Necrons Update

Well I've finally finished the first stage of my Necron project so thought it was time to post some pics. It's only a small army at the moment and I may add the odd unit to it in future, but its' enough to be going with and has already roughed up some Eldar nicely in a trial run....

In the end I went for a traditional metallic look for the Necrons. If you look further down this blog you will see that I was thinking about a sandstone colour scheme but it would have taken too long to paint and so I opted for a scheme that could be done mostly with spray paint. Only when I finished did it occur to me that I could have used sand coloured spray just as easily as a metallic - so a bit of a senior moment there. I have tried to keep a colour theme throughout - dirty steel for main bodys (Army Painter Plate Mail with Gryphonne Sepia wash), dirty bronze for special components (Vallejo bronze with Devlan Mud wash) and various shades of green for points of detail.

I don't like the supplied gauss rods for necrons so I took the decision (which I later regretted) to paint all of them with a sort of electric lightning flash effect. This was done by coating them black, then painting up the electric with three shades of green (goblin, scorpion then 50/50 scorpion/white) followed by a wash of Thraka green. Overall I'm happy with the effect but when you've got 40+ of them to paint then it starts to get soul destroying (which is sort of appropriate for a Necron I guess).

Warriors

Scarabs 

Destroyers

Heavy Destroyer

Tomb Spyder

Destroyer Lord

AWI British Commanders (Pendraken Miniatures 10mm)

Well finally my Brits have some officers. Once again some excellent sculpts from Clibanarium. There are 6 great individual officers in each pack. I've only used three though, since thats all I need for Guilford Courthouse. The others will have to wait until the rebels are completed (in a decade or so.....)

Other Partizan 2010

Just back from holiday today so, naturally, I deserted the family and went straight over to Newark to have a look round Partizan. It seemed a lot quieter than previous occasions but there were still plenty of nice games to look at. Of particular interest to me was the 28mm AWI game put on by Steve Jones who's excellent blog (Steve's Paintingshed) I only just discovered today. The game looked lovely and, in particular, the hand painted flags were a joy to behold. The game was being played with Black Powder rules and did seem to be flowing well. A very nice chap from Grimsby also started to convince me that perhaps I should be parting with £30 to sample these rules....sigh. But so far I'm still sticking with British Grenadier.

Oh..... and while I was on holiday the Pendraken Mounted Commanders appeared - just waiting for them to arrive in the post. Looks like the Necrons will have to wait for a bit (even though I got a rather nice Destroyer Lord and Tomb Spyder for my birthday......)

Here's some pics that I took of Steve's game. There's lots more nice stuff on his blog.

Pendraken AWI Generals might arrive September

The masters are complete for the AWI Generals and they look fantastic!!! Six Brits and six rebellious colonial types. This range just gets better and better ! Clibinarium has posted the above pic and a few even more detailed ones on the Pendraken Forum. Hopefully they are going to be available in Pendraken's September release. At last my little men will have leaders.

New Pendraken AWI General's are on their way

First pics from Clibinarium. At last I'm going to have someone to inspire my gallant Brits!

More details on the Pendraken Forum
 
 
 
 
    

Necron Army Diary - Part 1

Bit of a change of direction at the moment. I'm painting up a small Necron army for 40K. The main reason is so that I can play some games against George's Eldar. I really don't want this project to derail my historical projects and thats the reason I ended up choosing Necrons since a quick scan through the various 40K armies gave me the idea that they were probably the quickest to paint up.

I put some thought into a Necron colour scheme and was originally hoping to be able to do something a bit different to the normal metallic fare. My first thoughts were to paint them up Egyptian style with bodies of stone and bronze. I knocked up a test figure (see left) but it took me too long to paint. I am a really slow painter. So this wasn't going to work without putting my AWI armies back a year.....

So I've gone back to a standard Necron metallic scheme. They're going to be steel coloured, but dirty and rusty. I'm going to concentrate on a few small areas to detail and do the rest of the figures as quickly as I can. The main point of detailing will be to paint the Gauss rods. I'm not happy with the garish translucent rods as they come out of the box and so I'm going to do a variegated electricity pattern on them (I had a go of this on the tester model). My other area of concentration will be bases. I want to do some Giants Causeway style rock formations, so i've ordered some hexagonal plastic rods and we'll see whether I can knock up anything that looks reasonable.

Okay so now I've got the main force of warriors assembled. Before moving on, I really need to have a moan. I hate sticking plastic figures together and these were no exception.

Two main points of irritation for me;

Firstly the skulls are connected to the sprues by two joins, one under each cheekbone. That makes it impossible to snip off cleanly and finger-stabbingly difficult to then trim using a craft knife.

Secondly - it seems you need at least 15 fingers to hold the arms in place when glueing them together. In the end though, I managed to find a sequence that worked;

• Put glue in the socket holes not the socket balls. Put a blob in each shoulder socket and one in the gun socket. 
• Put the left arm into the gun socket and hold for about 10-15 seconds so that it holds in place but is still flexible. 
• Now attach the gun/arm assembly to both shoulders. It should just about hold itself together as you position the arms. 
• Hold it for a few seconds until it can support itself
• Curse GW and then move onto the next one

So, next step, painting......


Right, my secret weapon in speed painting has been deployed. Army Painter Plate Metal primer spray. So in only a couple of minutes they are primed and painted in the base colour. If only they did a 10mm tartan spray to do AWI Highlanders. From now on though it's all downhill speedwise..... I'm to be doing a series of washes to bring out the detail and add a general dirty rustiness to them. When I've had a go, then I'll post some more pics in Part 2.

the first real posting to this blog

All the posts below this one are a cheat really because the figures have been painted for ages. I've posted them now so that this blog starts with some actual content. I'm currently trying to build both armies needed to fight Guilford Courthouse at 1:20 scale. The figures are all by Pendraken and they are really a spectacular range sculpted by the extremely talented Clibinarium. I'm basing up for the British Grenadier rules and so far I've finished all of the Brits except of course for the commanders (which aren't yet available - if this outrages you then join the Pendraken Forum and add your name to the petition!).

This leaves the following outstanding tasks in the project;

• Buy and paint the American army (on the plus side they only have one flag per regiment. On the negative side there's bloody loads of militia and none of them in uniform)
• Trees - thousands of 'em!! I'm going to make them all myself using the wire technique. I might post some pics of these when I get round to it
• Rail fences - not sure whether to make them or buy them. I bought some N gauge model railway fences but they are in soft plastic so I'm not sure whether I will be happy with them or not. If I make them then currently I'm thinking about splitting matchsticks to make the individual beams. This might just prove to be the fiddliest task in history though..
• Buildings - I got some pretty resin ones at Salute from Timecast. Actually they are advertised as ACW period but I think they look fine for this period too
• Terrain boards - for the moment I'm making do with the "Mat-o-War" (get it from Antenociti), but I really should put some thought to some better quality boards (I'm undecided whether to make or buy though...)
• Various markers (casualties, disruption etc)

At the moment all of the above is on hold and will probably resume in the Autumn. For now Summertime is Necron time.......

Hessian Jaegers (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

Some of the best sculpted figures in the Pendraken range. A good variety of figures in each pack - just right for skirmishers.

van Bose Hessian Regiment (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

The van Bose Hessian regiment. This was one of those paintjobs that makes you feel that your eyeballs are going to pop. Striped trousers and the worlds most complicated flags (which annoyingly are smaller than British ones). And then I got carried away and put some patches on their knees too. By the time I got round to the Highlanders I had regained my sanity and cunningly avoided having to do tartan trousers.......

17th Light Dragoons (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

Royal Artillery 3 Pdrs (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

Some would have you believe the General Cornwallis fired through his own men on purpose to save the day. Surely not......

The Guards (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

Okay okay so we all know the Guards didn't actually wear 1768 Warrant Uniform but I've got some excuses. Firstly there aren't any figures of the Foot Guards in their correct uniform for the Southern Campaign. But, more importantly, the 1768 Warrant is just a gorgeous uniform and Clibinarium's sculpts are a wonder to behold. So.... no way was I going to paint up the Brits and not have any.

23rd Foot (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

The 23rd Foot (Royal Welch Fusileers). When I painted them up I wasn't aware of any goats in this scale so they are without their famous mascot. Apparently they are available as N gauge railway accessories so maybe I will re-do this command group some day!

British Light Infantry (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

These are just generic light infantry and totally wrong for Guilford Courthouse. However there aren't really any late war Light Bobs available yet and so I'm happy to compromise with these (and I'm sure that I will get to use them when I get round to my early war collection in a decade or two)

71st Highlanders (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

33rd Foot (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

British Legion (10mm Pendraken Miniatures)

These are actually generic British light infantry figures painted up in Legion colours. Pendraken don't yet do any figures in Tarletons. However a small amount of internet research (emphasis on small) seems to indicate that no-one really knows what the Legion infantry actually wore, so on the basis that nobody can prove me wrong, this is how they ended up. These are based up as light infantry as per the Legion deployment at Guilford Courthouse,