Over the next month, we will have something special on Spent Glory. My local club out of Seattle, Rain City Thunderworlds, will be holding a painting contest! A lot of new product has come out in the last few weeks and most of us have a basket of unpainted plastic sitting at our paint stations (assuming we didn’t already have a backlog!), so it was prime time for some group motivation. Today the competitors will be previewed and plans announced. Over the next month, we’ll all paint up our declared warband in our planned style. I’ll post the finished images on 5/20, and there will be a public voting form available for you to choose your favorites! The form will be open for about a week, after which the winners will be announced, likely on 5/27. In the meantime, enjoy this classic John Blanche art above, and some early photos from the contests below.

Meet the Contestants!

Vanja is our first entrant into the painting contest, who has a marvelous paint style and has been the featured painter in one of my monthly roundups. Over the next 4 weeks, he plans to paint up Headkrakka’s Madmob, with the theme of “Box Art Plus”. Excited to see what he cooks up with such characterful models!

John D has pledged to paint up his Exiled Dead which he has been piloting for a while now sitting on just a zenithal prime. His plan is to paint them in the theme of “Electric Funeral” which he hopes will have some vibrant OSL, and notes that this will be his first attempt at that technique.

Kevin has declared he will paint his Sons of Velmorn “For Bretonnia!”. A gorgeous set of models in that warband with a cool theme overlaid, should be a good one. He usually paints Khorne warbands and has a huge 40K collection, so we will see how he adapts to the Grave Guard in the coming weeks.

Andrew has chosen to paint up the new Mollog’s Mob, and has declared his theme to be “Mollog-rio”. Andrew is a prolific painter who puts brush to a model pretty much every night, so his experience should help him get something pretty special into the photos by the end. He’s also a digital artist who designed the Spent Glory Logo! Ever the artist, Andrew is a commission painter and has done a wide variety of projects over the years – you can see his other work here for a sneak preview of the type of thing to expect (or even place an order for yourself!) at Battle-Ready Painting

Steve is also a pretty experienced hobbyist who has been in and out of GW games for many years, and some of the stuff he brings to our game nights is jaw- dropping, with high-level use of slide transfers as well as freehand. He’ll be working on Spiteclaw’s Swarm with a Box Art theme.

Matt has the ability to slam out tons of models in a limited space of time, having done multiple full armies for GW armies on parade and store display cases with short turnaround times. For this challenge, he’s picked the Thricefold Discord, which despite having only three models has enough detail for ten. Interested to see how he handles the baubles and doodads.

Aaron is a painter after my own heart with frequent use of teal and purple in his models. For this contest he has chosen to paint The Headsman’s Curse and his selected theme is “Early 90’s’ ‘Eavy Metal”. Rock on!

John K is another one of our local Seattle guys who has chosen to paint up the Sepulchral Guard, also in a “Box Art Plus” theme. The model set that really launched Underworlds into the ‘best miniatures GW produces’ category, I’m excited to see how he brings them to un-life in this contest.

Rick has chosen to paint the Crimson Court in a box art style “with plenty of red and black” per his report. His Sepulchral guard have a gorgeous green, and his Looncourt is very smooth, so there’s huge potential here with arguably the coolest warband in the game, chosen by many Golden Daemon entrants over the years.

Josh, a local player who has won multiple Best Painted awards at our store tournaments, has entered this contest with a plan to paint up Blackpowder’s Buccaneers in an “Evil Clown” theme, which really suits his painting style and I expect it to be downright spooky. For extra artistic chops background, Josh not only is our local airbrush fiend, he’s also the genius who designed the Spent Glory website layout and made it look so good.

Anne, who has standout photography skills, has chosen to paint up Skaeth’s Wild Hunt, which is a very evocative warband and great to see back in the mix. Gonna be hard to vote against the warband with the most mohawks after all.

Chris is a longtime painter who went with me to the Tacoma Open last year – not to play WHU, but to participate in the painting workshops! He’s also a top-tier photographer and has a great eye for miniature hobby quality, so I’m excited to see what he comes up with in the end. He’ll be working on the Exiled Dead, so we’ll have a second layer of competition when we can see ‘who wore it best’ between Chris and John D. (They’re both quite fashionable dudes IRL)

Last and definitely least, Michael (that’s me) will paint up Zondara’s Gravebreakers for the contest. I’m aiming to ape “Disney’s 1991 Beauty and the Beast”, with the zombies representing Lumière, Cogsworth, and Chip. The jury is out on whether I’m going to be able to make that visibly apparent, but in fits and spurts while my toddler’s sleep schedule allows I’ll daub some paint on and hope for the best. Here’s my first-pass attempt at some old gold on the candlestick.

Wrap

Let’s get ready for some painting fun! It’s been proposed that we call the competition “A Brush with Death” seeing as we have so many Nagash-adjacent warbands represented, and it’s hard to argue. Which project sounds most interesting to you? Who are you rooting for? I personally am eagerly anticipating those Sons of Bretonnia because, I mean, come on man. Who doesn’t love that? I’ll post the finished warbands on 5/20 with a Google form for people to vote on their three favorites, with the final results announced the following week.