Review - Monument Hobbies Paints

Recently I purchased the "Base Set" of the Pro Acryl Paints from Monument Hobbies. This set includes all 24 of their original non-metallic paints.

The paints come in 22ml plastic bottles and contain glass agitators. The bottles are very well designed having a non-clog twist top design so you can easily add single drops to your palette.

They are advertised as "premium high-density pigment in superior acrylic mediums. They provide great coverage right out of the bottle, thin evenly to achieve any level of transparency, and dry to a beautiful matte finish".

My experience over the past couple of years has led to increasing dissatisfaction with Citadel Paints. I've found that the saturation generally is quite patchy meaning that even for base colours you require 2-3 coats. The pots they come are not conducive to longevity, leading me to transfer mine into dropper bottles and adding an agitator. They do have the advantage of breadth of range meaning you can typically find the shade you want. However, even with the range advantage, I made the decision to not replace my existing Citadel Paints as I use them up.

So on that basis I was keen to see how the Pro Acryl were. 

I tried them out over the weekend and can confirm that they are highly saturated. The colours give great coverage straight from the bottle but can be thinned to provide glazes. If you like saturated paints then these really are as good as I have used....similar to Scale 75 and Khymera but more vibrant.

The 22ml bottle with no-clog twist tops

The set represents very good value for money. In the USA it retails for $85 (but is currently out of stock). I purchased mine for GBP 77 from Element Games which landed here in NZ equates to NZ$165. That works out at just under $7 per bottle (by comparison: GW's Citadel Base Paints are NZ$7.50 per 12ml pot - and their paint posts are shite). So good value for money, relative.

Paints included -

• Bold Titanium White
• Coal Black
• Bold Pyrrole Red
• Green
• Blue
• Golden Yellow
• Orange
• Burnt Red
• Mahogany
• Purple
• Magenta
• Sky Blue
• Faded Ultramarine
• Dark Grey Blue
• Bright Warm Grey
• Dark Warm Grey
• Golden Brown
• Light Umber
• Dark Umber
• Camo Green
• Jade
• Bright Ivory
• Ivory
• Tan Flesh

Here is the set all snug in my HobbyZone rack

This base set has sufficient breadth to become my mainstay paint range. In part this is because you can easily dispense the paint one drop art a time - meaning you can mix and record any specific paint recipes you require.

I see the set as complementing the two sets of metallics I use - Scale 75 Metal Alchemy for Golds/Copper and Vallejo Metal Colour for Steel/Silver.

DBMM - Viking Fleet Refloated

 Twenty years ago I ran a Viking army in  15mm DBM. In those rules you need to a have a fleet of a certain size to ensure you had access to a waterway.

To this end I bought and painted eight Viking longboats. These were a metal model from Essex Miniatures - I think they were pretty much the largest 15mm model Essex did at the time. This gave me the fleet I needed and allowed me to attack by sea and river....so Viking!!

As I drifted away from historical ancient wargaming these models were shelved in boxes, drawers, storage cases etc. Two of them were given to my old gaming buddy the late Rob Cameron for one of his armies.

Last weekend I rounded up all the bits from around the how and started the process of rebuilding them. They were in various states of disrepair. Amazingly, I found all the pieces for boat, crew and stowage bar one stern decoration. They are now all but together and ready to take their place in my 15mm and 28mm Viking armies. 

The six remaining Viking longboats ready for some painting "touch-ups".

Each boat has rudderman, eight rowers and stowage. They come with furled sails and under "oar".

40k - Dark Eldar "Legacy" Models

 I own a Dark Eldar army that featured in White Dwarf during the 00s. The army is made up of models from the first release of Dark Eldar models - so lots of the original metals.

Recently I was going through my bits box and found an old Drazhar model. I then was looking at the existing units and saw I had 8 Incubi. So out went the call and I managed to pick up two additional metals.

After a quick bath in the ultrasonic cleaner I started painting them to match the existing figures.

Really happy with the bone army. Tried wet blending for the first time and was able to layer it through from a mustard to a stark white. 

Now I just need to do the basing.

DBMM Battle Report - War of the Roses Yorkists vs. Burgundian Ordonnance

 Today the Yorkists make their tabletop debut. 400AP game between contemporaries- War of the Roses English and Burgundian Ordonnance.

I’ve set up an 8’ x 6’ representative of 15th Century England and will give Josh the Bold choice of sides.

The Yorkist lines drawn up. Big Warwick command in center with Edward of March behind. Norfolk on the left.

The Burgundian lines. Pike and blade near camera. Crossbow and artillery in distance. Also a mounted command under Charles the Bold (“he of the halberd haircut”) - gendarmes, mounted bow and some LH

The Burgundian lines

Charles leads the gendarmes in an attempt to outflank the Yorkist lines

Change of Direction

 With my disillusionment re the current state of the competitive 40k game, in particular its banality around mission design, I started looking around at other alternatives.

To this end I picked up "Cursed City" on its release and am looking forward to it as a painting project in the last quarter of the year. I also picked up the original release of "Warcry" and I will move to paint this once I've done Cursed City.

however the big change was that I pulled out my old Ancient and Medieval armies. These are what got me into wargaming in the late 1990s. At the time you played using the Wargames Research Group's DBM rules. In the past 20 years this has been replaced by DBMM and there is a thriving 28mm community in New Zealand, particularly Wellington.

The rules are supported by four Army Books which contain 320+ historical armies. I own three 28mm armies - Patrician Roman, Mongol Conquest and Early Viking. A few small changes saw more Romans able to take the battlefield and I have spent the last three months re-learning the game.

At the same time I bought and painted a Yorkist War of the Roses army based on the forces of Edward of March and Warwick "The Kingmaker" at Towton. That's now finished and I had my first game with them on Saturday.

I recently played in a tournament and while it was enjoyable my real interest is in more historical matchups between contemporary foes and multiplayer refights of historical battles.

That doesn't mean I've turned my back on 40k. I had a fun few months in the lead up to the Fields of Blood NZ Grand Tournament testing a modified version of the Maelstrom of War missions GW released in White Dwarf. By the end it was possible to get a game that was less linear than the Chapter Approved missions. Since then I've had my Death Guard on the table and been playing some of the missions in the core rulebook.

I've also been painting up odd figures to finish units in my existing armies. Most recently this has been to add two metal Incubi and an old metal Drazhar to my Dark Eldar. I have a metal gimp suit Mandrake to paint as well as some models to create a Court of the Archon.

So check back over the coming weeks and months and you'll likely see a mix of painting and gaming projects/endeavours on the site.

2021 - Change of Direction

 At the outset of 2021 I was playing 40k almost exclusively. Although we were in the midst of the pandemic, GW had released 9th Edition mid-2020 and was starting to release the army books.

Jump forward three or four months and I hit an absolute wall.....and as a result started to lose interest.

Two things triggered this.

First, GW released the 2021 Chapter Approved Grand Tournament Mission Pack. This proved to include very minimal changes from the 2020 pack. The 2020 pack had nine missions, however this was basically the same mission played with minimal changes - 2 or 3 Primary Objectives required, one of three deployment maps, one scenario secondary. It had got pretty old, pretty quick in 2020 (for example, I think playing my Harlequins I never changed my secondaries except when I played Knights). Essentially the games got very samey, very quickly.

So I was hopeful that the new pack would introduce so more interest and fun. It didn't. Same base nine missions and small changes with secondaries. Yawn. I can play the same game over and over again. Minimal risk management, repeated resource management.

Second, the Mat Ward Gambit. GW released three books in a row that were so far ahead on the power curve that it was reminiscent of 7th WHFB when Daemons, Dark Elves and Vampire Counts were released in short succession. Drukhari (one of my armies), in particular, had win rates that were off the chart - at one point as high as 83% for the Dark Techromancer build. This was followed by Ad mech where the height of skill was to turn up with 140 Skitarii Vanguard/Rangers. This power creep has continued through the year where the power of some skew builds is a joke - recently the Ork Buggy list. I'm not sure how these slipped through the much-vaunted GW playtesting but clearly mistakes were made.

So I fell out of love with Competitive 40k. Hard. In my mind the skill element had been diminished by the reduction in variability and the power creep.

This left a bit of a hole 😆

Over the next week I'll outline some of the things I've been up to in the interim.

40k - FOB NZ Warhammer 40k Rankings Updated

 The rankings have been updated for the No Surrender, a four round event held in Christchurch mid September.

The end of what has been another disrupted tournament season is 31 October 2021 - so just over one month to go. Advise you to check the uploaded events since 1 November 2020 and if you attended a tournament and it is not included, then chase up the TO to see if they intend to lodge them.

They just need to contact me and I'll send them the necessary submission sheet

Mournival Hobby Challenge - Jeremy Webster (May)

Here's Jeremy's comments on his new 40k army.

"Made some progress on a new army for 2021: my home-brew Genestealer cult. After delaying for an unreasonable amount of time I settled on a scheme that I like (and that's relatively easy to reproduce) and painted up some of my character models."

A Primus (converted from a Drukhari Haemonculus)

Patriarch

 Kelermorph (converted from a Primus)

Mournival Hobby Challenge - Bruce Manning (May)

2. Create a new table of terrain to support a game

Made up some TTCombat terrain for my Necrons. Its always a fun hobby project

Keeping colours very simple but might weather buildings.

5. Add two new units to an existing 40k army

Hexmark Destroyer and some Flayed Ones for Bruce's FOB NZGT 2021 list.

7. Play a game a month and post a photo of it

Had a Necron vs SW game using MoW cards. Fun times

Mournival Challenge - Lliam Munro (May)

 Add New Units to an Existing Army:

Two Wraithblades

Falcon

Wraithlord

WIP Wraithseer & Vyper

Build a New 40k Army:

Rippers

Exocrine

Devilgaunts