Category Archives: General

Why Not Everything Sucks!

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This morning I’ve been reading a well-written post by Sevy over on the Tiny Painted Heroes blog on the topic of “Why Does Everything Suck?” The post largely deals with hobby content on YouTube, and the majority of comments are by people in our little gang – go read the post now if you haven’t yet – then come back here! I also attempted to add a comment but WordPress decided to eat both my comment and then my attempt to rewrite it. So I’m turning it into a little bonus post here.

I personally watch a lot of YouTube. Like, a LOT. When I’m pottering around on my PC – which is a lot of the time, I’ve often got a video running on my second monitor. I watch stuff from a wide variety of content types, but the relevent stuff for this post is the gaming hobby stuff, so I’m just going to discuss that here.

The thing I find with YouTube specifically, is that it’s actually pretty easy to curate your feed. Despite how annoying it is to hear it from every content creator all of the time, clicking like and even a subscribe not only helps their channels, but it also means you’re more likely to be fed more of their stuff as well as stuff YT thinks is like their stuff – which doesn’t mean “they liked a Star Wars Legion video – feed them Warhammer” – the algorithm also looks at what people who liked that video also liked. So yes, you’ll obviously still inevitably get Warhammer fed to you, but you’ll also get more stuff of whatever niche you’ve been looking at.

So in order to cull the stuff you’re not enjoying, a thumbs-down – especially without watching the whole thing apparently works well. Another thing that helps a lot is something that appears to only work when using YouTube on a computer web browser – the “Don’t Recommend Channel” button found via the “three dots” menu.

Below you’ll find some great channels worth your time to at least check out. Some often have a GW focus but a lot are for other games or wider. This is aside from the “painting tutorial” channels like Duncan, Sorastro, Vince Venturella and Sonic Sledgehammer (which can have interesting videos as well, but aren’t really in the “hobby news/discussion” genre – or hobby-adjacent modelling channels like Night Shift.

So while TPH definitely isn’t wrong that there’s a ton of negative content out there farming angry clicks (because that’s how making money on social media works) – I’m not going to bother doing a name-and-shame here of negative channels or the ones that piss me off – they’re easy to find and this post is wanting to be a bit more positive here –

Here’s a bunch of links here that you might find interesting to dip in and out of and hopefully improve some YouTube feeds out there. Obviously not an exhaustive list, and while you’ve probably heard of a couple of these channels, they’re mostly smaller and/or niche channels that deal with more than GW/Warhammer (not Auspex, though!) I’m sure I’ve even missed a bunch of channels I personally enjoy here:

https://www.youtube.com/@The.Game.Cave.

https://www.youtube.com/@MSPaints

https://www.youtube.com/@Miniscape-wh40k

https://www.youtube.com/@OldenDemon

https://www.youtube.com/@SnipeandWib

https://www.youtube.com/@PeachyTips

https://www.youtube.com/@EonsOfBattle

https://www.youtube.com/@AllMiniaturesGreatandSmall

https://www.youtube.com/@graysquadrongaming8670

https://www.youtube.com/@ArbitorIan

https://www.youtube.com/@GuerrillaMiniatureGames

https://www.youtube.com/@LittleWarsTV

https://www.youtube.com/@ModellingforAdvantage

https://www.youtube.com/@auspextactics

https://www.youtube.com/@tabletopminions

https://www.youtube.com/@TheLegionCantina

https://www.youtube.com/@Crabbok

https://www.youtube.com/@Ninjon

https://www.youtube.com/@stahly_taleofpainters

Anyway, check out some of the channels above and see if any interest you and hopefully some of them can help to improve your hobby feed!

Did I miss any positive hobby channels that you guys recommend? If so, feel free to drop them in the comments and I’ll potentially check them out myself.

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

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3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

Something a little bit different to the norm today! A free 3D printed life size bolt gun from creator AWPrintz over on Makerworld.

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

Regular readers are already familiar with Flippy the Bambulab A1 and possibly his newer brethren, Clippy (also an A1) and their work in the realm of wargame scenery and the odd model.

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

As it turns out, they have use outside of tiny buildings and tinier tanks – they’re also capable of producing significantly larger toys.

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

Despite the number of pieces this particular model came in, it still had a far lower piece count than a GW Saturnine Terminator.

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

I made a few mistakes along the way. Accidently printing a couple of pieces twice etc, using the wrong filament, a slight superglue accident – that sort of thing. Still, you live and you learn!

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

So what else could I do but print a few more pieces and end up with a second bolter? I mean, the printing part is basically set-and-forget and the assembly was on the level of a model kit for children (with clamps and superglue). How could I not?

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

One thing I should have photographed as well was these things all clamped up. There was a lot of clamping involved, using clamps. Especially since I had multiple sub-assemblied on the go at any given time. But it was a learing experience for sure. Much like my poor trigger discipline in these photos!

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

So much so that I actually have enough parts to assemble a third bolter from a combo of “mistakes” and then deciding the hell with it, I’ll just print the final few parts I need for another one. Which I will assemble at some point in the future, and then paint, rather than use the filament as my colours.

3D Printed Adeptus Astartes MkV Godwyn Pattern Boltguns

The overall plan is to leave this red one “as is”, add some weathering to the green one, and then completely paint and weather the third one. I’ll probably weather the green once I’ve built and painted the third one so I can do the weathering at the same time, since green still looks pretty solid as is.

I’m pretty happy with these. As someone who went through my teenage years as a Warhammer fan and have been interested even when not actively playing for decades now, I’m quite stoked for these to exist and to actually have them. Now to print some wall mounts and find somewhere suitable to hang these bad boys up!