about 11 or 12.

I went into one of our local toy shops.

It was huge, much bigger than toy shops tend to be nowadays.

And at the, I guess adult part of the store where there's all the, you know, World War II and hobby plane kind of kits, there was the Warhammer kits.

And at the time it wasn't as popular, it wasn't as widespread in its ip.

But the guy who worked there, I think he spent like 2 hours just explaining to 12 year old me like what the hobby is and like kind of what's the point in how you do it.

And I was enamored.

Back then they used to do these like thicc, like you got the recent Boarding Actions expansion rulebook for 40k, which we'll talk about in another episode.

But like the size of the rule books for Warhammer nowadays was like the Size of their catalogs that you would get for free.

And I remember like so intimately just car rides, you know.

Just flicking through this catalog, I have just the pictures of like 5th edition, like space Marines and orcs and stuff just in my brain because I would just stare at them so passionately in awe.

Being able to see like this sort of gaming media but in a physical format just blew me away.

I would pick up all the White Dwarf stuff.

Yeah, I saved up birthday money, Christmas money and I got the fifth edition.

I think it's the starter set.

Assault on Black Reach, Space Marines versus Orks got people say one of the.

Better starter sets too.

It's pretty cool.

I still have just about everything except all those models look like they're crying out for help from the paint stripper machine.

The ultramarines looked awful.

When you're 12, you're like, I like the ultramarines and that's fine.

But they look like trash.

And I didn't know how to thin my paint so the orc skin looks trash.

But that was like what I got into.

Like my neighbor and I, we were the same age.

We would play games.

He actually got into it as well.

We couldn't really make sense of the rules.

It was a bit like ahead of our, I guess, intellect at the time.

But it was pretty obvious that I wasn't going to be able to like collect a lot of this stuff on a 12 year old's income found as you did dawn of War, the video game.

I played through all of them, all of the dawn of War 1 and the expansions.

Dawn of War 2 and its expansions, dawn of War 1 in particular.

A lot of those like character voice lines live just rent free in my brain.

Like even now I'll be just like in my brain like for the emperor broom skins, you know, and the old.

Cockney accent, orcs or like, you know.

Like the Avatar of Kane.

I am Doom.

You know, just like every, like the voice lines are just in my brain.

I played it that much, you know.

And periodically over my teens I would just hop onto the wiki.

This was kind of before the whole like YouTube, like Lawmaster Craze that we have now and just find random like space marine chapters, battles and just read like the entire thousand word entries, you know.

But it wasn't until my early 20s, so almost a decade later when my life was a bit more balanced.

But we were going through something known as a pandemic.

I was working kind of like late night shifts, graveyard shifts at my job got really into audiobooks and got a book here, got a book there.

The Eisenhorn Inquisition series coupled the Horace Heresy ones.

It just really was the tipping off point to dive in firmer.

My girlfriend and I actually went halves on one of the 9th edition starting boxes.

We followed some of like the Midwinter Minis, like painting tutorials.

I did Necrons.

She did some of the Space Marines in her own color scheme.

She called them the Blood Giants.

She was very proud, but didn't want to like play the game.

Just liked the painting.

Yeah.

And so I had a few models.

I was living out of the country at that time.

But I came back and we really hit it off again with like playing like D and D.

We were talking about Warhammer and it wasn't very long at all until I bought another couple of kits.

You pulled the trigger on a couple of things.

We were both doing like Necrons.

I was going for more of like the Novok Dynasty annihilation melee version of Necrons and you were going for the Mefrit Dynasty, the long range executioner style of Necrons.

So I would.

I would just use like Veil of Darkness, pick everybody up, put them in your back line and then if I didn't kill you.

We were in an attrition war for the whole game.

It used to take us like an hour and a half to get through one round.

For me though, I was trying to figure out which of the 30 million stratagems I could use at any given time.

9Th edition was a mess, but 9th.

Edition, we play like 4 or 5 games before 10th edition craze really like hooked in a couple of our other friends.

And so we went from just you and me to now there's like four to maybe six depending on the week.

Mates of ours, we all gather and play like a crusade.

We've been learning the game bit by bit.

Everyone's playing a, you know, sort of a different army.

But that was my early days in getting back in.

Which sort of brings us to like out like where we are now.

Like our current game group, you know, we've kind of shied away a bit from pen and paper RPGs.

Everyone's got like at least 1000 points of models with pretty well understanding.

10th edition, we've had a couple of kill team games.

Crusades, our shtick.

Yeah.

Tell.

Tell me about how you've enjoyed playing the various factions in the thing.

Tell me about like Chaos Marines, Knights, even like kill team stuff.

How have you found actually playing it?

Actually doing the hobby now, moving into.

Crusade Was interesting for me coming from what a lot of people see as a very stat check heavy army and Chaos Knights and can either like run away or get taken out kind of depending on the opponent at these low point levels and not really being as well balanced at sub 1000 points kind of forced me to shift into what became my second army which is Chaos Space Marines.

Building up that army from like the low points was really interesting to do.

I definitely didn't win as much as I thought I would, but people were still very scared of what I was doing which was kind of fun even if it wouldn't get me the win.

10th edition has been an interesting learning curve and I think the biggest, biggest hindrance for me was how recently we had just started to pick up 9th edition.

So in my head there was a lot of cross rules and trying to like remember which one's which and how it works in this edition, which has taken us you know, up until like recently to really get our hands on exactly what 10th edition is.

Kill Team 2nd edition was an amazingly fun game.

I got pretty hooked into it and built quite a few different kill teams out of it.

I haven't played third Edition yet, but I would be excited to if we can get the handle of the rules and some people interested.

At the moment I think our big focus has been boarding actions, kind of sticking to that like casual, little bit faster low points interesting like dynamics for the rules and that's been fun and I'm pretty keen to jump in and play a game this week coming as well.

How do you feel about 10th edition and what we've been doing in the gameplay aspect of the hobby recently?

10Th edition has been all right, 9th edition.

I felt like I had to do a lot of reading and research to really get my head around like what I was capable of.

I even had to write down like which abilities in the Codex on a separate piece of paper was actually like relevant.

So I would have to not just flick through pages.

Coming to 10th edition and having my armies faction quite quickly has been quite fun.

I can see what I had already seen but broken down into these smaller detachments which really focuses on anywhere from maybe a good third to maybe even a fifth of the army's range and making them a bit tougher.

We started with like combat patrol games which doesn't seem particularly balanced in my opinion.

But it's a start box approach.

You have like roughly 4 to 500.

Keeping in mind tournament standard is 2000 points.

New combat patrols are not as valuable points wise, but you kind of get what I'm saying?

And then we played for.

I think we played nine games of the Crusade sort of narrative mission format, leveling up our various units, going from that lower points up to a thousand.

What I think was a huge, you know, turning point for everyone actually really enjoying the game was when we learned the game enough that we felt comfortable putting in like the secondary missions, because you always have the actual mission which scores you the most points, but there's always like little secondary missions that you can draw, like assassinate enemy commander or take a held objective from your opponent.

You know, there's a.

There's like a couple of dozen of those and you draw them randomly.

When we first started, there was definitely some armies like Necrons and Chaos Knights and you know, Space Marines, which felt a lot more lethal at these smaller points.

But then as we started to get a bit more comfy, get towards 800 or 1000 point games, introduce secondary stuff, everyone seemed to really like, wake up to like, 10th edition is pretty balanced.

In all honesty.

10th edition is fairly balanced.

Everyone has a chance.

There are some models which just aren't so good, but everyone has a pretty good chance.

And it's been quite fun to actually play.

I have won a lot of my games, but I think that's because I'm so in tune with my army.

I've played them so much now that I know exactly what everything does and where I need to move things, where I need to put them, what units go against what like opponent factions better.

And that's been cool.

I have seen a couple of our friends lose a lot of their games.

It could be a skill issue or it could just be the lower point games.

It could be a mixture of both.

Some people get in their head, you know, be like really aggressive.

But if 10th edition's taught me anything, it's that despite it being quite lethal, you actually want to bide your time.

I have one game simply because I've hid a bit more than my opponent.

And then when they were out in the open trying to come get me with a melee heavy army, I was in position just waiting.

And they didn't really see that coming.

So it's been fun to see that it's a lot more strategic than I think I otherwise assumed it would be.

I found Kill Team always more strategic.

But 10th edition has its own, I guess, strategy that snuck up on me the more we like expanded the rules and became aware of what everything does.

Yeah, no, that was.

It's definitely a very strategic game and there's a Big focus on like getting your objectives done as opposed to just killing as much as you can.

There's definitely armies that are better at just killing everything and trying to shut down the early game so that they can then do things later.

But the dice variants can definitely hinder and help elsewhere.

But for the most part, it doesn't feel like your dice rolls are as crucial.

There's always ways to help push it in your favor.

I think there's enough tools in everyone's toolbox to really do like well enough.

Even if you don't, you know, roll well on the offense or the defense, you can maybe not save so many damage rolls, but you can make a lot of them.

Or you might not be the fastest unit, but you're the toughest unit.

You know, there's a lot of this.

You got to really look at what everything does and process that.

I know a lot of people struggled against Necrons because they weren't dying.

But I kept trying to explain, you know, you can't put one unit into one unit of Necrons.

You're going to put two or three and really wipe them out.

Otherwise they will get back up.

They're not that strong.

They just keep getting back up.

Yeah, you Chaos Knights, the unit is to say, and yeah, Chaos Knights, like you had a little bit of anti tank or you get into melee and they fold like tissue paper.

Yeah.

When we first versioned with Chaos Knights, we weren't really doing secondaries and it was hard to really like figure out how we could possibly win.

But then we looked at tournaments and we realized that they always have the secondaries.

They use line of sight, blocking terrain.

They use a bit more denser tabletop layouts than we were running.

And we just have been learning more and more about how this game actually works.

And next year we're going to do another Crusade starting from 1K and bring our existing armies or even new armies forward and just keep having fun, because we are all having fun.

Players that started out not having as much fun are coming back around as they become more understanding of this game.

And it's fun it, you know.

But gameplay aside, I want you to tell me about the artistic side of things.

I want you to tell me what direction you went with your factions, how did you paint them?

What color schemes do you have?

Like a headcanon brief narrative.

So starting with Chaos Knights.

Well, let's go all the way back, starting with Necrons.

It was really a case of 9th edition, focusing on the specific dynasties, like the different sub factions within the faction and it kind of rewarded you to stick with their canonical factions as much as possible.

So for that reason, I found a faction within it that I gelled, wish gelled with and liked the look of and then found out how to paint and use that as my like entry into painting.

Because I've never been a very artistic person in the past.

So this was a very different new experience for me.

So being able to have the comfort of there's tutorials and all of this specifically for that color scheme really helped me build those initial skills.

So I went with Mephrit, which is like a silver with like a olive green and like an orange energy color for the Necrons.

And I really enjoyed putting the paint on the models and then being like, oh my God, I managed to get that done.

And it looked awful comparatively, but not as bad as I thought it would.

And that was a big positive for me.

But there were definitely days where it just didn't work and I just didn't know the techniques or know how to make what I wanted to get from my head onto it.

And I think there was a day where you and I sat down and painted and I spent a whole day painting one blade.

And it was infuriating because I would.

Turn around and say, hey, look at my third space Marine.

And you're like, look at the orange on the sword.

Yep, yep.

And that was.

It was really interesting for me from someone who's got a very mathematical minded mind to then be trying to do something artistic.

Since then I moved into Chaos Knights and I built this headcanon of around a color scheme I like.

So it is silver with gold trim, purple for the accent color, very like regal.

And then built this headcanon around it as Iron Warrior descendants that were separated from the main sub faction and moved into worship of demons and went from there through building it all up and fitting it all together with that D and D brain, you know, with the quick change to Chaos Space Marines that I did, I wanted a very coherent Chaos Army.

So I kind of took that color scheme, improved on it, built on it, and then introduced it straight into Chaos Space Marines so that my knights and the Space Marines all kind of fit together in this one big Chaos Faction army and just really push the headcanon and then found a model I really liked the look of and hyper shifted my entire focus around Fabius Bile and like his mutations and demonic possession and.

And that really drove the headcanon behind my Chaos army to move away from that.

Iron warriors who refused possession to exiled from Them because they enabled the possession and then was like, okay, so in the lore, how could that have worked?

And, like, trying to like, look at the lore and fit it in and focused then on Vashtor and learned some more about him and really let the lore take me on this ride, which was a lot of fun and it really helped solidify my love for all things chaos and all defined details.

And then we got a codex release and that just took it off as well, because now suddenly I had this detachment that could focus on the thing I wanted to do, being the more culty chaos, demonic possession, etc.

So it was really an interesting journey into like painting and lore gathering.

And now once again, I found something that resonated with me.

And I'm starting the 3rd army, trying to do something a little different, Build on my painting techniques, try and introduce some more texture and shading and coherency.

And soon I'll have a neat looking thousand points of thousand suns.

I'm hoping in the near future to throw at the table and see what happens.

But the painting side has been the most interesting journey for me because I never thought it was something that I would be able to accomplish.

And this hobby has really shown that there's so many aspects to it and you don't know where you will resonate until you give everything a go.

It's been really cool to see how your paintings come along.

I knew how, you know, doubtful you were about, you know, your talents for painting.

But honestly, you do a lot more than I do.

And your time investment really speaks for itself.

The various kill teams you did early on compared to the ones now, even like the Chaos Marine cultists you paint now compared to even the Chaos Knights, which, yes, are a bigger canvas.

But just seeing like all these various models, I've got some of your old Necron models that I have yet to strip.

You know, I can see this.

You know, it's like first year art student to second to third year.

It's great.

You got an airbrush now, you got the wet palette, a dry brush, texture palette.

You've got all these different paints.

You're experimenting with different brands outside of the Games Workshop paint range.

It's cool, man.

You're doing great.

You got the transfers, which I'm still pretty like, freaked out about.

It's nice.

Yeah.

Transfers are an interesting one.

And everyone online will tell you there's two products you need to do it, but you don't need them.

They just make it a bit easier.

I've managed without them.

You just it's just all really fiddly.

Yeah, my passion hasn't really been around the painting, if I'm being honest.

If I'm painting, I want it to be good.

And I watch all the tutorials, buy the right colors, etc.

For me, it's all about that lore aspect.

I often joke that when we're at our game nights, any rule questions should go to you because of the way your brain works.

Whereas I can just pull out the backstory of Drazar of the Drukhari, like at a moment's notice if you want it.

You know, all the lore just lives in my head rent free.

Prior to really getting into Warhammer again, I watched all the Marvel movies, read some of the Marvel comics, and I was just really in love with how all this lore connects to each other.

I got back into some of like the RPG video games.

I like Mass Effect, loved how everything connected to each other.

And then when I started getting into Warhammer again, everything I wanted to paint, I wanted to sort of slot in my own narratives because I could.

Because there's so much in this universe.

I love to think about how my Necrons fit in amongst the rest of the Necrons.

If I have some Space Marines, like I want to do a unique space Marine chapter, but who are they?

Why are they this color?

You know, if you've listened to some of our earlier episodes, you'll be aware that I'm quite positive about a lot of different factions.

I get very excited about really anything before me.

I love to get new models, build them, paint them, play with them.

Even though I really only play with Necrons.

Hopefully not for.

Yeah, so while I do primarily have Necrons, I have toyed around with a couple of different factions if just to paint them up, because I have them.

When I got into Necrons, I started with the Zarakan dynasty, the 9th edition poster boy color scheme, a sort of rusted bronze slash silver.

They are the Silent King's dynasty.

I thought that was cool.

I painted some Necron warriors scarabs in a royal warden in the paint scheme.

Before I was inspired to figure out a scheme of my own, I decided to do a sort of an heavy metal style painting scheme, which is your typical base layer edge highlight washes, that kind of approach.

I started by experimenting with colors I wanted to do which was silver and purple and orange.

Similar to you actually.

And the first couple of test models looked like Generation one Transformers, like all the Decepticons.

I keep joking that they are the Decepticons.

I Run a couple of those models in amongst my current scheme and you hate that it doesn't look the same.

Breaks the cohesion.

It breaks the cohesion, but it's also hilarious.

Yeah, if it wasn't for them, like, the last model in the squad is always the Decepticron.

Yeah, if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have gone to what I actually do, which is predominantly a gold scheme with purple accents and sort of a silvered metal with orange energy.

I really liked these various aspects of the Necrons.

The regal color palettes that a couple of the dynasties have.

The solar orange energy of the weaponry as opposed to the gauss green.

I thought that was really cool.

I think the gold is really striking.

It was fun for me to figure out not necessarily the color scheme, which was quite straightforward, but how to paint the different Necrons of different rankings, I guess within the dynasty.

As the nobles, you know, started to get painted up, I realized I was putting a bit more of the purple scheme, less of the gold in this weird, ironic gold is a lesser color mentality.

A couple of the bodyguard lichguard have black heads to represent.

They are like a bodyguard, you know, like black backpacks, black weaponry, just a bit more of a darker scheme.

They're not nobles, they're bodyguards.

You know, I really created this headcanon for myself that they were a dynasty that was actually void fairing that traveled across the various, you know, dynasties out of this mysterious algorithm to help out and put things into place.

And that's what really, you know, that's all I really started with before.

I just kept adding models and painting them up, and that's been really cool.

I have some space Marines from 9th edition and now 10th edition start boxes.

I wanted to do something slightly different.

I did a.

I sprayed them white, washed them brown, and then dry brushed the white back so they have this very skeletal look.

And then I wanted to use, like, contrast paints to highlight some colors.

So I got some reds, some greens, and they kind of look like these sort of skeletal Space Marines with just these bloody red hands.

And they're really fun.

You mean the Christmas Marines.

I'm gonna add blue to the weaponry, so it's not just Christmas.

I look forward to seeing it.

Yeah.

But no, they are kind of Christmas Marines.

Their highlights is like Necron Gauss green eye lenses and emerald green capes for the, like, Terminators and the captains and stuff.

Tyranids came with the 10th edition start box.

I actually was inspired by one of the local butterfly species and basically Tried a dry brush style approach again, but with more of a sort of a slap chop approach.

So I got them black, dry brushed them gray, and then dry brushed them white so that they have natural values before adding contrast paints to really pop.

Basically grim, dark butterflies.

We could have a.

Maybe a different episode where I actually give my more extended notes about their laws and backgrounds because, oh, boy, do I have them.

I have a Google document of all these backstories.

I have them for Harley Quinn's Genestealer Cults Orcs.

I just love thinking about what could be out there.

You know, I have a couple of focuses.

Yeah.

It gets me going in the morning and the evening.

I have a couple of kill teams.

I have the Harley Quinn Void Dancer Troupe.

I painted them very vibrant, very contrast.

There's six or seven different colors on them, but they all have them in like, very similar places.

So they look unique but also cohesive, and they've been really fun.

They're a bit of a tricky kill team.

They get in very quickly and hit very hard, but if they get hit, they fall over very easily.

Over the Christmas break last year, I picked up the Inquisitorial Agents Kill Team.

Not realizing you needed another kill team to supplement them, but with them, I wanted to give myself a project.

And basically, what's.

What's the artist's name?

Oh, my goodness.

Who's the guy that really put the Warhammer art style on the map?

Aw.

John Blanche.

Yes.

Yes.

I found all his old Imperium artworks, which, coincidentally were a lot of the inspirations for the Inquisitorial Kill Team, and painted them as best as I could to that grungy, earthy tone, dirt, grunge blood, really gritty metallics, and they look pretty cool.

I just haven't bought another kill team to put with them so that they actually work.

But that's sort of where I am.

I have wanted to play different factions.

Whenever I think of a faction, our other mates decide that's the one they're going to pick, though.

Sorry.

Not sorry.

That's okay.

I wanted to do Thousand Suns once, but then I did Necrons.

Now you're doing Thousand Suns.

I wanted to do Eldari, but their models were old, so I got Necrons, and then the Aeldari updated their range.

I wanted to do Genestealer Cults and then their rules came out and they sucked.

I wanted to do Custodians, but their rules came out and then they sucked.

You know, I wanted to.

I was so close last Christmas to buying the Orcs.

Like beast snagger style value box.

Because I love the caveman orc style, but our friend got into orcs.

You know, he doesn't even use those models anymore, the ass.

I mean, you.

You bought him those models too.

Let's not talk about that.

We've bought him three combat patrols.

He uses none of them.

Chat.

If your players start blaming the dice, just buy them new dice, don't buy them new models.

It's a trap.

It is.

But that's.

That's kinda all I can really say without delving too much into what I really, you know, hyper focus on, which is like, what is this character I'm painting's actual name?

And like small backstory.

What's this?

Space Marine chapter's like deeds of battle.

You know, it's all right.

Once we work out some visual aids for this podcast, maybe we can do some snapshots of what you've got and who they are.

And if I will say one last bit to add to this little segment, when I do paint these different armies, I want to do different styles.

I want to still expand and hone my painting skills much like yourself.

I want like a heavy metal style, which is the classic, you know, styler models you see on all the various warhammer box art.

The contrast style, which is the speed paint version they have now the slap shot, which is like a dry brush, kind of a hacked version of making a very grim, dark looking model Airbrush is another methodology that I haven't done.

But I love learning all these different techniques.

It's been fun.

What are your next steps?

What are you hoping to sort of do with your hobby next?

What models do you want to add?

What games do you want to, you know, get us playing, etc.

I really want a couple more games of boarding actions to start with.

I really want to just like throw it different kits together.

It's the easiest way I can describe it is it's the combat patrol format done properly.

It is a small 500 points game in a close combat inside of a space hulk or inside of a ruined spaceship.

It's all tight corridors, trying to move through hatchways and very strategically placed around a very small board with a very small force.

I think it's really neat.

And they just released the big supplement for boarding actions which added detachments for every single faction except for two of them.

And really like threw some fun ideas into restrictions to list building, which always helps drive me in the way of building lists when you've got things that are weird and wacky and restrictive.

But it's.

It's just such a quick, small focus game that you can just throw together and the train looks sick and I painted the whole lot in a week and I just want to use it as much as possible.

On top of that, I would love to really get my hands on the Kill Team rules and pick up third edition and really give it a go in terms of like models I want to pick up.

I'm currently building Thousand Sons slash painting Thousand Sons, going for a very sandstoney, warm theme.

The bases are designed to be kind of this sandy warp energy infused area with the actual rubrics themselves being also made of like sandstone, almost like statues that have come alive using bronze as accents, which makes it very warm and monotonous, but introducing a little bit of like that magic blue just to make them pop a little more out.

And I think it's going to look really good when I can get a few of them all finished up and see the coherency.

It's really been an a way for me to practice stippling and dry brushing and building those techniques that I've lacked in the past where I focused more on metallics and things like that.

Now I can do something a little less metallic, a little more focused on building texture and warmth and layering and all of that sort of stuff which you've done previously but is more new to me.

I've really resonated with the models for the Thousand Sons Army.

They're very heavily detailed and super trimmy.

But even in a scheme like I'm doing, which cuts out a lot of the really annoying focus on painting trim, they still look very nice very easily, which I really appreciate.

And I'm just picking out a few key details as opposed to like highlighting the whole model, which really helps push it through and drive it for me.

On top of that, moving into next year's crusade, I want to finally get a chance to put my Chaos Knights on the table properly, build them up.

Hopefully they get a codex next year, but we'll see.

It would be nice.

I do like to focus on a few of the big knights as opposed to just War Dog Spam, which is what a lot of people will say is the better way to play at the moment.

And then using that kind of chaos coherency amongst forces I'm allying in tzeentian demons as their allies to kind of fit in with the thousand suns and then also mixing with the chaos because I want everything to be very cohesive overall or see these ties and connections between the World and the Lore.

Like, for me, it's part of building that lore.

And why would these people exist and how would they coexist in the greater universe?

And building up those reputations and lore and pulling characters out of books and then naming my guys after them and building them up through Crusade.

Like, it's been a lot of fun and I really look forward to the next step into Crusade as well as like a few casual games of these smaller skirmish type games.

And I'm still thinking about Underworlds every now and then.

Not gonna lie, I'm very close to pulling the trigger on building this Underworlds team.

Mm.

Age of Sigma, specialist game, Warhammer.

Underworlds.

Yeah, you know, it's miniature games meets card game, which before Warhammer, I was a big the Gathering person.

So having this like deck builder kind of tacked onto Warhammer sounds so enticing to me.

Yeah, I could see just your eyes light up when you talk about them having a card game.

Warhammer.

It's.

It's quite.

It's quite interesting.

I did grow up a little bit with the Yu Gi oh, Duel Masters chaotic kind of craze, so I get that.

Oh, for me, you know, I love all these games.

I'm.

I don't support all of Games Workshop's decision making and cost of hobby and all that stuff.

You know, I'm.

I'm not, you know, giving them a hall pass, but I love the universe.

I love what the artists do.

For the most part, I'm really supportive of the game designers and so I want to keep enjoying this hobby.

Yeah, especially the artists and the model sculptors.

But it occurred to me quite recently that I own a freaking ton of stuff.

I have some old models from the Black Reach era that I could always strip down and redo.

I got the 9th edition start box.

I got the 10th edition start box because I love value and I love limited edition stuff.

My father, as a gift of my graduation of my like post high school study, was the relatively recent Imperium magazine of Warhammer.

So I got all these extra Necrons, Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, even a little bit of Admech and Imperial Agents.

I have all this stuff, dude, and we don't even play that much to really make use of all this stuff.

For my birthday last year, you and a few of our mates pooled your money together and got me my favorite model, Katarn Shard of the Void Dragon.

I played it once because we.

This whole year we've done small games like Crusade up to a thousand points.

Get out of It.

Oh, New model syndrome.

Hit me hard.

I'm gonna hit you now.

Roller one.

I'm gonna command point reroll at roller one.

Alright.

You're going to attack me.

I have to save at least one one.

One, two, one one.

Yep, yep.

He'll have his revenge.

Because we're finally moving into the higher point values.

We're finally ready to start playing some real things.

Yeah.

So I have almost now from your contributions, your dynasty, I've assimilated me.

Assimilating a named dynasty is a bit of an interesting one.

But I have roughly nearby 4,000 points of Necrons.

In the current game economy, that is enough for two whole armies in a tournament setting.

By the way, most of them is built.

Not going to lie.

Most of them is built.

Very little of them are actually painted.

You gotta sit down and do some serious batch painting.

Most of my hobby time has gone into this.

What we are doing right now, the editing, understanding how it all works, putting it out into the world.

Yeah.

Besides that, my next year army project, I'm going to just pull the trigger and say Sisters of Battle.

Our recent episodes highlighted how much I actually do like them.

And I have nearby a thousand points of them.

Maybe lacking a tank or two, maybe an epic hero or two.

But pretty good, Pretty good start.

I want to paint them as like a blue orchid.

Actually I was thinking, thinking doing them with like a nice vibrant purple and then heavily dry brushing them with blue so they have that, you know, purple out into blue.

Can I with making lot offer you a suggestion?

Go for it.

I have an airbrush.

Could this be your airbrush army?

That means I'm going to spend a lot of time at your house.

Oh, you can borrow it.

Do you remember the time when our mate got an airbrush for the first.

Time and you were like, hey, look at my fresh painted minis that are all done.

I'm just going to OSL everything.

And I was terrified that you took an airbrush to a model that you actually had already done with no practice whatsoever first.

And it looked great.

It looked fantastic.

Airbrushes have been so much easier to use than I thought they were going to be.

It might have been that point where we really started the joke of trust the process.

Yeah.

What can go wrong?

Trust the process and just some paint out and it went well.

Necron's glowy now, but yeah, sisters.

I'm thinking maybe some like lighter or white metals to represent the little like flowery buds.

Maybe some green for like accents like capes and vehicle stuff.

Yeah.

Blue orchid is my inspiration.

I would love to finish the Leviathan box of Tyranids.

Give them a little like maybe a jungle esque base.

Really make the vibrancy of their like reds and greens and yellows pop on their relatively dark carapace.

I have a lot of Space Marines actually built.

I'm pretty close to a 2k army there.

I would love to just have them as an option to bring them in.

I have a couple of the Ultramarine named characters.

They're actually considered good in the game.

So I'm contemplating like a nice Elites style.

Space Marine Force, Terminators veterans, epic heroes.

But they're lower on the priority list.

I do think For Kill Team 3.0 I want to run the Inquisitorial agents.

Mainly because I played Void Dancer as the Harley Quinns for all of the second edition Kill Team.

They were exclusively who I played.

So I need to figure out what I want.

I need to figure out what I want for the Inquisitorial like supplements you have I think 13 different models.

You can build from a, you know, from seven bodies.

Seven bodies.

Most.

I think five of them have like two options.

And so I would like to get another box of inquisitorial agents.

So I have all the agent options available to me and still have to supplement them.

Yep.

Well, I think so.

Thinking Sisters of Battle, I assume.

I like the idea of them.

I think they'd be a very niche pick and I think the models would be pretty cool otherwise.

I have heard that Kazakhin, the Imperial Guard Stormtroopers are actually a solid choice because they offer some much needed firepower to the Inquisitorial agents who are more of like buff and aura pieces.

But if I was to pick Rule of Cool, I would for sure pick the Judge Dread Arbite, you know, Riot Trooper Kill Team box.

I think they look really cool.

I think they're a sick kit.

I love them.

I think, you know, if it wasn't for agents having the option to bring them in, I might have just sidestepped them and gone straight to Arbytes or Arbitess.

I'm not sure.

For our crusade stuff though, I'm thinking of giving the Necrons a little break in bringing in Sisters.

I'm very much into my game design.

I want to create a little homebrew expansion to our crusade.

Create like a little sort of dawn of War esque solar system, like hex grid tile map esque thing.

Come up with some rules, have us do like a little bit of base building.

Sounds pretty exciting.

Yeah.

I've Got a homebrew system already.

Star Mask.

It's very Soulstorm esque.

I just.

I'm waiting for a new computer which is on its way to be able to do stuff like video support, like YouTube stuff for this podcast to get some like, you know, photoshoppy stuff happening and really get a.

Get all that stuff happening, you know.

And that probably means I'll have a lot less time for a while from actually hobbying, but that's what I had in mind.

Maybe run the Necrons as this sort of, you know, a bully faction.

Whoever's like performing well, the Necrons because it's going to be the prior Nexus Crusade where the Necrons have kind of established dominance.

They can be like the bullies of the region who come and kick the top player down a notch or two.

You know much how like the Necromunda game has like kind of a GM who runs a separate faction to kind of bully the other players a little bit.

But that's what I had in mind.

What do you think of all that?

I am so excited for it, to be honest.

Which parts?

Oh, all of the Crusade stuff.

I'm so excited to get back into Crusade and really drive that.

That increasing Crusade benefits.

I think it's so flavorful.

They do such a good job of like writing it all and it really just adds little bit that we need.

And the stuff that we've talked about that you're going to introduce alongside Crusade.

I think we've got some really good stuff coming.

Yeah, I have a solar system already designed with different planets with little backstories.

Are you surprised?

I'm not, I'm not.

I remember the days you spent looking at maps on AI generators, trying to get something you liked as a starting.

Point because my computer wasn't like strong enough to do like proper design applications.

I was using DALI or something.

But yeah, I had this in mind for a while, a whole sort of system game.

But when we started our actual Crusade, we thought Tyrannic War would be just a good start point.

Get everyone used to the actual 40k.

Don't overwhelm them with all these extra systems.

And then this will be like our first season.

Next year will be our second season.

We make it a little bit more.

Engaging, give people a little bit more to do outside of the game part too.

And if you are good boys and girls, maybe for Christmas I put it as a PDF.

Hey, that could be interesting.

Adobe InDesign anybody?

The PDF designer.

But that's what I had in mind.

Do you have any other Things you want to talk about for today.

Any other things you want to say about your experience with the game, the crafting, what you're looking forward to?

I think the most fun I've had in the hobby, in all honesty, has been something that I previously never would have thought about, which was kitbashing.

When I first moved into Chaos Knights, there was no models in stock worldwide.

They had over a year period where war dogs were unavailable.

The abominant kit was very hard to get and it held me off for quite a while.

I think for about six months.

I was like, I want to get into Chaos Knights but there's nothing available.

And then one day I was like, you know what?

And I just pulled the trigger.

I bought the Imperial Armiger kit and I was like, you know what?

Let's make this work.

And I had so much fun kitbashing these like chaos ified robots.

And it was such a blast to think about, what can I do with this one that's different to the rest?

And eventually I got my hands on an abominant kit and I built an abominant which left me with a bunch of extra pieces.

So I had all these other weapon options and stuff like that.

And I made a war dog that had like big knight weapons just like tacked on because.

And it's one of my favorite models I have made to date.

He looks so cool servant being like running around the battlefield.

Master, here is your weapon.

And then I was like, yeah, where can I go from here?

And every single one of those models has been a kit bashing journey in and of itself to make it look carnival.

Yeah, you're carnival.

With the night sized chainsaw glaive for an arm.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I was talking about with the huge weapons.

There's my rampager has torn the arm off of another knight and it is using it as a weapon.

I've got another carnivore that's like picked up a gun from one of the big knights and is like hooked it in and is now like running around with this giant cannon.

It's just so much fun.

And it was my first step into like building up bases for models too and adding story and having literally tearing terrain apart and like chucking it on there as like ruined buildings.

And there's one model that's a little bit of a disappointment but like the idea didn't quite come into fruition the way I wanted.

But is this the vaulting model?

The vaulting.

I've got a war dog that's trying to vault a building and it just didn't quite work the way I wanted to, but I refused to change it.

It's a journey in and of itself and it's still a unique looking model that no one else has.

And yeah, it's a sculpture, it's an art project.

It's your thing.

That's it.

Right?

And it's something that's very me.

Like it's something that I tried, I didn't quite get there, but I still managed to like pull off something.

And where I'm coming from this is find something that meshes.

Like there's so many aspects to this one hobby.

You've got the law, the painting, the building, the playing the, the kit bashing.

Like there's so many different aspects.

There's audiobooks, you've got animated series, we've got an Amazon show coming.

We've just had a new video game that's come out plus all the ones before it.

There's so many different aspects to this hobby that there's something for everyone.

I even managed to get my partner, who wants nothing to do with 40k building demonettes and is so excited to paint them.

It's amazing what happens when you figure out how someone can enjoy this hobby.

And then see where it takes them from there.

Yeah, my partner doesn't really care for these sort of strategy games.

She doesn't really like violent narratives, but she enjoys like building with me all these extra models I have lying around and painting the tokens in her own little, you know, schemes.

The Terminator Space Marines have like a token that's their teleport homer.

She painted it as an ice cream cone and she loved it.

She found it so fun.

She put the little like basing materials on little model grass and she was so proud of it, you know, and then she played a game and beat me because she actually like, you know, listened to us with our strategies and doesn't want to play another game anytime soon.

But you know, you found a way to get her involved and you found a way to get your partner involved.

They're actually like decently open minded about this hobby that maybe five, ten years people generally weren't because there's a lot more accessibility to the hobby now.

Find where your inspiration comes from.

Try every single piece of the hobby.

See what meshes and go crazy.

If you enjoy it, please, like enjoy it.

Spread the love, chat, talk about it.

Make you know, we're making a podcast now.

I never would have thought I'd be putting my voice out there on The Internet five years ago, but here we go.

Yeah.

The original.

The original intention for this podcast was like almost a pipe dream, tangenting on random topics.

And yet Warhammer has such a grasp on us.

It's now like a Warhammer focused podcast.

What else could we possibly talk about at this point, right?

It's all we talk about.

I don't know.

I could talk to you about Transformers lore and background.

Yeah, well, I wouldn't know much, but one day we'll get there.

Bonus episodes.

But you know what?

You've.

You haven't mentioned something that I'm incredibly proud of.

You submitted to armies on parade in our local game shop.

Oh, man, I forgot about that.

And you, like, placed.

Yeah, I put my Chaos.

I put my Chaos Knights on display in all their glory and managed to pull the award for store manager's favorite, which I thought was such a drama, right?

Yeah, like, such a big accomplishment for me to show that, like, not only did I do something I like, but I did something that other people could enjoy as well.

And already thinking about the next one.

These Thousand Sons are going to look great.

These Thousand Suns are going to be great.

I'm going to do everything I can.

Maybe you can do the Thousand Sons and I'll do the Sisters as a nice display army.

Yeah.

And then we get to do boards up and we'll see where we go from there, eh?

Hey, I think we've had a pretty nice, relaxed discussion today, wouldn't you agree?

It's been good.

We talked about our early days, how we got back in a bit about a game group.

We talked about where we are right now, how we're feeling, what our next steps in the hobby is.

We have a couple of episodes left.

For the year and a special surprise for everything else as well.

Right?

Yeah.

We're thinking.

Talking about maybe a little bit about the Kill Team, maybe what other game modes you could play for Warhammer.

Talk a bit more about combat patrol, boarding actions.

Have a little discussion on some of the older game modes that are no longer supported but have existed, such as Apocalypse.

That could be fun.

And then we do have an end of year special.

We'll announce it closer to.

All right, well, I guess that that leaves us at the end of this episode.

Yeah, we may as well wrap it up and go build more models.

I got some painting to do.

I got some building to do.

You got some painting to do.

You hyper focus down your hobbies.

You're like, actually, you know what?

I do want that model.

You buy it, you build it.

You paint it.

There we go.

And I'm like, you know what?

I've got this master plan for a 2K custodian army.

And then you're like, oh, you're gonna get custodians?

Like, no.

Have you built those necro models?

No, but I need to get my boarding actions ready.

Yes, I did.

What?

I did go and buy.

I did look at buying spray paint today to base my models.

They didn't have the one I wanted, which was.

I thought about trying the Retributor armor, the gold.

I don't have that one.

Otherwise I was gonna swing it.

Not at the moment.

All right, at the moment, I think.

I've got Army of Gray.

Chaos black.

I have some Wraith bone.

That's okay.

And Xandri Dusty Gray.

Army of gray.

Army of gray.

But you let me know if you need that Zaras next week because I've got one sitting on my shelf if you don't get a chance to build it.

But it's a hell of a build.

Illumina.

Dusty boy.

Yeah.

Your models are so dusty, dude.

I'll pass him through the airbrush for you and I'll make him nice and less dusty.

You need to do what I do and buy a display cabinet with doors.

Oh, I'm.

I was looking at them the other day.

That's next step in the hobby.

Alright.

Next step in the hobby, alright.

Yeah.

Get display built up.

Get display built up.

Okay.

You display your several armies and I'll write us our game rules.

That's it?

That's it.

Hey.

All right.

My fans and fellow army of Grey players out there.

Or even those I don't know what I'm talking about.

Have you got models painted?

Have you got models unpainted?

Who cares?

Just play with them.

Have a good time.

Enjoy your hobbying.

We love to talk at you.

Hope you enjoyed this episode.

I've been Joshy.

And I've been Johnny.

Alright, Warhammer fans and nerds and newcomers and explorators.

It's been real.

We'll catch you next week with some other topic.