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I'm Andy and I'm a UK based hobbyist and miniature enthusiast - painter/ kit-basher and proud member of the #warmongers and #Warhammercommunity. Come say hi on my socials!

A bit of background…Warhammer 40k has been a part of my life since I was a kid, over 20 years now! The painting, converting and collecting side of things has always been my main interest, with gaming being a good opportunity to get my toys out over a few beers (or a nice cup of tea these days…) with friends and show them off.

I’ve spent much more time painting than playing over the last couple of years, pushing my skills and techniques further than I ever imagined, and so decided to have a crack at the Classic Golden Demon at Warhammer Fest earlier this year. To my surprise I walked away with a silver trophy. That really meant a lot to me, and then fired me up to have another go...

So, when Andy asked me if I fancied writing a blog post I thought I’d share with you my journey over the last couple of months preparing for the Warhammer 40k Open Day Golden Demon competition.

Firstly, what to enter…

Always a tough decision. Should it be a standard model or a complete kitbash? I had a couple of ideas but the one I went with started life as I was reading Master of Mankind earlier in the year. The image of a black-clad spectre helping the forces of the imperium really spoke to me. Like many in the hobby, I have always loved the Legion of the Damned and this image just wouldn’t go away… but how to portray it in model form? To me the spectre was clearly Ferrus Manus, and that’s where “The Ghost of Ferrus Manus” piece came from…

The big question with Ferrus is always “what about his head?”I opted for a Reiver skull-head, which kinda looked roughly to scale... I don’t know, something slightly bigger might have looked better but that’s the best GW had to offer after scouring pretty much every range on the webstore.

Now for the colour scheme. For anyone who has followed me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll know I have been playing around and developing a particular style over the last couple of years: limited palette schemes, where the contrast between areas is denoted by the shade and contrast between a very limited range of colours using layers of glazes and washes rather than solid painted blocks. It’s more akin to water colour painting and I’m really pleased with it. The only drawback with this style or painting is that because it is built up overmany layers, if you screw something up you have to re-paint a whole section, or the whole model. There is no quick fix.

With “The Ghost of Ferrus Manus” I have contrasted the dark armour with the almost-garish spectral-green glow of Ferrus’sskin, for a very striking finish. Perfecting that green has been another thing I’ve been working on over the last 12-months and early attempts featured heavily in my previous entry.Some say it hurts their eyes, and I found it very difficult to photograph. I couldn’t be happier! Haha!

As often happens, once I’d finished Ferrus, the ‘single miniature’ intention turned into ‘I want this guy leading a whole army of ghost warriors’ and I decided to build a display army around him, with my target to enter Armies on Parade 2019.

To this end I also managed to paint up a Leviathan dreadnought in time to enter into the ‘Vehicle’ category. In hindsight, I should have painted the armour the same on bothminiatures, but as it is I have gone for a classic Legion of the Damned black base colour with flames on the dreadnought. I’ve opted for spectral green flames rather than the traditional red to tie the pieces and overall army together, contrasting this with the heavily corroded metallic elements of the miniature: this is a Space Marine that’s literally been brought back from the dead from whatever battlefield he was left rotting on. It’s a bit of a test piece and if I had more time I might have re-painted some bits that I’m not happy with, but here we are…The colour palette is not as limited as Ferrus himself, but the overall tone is very muted to again contrast with the spectral green of the skull and flames.

The Results and food for thought…

Well, I managed a finalist’s pin for each of my submissions, and with Golden Demon, that’s all I ever go in hoping for, so for me it was a successful event and I’m really happy with a pair of pins. This is THE event where you will face THE toughest competition and there are only three trophies per category, so your entry really needs to stand out for a chance at winning. A good conversion goes a long way, coupled with a solid paint job.

Personally, I think The Ghost of Ferrus was maybe a bit too left field… as for the Leviathan, it was one of 5 or six in the cabinet, and mine was completely reliant on the paint job so it probably didn’t stand out as much as some of the others that had been kit-bashed or converted a bit.

What is always good is seeing what else has been entered and which entries eventually get the trophies. In this event the stand out feature of the top entries appeared to be the fantastic basing. I came away from the event thinking that I definitely need to up my basing game for next time round and am already rummaging around in the recycle bin for bits…

Here’s to the next event: Golden Demon at Warhammer Fest in May 2019!

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