Chaos Mutilators Land On The Hobby Desk

This Tuesday I celebrated my 24th birthday; Since my mom is not a fan of ordering things online and most things I tend to wish for are acquired online I got a handful of money to treat myself. And treat myself I did, after the traditional birthday family dinner(we had vietnamese) I hopped on a second hand tabletop store online and filled my cart with things. What things you may ask? Oh there was a choice selection of Age Of Sigmar books from first edition and the miniatures featured in today's post: The Chaos Marine Mutilators!

I always had half an eye on these guys, I remember they were released alongside the Heldrake, Forgefiend and the first plastic Warptalons back in 2013; Fast forward to 2017 when I returned to the hobby and I saw them again, this time on the local GW's 'going out of store soon' shelf next to some resin plague marines(still so mad I did not pick them up). I always wanted them but got sidetracked by other kits, now with the first plastic Mutilators on the horizon I find myself returning to these guys. Do not get me wrong, I am not one to hate on when GW overhauls designs with new minis, but the new Mutilators are just such a downgrade in my opinion.

Unlike the new obliterators, they just look so intentionally engineered, the older designs looked so messed up and warped, flesh stretching over their weapons, nothing looked like it should belong. Anyways, now that I have vented my frustration with the new models you might understand why I wanted some of the old ones and finally pushed myself to buy them. They arrived surprisingly fast only a day later and here they were:

I bought them used for about as much as they cost back in the day and they were in pretty good shape, the store even had the sense to stick a package puff on each claw and horn! I spent about an hour disassembling and cleaning them, removing the little triangles of hell, which were surprisingly rare. I know these guys were never released in metal, but their bodies were, so to see metal models adapted to Finecast not suffer from the horrendously bad casting and triangles of doom was quite the joy. 

Since my Chaos Marines are part of my Ordos & Heretics collection I had to make some Cobblestone bases for these guys to sit on, as always its an hour long process with lots of swearing and mismeasuring the amount of Miliput I need; As you can see I ended up with enough Miliput for two 32mm and two 25mm bases, so I guess I can skip this step for the next four minis I do for this collection.

After the bases were prepped and drying I began the long task of pinning the mutilators, the heads had a fixed position, so I added a pin to reinforce the bond, I also had to clean under their chins for them to fit flush into their terminator torsos. The arms took the longest time as I hummed and hawed over the position, I originally intended to follow the poses on the studio models, since that seemed like the easiest way to get decent looking poses out of these guys; Not to say that they were great poses as the arms still conflicted with their legs and knees. I ended up settling for some more dynamic poses working arm by arm.

The first guy was done by the book so to speak, but with slightly wider stance as I felt he deserved to be a bit more open, the left arm on this guy came in two pieces(shoulderpad and arm) which allowed for a slight posability, I pinned the arm and shoulder to each other first to have a bit of free range motion to see what fits. The other arm was bog standard as seen in the studio photos. Truth be told this is the least interesting model out of the unit since he has the least interesting arms and there are two copies of his body and head in the unit.

The next guy was the most fun to pose, he has a mid walk body which already makes him more dynamic than the others too. I followed the studio miniatures again roughly for pose references, but I decided to modify his right arm, it is the same one as seen on the first guy, but I wanted this guy to have a more sweeping motion like he is prowling for prey, his arm outstretched. I ended up slightly overextending the arm, sculpting a bit to transition the overhang into the shoulder pad. I think this guy turned out great in terms of pose, but after spray priming I realised he would have actually profited from a bit of paint stripping, since his face got a more concentrated blast of spray primer, but oh well, nothing a bit of detail painting cannot fix, right?

The last guy took the longest for me to figure out to be honest, given how very static his arms looked I figured I could add some dynamism by giving him a mid swing pose. The next fifteen minutes were spent figuring out how to do that with the limited posability; The first decision was to use some hot water and curl his fingers to make him look more agitated and less relaxed. I know hot water or air is great for dealing with warped resin, but I implore you to try and slightly adjust poses and give minis a whole new look in some cases. 

Anyways back to the Mutilator, with the first arm settled I was unsure what to do with the other arm; I originally thought I could give him a Hulk-like pose with both arms lifted up to strike. In the end I settled for a counter balancing pose. I think this worked in favor of the whole pose as it gives the pose the slight sidewards angle it needs to sell the striking pose.

Anyways that is all three Mutilators refurbished and assembled, sadly I noticed I was missing two spike bitz and decided to miliput over the gaps. A quick two tone zentihal and they are ready for some paint!

I am really looking forward to painting these guys; Thank you for taking the time and reading up on my progress, have a great night, day whichever applies!

Oldhammer Arbites WIP

 So while it's not done yet, I can't help but show off the next mini I'm working on right now. While I still have 10 of the 2nd edition Arbites left, I acquired a single Rogue Trader era Arbites two years ago. Seeing as how I now have a very usable recipe for Arbites and I haven't painted anything  Rogue Trader in quite a while he seemed like the logical progression. Honestly the start was a slight pain since both details and edges are a tad bit vague on this sculpt.

But after today's painting session I feel rather confident, the red and metallics make the black armor pop and the edges on the red do seem straight enough. Anyways, just wanted to share what I was working on right now, also still working on what to do about the other Arbites. 

From the workbench: Old Adeptus Arbites

 

After a pretty nerve wrecking week of studying for an exam I decided to let inspiration flow freely and pick out something to paint from my boxes of mini; The mini that tickled my fancy ended up being this Arbites with Bolter from around 2nd Edition/Necromunda 1st Edition(can't say where it appeared first). Either way, I have had two five man squad of these guys kicking around my collection for years now 

and since one of my goals this year is to work through my Heretics and Ordos collection I figured I could start with these guys; Plus they have been stripped, painted and stripped again twice now lol.

First evening was relatively productive, I started painting his face as that was gonna be the most difficult thing to pull off. Other things painted that session was all of the black armor and the metallic details. I have painted black armor and cloth with the same few paints for the past few years, but for

this guy I tried the classic eavy metal approach with less large glazes and more tightly packed highlights, turns out it looks pretty neat. The metallics were whatever, my gold recipe switches on any given day via whichever gold paints I find first and the iron is the typical gunmetal recipe. I ended up painting until 2 am if I am not mistaken, so yea I may have gotten carried away. Before I had begun to paint this guy I also prepared my usual Heretics and Ordos bases, a simple texture roller cobblestone base; Since I wanted to keep the tab on this guy though I had to carve a slot into the base and let that dry for later processing.

Next day I spent an hour before work painting all the red accents as well as basing the brown leathers; At this point I had more of an idea of how I wanted this guy to look, I wanted him to fit in somewhere between 2nd and 3rd edition 40k with a degree of cleanliness that would make him fit in somewhat

with more modern sculpts as well. So while he still sports a classic red bolter it is a little bit less saturated, yet still sports a fiery highlight. I also spent the time fixing two panels on the back I forgot to properly paint the other night, not realising I had also forgotten to paint the fingers, whoops.

After work I sat down for what I thought would be the final stretch, painting all the leathers as well as finishing his fingers, pleased with myself I retired a bit earlier only to realize while painting that I had

forgotten to do paint the rivets, classic. Also on a somewhat unrelated note, while painting this guy I listened to some World of Darkness lore videos on Werewolf and Changeling by TheBurgerkrieg, just thought I would give him a little shout as his videos have steadily driven me deeper into the World of Darkness after being engaged in it by Hunter: The Parenting. Anyways, back to space cops.

Today; I began by doing the rivets all over and saw I forgot even more details such as the lenses and cables on the Bolter's rangefinder(I think?) which I quickly painted green. This left the base for last;

First I made sure to cut as big a slot into the base as was necessary and then carefully glued the Arbites into place. After the glue settled I put on a small bit of Miliput and covered the tab, carving the brick texture into it to cover it up. Once that was dried I did my usual basing shenanigans, painted and then filled the recesses with light sienna pigments to simulate sand accumulating inbetween the stones. 

And here is where I kinda messed up. Throughout painting an amazing hobbyist on Instagram recommended I enter this into Olden Demon this year, given how much positive feedback I received for this guy made me consider it heavily. Anyways, in my infinite genius I decided since there was a good chance this guy was also going to get played with I varnished him. And that's when I got reminded, that Matt Varnish desaturates and mutes colors... yea. All the crisp detail? Washed out. Not to say he looks bad, but god if it isn't a noticeable downgrade from before he was varnished; I pray when properly photographed he will look a bit better, but I have low hopes. On top of that the Varnish left a bit of a texture on the base rim which also irks me. 

So yea, I should probably wait until I have taken some proper photos of a miniature before I varnish it huh? Anyways, I will put up another post for when I have this guy properly photographed, so finger crossed yea?

First look at the new IJA infantry by Warlord Games

I was kindly sent the new plastic Japanese Infantry by Warlord Games. While I will dedicate a proper article to a more indepth look at these, I couldn't resist building two miniatures already and thought I'd write down my thoughts.

First and foremost I am happy to see that the new sculpts are remarkably better than the old racist caricature-like sculpts. While the new sculpts are also somewhat squinty they don't feel nearly as bad, but until I've painted up a face I can't be too certain.  

Similar to the Soviet kit this box comes with extra parts to build jungle fighters and even SNLF which comes in handy if you're looking to build armies of those branches. However on the downside the weird leaf ponchos for the jungle fighters in this kit are not very good, they don't properly rest on the shoulders and look very much like a toy attachment and less like actual leafs.

I've tried using two of the loose leaf bits to emulate something like the poncho which given the more fitting nature looks much better in my opinion. Lastly we have only one pistol arm in this set which makes it hard to do dynamic sergeants, especially since the arm pose is a little less dynamic than I would've like it. But that rounds out my thoughts on building these guys, rest assured I'll dedicate more than a few hours to this kit whenever I'm done with my exams. 

The First Miniatures of 2025

Since this blog will be my little corner to show off my stuff, I figured I would pepper in some old photos of minis I painted over the last few years. Yesterday's post saw me finishing the first miniature of 2025, so what better place to continue than with what I finished first last year.

Quickbeam the Ent

Quickbeam is part of an ongoing commission for a friend to paint his Lord Of The Rings miniatures; I had already finished him for the most part but actually got to finishing him off in early 2025, adding moss tufts into his roots to make him look more overgrown and adding shrubs and flowers to his base. I sadly forgot to write down how I painted his bark, since to this day I think he is the best looking Ent I have painted.

Wounded Mordians

A few years ago I got hold of these Praetorian Casualties, I actually also picked up some Praetorians, but since I have a full army squad of Mordians and the praetorians are just modified Mordian sculpts, I decided to make these guys Mordians, painting them primarily with the paints from the Nostalgia '94 starter set. If you have never heard of Nostalgia '94, it is a full range recreating the paints Citadel released in 1994 in the large hexagonal pots. I actually wrote a review on them back in 2023 over on Goonhammer if you want to take a closer look at that.

Ever since I occasionally tried to paint full miniatures with just those old paints and these two guys are the most impressive I have pulled off so far I think. Although recently I have tried to pick up more of these paints, since I cannot mix all kinds of paints all the time. If you want to pick up some of these paints and support me, I got an affiliate link for the starter set.

Anyways, these three were the first minis I finished back in 2025, giving me quite the head start, which I then promptly fumbled and didn't paint more than 30 minis or so in 2025... oops.

The first Miniature of 2026

Halfway into January and I finally finished my first miniature this year. Not just that, this guy was snipped out, assembled and painted in six hours. This beats last year's first finished miniature which was an already started project I just took the time to finish + six hours from assembly to painting is pretty quick for my standards.

The Tomb Kings were my favorite army when I was a little kid and sadly they kinda fell to the way side over the years, I have plenty of models but haven't painted up too many of them. While my projects for this year don't see me changing that, who knows when inspiration and childhood whimsy will strike.

Anyways, nothing huge but I thought I'd share the first miniature finished this year as it is a small achievement in my books. 

Blog Revival

Four years ago I started this blog with the intention of sharing my hyperfixations with all of you in a more central location; In pursuing this I ended up being offered to write these articles for Goonhammer and so my focus fell away from this blog and I honestly forgot about it. Now I write semi regularly for Goonhammer, but I think I want to have my own little corner on the Internet to share things that maybe don't fit into a neat article. Plus here I've got no oversight! 

So, what can you expect from this blog? Well anything really; My hobby attention is about as fickle as a cat's and so I regularly switch focus and projects, leaving behind half painted miniatures. While I aim to somewhat mend my ways this year, I will still be relatively chaotic and that is okay; It is my hobby after all and if I am not having fun why do it, right?

But on a more serious note, I will most likely use this space to share my collection of weird and wonderful old miniatures, there are also a handful of games I want to explore and maybe writing about it will keep me focused and actually get me to play them. There will also be the occasional painting guide, although I was considering doing those for Ko-Fi and Patreon(that is if people would care to support me in these ways).