Updating My Necron Colour Scheme

If I were you, I would keep my eye on the little ones

Good evening children of the Plague Father and thank you for joining me again on this cold and dreary evening. I would like to take a look at my ( lack of ) progress with my Necron Force and hopefully help me make a few decisions as to which direction I am going to go in with them.

When it was formally announced that Necrons were being given a new codex I knew I had to add to my collection, they were my first army after all and it would be rude not to. So I placed an order which gave me a little of everything to try out. While this does mean I don't have an army internet approved "auto include" units, I do have a lot of nice new models to have a play around with and can hopefully find what suits my play style.

I actually like the Cryptek who thinks he is KISS

So far I have only assembled an Annihilation Barge as afterwards it got me thinking about my colour scheme. As you can see in my previous post my models have a basic scheme and the basing needs redoing. I have decided to add blue to the army as it goes well with the brown of metal but am torn between a metallic blue and a flat blue. Both of which I like though I find myself switching back and forth between the two.

I apologise that the photos below are pretty bad, this is because I had lost the natural light by the time I finished trying out colours on my robotic minions but hopefully it will help you get an idea of what I am going for.

Dark blue and my Dragon Forge base tester

Metallic blue

Then there is the question of vehicles and what colour to do them as my monoliths are painted the same way as my infantry but I am unsure on the smaller vehicles. I have seen some very nice ones using a dark green base and glow effects which I could change to suit my idea of a blue scheme. This is causing me to delay my army as both ways appeal to me and I could extend the metallic blue on to the vehicles as they have a lot more detail than the oppressive monolith does.

For the bases I have decided to use the Dragon Forge bases I picked up for my Black Templars as between painting my Tomb Kings, Necrons and any smaller model that steals my interest they have been carefully packed away waiting their next wave of reinforcements to further bulk out an army I barely use ( what can I say T'au & Necrons just steal away all my 40k focus ).

Luckily I already know how I am going to do the bases as I painted one Sunday afternoon ( without my usual changes to the colour scheme every few minutes ) along with testing a few colours out on my Necrons. Looking at the pictures above I am happy that the new bases really do look a lot better.

So I put it to you ladies and gentlemen of the internet, metallic or non-metallic blue?

Until next time keeping spreading the blessings of Papa Nurgle and you will always have a place in his garden.

O'Shashar

Crimson Fists Showcase

Hi everyone, I thought I would take a break from my Skaven progress posts (mainly as there hasnt been much recently) and show some pictures of some of my Crimson Fists army.

First off here is the Chapter Master himself, Pedro Kantor. In the above picture he is with my Sternguard Veterans unit. Including Pedro in an army list allows you to use Sternguard as a scoring unit (which has been very handy at times). My favourite thing about Pedro is the extra attacks he gives out due to his Living Chapter Banner rule. Half of my Sternguard are converted from a tactical squad and the Black Templars upgrade sprue as well as some bitz I had left around, and they fit in well with the metal figures so I'm happy I took that approach.

One of my other units I often use is my Chaplain with Jump Pack attached to an Assault Squad. Rerolls for an assault squad are fantastic, this unit ripped apart Mighty Simo's Demon Prince in a single turn the last time I fielded them (and he was not happy!!!)

My Terminator Librarian has only seen battle the once so far (and rolled a perils of the warp - doh!) however I can see big things for him if I can learn how to use him properly. My ideal plan is to add him to the Sternguard unit and teleport into ideal locations to unleash the Sternguard's special ammo.

Another unit type I am fond of are the Scouts. I tend to use my scouts in a defensive capacity, holding objectives in my own deployment zone, however I sometimes use the land speeder storm and bike squad to try to perform last minute daring moves to contest objectives, or to lend support to an assualt. In my last game my scout squad joined an assault and actually caused 2 wounds on Typhus... Bargain!

I also have painted up a Predator, Dreadnaught, Tactical Squad, Devestator Squad, Techmarine, and a Captain, however I'm not as happy with the paintjobs on those. I have lots more to paint for my Crimson Fists, including a Vindicator, Landraider Crusader, Rhino, another Dreadnaught, a second Tactical Squad, some more scouts, more terminators, some assault terminators, Darnath Lysander (as a counts as model), another Captain (which will be my attempt to create Alessio Cortez the Immortal), a Command Squad and thats it off the top of my head... Damn you Ebay!!!

Thats it for me until next time, hope Father Nurgle doesn't frown upon my Imperial background :)

Fresh from the Forge: Chaos Warhound Titan

Hello and welcome back to Nurgle's favoured cupboard. We apologise for being a little behind on our posts, but we have all been extremely busy or have had nothing new to report. I wanted to change the tone from the buzz of the latest Necron release. I have to say they look very shiny and I am sure O'Shashar will be doing a post soon about them seeing as he acquired some of the new models on release day.

OK, now none of you may be aware but it was my birthday 2 weeks ago. I was surely blessed as last week my Brother-in-law got in touch with me regarding my top secret present. It was so secret that even the Inquisition struggled to find out what it was. Well today I have decided to share this blessing of Nurgle with our loyal followers.

I was gifted a might Chaos Warhound Titan fresh from the forges of Mars to bolster my growing Chaos war band. My Brother-in-law and his best friend Salty, who some of you may know him as he is very well known on Warseer Forums, had hand built the titan from scratch. Now for those of you who would like to know how this can be done can find the blueprints here.

OK, well I am sure you are drooling in anticipation to see what this magnificent war machine looks like. I have got some pictures for you below that Salty kindly allowed me to use from his Warseer log. He has two running at the moment that I would recommend checking out. He has an Ork log and a General log.

I am unsure when I will be able to get round to painting this awe inspiring creation, but as soon as I do I will get post, put up about it. For the the less evil of you out their Dorn's Arrow is due to put up a showcase of his Crimson Fails...I mean Fists. Until next time our loyal daemonic followers of the all father.

An ancient evil stirs (Necron Showcase)

Welcome back our faithful followers to Nurgle. Now I thought I would continue where O'Shashar left off and dust off my small Necron army with the pleasing news they are due to be updates tomorrow (let's face it, we all know its happening) and its about time aswell! I started my Necron army shortly after getting back into Wahammer about 2 years back. I thought they would be an easy army to paint and build up and the plan was to use them when I got bored of my Spiky Marines.

Needless to say in 5th edition Necrons have been nerfed pretty badly, so I am hoping the update with bring them back in the competition. However, I don't want Games Workshop to carry on their trend of making each new army overpowered like the Shiny Super Marines as I don't want to dust off my Necrons only to find that everyone has decided to be them as they are the best thing out there. Rant over. Anyway, back onto my cold, merciless killers from the stars. Below are a few snaps of my army (about 850points) in all its glory!

I decided not to go for the standard paint scheme of black dry brushed with a bit of silver and a few details as I thought it was too sloppy. I looked through the codex and decided to bring a bit of colour to the scheme. There where a lot of nice examples of alternative ways to paint Necrons. I really liked the ceramic effects on some of the schemes as well as the old and rusted. In the end I ended up doing a mix of two or three of the schemes in the book. There a few more photos of my models below for a closer look.

I started by basecoating the entire model in Tin Bitz and then dry brushed a layer of Boltgun metal over the top. Followed by a lighter dry brush of Chainmail. I then did two washes on the model. On the metal areas, I gave a light was of Gryphonne Sypia to give the metal a rusted look. To achieve the metallic purple I gave the model a wash of Leviathan Purple. The gold trim was done by starting with a base coat of Dwarf Bronze with a Layer of Shining Gold, followed by a highlight of Shining Gold.

The face mask was done to mimic bone and I did in the same way many people would do ice. The idea behind this was that the face mask would strike fear in the Necrons enemies and I thought doing the same method as bone wouldn't look right. I wanted it to look more artificial and so I went with a cold ice white. I started off with a base coat of Fenris Grey I then gradually added Space Wolf Grey in dry brush layers and then finished off with a highlight of pure Skull White.

Anyway that's it for me this week our companions of chaos. I am currently finishing some more models for my army in our tale of three gamers and I hope to have some pictures up soon of those. In the mean time continue to spread Nurgles blessings.

My Finished Justicar Finari

Good evening children of the Plague Father and thank you for making the perilous journey through the warp to join me in giving reverence to our lord.

Tonight my humble offering is my completed Justicar Finari from Reaper Miniatures and follows on from my earlier work in progress post. After the issues I had I was going to leave her as she was and hand varnished with gloss coat for two reasons, firstly I had become completely paranoid I was going to damage her again when I played my first game and secondly I didn't own any brush on matt varnish.

This made the armour look a little too reflective compared with how tarnished it was suppose to be, as well as her cloth, skin and hair looking unnatural. I decided I would pick up a pot of matt varnish and hope it evened out, the trouble was I had a very busy week at work and couldn't find the time to walk up to my local store. After I took some photos of my Necrons last weekend I was filled with motivation to paint and Finari got a little more work. I decided to work on her face, hair and to highlight the cloth.

So without further ado here is my Justicar Finari.

In the end I redid the sword as well as found it disappeared into the armour. It also gave me an excuse to use my Vallejo Gun Metal Blue, which I bought for no other reason than I thought it looked funky. I used it as a base then gradually added Mithril Silver, building up the colour with a mix of thin layers and dry brushing.

With her hair I added streaks of a darker brown to the recesses as they had been lost after the second repaint. For the cloth I mixed Hawk Turquoise with a touch of Enchanted Blue and used broad highlights. I then added gentler highlights using a 1:1 ratio of Hawk Turquoise and Enchanted Blue.

The base I was torn between adding a skeletal arm or some red lichen used sparingly. After speaking with my fellow adventurers during our first Warhammer Quest dungeon, they seemed to like the base as it was and thought that anything else would take away from the feel of the stark dungeon floor.

Now I know I am not going to be winning a Golden Daemon any time soon, I am however happy to have this model done and to a better standard than I was planning to leave it at. For my first attempt at highlighting I am pleased with how it turned out and I have learnt a few things, mainly I need to take my time, keep a steady hand and practice as much as I can. As without practice I will never improve and there is a lot of room for improvement judging by the quality of work I have seen others publish on their own sites.

On the subject of improving my painting abilities I welcome any criticism that you may have.

On a final note this will be my Bretonnian Knight stand in and will go by the name of "Sabriel la mort d'argent" which should be the "Sabriel the silver death" however if any of you speak/write French and this is incorrect please correct me.

Until next time remember you are never alone as long as you carry Papa Nurgle's pestilent blessings.

O'Shashar

Progress, Injuries and Distractions

Greetings followers of the Plague Lord. Today I thought I would talk about my last month's hobby activity which brings me to the title, 'Progress, Injuries and Distractions.' So first of all I would like to share with you a couple of photos of 'Progress' towards my 1000 point Skaven list.


So above are 20 Clanrats which I will mix into my Slave unit (and pretend they don't have shields). I will be mixing in some non-rat members as well as more poor looking wretches to the unit shortly in order to boost it to 40 strong.


The above are another 20 Clanrats, this time with spears and shields, so another 19 to add to this block and I will be getting somewhere with my ever daunting list.


Above is my 2nd Standard Bearer and my first attempt at a very simple freehand banner design, which I am fairly happy with.

Now onto the 'Injuries'. A few months ago I broke my toe while kickboxing, which allowed me to spend a fair amount of time painting. However this month I injured my hand while doing a much less extreme sport (washing the pots haha) and was unfortunately bandaged up for a week. However it was around this time that the idea of doing Warhammer Quest started cropping up. Which leads me to the 'Distractions'...



Here is my Warrior Priest that I have painted up for Warhammer Quest. I'm really happy with how the model has turned out as I have always wanted an Empire army from the Ostermark region and this model can be my first step towards that aim. Now if only I can find enough free time to get to one of these Warhammer Quest meetings...

Next post from me I will hopefully have some Stormvermin painted up and will have played some Warhammer Quest, so until next time friends enjoy the pestilent gifts of the Drippy One.

A Tomb World Awakens

Good evening children of the Plague Father by now I am sure you have all seen the stir about the Necrons being put on preorder at the end of this month and I for one could not be happier about this ( providing they don't get crippled in 6th that is ).

Now instead of recycling the pictures you can see everywhere at the minute I decided instead to start awakening the sleeping warriors of the C'tan I have collected ( yes that's right I have another old xeno race up my sleeve ).

I bought the Necrons after having my first game of 40k with a few friends and loved the idea of an unstoppable wave of robots killing indiscriminately with their gauss weapons stripping their victims to nothingness atom by atom and feeding the survivors to their cruel Gods. So after one whole game I went out and bought two battle forces, two Monoliths, a couple of lords and a Tomb Spyder.

Over the course of a long weekend I built and painted my Necrons ready for the next game and the look of shock on their faces when I put my painted army on the table to face off against the sea of grey miniatures is what set in my mind that I wanted to always use painted models ( I am the first to admit while I still strive for this I have fallen short more often than not ).

These are not the best painted models as these were the first models I ever painted. I remember the Necrons being quite forgiving to a new painter and letting me feel I was getting a force I could be happy with without selling my soul to the Devil for painting talent. These days they are desperate to be rebased with the crystals never fitting on any board I have ever used.

First up are five of my fifty six basic warriors. I like the basic troops and hopefully they will be given a decent buff so I can make the most of these happy little bringers of death but with new Immortals and Flayed ones supposedly having a way to become troops I am not too sure how many I will need.

Scarabs have always proven to be a good unit to tie up small squads and with their 2+ cover save when turbo boosting they are difficult to remove without templates. The proposed buffs they are rumoured to be getting may mean I have to expand their ranks though currently they are only in the warrior boxes so unless sneak in more boxes like Ripper Swarms or get their own there could be a problem I'll have to address at the time.

 

The Tomb Spyder was my first attempt at magnetising a model and turned out better than I expected. Through trial and error taught me a lot about using magnets and the importance of using the right sized magnet for the job not just the ones you have to hand.

My Wraith Lord which I ran as a Destroyer Lord with War Scythe along side two squads of three Wraiths was my first conversion using a standard Wraith and Destroyer Lord kits. It was less finesse and more force as I used a combination of clippers and bone saw to "lovingly" join the two kits and Lord Styx was born ( originally Lord Sticky as he stuck to my fingers more than himself while building it ).

Now being a true Yorkshire man and not liking to waste any thing I salvaged the head off the Wraith body and used the rest of the Destroyer Lord kit to make a Destroyer Lord with Resurrection Orb & Staff of Light. He is pictured with two of my Destroyers as he did like to sit with them in the back field to let them keep on getting back up.

And lastly the group shot which if you click will give you a larger picture if you desire a closer look.

Now I expect most of these models won't get that much use in the new codex as all the new models don't have the green plastic rods, which I have to admit I am going to miss. The plastic wasn't great with bubbles and very obvious join lines on the large crystals but it gave a nice contract to the metallic scheme.

Until next time may you enjoy the blessings of life Papa Nurgle grants you before the cold unfeeling wrath of the Necrons cleanse this universe of all organic life.

O'Shashar