Jodrell Plays Games

This is just an extraordinary model, and the perfect exemplar of just how damn good Games Workshop's designers have become at sculpting using modern techniques. This miniature literally could not have existed five years ago!

It was also surprisingly easy to paint to a level that I didn't think I'd achieve given the amount of effort I put in. It's not much more than a zenithal basecoat with a rattle can, some pin washes, and a bit of drybrushing.

More pictures below the fold.

Two of the characters from the Indomitus box set painted by The Unrelenting Brush. I have lots of Overlords but I really like this model - like the Royal Warden, it's a very macho pose, and a lot more intimidating than the other versions of this character.

Another model from Indomitus, this time the Skorpekh Lord, as painted by The Unrelenting Brush. I love this model, possibly even more than I love Illuminor Szeras. It’s hefty in a way many necron models aren’t, while still being extremely necrony. Looking forward to getting it into the table!

As soon as Forge World released this model I knew I wanted one! My amazing other half bought me one for Christmas, and I've just finished it.

It has the same basic colour scheme as my other large Necron models: I used a piece of firm sponge to stipple Warpstone Bronze over a black undercoat, and then drybrushed with Brass Scorpion, finished with a highlight of Vallejo brass. Simple but very effective!

More photos below the fold.

My birthday treat to myself last year was this, a Necron Pylon from Forge World. It was a fun challenge to get the paint job to match that of my other 40K Necron models, some of which are now over 5 years old, using a different palette of paints (since GW changed their paint range and I've started using a lot more paints from other manufacturers). But I'm very happy with how it turned out!

I Just finished this Vindicare Assassin, to be a sting in the tail of my Salamanders army, or for use in In the Emperor's Name.

Here is a pair of classic metal Necron lords. I picked them up in a bag-o-bits that I bought from vidpui on Twitter, as a result I've customised them a little bit.

I'm rather pleased with how the cloaks turned out; although the effect doesn't really come over in the photos. I drybrushed them with a sequence of greys of various shades, then mixed a glaze using the ancient blue ink I used on the C'tan shard with some Vallejo Model Air yellow and painted it over the grey. I then highlighted the raised areas with a bright, slightly metallic green.

More pics below the fold.

Here is my Necron army (all 4,000 points of it), completed after nearly six years (I started it in late 2009).

Obviously, no army is ever really finished. I expect that I will probably buy and paint new pieces as the whim takes me, but I now have enough stuff that I can have a few options when playing at 1,500 points and higher (rather than simply taking everything I own).

More pictures below the fold.

Here is my version of the new Necron Overlord released with the new codex. The new rules allow you to equip your Overlord with any wargear you like so I took a couple of bits from my bits box to make him unique.

He's on a 40mm base which I think works quite well for characters. I'm tempted to rebase some of my other characters on the same size base so that he doesn't stick out. He got the same basic paint job as all the other models in the army.

It occurred to me that his pose is somewhat reminiscent of Usain Bolt's signature pose, what do you think?





More pictures below.

Nothing especially unusual about these guys. I already have a unit of Immortals with Tesla Carbines so I chose to give these guys Gauss Blasters for diversity purposes.

The Army Painter Chainmail spray went on a bit too thick in places — I've been spoiled by my airbrush — and a couple of the models have distinctly featureless faces. I decided against repainting for the simple reason that although I'm a big fan of Necrons, my aim with this wave of reinforcements is to get the army into a usable state, rather than produce a work of art.

More to follow...

I've just finished these models, the next wave of reinforcements for my 40K Necron army.

It's been an interesting experience to paint models to match the colour scheme I developed more than five years ago; getting the green hue on the shoulder blades of the wraiths to match the original models was quite challenging. My ability as a miniature painter has improved a bit in the years since I started my Necron army, and it's interesting to compare "before" and "after", and realise what I would do differently if I were to start again now.

Anyway, these are done now, but I still have a few more models to go: some Immortals (with Gauss Blasters), Triarch Praetorians (with Particle Casters and Voidblades), a Doom/Night Scythe, and a dozen bases of scarabs. Stay tuned!

Here is the first finished model from the wave of reinforcements to my Necron army. I'm fairly pleased with the opalescent effect I accidentally achieved on the robes (which is the result of using an ancient Citadel ink over black drybrushed with grey), but the drybrushing on the torso could be better.

More photos after the jump...

I started working on the Reaver in May, and finally finished it at the beginning of December. That's six months!

I am generally very happy with how it's turned out. There were a few glitches along the way but as is the case with any hobby project, those problems that did come up were fixable.

The paint scheme is, of course, the same one I have been painting my Epic titans for 25 years. Here's a quick run-down of how it was achieved:

• Prime with Vallejo black primer (via airbrush)
• Mask off armour plates leaving edge banding exposed
• Airbrush Vallejo Model Air Brass on banding
• Wash with Army Painter Soft Tone through the airbrush
• Remove masking and remask to expose quartered sections
• Spray with Citadel Skull White spray

The exposed metal of the superstructure was primed black as above then sprayed with Army Painter's Chain Mail, then washed with Strong Tone through the airbrush. Weathering was achieved using Citadel's Nihilakh Oxide, Typhus Corrosion and Forge World weathering powders.

The base is a simple cake base with a belt of plasticard around the outside. It's supposed to match the basing scheme I've used for my Salamander and Necron armies and the Leviathan. There is a layer of cork on top of the base to allow me to create depressions into which the titan's feet can be placed (to create the effect of the ground sinking beneath its feet). I added some crushed up aluminium foil and some craters from Amera Plastic Mouldings to add relief. I then painted with PVA and applied sand. once dried, I sprayed the base with a mix of Army Painter leather and Plasti-kote sprays, drybrushed with a few GW paints and then added static grass (GW's Dead Grass).

Overall, I'd say this project is pretty straightforward, requiring a lot of technique but not much skill: for example, knowing how to pin the leg joints in the most effective way. Since the model was painted almost entirely using the airbrush, the amount of masking required was pretty exhausting and very boring indeed!

Adeptus Mechanicus Collegia Titanica
Legio Pantera <Black Panthers>
Battle Group ΔVII <Delta-Seven>
Omega Crusis Maniple 533
"Invictus Ferrum" <Invincible Iron>
Mars Pattern Reaver class Battle Titan
Chassis Serial #MCCCXLVI
Currently on operations on Severus Ultis, Vastus Sector

The Reaver is done! Check out the rest of the photos on my Facebook page. I will post them here (along with a post-mortem of the build and paint) in a few days.

The Reaver is 98% done. Apart from this teaser, I'm not going to post any photos until it's 100%. I still have a few problems to fix and a couple of parts still to paint, and the whole issue of banners remains unanswered.

There have been a few ups and downs but I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out, more or less.

Stay tuned for the big reveal!

Work progresses on the Reaver. I've finished painting the sculpted detail on the carapace; here's a photo I posted on Twitter:



The text on the scrollwork is Latin cooked up by Google Translate from the following:

IN THE NAME OF THE GOD EMPEROR AND THE HOLY OMNISSIAH, LET THIS MIGHTY
ENGINE OF WAR BRING FORTH ITS WRATH UPON THE ENEMIES OF MANKIND. LET ITS
LEFT HAND BRING FORTH FURIOUS HEAT TO CLEANSE THE GALAXY OF THE UNCLEAN
AND THE ALIEN. LET ITS RIGHT HAND SMASH THE TRAITOR AND THE HERETIC. LET
IT RAIN DOWN DESTRUCTION FROM THE QUIVER UPON ITS BACK. LET NONE STAND
BEFORE IT. IN THE NAME OF THE GOD EMPEROR AND THE HOLY OMNISSIAH!

which apparently translates to:

IN NOMINE SANCTAE DEI ET PRINCEPS OMNISSIAH DIMITTE IRAM SUPER TANTO
MACHINA HUMANITATIS INIMICOS FERAT. PURIFICATIONEM EIUS GALAXIA CALUERE
ACCONGERO SINISTRA POLLUTUM ET ALIENUM. FRANGIT DEXTRIS EIUS TRADITOR ET
HAERETICUS. DE EXCIDIO PHARETRA STILLABIT SUPER SE SIT. NEMO RESISTERE
EI. IN NOMINE DOMINI DEI AD CAESAREM OMNISSIAH ET SANCTA

Here a few photos of the head, which is pretty much finished (it just needs varnishing and maybe some decals):

I don't have much to say, so here's a bunch of photos:

Here's one of the titan crew on foot, He came out of the blister with a little lean, which needed fixing:







Here's the Tech-Priest, who I magnetised so he can go inside the titan's torso, or on his own base:







Here's the assembled legs, compared to the Leviathan:









Completion of the legs and armour (everything is still in pieces as I still need to do varnishing and priming):







Miscellaneous photos:

The consulting firm Gartner is famous for its eponymous Hype cycle which tracks the development of new technology.

I've come to realise the my project to build and paint a Reaver titan also fits onto this graph. This time last week, I was definitely in the Trough of Disillusionment, as my frustration with the complexity of the leg assemblies (pistons! So many pistons!) overcame my enthusiasm.

Now, however, I have started working on the torso, head and weapons, I feel like my determination to get the bloody thing finished so I can get on with other things is reasserting itself, and I'm approaching the Plateau of Productivity, at which point, the Reaver will probably end up being finished fairly quickly.

Here's hoping the hype cycle holds true this time!

As you might imagine, the Reaver is a big project, hence the lack of updates. I won't bother giving you a blow-by-blow account of how I have been working on it; instead I'll just point to the blog posts that I've been working from instead:

• The Inner Geek
• 30mm Madness

As with the Leviathan, the legs are definitely the trickiest part of the model, and you need to take a lot of time testing out positioning. The general procedure is: measure twice, then measure again, then check on the Internet to see if anyone else has done it the same way, then measure again, then cut!

One innovation that I haven't seen anyone else write about is the magnetisation of the "helmet", or the roof of the Titan's head. I did this by drilling holes in the appropriate places (you'll notice that I had to do this a couple of times before i got it right) and inserting 3mm magnets that I bought from Gladius Game Arts.



Most of the leg and pelvis of the Titan has now been primed black, and the superstructure will then be sprayed using Army Painter chain mail. I tried a variety of white metal Vallejo model air paints but decided that none of them looked right over a black primer.

I've finished some of the interior parts: here are the wall panels that will sit inside the Titan's body:



I also have plans to give the Titan a base, although it would probably be fairly impractical to use it for gaming, so it's probably just going to be for display purposes. I found a 36cm-diameter cake base which looks like it will do the trick:



As I should probably have expected, I've made a few mistakes along the way, the most annoying of which was the realisation that I'd glued this plasticard logo onto the knee pad upside-down!



In the process of removing it I caused a fair bit of damage to the surface of the knee pad which I then made worse through clumsy application of a rotary tool. So exactly how I fix that will be the subject of a future post.

More to follow!

I bought some terrain for Warhammer 40K a few years ago, but never bothered to make it usable on the tabletop until recently, because I had No Mans Land on my doorstep: if I wanted a game I had access to the gaming tables and their vast array of terrain.

Unfortunately, NML is no more, but now that I've moved house I now have a dining room (with a big dining table) to play games on, so in advance of a four-way game a couple of weeks ago, I decided to refresh my modular gaming boards (which I'll blog about soon) and paint the terrain pieces that I'd assembled all those years ago.

The paint scheme is very simple: after a black undercoat, the walls were drybrushed with Tin Bitz and then Army Painter, Gunmetal, then washed with Army Painter Strong Tone wash shot through my airbrush. Then I applied some Forge World Light Earth weathering powder at the base of the walls. The plasticard bases were covered in PVA glue and acquarium sand, then sprayed with Army Painter Leather and then drybrushed.

More pictures below.

It looks like Knights are about to return to Warhammer 40,000 in 28mm scale. Before they become the new hotness, I thought it might be fun to run through their history.

The nice man from UPS dropped by today and delivered my Reaver titan! Here is the certificate that came with the enormous pile of resin that's now sitting in a box under my desk:



Mine is the 1,346th Reaver Titan to roll of the Forge World production line, so I'm going to be using MCCCXLVI as part of the decoration of the model.

Now, if you excuse me, I have a lot of resin to wash and several pages of instructions to read...

After years of dithering, I have finally taken the plunge and ordered one:





After the success of last year's Leviathan I finally decided that I had the painting and modelling skills to take on the ultimate hobby project: a Forge World Reaver titan. I have bought the body only for now: I'll pick up the weapons when I've finished the body. And of course, I'll be blogging my progress. I plan on painting it in the same colour scheme as my Epic Titans, but obviously the level of detail will be far higher. I'm very excited!

OK, so maybe not actually completed, because I still have the knee pad, chest and sword shield to do, but as you can see, everything else is done.

As predicted, final assembly was a real pain. Things got a bit messy with the epoxy resin and I managed to break one of the hydraulic rams that attach the torso to the hips. Fortunately it's holding together pretty well, although I suspect that it will need some repair work in the future.

Click through for more pictures.

I am probably 75% done on the paintjob on the Leviathan. If you follow me on Twitter then you will have seen some photos of the progress I am making.

The paint scheme has progressed somewhat, with the addition of edge highlighting, use of weathering powders to add texture, and some very effective "chipping" achieved by using a piece of sponge to apply Tin Bitz followed by Boltgun Metal, washed with Devlan Mud.

The only stumbling blocks have been the shield pieces on the front of the torso and one of the knee pads. I made the mistake of hand-painting the quartering and chevrons and the final finish is pretty terrible. I am going to look into how I can fix this, and it may delay the completion of the model.

Here are some photos I posted on Twitter over the last couple of weeks, in case you haven't seen them:


The finished base.


Test fit of the legs on the base.


Torso test fit.


Size comparison with the Stormeagle (my next big project).


Close-up shot of the chipping on the legs.

With the recent remission in this summer's foul weather I've had a chance to do some spraying and have made a start on the main subassemblies of the Leviathan Crusader.

Over the weekend I finished one of the shoulder pads - like my Epic knights, the Leviathan will have Mechanicus-style hazard stripes on its left shoulder. Unlike the Epic knights, I've managed to do a pretty decent job of them!



I used 6mm Tamiya masking tape to create the chevrons - if you stick a piece on, and then stick another piece right next to it, then you can stick a third piece next to the second, then remove the second piece to get nice parallel lines. I then sprayed white over a black basecoat, painted yellow other that (mixed with flow enhancer to remove bubbles and brush marks), and finally a sepia wash.

I also added a light weathering to make the yellow a little less dayglo.

There was just enough light after dinner this evening to allow me to break out my airbrush and have a go with the other shoulder. I decided to use this as a guinea pig to try out a colour mix using Vallejo Model Air paints (the first time I've used them). The picture below shows the result. This colour is 3 parts Fire Red and 1 part metallic Turn Signal Red, over a black undercoat.



I am pleased with the final result and I'm now going to use it on the rest of the model.

Once the paint is dry, I'll finish the bronze edging of the shoulder pad. This is done with two coats applied with a stipple brush over black undercoat, washed with Devlan Mud. I might also add weathering to add some depth to the colour.

Update: here's the finished shoulder pad:

The Leviathan Crusader is now mostly assembled, and I was able to get it base coated last night. I gave up on having dozens of sub-assemblies and have assembled most of it, it just means that there will be a few fiddly bits when doing the fine detail work.

Photos of the model on its own don't generally do it justice: this thing is big. Here you can see how the legs compare to a normal AoBR Marine:



And a Land Raider:

Having boxed up all my hobby stuff in anticipation of an imminent house move, and having generally avoided spending anything on my hobby since the new year, Salute 2013 turned into a session of Retail Therapy! I bought a bunch of Critical Mass stuff, and a KR Multicase system for my Epic knights and titans, but my biggest purchase was a Leviathan Crusader kit from Dreamforge Games. These seem to retail only at about £85-£95, but I picked mine up for £65, which sounds like a pretty good deal. Most of the retailers at Salute were selling the kit at about the same price.

This is a big kit - the box is about the size of a couple of shoe boxes, and it's full of plastic sprues. I thought I'd take some pictures of the unboxing, because apart from the coolness of the model itself, I'm also rather impressed about how neatly it's all been fitted into the box. The sprues are designed to stack on top of each other, and the empty space is filled with foam, which means that the parts of the model are very well protected in transit.









The kit is relatively simple (I've built much more complex kits, and its sheer size means that there aren't any especially small and fiddly bits) but it looks like there will be dozens of sub-assemblies that will need to be painted before they can be put together, so this is going to take quite a while to complete. My plan is to paint it (and use it on the table) as a Knight Paladin in the same colour scheme as my Epic knights. Fortunately there are (unofficial) rules from Bell of Lost Souls.

I just finished this Necron Cryptek. Because, y'know, Veil of Darkness is just too much fun not to use in my Necron army.

Paint scheme as per all my other necrons.

A recent discussion on Twitter got me thinking, as I occasionally do, about Ian Watson and his literary contribution to Warhammer 40,000.

Back in the old days, when GW was cheap, 40K was still relatively new, and the Black Library was still a decade away, GW published 40K "tie-in" novels by hiring established genre writers. Some used pseudonyms, but others didn't. Most notable amongst them are (in my opinion) Charlie Stross, who contributed a short story to the Deathwing anthology, and Ian Watson, who wrote a total of four novels in the 40K universe.

I don't think it's possible to underestimate how important these novels are for me, and also to 40K, for reasons I will now explain.

First, the fact that an author with the reputation and status that Ian Watson had (and still has), must have done a lot for 40K's credibility in the publishing scene. That Watson didn't use a nom de plume says an awful lot. That must have been quite helpful when the Black Library was being established.

Secondly, these novels went a long way towards establishing the mood, and general approach, that 40K was to take for the next two decades. They are a bridge between the frivolous and silly Rogue Trader era universe, and the full-on grimdark of contemporary 40K: with feet on both sides of the divide, the books somehow manage to be silly and serious at the same time, simultaneously light-hearted and sharply melancholy.

Finally, they are important to me personally, because they cemented my love for both 40K and for Ian Watson. I read Inquisitor. Then I read Space Marine. Then I read everything else he wrote that was still in print. When I got an internet connection in 1995, I started picking up out-of-print paperbacks.

About ten years ago, Ian did an interview with some Hungarian 40K fans about his books, and what drew him to the 40K setting. It remains one of the most cogent and concise explanations of how the 40K universe works. Here it is:



Of all the great contemporary British SF writers, the only person I admire as much as Ian Watson is Adam Roberts. So imagine my delight at seeing this detailed review of Inquisitor. 40K as seen from a "serious" literary perspective!

Like many wargamers, I enjoy the “fluff” of the imaginary worlds that I play games in, as well as the “crunch” of the rules and models. I’ve even taken to writing my own background material, to help bring my armies to life.

Tonight's Forge World News Flash contained a link to a YouTube video which confirms that they will be doing a Horus Heresy expansion for Warhammer 40,000. Here's the video:



(Video Link)

This should be awesome!

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.)

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.

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?

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.

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.

I've now finished the centerpiece of my Warhammer 40,000 Necron Army: an internally illuminated Monolith:

This is what it looks like when you turn the lights down:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

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:

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:

I had to re-base these miniatures, using a razor saw to remove them from their old base. Here's the new 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!

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.

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:

I found out about these terrain pieces from the Beasts of War, who have a series of excellent unboxing videos:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHVC3fJdUig&w=560&h=349]

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:

Nice tribute to one of my favourite 40K memes in Dawn Of War 2:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrCY7dgaqs&w=640&h=390]



PS: the original picture is by Dan Scott.

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!

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!