New ITEN Necron Retinue List
The new 40K codex for Necrons was released last year, and added a bunch of new models. I’ve just got round to finishing and releasing an updated retinue list for In The Emperor’s Name which introduces all these new models (and don’t worry, I’ve kept the Pariahs!).
You can download the list here – if you have any comments, please post them on the Forge Of War forum.
Warhammer 40K 25th Anniversary Tournament at No Man’s Land
Big day today. Quite apart from it being Warhammer 40,000′s 25th birthday, it was also the first time I’ve played in a tournament: against strangers (sort of). Also the first time I’ve used my destroyers, scarab, Imotekh, Annihilation Barge and Monolith.
I don’t have time to give a full report but I’m pleased to say that I came 9th out of 14, with two losses, a draw and a win, against Dark Eldar, Space Wolves, codex marines and a rival Necron dynasty. Playing against Necrons was a lot of fun!
Check out the photos below and look out for the special spectator who came along! (I’m not talking about Ty the Wonder-Dog.)
Review: Puppets War Cyber Beetles (Canoptek Scarab proxies)
I came across a post on TGN about some cyber beetles produced by Puppets War (not to be confused with Puppet Wars). They’re obviously cashing in on the newfound cheesiness of Necron scarabs: other than the scarabs you get when you by a box of warriors, the only other way to get scarabs is to buy them from Forge World at £1.33 each. By making pretty reasonable proxies at about a third of the price, I am sure they are doing quite well.
Seeing how I sacrificed most of my cache of scarabs to make Epic scale destroyers, I am pretty short of the beasties, so I decided to buy some. They just arrived today, so here’s a picture of how they turned out:
The casting quality is pretty good, with only a small amount of flash or warpage (and where there is any, it’s to the underside where it’s not likely to be noticed). The detail is pretty good and the size in comparison to Games Workshop’s scarabs is pretty good. So they’re not a bad alternative to the official models.
Games Workshop should open source their rules development process
As a rule I don’t like to get drawn in to the 40K gossip echo chamber. There’s an old saying: Never wrestle with a pig: You both get all dirty, and the pig likes it.
Yesterday evening, I noticed a flurry of gossip in the blogo- and twitter-sphere suggesting that rules for the rumoured 6th edition of Warhammer 40,000 had been leaked, and uploaded onto a file-sharing website (the file has since been removed).
All this cafuffle prompts the following question: so what?
How to make dragonscale with green stuff
Here’s how I made the drakescale loincloths and banners for my Fire Drakes.
Fire Drakes, Part 1
I’ve spent much of the past week working on the first few units of my previously-mentioned Salamanders Fire Drakes army.
Behold:
My Hobby Plans For 2012
2012 is almost upon us! The last twelve months have been a period of diversification for me in hobby terms: I delved more deeply into 15mm SF stuff, finished my first 40k army in 15 years, and discovered In The Emperor’s Name.
I thought that it might be fun to post my plans for 2012, so I can look back next year and see how I did.
Citadel Finecast, First Impressions
Here’s the first FineCast miniature that I’ve assembled and painted. I recently took my step-daughter and her friend to one of my local GW stores for one of their “hobby tutorial” sessions (which was actually great fun) and we each bought a miniature to paint after. The kids both got Huron Blackheart and I got this, Imhotek the Stormlord.
Overall, I’m not especially impressed with Finecast: of the three miniatures, mine was the only one that didn’t have major gaps left by bubbles in the mould. Imhotek’s staff was quite badly warped (although that’s easy enough to fix), but the absurd number of injection sprues meant that getting the model off the frame was pretty risky, and I ended up breaking off his thumb, which I promptly lost, and had to replace with a piece of sprue. His foot also broke off and I had to reinforce it by adding some cork pieces to the base (which actually turned out quite well).
I was probably foolish in believing what I’d been told about being able to paint directly onto the resin: when the kids tried this with their miniatures, the paint refused to adhere and I had to give them a quick blast from a spray can to prime them.
Here’s a few more pictures of the finished Overlord. I think I am going to avoid Finecast miniatures whenever possible, and stick to metal miniatures if I can: thankfully a lot of the stuff that’s now Finecast only is still available on eBay.
I’m still pretty impressed by the new Necron stuff. I bought a box of Immortals/Deathmarks and these plastic minis are pretty fantastic.
WIP: Imperial Crusader For In The Emperor’s Name
Here’s a photo of a current work-in-progress: an Imperial Crusader that I plan to use in games of In The Emperor’s Name:
The miniature is a War Priest from Avatars of War. I’ve 40K’d it up a bit, by adding a Plasma Gun, Combat Knife, ammo pack and purity seal, all taken from the Space Marine accessories sprue. The head is from a Space Wolf marine. A bit of etched brass on the shoulder and on the sides of the warhammer finishes him off (note that the base is temporary).
More pictures below.
Illuminated Necron Monolith
I’ve now finished the centerpiece of my Warhammer 40,000 Necron Army: an internally illuminated Monolith:
Front View
This is what it looks like when you turn the lights down:
Front View
To build it, I pretty much followed the instructions in this article on Librarium Online. The only difference was my use of small pieces of paper, which I glued behind the green plastic rods to make the light more diffuse. Here’s what they look like from the inside:
Interior shot showing paper filters
You can also see the big wads of Green Stuff I used to plug the holes around the Gauss turrets in each corner. Here’s a couple of pictures of the lighting rig:
CCFL Lamp and Transformer
CCFL Lamp and Transformer
I bought the CCFL system from Scan.co.uk: the components cost me less than a tenner, which is pretty amazing. I am thinking about buying some more to use in some future terrain pieces.
After being sprayed black, I painted the outside of the Monolith in Tin Bitz using some home-made foam brushes of various shapes and sizes:
Foam Brushes
I then drybrushed Brazen Brass over the Tin Bitz using a large drybrush, and then picked out the edges in Shining Gold. I used Devlan Mud to add some weathering and dirt, especially to the parts that I’d given a coat of Boltgun Metal to add some contrast.
Side and rear shots:
Side View
Side View
Rear View
Rear View
Necron Destroyers and Heavy Destroyers
Here are some photos of the my Destroyers and Heavy Destroyers. I decided to wait until I’d painted them all before doing the bases, so that there was consistency. I painted the bases in the same style as the troop bases: Snakebite Leather washed with Devlan Mud, then drybrushed with Bronzed Flesh and Tallarn Flesh, with GW’s Dead Grass applied on top.
Necron Warriors Finished
Necron Warriors - First and Second Phalanxes
I’ve just finished the second phalanx of Necron Warriors for my 40K Army. This is the first set of models I’ve done with the new basing style, which you can see here:
Necron Warrior
The base texture is fine sand glued to the base with PVA. This is then painted with Snakebite Leather (as is the side of the base), and then washed with Devlan Mud. This is then drybrushed with Bronzed Flesh and Tallarn Flesh. Finally, I applied some of GW’s Burnt Grass using a Noch applicator.
The first picture shows both phalanxes together, the first one is on the left. Here’s a close-up:
Necron Warriors - First Phalanx
I had to re-base these miniatures, using a razor saw to remove them from their old base. Here’s the new phalanx:
Necron Warriors - Second Phalanx
These two phalanxes form the core of my Necron army, which is just about finished: all that’s left is a couple of Heavy Destroyers that are nearly done, and then the centrepiece: my internally illuminated Monolith. More to follow!
Quick tip: future-proof your bases
It’s been a while since my last post. After a few weeks of very pleasant weather, which made it possible for me to undercoat and varnish a huge pile of stuff, the Traditional English Summer has put in an appearance and it’s been raining for the last few weekends, so I haven’t had much to show off.
I wanted to share a quick tip which might make your life easier in the future: I have decided to rebase all my 40K scale Necrons, as I wasn’t happy with the appearance of the basing material I was using (a very coarse saw dust). I quickly realised that this would be a particularly tough challenge for my plastic Necron warriors.
I was a scale model maker before I was a war gamer, so for as long as I can remember, I’ve always used polystyrene cement (specifically Revell’s professional liquid poly) for assembling plastic miniatures. As I understand it, a lot of miniature hobbyists use superglue instead, but using polystyrene cement welds the plastic parts together, meaning that you can shave and file the join down until it’s invisible.
So naturally, when assembling my Necron warriors, I used liquid poly to glue them to their base. I’ve now realised that if I’d used superglue instead, it would have made the job of rebasing much easier.
So: always superglue plastic miniatures to their bases, even if their bases are also plastic! Here endeth the lesson.
Necron Wraiths
I’ve been pre-occupied with Epic recently but I still have a 40K Necron army in the works. I did once have a modest Space Marine army (made up mostly of plastic Mark VI and VII marines from Rogue Trader and 2nd edition, and with an old-style Land Raider) and even played games with them – a total of 2 – but I haven’t really been interested in 40K since the early nineties. But at least one of my friends is, so I agreed to build a Necron army to play against him.
I finished a squad of Necron Warriors and a Lord last year, but progress stalled due to problems with some Destroyers that were damaged by the Plasti-kote spray I was using. While painting my Epic army, I found that Army Painter chainmail spray gives a better finish, so now that the Epic army is pretty much finished, I’m ready to have another go at the 40K army. Here are some Wraiths I just finished:
Gale Force 9 “Battlefield In A Box” Green Crystals
I found out about these terrain pieces from the Beasts of War, who have a series of excellent unboxing videos:
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I realised that they are perfect for both 40k and Epic scale games. Unfortunately they’re extremely hard to get hold of! It took me a while but I finally tracked down a box of them on the Marquee Models website (they’re now out of stock on there as well).
I decided that I wanted to base them so that they’d be more stable on the gaming table. Taking my trusty compass cutter I made some based from 1mm plasticard and glued them on. All I needed to do then was apply some Basetex textured paint, some Devlan Mud, and then the same flock that I use to base my Epic necron models. Here’s the result:
Drive Me Closer…
Nice tribute to one of my favourite 40K memes in Dawn Of War 2:
PS: the original picture is by Dan Scott.
Blasts from the past!
I’ve been going through some of my old boxes of miniatures, and thought it might be fun to post a few pictures of some of them. These are some of the very oldest Warhammer 40,00 miniatures. Some of them are more than 20 years old. Enjoy!
Rogue Trader era Imperial Guard Commissar
Rogue Trader era Eldar scouts
Rogue Trader era Space Marines
Rogue Trader era Imperial Guardsmen
Rogue Trader era Space Marine Dreadnought
Rogue Trader era Chaos Space Marines
Rogue Trader era Imperial Inquisitors
Rogue Trader era Imperial Guard Sentinel
Rogue Trader era Space Marine Librarian in Terminator Armour
Hobbyist fail, Dettol win!
Last year I posted about a test Necron warrior I painted, to see how easily I could make the process a “production line”, to get my planned 40K Necron army painted as quickly as possible. My plan was to use Plasti-cote silver spray, followed by Citadel ink washes (click on the link to see the results).
The experiment was a success (I can get the amount of time required to paint an individual miniature down to about 45 minutes), but also a failure (note the “last year” at the beginning of this post!). However, I have now finished my first squad of Necron warriors, and a Necron Lord:
It’s not all good news, unfortunately. I built three Necron destroyers, but managed to screw up the spray coat of silver: either I didn’t shake the can enough, or the air was too wet, but whatever the reason, the destroyers came up covered in a thick blobby coat of silver, and looked awful.
Necron destroyer
So based on recommendations from my friend Mark, I performed an experiment: I gave one of the models a week-long dip in Dettol (a British household detergent):
Dettol bath!
After a wash and scrub with an old toothbrush, the final result was an – almost – stripped model:
Stripped destroyer
There is still a silvery coating on top of the bare plastic, but the lumpy crud has gone, and it should be good for another coat, and painting.
Test Necron
I’m planning on building a Warhammer 40,000 Necron army. Earlier this year I bought a box of Necron warriors, but due to real life interrupting, have only just finished the first test model. Here it is:
Click to embiggen. I designed the painting process to optimise for speed: once prepped, the model was sprayed with silver spray paint bought from my local Hobbycraft store. The next stage was to give it a thorough wash with the Citadel Devlan Mud wash, however the finish of the silver spray meant that the wash didn’t adhere, so it was given a coat of Purity Seal to give the wash something to stick to. A couple of washes were added, and the base painted with Snakebite Leather. Total time involved: about fifteen minutes!
More on that trailer…
I just watched the previously mentioned Dawn of War II trailer and noticed something about the last image from the movie: the moon and the nebula seem to form the eye socket of a skull. Take a look:
Given that the skull isn’t a particular significant symbol for the tyranids, is it meant to indicate Chaos or Necrons?
Unbelievably awesome trailer for Dawn Of War II: are Tyranids the new race?
If this doesn’t rock your world, then you must already be dead:
You can see a high-res version here. Over at Bell of Lost Souls, the speculation is that the final line of the trailer indicates that the Tyranids will be introduced in DoW 2: I think that sounds very likely. They’re the only missing race in the game, so if only for the sake of completeness, I’m sure they’ll be introduced sooner rather than later.
One comment on BoLS is salient:
I would gladly fork over reasonable sums of cash for a feature length 40k film of that quality. Doesn’t have to be in theaters (though that would be awesomely insane on IMAX), direct to DVD is fine. A series available on DVD would be spectacular as well.
Here’s hoping. GW has explored almost every other medium for their product (let’s count them: music, novels, audio books, comic books, video games, artwork, even clothing), but there’s never been a proper movie or TV series (apart from the never-to-be-seen Damnatus). Now that the technology is here that would do justice to 40k, it’s time GW pulled their finger out!
Are Relic and GW dropping some not sneaky hints about Dawn Of War II?
I just noticed that there is now an official website for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War II, the follow-up to the stonking original. Check out the video teaser (warning: be prepared to pee a little). But I was struck by the title of the press release announcing the game (excerpt follows):
THQ AND RELIC ENTERTAINMENT SET TO WAGE WAR OF EPIC SCALE IN WARHAMMER ® 40,000™: DAWN OF WAR ® II
AGOURA HILLS, Calif. April 3, 2008 — THQ Inc. (NASDAQ: THQI) today announced that Warhammer® 40,000®: Dawn of War® II, the highly anticipated sequel from one of the industry’s premiere Real-Time Strategy (RTS) developers, Relic Entertainment, is scheduled to bring the 41st Millennium’s savage warfare to life like never before in spring 2009. Powered by an enhanced version of Relic’s proprietary Essence Engine 2.0®, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II will take players to the brutal frontlines of war where they’ll experience intense action and visceral combat through a non-linear single player experience and a fully co-operative multiplayer campaign. Set in Games Workshop’s (LSE: GAW) highly popular Warhammer 40,000 science fiction universe, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II is being developed exclusively for Windows PC.
Epic scale? Epic scale? We saw a downed Titan in the Winter Assault expansion, but I’d now give you very good odds on a fully functioning Warhound or Reaver in DoW2. And check out those screenshots! I can’t wait.
