Spotlight: Meet Paul — The Smiling Face Behind the Stunning Tyranids

Some people walk into a club and take a while to find their feet. Paul arrived at West Allotment Wildlings, looked around, said "right then," and has been involved in absolutely everything ever since.

There's a quality that the best club members share — and it's not about how well they paint or how many games they win. It's the way they make a room feel. The way a conversation with them leaves you feeling good about the hobby, about the club, about yourself. Paul has that quality in abundance. He's the kind of person you notice within five minutes of walking through the door — not because he's loud, but because he's present. Interested in what's on the table next to him. Ready with a recommendation for a game you haven't tried yet. Always, without fail, smiling.

He's also been quietly assembling one of the most eye-catching Tyranid armies in the North East. But we'll get to that.

The slippery slope...

Like so many hobbyists of a certain vintage, Paul's story starts somewhere deeply familiar.

"I first got into tabletop gaming at around ten, through the absolute classic — HeroQuest. The gateway to Games Workshop."

HeroQuest. The game that launched a thousand armies. Paul didn't stop there — alongside his friends he worked his way through Space Crusade, Space Hulk, and Talisman, each one trailing its box of plastic miniatures behind it like breadcrumbs leading somewhere inevitable. By the time secondary school arrived, the slippery slope had delivered him squarely to the second edition Warhammer 40K big box — and his very first purchase after that was the original plastic Rhino kit. A decision that will produce a knowing nod from an entire generation of hobbyists.

What's interesting about Paul's origin story, though, is that model-making itself goes back even further — before Games Workshop, before HeroQuest, all the way to his grandpa's kitchen table.

"The love for model-making came from my grandpa, who got me into building and painting Airfix. My first ever hobby project was painting a Lancaster Bomber over a week in the school holidays."

There's something in that — the idea of a ten-year-old kid, brush in hand, spending a whole week bringing a Lancaster to life. The patience required. The focus. The quiet satisfaction of stepping back at the end and seeing something finished. Those of us who've spent hours at a painting desk chasing exactly that feeling will recognise it immediately. Paul's been at this a long time. He just didn't always know it.

The Return

Like a lot of people, Paul drifted away from the hobby as life filled up — kids arrived, time got scarce, the paints dried up at the back of a cupboard somewhere. It happens to nearly everyone eventually. The hobby waits, though. It always does.

"A couple of close friends enticed me back to play at the back end of 9th edition 40K — and I got the bug back."

That simple. That's all it takes, usually — the right people, the right moment, the door back in left slightly ajar. Once Paul was through it again, something had shifted. He'd come back to the hobby, but not quite to the same version of it he'd left.

"I used to be all about playing the game — but I've found that the painting and hobby side has become a lot more appealing. I find it very relaxing. The ability to focus on a project is a great way to quiet the noise of all the pressures of daily life."

It's one of the things we don't talk about enough in the tabletop community — the meditative quality of the hobby. The way an hour at a painting desk can do something that nothing else quite manages. Paul has found that, and it shows in his work.

His setup is modest and practical: a permanent desk in the kitchen, set up with his wife's blessing, ready whenever the mood takes him, with a podcast or a YouTube video playing in the background. Nothing that demands his full attention. Just enough to fill the silence while the brush does its work.

The Painting

Ask Paul which model he's most proud of and he goes back to a specific moment — one that a lot of returning hobbyists will recognise as a turning point.

"My Avatar of Khaine. It was my first centrepiece model after I got back into painting, and it was a watershed moment in terms of my confidence with a brush."

There's a particular kind of satisfaction in finishing a centrepiece — a model that demands more of you, that sits at the heart of an army and earns its place there. The Avatar clearly did something important for Paul's belief in what he was capable of.

But it's his Tyranids that are turning heads right now. Eighteen months of work, a colour scheme that's deceptively simple, and the result is an army that genuinely stops you in your tracks when it's laid out on a table. He's understated about it — "they are a joy to paint" — but anyone who's seen them in person knows there's rather more to it than that. At last year's West Allotment at War tournament, Paul was nominated for Best Painted. In a club that contains some seriously talented painters, that's not nothing.

"Given the quality of painting in our community, that was an amazing thing to get recognised for."

He means it, too. Humility isn't something Paul performs — it's just how he is.

Finding the Wildlings

Paul's route to the club is a story the Wildlings have heard a few times, in different variations — and it's one of the things that suggests the community is doing something right.

"One of my group of friends lives out at Whitley Bay and we were looking for somewhere to game. It wasn't long after you guys had just set up — we came along, played, joined the Discord, and just started interacting with the fledgling community."

The Wildlings were barely off the ground when Paul first walked through the door. He came in at the beginning, watched the thing grow, and quietly became part of the fabric of it. Pretty soon he was arranging games directly on Discord, bringing himself along, finding new opponents, trying new systems. The community did what good communities do — it gave him a reason to keep showing up.

What keeps him coming back, he says, is something harder to manufacture than a good games library or a well-run schedule.

"There is no judgement. Ever. No matter what you arrive with — whether that's grey plastic or a bad mood — people have always been supportive and welcoming."

It's a small thing to say and an enormous thing to actually deliver, consistently, across a growing membership. But it's the thing Paul returns to when you ask what the Wildlings means to him. Not a specific game, not a tournament result — just the knowledge that walking through the door is always going to feel like walking into somewhere safe.

"I love the fact that there is always something you can get involved in, and everybody is super keen to introduce you to their particular brand of nerding. Even if you don't have a game, it's great to come along and just hang out with like-minded people."

One for the Desert Island

Every hobby spotlight has to end somewhere, and the question we can't resist asking is this one: if you could only keep one model from your entire collection, what would it be?

"My OG metal second edition Eldar Wraithlord. I've left it with its original paint scheme — it really reminds me how far I've come in the hobby. Plus it's a classic model now."

There's something quietly poetic about that. A model painted by a younger version of himself, kept exactly as it was, sitting as a reminder not of how far there is still to go but of how much ground has already been covered. That's the hobby distilled to something essential — the long arc of it, the accumulation of years and armies and quiet evenings with a brush, measured not in tournament results but in the distance between who you were and who you are now.

Paul's Message to Anyone on the Fence

We asked Paul what he'd say to someone who's curious about the hobby but hasn't quite taken the plunge.

"The hobby is so vast there is something for everyone — even if you're just there for the company with like-minded people, that's massive. It always amazes me the breadth of backgrounds our members have. There is real friendship to be found, and that common language of rolling dice and playing with toy soldiers is a great way to meet people."

Coming from someone who started with a Lancaster Bomber on a kitchen table in the nineties, found his way to HeroQuest and Warhammer and Tyranids and Trench Crusade, stepped away, found his way back, and ended up at the heart of a community he clearly loves — that lands with a bit of weight.

You can find Paul on Instagram at eldar_elder_paints — go give him a follow and prepare to feel inspired.

If you'd like to be featured in a future Wildlings spotlight, get in touch. Every member has a story worth telling.