Review - Coolminiornot Ultimate Painting Guide

Important Note – Being an internet fiend that I am. I’ve travelled many a hobby/warhammer/miniature site and one thing that I first noticed is that lots of the guides, if not all of them can be found on the web for FREE! I think all of them are from articles section on the coolminiornot website, which to me makes this guide abit of a fraud. I’m not slating the content, just the manner in which this guide somewhat tricks you into thinking its new content and that it hasn’t been rehashed from there article section! So just a word of warning to you all.




Cost: It cost $9.99 or £7.00 from their online store. Now this is for a pdf download. You get sent a link where you can download it from after payment. Their store currently has an issue with the SSL certificate as their website doesn’t show it. The mods at the moment don’t seem to be in a chatty mood either and getting a reply from them hasn’t been particularly great. I took the risk anyway, but again a warning point if you are thinking of buying anything else from them. I paid by paypal, so I had some sort of protection if things went wrong.

Content: Well despite the issues with the store and somewhat fraudulent nature of the guide, its actually quite good, content wise. While you can find all of the articles pretty much for free online on their website, it is nice having them all together in one tomb.

It covers all the basics of mini prep and painting that you will find in most painting guides. Ranging from pinning to highlighting and shading and does it abit more in-depth than most of the guides that I’ve seen (using GW’s as a comparison). It also then focuses on other techniques such as feathering and blending, but not in enough detail. There are very few good written guides though on that subject, mainly due to its difficult nature, through the kraken edition DVD (review soon) is meant to be brilliant for it!

The guide also has some step by step guides on various bits such as lighting effects, bases and painting models. All these guides are well written and have a good supply of pictures (300 page guide in total). In general the guide is well thought-out and covers a broad range of subjects including basic sculpting, making this a fairly good guide for the beginner or average painter looking to improve. Its just let down by the fact all this info is free if you take the time to search which lets it down.

Evaluation: Content wise, I can’t fault it at all, well presented and ordered, with loads of pictures and useful tips. It could however spent abit more time on the advanced techniques as these guides are a little rushed, but other than that it’s a excellent guide. I would recommended it, but as I’ve said the ‘dodgy’ nature of coolminiornot’s online store and contact is a real put off for me as its rather poor at the moment. Also the fact that the majority of the content can be found for free online is also another let down. Price wise, if the content hadn’t been around online for free, id say it’s a good price and this along with the shop issues lead me to give it:

5/10.

Guard, Guard, Guard

Ok, not quite what i promised. But, i still havent had a indepth look at the coolminiornot guide.

Anyway to make up for it, here are some thoughts on the up and coming guard codex

So for those of you who haven’t seen the leaked sheet


Now if this is all true, this I fear will make guard one of the hardest armies out there!Since I started playing 40k back in third edition, guard have always been seen as the whipping boys of 40k along with dark elder. Now GW last incarnation produced some cool models and a good set of working rules which when used properly can still challenge any of the main competitive armies out there. Proof of the pudding is the guard army which appeared 7th at the Throne of Skulls/GT heat 1 in 2008. Now this could be put down till people lack of experience with the new 5th edition, but to be honest most of the top players, shouldn’t have been troubled by the changes to the rules if they where that good.

Now along with another horde army, orks (which seems to be the way GW is going with armies for various reasons, ££££) the main changes are going to be points and correction of kill points for the guard, while giving them a load of cool new toys. Now a reason I suspect GW has put more tanks in this book than any other I know, is probably to allow people to use models in apoc and fun games a lot easier than making separate data sheets and a whole lot of hassle trying to find rules.

But the main thing I’ve noticed from my rumour gathering and this data sheet is the sheer amount of tanks there guard are going to have access to with lots of blast weapons. Now in 40k blast weapons are very, very nasty and when you take into account the average dice role on two dice is 7 coupled with the guard BS 3 means on average the templates will be moving 4 inches. Considering it’s a large template that most guard tanks fire, you should always hit something especially against horde armies and I imagine this will ignore most armour including marines. Failing that the guard are gonna have access to lots of weapons that have a medium/low strength with lots of shots (heavy bolter etc) and can force saves through sheer number of shots. Now this is balanced by the BS and hopefully cost. But I’ve got a feeling tanks are going to be cheap as chips.

Along with this, if you can have cheap infantry, which is a high probability, this makes a rather deadly combination. With the changes in assault rules it’s kinda dangerous to assault stuff without back up. A platoon of guard (30 to 40) is gonna be a hard thing to kill or move off an objective, especially if in cover and they got rapid fire range. So unless you can engage multiple units in order to give yourself time to wade through the bodies, you probably going to get flash lighted to death!

Now a lot of this is speculation from the sheet, but with the trend in previous horde like armies (orks) I could see the guard becoming horribly evil (for once). But we shall wait and see, if I get anymore info from anywhere ill be sure to post it up!

Welcome All

Well as everybodies blogging, so am i!

My names Max, ive been doing this hobby for over 10 years and thought id share some of the wisdom within the hobby to everyone out there. Primarily ill be writing some articles on the tournament scene in 40k as well as a variety of hobby guides and reviews of various gaming products which all relate to our favourate hobby, 40k!


So ill go do something constructive now, my first review will be the coolminiornot ultimate painting :(


I am currently looking for some help designing a logo (bunny with a bolter) im rather broke a the moment though if someone wants a brand new deciver and 2 brand new obliterators in part ex for helping design the logo that would be awersome! If interested leave an e-mail address and ill get in touch!