Robert Jones links Tabletop Battles rebrand to miniature painting color theory

Robert Jones turns a branding headache into the kind of hobby lesson that actually helps your next paint session. If Tabletop Battles needs a coherent visual identity, your army probably does too, and that is the real value buried in his latest progress update.

The rebrand that exposed the same problem painters face

The shift from Goonhammer to Tabletop Battles was announced on April 20, 2026, and the reason was practical rather than sentimental: the old name no longer fit what the worker-owned collective does now. The group is no longer just a Warhammer site in the old sense. It also runs apps, event tools, and broader tabletop coverage, including Administratum and The Tabletop Battles App, and it describes itself as the largest worker-owned media collective in the tabletop and wargaming space.

That matters because Jones is not just writing about the change. He is the person carrying a lot of the visual load, and the rebrand has forced real work: logos, icons, banners, and a new brand palette. For busy painters, that kind of pressure should sound familiar. When a project gets bigger than the first idea you had for it, the fix is almost always the same: stop improvising and build a system.

Why the old look stopped working

Jones is blunt about the old Goonhammer identity. It was mostly black-and-white text, with a few in-jokes and not much in the way of a modern logo. The name on the page used Redeye Serif, a font chosen because it appeared in 7th edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebooks, but the overall look was still more text-first than brand-first.

That old setup worked when the site was smaller and more self-referential. It breaks down when the project becomes a broader media and software ecosystem. Painters run into the same wall when a one-off scheme turns into a full army. The first squad can survive on impulse and memory. The fifth unit starts looking off if there is no repeated structure holding it together.

Jones’s point lands because it is not really about websites at all. It is about what happens when a visual project outgrows casual decisions. At that point, you need rules for color, contrast, and repetition, not just taste.

Color theory is not just for designers

The most useful part of Jones’s piece is his reminder that color matching tools are not limited to branding work. They can help plan miniature schemes and keep an army visually consistent. That is the bridge between his site work and your paint desk.

Goonhammer’s 2024 Hobby 102: Colour Theory guide frames miniature painting as an exercise in understanding color relationships and the core attributes of hue, saturation, and value. Warhammer Community’s Citadel Colour Masterclass says the same thing in plainer terms: colour theory is a system for categorizing colors and understanding how they relate to one another so you can get better results on the model. Jones is essentially applying that same logic to a website refresh.

The practical takeaway is simple. If you can control how colors behave in a logo, you can control how they behave on a squad. A strong army scheme is not just about picking a favorite paint. It is about deciding which color dominates, which color supports it, and which color acts as the accent that makes the whole thing read at tabletop distance.

What to steal for your own backlog tonight

Jones’s progress matters because it shows how far you can get in short sessions when the work is organized. Design work, life obligations, and hobby time do not have to cancel each other out. They can feed each other if you stop asking every session to solve the whole project.

Try borrowing the same approach for your own backlog:

• Pick one dominant color and one accent color before you start the next unit.
• Test the scheme on a single model, then lock it in before moving to the rest of the box.
• Write down your paint order and highlight mix so the next squad matches the first.
• Use a reference image or palette card so your armor, trim, and basing do not drift over time.
• If a project includes banners, icons, or markings, decide those colors at the same time as the armor so the whole force feels intentional.

That last point is where Jones’s branding work becomes genuinely useful to painters. A banner is just another place where your scheme can fall apart if you improvise too much. So is a shoulder pad rim, a chapter badge, or a display base. The more you treat those elements like parts of one visual identity, the less cleanup you need later.

The Dallas deadline gives the lesson teeth

The timing makes the update sharper. Games Workshop’s 2026 Warhammer Open Dallas runs May 22 to 24, 2026 at Esports Stadium Arlington, and the event covers Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar, and Kill Team. It also offers Golden Tickets for the World Championships of Warhammer in Barcelona, which instantly gives hobby planning a deadline and a purpose.

That is why Jones’s ongoing Red Corsairs project and his preparations for Dallas matter beyond his own desk. Big events compress decision-making. When a tournament, narrative weekend, or local meetup is coming up, you do not need a perfect masterplan. You need a palette you can repeat, a finish you can sustain, and enough structure to keep the army looking like it belongs together even if the work happens in half-hour bursts.

Jones’s real progress is not just that the site got a new name and new art. It is that the rebrand forced him to think like a painter again, only with logos instead of power armor. That is the useful part for anyone staring at a pile of unfinished minis tonight: a better system beats a bigger burst of motivation, and a coherent palette will carry farther than another random color choice ever will.