Rehab - Tomb Blades

My test mini is finished for rehabbing the Tomb Blades. The painting went pretty fast and the results are ok. There are still some weird-looking places but it looks ok. 

Now, I just have to do it 5 more times before I can put this mini nightmare behind me. 

Double Fail - Tomb Blades

The heat gun fix not only did not work great but it warped the plastic minis. I bought a fancy heat gun with digital adjustable heat and no help. I tried gently heating all surfaces and no joy. I think there is just too much variation in thickness of plastic for it to work. 

The worst part is that it bent and warped the plastic. I tried the heat gun on three minis, and all three are warped in some way. It is hard to tell from the pictures, the the one on the right is warped to the left. I doubt that anyone will be able to tell on the table top but it irks me. 

The new plan is to repaint them. The fogging ruins the mini by ruining the shading. I am going to reapply all the shading and then rehighlight the minis. This is not ideal and certainly not easy. 

Failure - Tomb Blades

I am so mad at myself that I could spit. I tried to clear coat the Tomb Blades and all of them fogged. It was hot and humid and I pushed my luck a little too far. Most of them are ruined. I am going to try this guys heat gun fix but I don't hold out much hope. I may try the oven or pick up a heat gun. 

Finished - 6 Tomb Blades

Finally, all 6 of them are done except for the weapons. The side mounts for the weapons are magnetized as well as the slot on the back for the support system. There is also a magnet in the base that hold it to the stand. It is just easier to mount them that way and no chance of it breaking. 

I painted them in my Rusty Necron scheme with the rust parts being brown, stipple red, stipple orange, wash Agrax Earthshade then touch up red and orange. I do the chips with Carcharodon Granite followed by Chainmail then washed Agrax. I touch up the chipped areas with Mythril Silver. the clearly inorganic components are painted Boltgun or Chainmail then washed black. I do a broken edge highlight of Mythril Silver. There are some aread that I wash blue to give contrast with the orange. 

Retail for the kit is $41 which is a little crazy considering you only get 3 minis. Paint is worth about $60 for the set of 6. Magnatizing them adds about $5 onto each model bringing their replacement value to $172.

On the table now - Tomb Blades

I have been working real hard to get these guys done. I don't know that I ever would have bought or painted these Tomb Blades but they are required for some reason in a Decurion Detachment.

Finished - Green Cow of Nurgle

I found this little guy in my bits box and I have no idea what he is. I took a cue from the mutated hand and three circles on his weapon and guessed that he was some sort of WFB Nurgle Beastmen thing. He was already painted... poorly, so I painted over him with Bleached Bone and started the process for Nurgle's Skin. Mixed in there are metals, Simple Rust and leather. There is a little bone and wood for the stick. I really need to do a step-by-step for my common color schemes. 

I'll probably use him ad a Herald of Nurgle.

No idea what this mini is worth but I could probably replace him for $10. Paintjob is worth $20 making his replacement $30. I would trade him for $45.


1-42-17 Update: I traded this mini with these two worms for a Dark Angel Codex. 

Finished - Palanquin of Nurgel

I have wanted to build modular versions of the Daemonic Mounts for a while and the easiest to do was the Palanquin of Nurgle. Now, a Palanquin is supposed to be a covered box supported with sticks and born aloft but the backs and sweat of the unfortunate. I skipped the sticks and the box, but this is what I have. I took inspiration from Epidimius and had a surface help up by a host of Nurglings. 

I kept it simple by making a disc that was slightly bigger than a 40 mm base and made a guard for it out of plasticard. I put a stand on it to later secure to the base. I used a mix of old metal Nurglings and newer plastic ones. If I had been thinking, then I would have used 7 of them, Nurgle's favored number. 

I did incorporate the "three" symbol into the top of the palanquin, as you can see from above.

On the table now - Tomb Blades

The prototype Tomb Blade is finished and I learned some good lessons. 

1. Magnets are best applied to the weapon mounts after the weapon mounts are in their final position. 

2. Think of colors in terms of what wash you need to use. Paint everything that needs Agrax then everything that needs Nuln. 

3. Sometimes, detail is not worth it. I skilled some detail on the spine and wires and feel ok about that. 

The rest of the Tomb Blades are getting painted assembly line fashion. It is a lot of stop and start because I am waiting for washed to dry but everything is going well. During all that waiting, I banged out a Nurgle Palanquin so the time was not totally wasted. 

It is slow going but I think the final product will be worth it. I am looking forward to fielding a Decurion Detachment until it become no fun. 

On the table - Six Tomb Blades

I am starting the Obligatory Tomb Blades choice so I can be like the cool kids and field a Decurion Detachment. I didn't even notice it in the Codex until Charles pointed it out to me. Then I saw all the drama on the internet. I am not going to link to it because it is everywhere. I don't know why people are so upset about a 4+ Reanimation Protocol roll when they had that in the 3rd Edition Codex and many of them had better armor too. There are plenty of synergistic wargear and choices that make it a little abusive. If I was designing the Necron codex, I would make the Decurion Detachment able to re-roll WBB rolls and leave the things that give a bonus to very few available options. 

Back to Tomb Blades, you have to take at least 1 unit of them to get the benefits of the detachment. This seems more like GW trying to sell more of a crummy kit as it does not make any sense. Many of the new formations do not make much sense. They just seem random and the Codex provides no explanation or fluff for any of it. 

I started with one Tomb Blade as a test mini and that is going pretty well. I decided to magnetize the weapons on the back mounts and just shoehorn the Particle weapon into place. I also am going to magnetize the optional support system. I am not going to magnetize the Shield Vanes that give the better Armor Save as there is no good way to do that. I am going to douche out and glue them in place but just have to note when they are actually taken as wargear.

I broke them down to three main sub-assemblies and some accessories. There is the hull, the shield and the driver. Once those are done, most of the mini is finished. 

Finished - Iron Warrior Havocs

I got these old old metal Chaos space Marine minis in some trade or another and they sat in my bits box for ages. Perhaps years. I have another of these types of Las Cannon Marines and was not really a fan of it. The Auto Cannon is a straight up ugly mini. If it were not so hard to convert them up, I would trade it. I really love the Heavy Bolter Marine. It looks totally Grimdarkand 40k. There are hooks and chains and a BFG that looks like it was carved out of single giant block of steel. 

Finished - Gun Servators

My Inquisitoral Warband grows! I have one Inquisitor finished and 2 more Inquisitors that I never posted about to cover my HQ. I have been slowly building the group of mercenaries, misfits and masterminds that shall accompany them into battle. Already finished for the Warband are Three Psykers and two Jokero that I have not posted about. That, combined these three finished Servitors, makes up the majority of the shooting portion of the Warband. 

The dream is an Inquisitor and 11 of his buddies riding around in a Chimera or Valkyrie (if I am feeling squirrely). How those 11 dummies break down may change but for now I am planning it around the 6 people that can shoot out of the top of the Chimera. I like the Psykers that can lay down a S7 AP2 large blast as long as there are 5 of them but only counts as one guy shooting. The Jokero can shoot Las Cannons from their eyes apparently and these three lobotomized dummies with guns for arms round out the shooting. There is one slot left for people to shoot out of the top hatch and I'll save that for a wildcard. 

Finished - Genestealer Cult

Greg from Cranky Old Gamer now has a finished Genestealer Cult. The step-by-step here worked out well and I adapted the color scheme to the robes of the Hybrids and the armor of the Cultists. Greg had requested a blue skin tone for the human Cultists but I could not make it look good. My back up plan was to add some purple wash into the shading on the skin. I had been doing this on my eyes for a while now but I took it to a new level. 

The base colors go on well but there is a fair amount of fine detail work that slows down the process. I have had these minis for almost three weeks and the painting took about 35-40 hours because of that detail. 

Finished - Deathleaper Lictor

Long ago, I had a dream about starting a Tyranid army. It was going to be a first wave of a bug invasion. A Deathleaper as an HQ, Genestealers as Troops and Lictors as Elites. None of the Tyranid creatures that are normally associated with a later invasion. 

I scrapped that dream in early 2014 when I traded all my Tyranids on Bartertown for some Forge World Terminators and a busted Baneblade. 

I resurrected it when I started Greg's Genestealer Cult minis. I used my Space Hulk Genestealers as test minis for that project and just kind of kept going. The minis were turning out so well that I dug out some Lictors that I had not been able to trade for a good deal and painted them up too. The plan is to use the Lictors with some special rules in Space Hulk or in Deathwatch RPG but before I knew it, I had an almost 300 point Tyranid army painted. Now, I am starting to think that I could make this happen after all. 

Finished - Genestealer Cultists

It is difficult to keep up with On the Table and Finished posts with these small batches of essentially the same mini. My plan is to post Greg's Genestealer Cult when it is done as one post and all the Space Hulk Genestealers as their own post. I may post occasional pictures just to document my progress but I am unlikely to write posts or tag them. 

I just have to finish the Magus and Greg's minis are done. However they is a pile of Space Hulk Genestealers to finish on my end. They are going to be a long term side project. 

On the table now - Genestealer Cultists

Finished - Genestealer Hybrids

Finished - Lictor

I think I am a pretty good painter but every once and a while I pull something off that blows me away. I started this guy a few days ago as a side project and a few weeks before that, I had never even used this technique before let alone painted a single Tyranid. I did a few tests and a few more but this mini turned out great with very little effort. I thank the blue paint gods for making it an easy color to work with. 

I started with Kantor blue as my base and did a heavy drybrush of Techlis Blue over that. I washed with Drakenhof Nightshade and then did a light drybrush of Teclis Blue again. I had to touch up some areas with Teclis Blue but very little. Mostly just the edges of the armor. Some areas had to be shaded again thanks to some over-zealous drybrushing. After that, A little Temple Guard Blue finished the blue areas.