Happy Little Accidents
When the Plan Wasn’t the Point
A while back, I was experimenting with our Metal Elementals.
Specifically, I wanted to see if I could use an Army Painter Speedpaint as the base coat instead of Citadel Runefang Steel.
Before we go any further, there’s something you should know about me:
My ability to accurately visualize an end result ahead of time is about as effective as an unplugged monitor.
So this experiment had two key ingredients.
One mistake.
And one very strange interaction.
The Mistake
Normally, when we paint our Metal Elementals, we dilute our grey contrast paint.
The goal is simple:
Let the contrast settle into the recesses
Keep the steel bright everywhere else
That balance creates the illusion of age and use — darker where grime would naturally collect, lighter where the metal would wear clean over time.
Except this time, I forgot something important.
I didn’t dilute the contrast paint.
At all.
The Unexpected Interaction
When the full-strength contrast paint hit the Army Painter Speedpaint, it didn’t behave the way it normally does over a metallic base.
It didn’t flow.
Instead of running into the recesses, it just… stayed put.
As it dried, something even stranger happened. The contrast didn’t sit on top of the speed paint the way I expected. It seemed to meld with it.
The result wasn’t silver.
It wasn’t black.
It was a deep, metallic dark grey.
And suddenly, it clicked.
When the Accident Makes Sense
If you play Pathfinder, you probably already know where this is going.
That dark grey-black wasn’t “wrong steel.”
It was adamantine.
The medium Metal Elemental sitting on my desk didn’t look like a mistake anymore. It looked like something else entirely — heavier, older, meaner.
Honestly?
It reminded me of a xenomorph.
I loved it.
How the Adamantine Golem Came to Be
That test piece wasn’t supposed to exist.
But once I saw it, there was no un-seeing it.
That’s how our Adamantine Golem was born — not from a design document, not from careful planning, but from a forgotten dilution step and a chemical interaction I didn’t expect.
It wasn’t a failure.
It was a lesson.
Why We Let Mistakes Breathe
This process keeps reinforcing the same idea for me:
Failure is always an option — as long as you learn from it.
If I had immediately stripped that model and started over, the Adamantine Golem wouldn’t exist.
Sometimes the right move isn’t fixing the mistake right away.
Sometimes it’s stopping long enough to ask:
“What did this just teach me?”
That question has led to some of our favorite pieces.
And it will probably lead to more.
Adamantine Golem, 75mm Base, 5” tall
