 Wait a minute, but before we get into that, how did we get here? I'll read your legends! Just blow out the microphone, why don't I? I'm the Game Beaver, and today I'm going to tell you how in three months I went from zero warhammer to... Well, it starts with a little game called Dark Souls the Board Game. So if you didn't know, Dark Souls the Board Game is a role-playing game, where you have a character, you level up stats, you defeat mo- It's basically, if you've ever seen Dark Souls, imagine that in a board game form, with a crude ton of expansions! This isn't even all of them, I think I'm missing like two, so... Good Lord, I don't know why I keep the boxes! And that's not even including the base game, which looks like this! So in the main game, you have cards, you have stats, you have dice or letchers, but you also have figurines, like miniature figures. And in some of them, the bosses are actually massive. The sculpt on the models is beautiful, but it's missing paint. And I've had a friend for a long time who, for as long as I can remember, has been into warhammer, and he's never really stopped. But recently, he got back into it, not to share why, but he did, and this is all his fault, basically. So I'd go into the Dark Souls subreddit and see these amazingly well-painted miniatures that were in the game, but these guys had created themselves. And I was thinking, hmm, what would they look like if I painted them? Probably terrible, but let's give it a shot. And this is where 40k comes into play. When I was a wee boy, I collected Lord of the Rings Warhammer. They weren't painted very well. I was 12 at the time, I think 12, 13. About there, I didn't really know much about painting. The best I mastered was like dry brushing with the Urakai. Get some metal, dry brush it, get it all off your brush, and then just go crazy on the model. And you'd get these really good, like, it was way too professional for what I could actually do, but it gave the impression that I was a good painter. We planned to go down to Nottingham for Games Day. It's where Games Workshop is, just to see all the different Warhammer. And which is why I still have this. This is 2008, I don't know if you can see, 2008 Games Day Space Marine. At the time, I didn't collect 40k. I was Lord of the Rings, and I think I was the only person there who collected Lord of the Rings. So we decided to go with Games Workshop, and they hired a coach to take us all the way down to Nottingham. Before that, there was going to be a sort of competition to see who could make the best painted model. So I went to his house and stayed up all night, and I painted this, I think it was like an Urakai cave troll. It was really, it was a new model for the time. And then when I went over to his place, we did the base, he gave me some wash and stuff. He painted some space marine because everybody collects space marines pretty much. And it didn't turn out too bad. I've got to admit, I thought it was pretty decent for the time. It was the best thing I'd done, that's for sure. But he gave me one of these little like Warhammer fantasy models. I think it was a skink, I think they were called, just this little lizard man. And that I think was officially the first sort of like outside Lord of the Rings thing I'd painted. But it seemed like Lord of the Rings had a very small niche market, and I never really knew how to play it. But 40k, there was plenty of people that want to play 40k. So I decided I was looking at all the different, you know, different races that you could make. And I settled upon Tyranid. So I bought myself one box of Tyramid Hormagorns, I think they were. And they came with the Reapers, which is probably what I'm showing now. I painted them like a custom scheme that was loosely based on one of the hives or whatever. And it didn't turn out too bad, but I really wasn't too bothered. I think I just lost the flair for it. I was like, oh, they look good, but they don't look too great. And that was it. 15 God knows how many more years Warhammer was not in my life. And I never painted anything again. Those Tyranids, the one remaining thing I have was the last thing I ever painted. But going into this Dark Soul board game, I know what it's like to paint something and for you to be really disappointed. Feel like, oh, this is going to look great. And you start putting on some layers and then it just doesn't turn out the way you want. And you're completely demotivated. So I decided to start with something easy, something that I'd already done in the past with the Oryka and the dry brushing, which was the Silver Knights, which was so easy and it really built up my confidence because they look really good. And it's very easy to achieve. You slap on some leadbelcher or metal paint, whatever you've got, and then just get some Null Oil from Games Workshop or whatever. And it just sinks into the recesses. And if you want, you can dry brush some of the metal, the same metal or maybe even a lighter metal over the top just to really bring out the highlights. And there you go, bingo! Jobs are good and you've got some pretty badass looking knights. So not wanting to stray too far away from what I'd already achieved in my mighty return to painting, I guess, Minjapaint. I decided to paint the Titanite Demon, which again, it was very easy. It was just some black undercoat and then just going from different gradients of grey. Dry brushing most of the majority in certain areas of that, like a kind of lightish grey. And then a tiny bit in the highlights with that lighter grey. It just gave it like a really good effect. So the next thing I did was a Smao, I think it is, or Smoo, which is just this huge executioner guy from the game, except for instead of like normal silver metals, he's a gold! So I put like an Agrax Earthshade, so a brown shade on top of it. I can't even remember how I painted it with some different kind of coloured metals, I think it was, not just gold. But the result turned out pretty decent, I was quite happy with it. So at this point, as you've probably gathered, I'm starting to run out of metal things to paint. But the closest thing I could get to was this winged knight, which was majority metal, but he had this cloth running down him. And I'd never done colour blending before, which is like going from one colour to another, while slowly, you know, getting in between shades and like having a very little paint on your brush and blending it. But I persevered and he didn't, actually I think when I finished this guy, I was really impressed with myself. I was like, I can paint! And then going from that, being able to do some sort of like clothy material, I wanted to just push the dry brushing a little bit more instead of doing, you know, one type of paint, doing two, like a blue and, you know, two paints. In this case, I did the Outrider or Boreal Valley Knight, I think it's called. And I just, like I undercoated some blue and then I put silver on top of that, just to give this really like, sort of glossy, icy kind of effect, which didn't actually turn out too bad, I was quite happy with that result. But I wanted to do something that was not just metal or not just dry brushing. And it was about time I painted some of the human characters. And there's a lot of different things going on here. So I decided to do the assassin, the warrior and the herald all at the same time, doing all their faces at the same time and then doing all of the materials at the same time. It was like something called Zenithal Highlighting where you put like white over the top or you dry brush white to bring out the highlights before you put on a very transparent paint colour. It allows you to shade without actually shading. So the cape on the warrior just really popped and came out and so did pretty much everything else. I tried doing some like a metal kind of paint for his axe without using metal paints, just using blacks and greys. And I thought that didn't, you know, it wasn't completely like well blended, but it didn't turn out that bad. And really, that's what it's about. You just want to build up your self confidence. Don't do like something too crazy. Like you see these amazing like pro-painted models online and then you look at what you're creating and of course it doesn't, it pales in comparison. But remember they've got thousands underneath their belts whereas you don't. So don't compare yourself to that. And I knew that going into this. So my friend McClure decided after seeing my miniatures, he was like, Yo, you should do some 40k. And I kind of did want to do something like that. I wanted to try and get back into it. And anyone who's in the hobby can tell you, What am I? Hey, cheap. Those little bits of plastic are expensive. So this isn't something that I'm going to just dive into if I'm not fully committed. So I had a look at all of the different races. I settled upon one that I thought I could paint. And I thought was pretty interesting. That being the Necrons. And the Necrons are these like metal, almost terminated, esque looking creatures or humanoid robots that sold their soul for immortality and then ended up getting tricked. And now they're stuck in these bodies with barely any free will, but they want to kill. And then they've got... There's a whole lot of lore. I ain't going to get into that. And I decided to buy this. The first box, the Necron Warriors, which is pretty much, I think anyone who's starting Warhammer, you don't really want to go for, unless you know you're going to stick to it to start collecting boxes. And I found some cheap like this on eBay because there's so many of them. And I painted my first test model. Again, not that hard. I just painted some lead belcher or metal paint and put some nul oil on it. Just drybrushed green onto the gun. And then tried to do some color blending. I still didn't know what I was doing really with it. And there it was. My first warrior that quickly turned into the full box of 12, doing exactly the same. And once I'd done the first one, the others, I just did them an assembly line. So I did all the metal at once. Then I did all the shading at once. Then I checked them out within a couple of days. It was the bases that were more complicated because I wanted them to be on some sort of, I don't know, marzy terrain with lots of skulls. Very similar to like Terminator, because that's the vibe I got from them. And at this point, lockdown had happened. I couldn't go down to Games Workshop. I couldn't go to a model shop or anything like that to see what range they had. So the next box I picked up on eBay or Amazon, I think it was for cheap, was these Triarch Praetorians, which are a lot more complicated than the Warriors, because they have a few more things going on. First off, the rod of the Covenant, which I decided to put on them, which was, again, to get the look that was on the box, because that's what I was using. I had the Master Color Blending, and it just felt like it was just so high up on the skills you needed. In the end, I think I just ended up, instead of blending it, I just got a dollop of green that was very wet and then got a dollop of yellow and then just worked that into it. And that was really the closest I could get to. But that one, again, turned to five more Triarchs, and they didn't look too bad for me. I was pretty happy with myself. I was in a position where I knew I was really stepping out of my comfort zone, but the final result didn't knock my confidence too much. I was like, you know what? That's not too bad. And in comparison to the Necron Warriors, they looked way more impressive. They had way more going on. And then the next box I got was the Immortals, which are basically Warriors, but they have two options for the guns and Tesla Carbine from what I could Google at the time was the best weapon to use because it had way more shots. If I ever wanted to play this at this point, I still wasn't thinking I'd play it. I just thought these looked cool. And I'd gotten a little bit better at color blending. Did some dry brushing for the exposed exhaust of the gun there with just some different greens and a little bit of yellow. And then did the full box of five because assembly lines with these guys especially is the way to go. And I think it accidentally bought another box of Immortals as well and these guys can be changed into the Snipers, which are called Death Marks. And the crap basically if you want to use them in competitive. But I thought that would be the next step because not only are they metal, not only do they have some color blending going on, but they've got this like highlight going along that armor, this bluish highlight. And these at the time was the most complicated thing I'd ever done because they're small, they're tiny and all this little intricate details. But once I'd marked up the first one and I was confident that I could definitely do this, I just, the five just came naturally. It was like assembly line again, do the metals, shade it, then clear up and just yadda yadda yadda. And they didn't turn out too bad either. It was at this point that I realized I developed a problem. James! Are you gonna come downstairs and help me or what? James, this is the third time I've asked you. What are you doing? James, you better not be painting again. No. James? So I bought online the Necrons start collecting box with more warriors, more immortals, and if I wanted to play HQs, which I still had no idea how to play Warhammer at the time, having something called an Overlord and a Lord. That sounded badass. He was the first thing that I painted as soon as I put that box together and it was here that I just wanted to focus on color blending. I would take three colors and then mix two of each color to make an in-between color and then I would just really concentrate on color blending. Color blending is one of those situations where it looks absolutely rubbish to start with, but the longer that you persist with it, it just sort of melds together and looks really good. And the Lord being more of the same. He had a resurrection orb that I did a little bit of detail to almost give it a cloudy swirl on the inside, with just some very, very faint white. And those two together, I was pretty happy with. There's something that Necrons have that I definitely hadn't kind of attempted at all, and that was their vehicles. And I loved what the box art showed of the vehicles, which is their black, but then they've got this sort of glowy green around the edges and stuff. And I thought the next kind of thing to go to was the destroyers, because they're kind of half metal and then they've got, I could attempt, you know, trying this different type of thing on their platforms, I guess you would call it. So I bought one on eBay and gave that a shot. And it didn't turn out too bad. I did the same kind of wet blending technique that I had done with the glowy green stuff, but I wanted to do that with black. But black is kind of unforgiving, because as soon as it goes over something, that's it. So you had to really water down the paint with it, which I attempted and it didn't turn out too bad. So the next thing that I decided to try was the biggest thing I'd ever painted, the doomsite or a night sight, depending on what gun you give it, which was the kind of the destroyer, the vehicle kind of look, the glowy stuff, the metal that it had all around it as well as the gun had metal. The pilot had metal as well as some glowy stuff and the control panel was color blended. When it's a huge piece like this, you can afford to spend a lot of time on it. If it's just like a Necrom Warrior, like I'm not going to see you too much, but if it's a character or if it's a vehicle, and it was the doomsite or sorry, the death ray, the maniacal villain death ray on the bottom, that I really just wanted to attempt like getting the white edge highlight on that. I was super happy with how that turned out. And the fact that I could switch out as weapon meant that I had basically two different vehicles. And luckily, they don't do this all the time, but Games Workshop allowed you to switch in and out the different types of weapons quite easily with no need for a magnet, because usually it's like one piece and you've got to choose which weapon to use that for, but I'm glad that they didn't do that. So good job, Games Workshop. Do that more, please. And it was at this point that I had a load of like spare pieces. From the triperatorians, I had the Lich Guard, because you could convert those. So I had different heads. So I started kit bashing different types of necrons together. So I made my first sort of OC, I guess you could call it, called the immortal king, who's just a regular immortal, except he has a crown on and he has a belt, but he does nothing extra. I just thought he looked kind of cool. And of course, because of the start collecting box set, those 10 immortals turned into 20 immortals. And when you've got Horde armies, there's nothing more satisfying than just seeing a whole bunch of them fully painted standing together. And I tried to do a little bit more of chipping to give them a little bit more of a weathered look and I got like a little bit of, I think it was soundproofing foam that I had left over. Dipped it in some black and just put it on the shoulder pads to give it that rotting look. So that at least even with the metal, I'm trying to do something different instead of just be like, right, I'm plateauing, that's it. I can't do anything more. And at this point, I'm like, okay, I'm going to play it. I watched a lot of battle reports. One thing that struck me was how powerful the necron destroyers were. So with that in mind, I bought a second destroyer, painted it up exactly the same as the first one and all the models I spray paint with this like shade can varnish stuff that you can get from Games Workshop. However, something was weird. I compared the two of the destroyers and one of them had a frosted look on it and I don't know what happened. I had a look at the can and it said that it needed to be within like 15 degrees to something else. And in the UK, you very rarely get 15 degrees on a good day. So the only thing I could come to the conclusion of was that the temperature was wrong. I'd shaken it for the two minutes. I'd actually run it under warm water and shaken it for long enough. So I decided to not use that because no matter how much of a good paint job I did, it would just make it look crap. So I decided to buy some Storm Shield varnish, I think it is. And what I'd do is water that down and just glob that over the entire model and it gave a really nice look. And for anything that needed to be extra shiny, I would use Games Workshop's Odd Goat. So I decided to put together another box of Triarch Praetorians. Except for this time they got their Void Blades and particle caster pistols. But this time, I'd used the different type of glossing. And it just looked gorgeous. Like the metal didn't look cloudy at all. It was like super vibrant. It just looked so much better than the first attempts that I'd done. And at this point, I felt like I had enough troops to do my first ever battle. So I painted four more destroyers in about two days. And this was the first time I'd probably set myself a challenge, like a time limit, to see how fast I could do these. And I think because of the amount of time I'd spent doing the same process over and over, I managed to actually get them done to a standard that I was pretty happy with. But there was something that every Necron Army has that I didn't. And that was a Kryptek. And I spent days on him. I really wanted this guy to look good because I knew I was going to use him a lot. And I haven't mentioned this before, but I paint my parts separately. So I don't put all the models together and then paint it. I have the weapon separate if I can, if it even needs it. So with this Kryptek, his head was separate, his staff was separate, but the body was all together. I guess the most difficult and time-consuming part of it was his staff of light. I really wanted to get it to look as close as I could to the box art. Introducing the Ghostalk. This thing took me like a week and a bit to paint. Each of the arches was separately built, painted by itself, including the Warriors. Oh my God, it took so long. And this is pretty much everything that I'd been putting into practice up to this point. It was the destroyer sort of vehicle look that I was going for, the highlights that I'd done on that, the, of course, the Necron Warriors. I painted extra sort of rust on them, trying something different. I'd also used the Contrast Paint Warpstone Glow for the little lamb, for the stabby bits of the Gorse Flayers. So with that out of the way, how about we have a look at some glamour shots of all of them, on some sort of like Spacey Mars terrain, which is what I kind of envisioned them all walking on in the first place. This is probably the most rewarding part of 40K when you have your full army painted and you see them all put together. Oh, there's nothing. Oh, it's so good. But there is one person who has not seen the extent of my addiction. Can you guess who it is? I got something to show you. Is it good? It's like something from a movie set. I was expecting you to come in and be like, why James? Why? Do you want to do a take two? Okay. Where's the thing of it? That's beautiful. That was great. I loved it. So when I started collecting Necrons, I didn't realise that there was going to be this whole new push. There's like new vehicles. The Warriors have got a remodel and like this Indomitas box set that went absolutely crazy. It was completely sold out, but they're making them again to demand because there's so much demand for it. And I got it yesterday and I so didn't spend almost all night trying to put together as much as I could before getting too tired. That would be stupid. Who would do that? And there you go. That's my warhammer journey so far. And I just want to give a shout out to some people that have really inspired me during this whole process and helping me stay sane within this quarantine that we're all going through. The first one being Midwinter Minis because he does some amazing painting tutorials and some really quick battle reports that are just cinematic in a way and just very quickly cut to the chase. I also want to give a shout out to Goobertown Hobbies. I just find his videos super relaxing. And when you're doing stuff like this, when you're painting, there's a lot of pressure and you can get the nerves can get to you like, oh my God, if I make a mistake here, this is going to be it. And I think one of his sayings was paint bravely and that just sort of resonated with me. Like, if I make a mistake, that's fine. Like, if I try this color and it doesn't work out, I can paint over it. And that's really what the hobby is all about. It's just experimenting and just trying to extend your skill set a little bit more. And another one being Tabletop Minions who does whether it's painting tutorials or like just keeping a good mental state while you're painting. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed this video. I know it's a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit squishy, a little bit different to what is normally on the channel. But don't worry, I'll get straight back into it. I just wanted to get this out here while I could because there's just so much going on in the Warhammer Spectrum. But anyway, guys, thank you for watching. If you stayed until the end of this video and until next time, I'll see you later. Oh, bye-bye.