Finished - Corvus Blackstar

I was kind of shocked when I finished the Corvus Blackstar tonight. I just kind of ran out of things to paint.

I started by spray painting the mini on sprue black. I wanted to assemble it in stages to make it easier to paint but I didn't find a good way to do this. The wings join the body in such a way that they need to be shaded while attached. The tail sections and engines could have been painted separately but with little advantage. So I painted it all at once.

Once it was assembled, I undercoated the whole mini with a 1:1 mix of Abaddon Black and Dawnstone. Then the mini got a drybrush of Dawnstone. I painted on my wash of Nuln Oil and then alternate with Agrax Earthshade on areas where I needed extra shading and darkening.

The silver areas were Ironbraker washed black and highlighted with Runfang Steel. It was all pretty standard. The exception was with all the vents. I dry brushed all of them with Abdadon Black, washed them black and then drybrushed with Runfang Steel. This is not precisely how I have done it in the past and it did not turn out great. I think it fits the model because it is so dark that it does not stand out much.

I painted on the red stripes inspired by the Codex. I also saw some stripes on the tail that looked like the stripes just continued. I tried to get mine as straight and as even as possible with each other but I think that worked against me. I should have made the stripes on the tail smaller. Don't ask me why, but it looks wrong the way it is.

On The Table - Corvus Blackstar

Well drunk-me tried to do some detail painting and sober-me is just now finding out about. Wisely, drunk-me decided to paint the bottom of the Corvus and not on the top or front. Good move, drunk-me.

Surprisingly, when sober-me tried to take over painting, I had a harder time replicating the fine lines that drunk-me did. It might have something to do with me having to add some water to the pot of grey paint that I was using and maybe that made it harder to get clean lines.

Drunk-me also tried to wash the red areas to try and make them darker. Unfortunately drunk-me can't tell when enough is enough (in more ways than one way). The red areas became a muddy mess and had to be repainted from scratch.

On The Table - Corvis Blackstar

Things are going better with painting the Corvus Blackstar. Since the last update, I painted on the silver areas and washed them black. I also painted on black wash in selected areas rather than dipping the whole mini.
I was not able to get the recesses as dark as I would have liked. I briefly contemplated stippling on pure black on the areas that needed shading but decided against it. I traced on some black lines on some of the deep recesses and it mostly worked. I also tried alternating between Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil to try and get a deeper black.
It is kind of working but it is going to take some tinkering and experimentation to get this mini finished but I am more sanguine than in the last post. I think that this mini is going to turn out well.
The plan is to finish this as the prototype model and experiment a little more on the next one. The third and final Corvus Blackstar will be the "command" mini with a lot of conversions and modifications. What those are I have no idea but I am sure that awesome things will come to me after I google "Corvus Blackstar conversions.

Deathwatch Codex

I just got the Deathwatch Codex and it was worth the decade-long wait. Certain websites that shall remain nameless have had this Codex on their "next 8-12 months" for almost that entire decade. Rumors are such garbage. 

It took GW more than a few tried to get Daemonhunters/Grey Knights/Ordo Malleus right and some could say that they still are not a well-rounded army. They have never done justice to Sisters of Battle with numerous chances and it almost seems misogynistically intentional at this point. While I can't say that this is a "home run on the first try" situation that we have here but is a darn good for a first try. 

Deathwatch is going to suffer from what every Astartes army suffers from and that is being out numbered, except Deathwatch (like Grey Knights) runs the risk of being out numbered by Astartes. All of these armies lack a cheep troops choice. There were several things that I was shocked to see didn't make it into this book that were part of 40k cannon, but I was really shocked to see Scouts missing. GW seems to have a problem moving that dated box set. They would not even have to release anything new to include them though a Deathwatch Scout arm like the one I made would be pretty awesome. 

Finished - Tau Baracuda Base

I have had the base of the Tau Barracuda staring at me for about two months. I knew I wanted to do a more scenic base than just sand, but eventually phoned it in a bit. Two small walls, some razor wire and a land mine/hatch. I will add some patches of grass to it and many of my other minis in the future. 

The goal was to make a base with a soldier looking up at the flyer. I can always add that later, but for now it is done. 

Finished - Tau Barracuda

Finishing the Barracuda was a giant task. I had to relearn how to paint in the my Tau style all over. It had been way too long since I had painting an icy blue Tau of this size. I finished the Tetras and Remoras but they are not the same as painting something this big. Really the only practice that I had was the Sunshark and the Riptide and those were super long ago. I had to invent new ways of painting this scheme.

I sprayed the mini white then, rather than basecoating Fenrisian Grey, I used Celestra Gery insted. I then painted on the areas that I wants Fenrisian Grey. Next up was washing with Drakenhof Nightshade the touching up with Fenrisian Grey. That gave me the a good base to work from. After that it was just dialing in the amount of Celestra Grey that I wanted showing before a final highlight of pure white on the hard edges.

I used a broken line on the white highlights but tried to make it look like shiny glare rather than jagged metal, I also had to highlight rounded edges to create the illusion of reflection.

On the table now - Tau Barracuda

Things are coming along with this giant project. It is hard to see but I have all of my base colors and most of the highlighting done. Really it is just detail work at this point. Unfortunately, that is the part that takes the longest time and is the most frustrating part. 

I am close to being done with the main body. The weapons and accessories may take a while though.

On the table now - Tau Barracuda

I am taking a bit of a giant project. Normally I hate large vehicles as they take too long to complete. I have been putting off starting this Forge World Tau Barracuda for a while now. I needed to figure out a few things. First, how to properly mount the ship on a stand. Second, hot to magnetize and convert the ship. 

The Barracuda does not come with a sane way to mount it. It predates the current flight stands and only had a randomly-sized hole in the middle of the bottom. I could use a brass rod to hold it up but that would not reliably hold this beefy piece of resin.  What I decided to do was to get a wooden base from the Christian-run hobby store and some nut and bolts from the hardware store and make my own base. I drilled though the base then widened the hole from 1/8" to 1/4" with a spiral bit being careful to keep my hole perpendicular to the base. After that I drove a partially threaded bolt through the bottom and Gorilla Glued it into place. After trimming up the predictable overflow, I packed the hole with super glue just to be sure. 

Finished - Tau Remora

Also from the China recasters, are these Tau Remoras. They retail for $25 each not including shipping which is insane. The Recasts are not awful. The detail is good, the lines are nice and deep and the wings are all almost straight. For $25 shipped, I got two Remoras which is fine by me. Depending on how they actually perform for me on the battlefield, I may be getting more. 

At 110 points each, they are expensive to fit into small games. They also eat up a very valuable Fast Attack slot int eh Tau army. That means less these days, but I tend to think in the old Force Org chart even in these Unbound days. For only 20 more points, you can get a Barracuda, which is superior in my opinion. 

Finished - Necron Flyer

I love the Doom Scythe/Night Scythe kit. It is affordable as it is priced at $45 which is pretty standard for a Flyer. The real great thing is how easy the kit is to assemble and paint. It does not look like it, but there are very few parts to it.  Most of these that I see are sprayed silver and called "finished" after a little green is painted on the lenses and weapons. Necrons really suffer from the bad rep they have had since 3rd (let's be honest, since forever) of drybrushing silver. It s sad. 

The rules are also great. The armor is a little light at AV 11 (pretty standard for Flyers) but it has Living Metal to offset that. It carries 12 models and is the only thing that can transport units that are not Warriors. 

On the table now - Necron Flyer

This kit is flying together (pun intended). 

I have never really detailed how I paint my rusty Necrons so I will go over it briefly. 

In the top picture you can kinda see the stages in my rust stippling process. On the left side is a brown basecoat (as seen here) with Evil Sun Scarlet stipples over it. On the right side is Wild Rider Red stippled over that. The idea is to leave a little of each color showing through each layer. After a few passes, the brown is completely obscured but it makes for a good basecoat.

At this point, I would apply some Stormvermin Fur in weird and random patches and put some Chainmail over that, but I forgot on this mini. I starting doing this to represent the rusted Necrons repairing themselves but someone at the FLGS said that it could be a robot's idea of what camouflage would be. Either way works for me. I am just happy to paint them in a technique that is different than my other armies. 

On the table now - Necron Flyer

As promised, I am starting on the Necron flyer. It is hard to remember the color scheme that I painted my Necrons in but I am muddling through. 

Finished - Tau Flyer

I kinda wanted the theme from Air Wolf to play when the post opened, but I have no desire to be that annoying. 

I bought this mini 3 weeks ago off eBay for $45 including shipping. I assembled most of it in a week and painted it in two. I am still working on some of the bits like the turrets, but they are minor things. The real challenge was getting the its to line up so I could make both of the two kits. 

On the Table Now - Tau Flyer

Epic Post - This is not the EMBARGO you are looking for.

I am now the proud owner of GW's new starter box Dark Vengeance. Oddly, this is the first starter set not names for a place or a battle. Equally odd is that this is the first time a named Space Marine Chapter has been featured in a starter box. The last two starter boxes have ostensibly been Ultramarines but there was little detail on the minis to distinguish them from vanilla Marines.

It retails for about $100 which is friggen crazy for a starter set. No parent is going to walk in there and drop that on a child's whim and no gamer has that much to throw around on a new hobby. Bad move  IMHO from the start, GW. $50-$70 would have been a much smarter place to stay.

There is an OMG Limited Edition Pre-Order WTF that is about $10 more and you get is a pretty awesome plastic Interrogator Chaplain. Pretty good deal right? Wrong! You can only get the LE Edition from GW Direct or from your FLGS/CLGS. Unless you have a really cool FLGS that give you a loyalty discount you are really paying $25 for that one mini. Average discount on GW products is 20% because GW sells to independent retailer at 30%-50% off (I can't remember the exact figure) the retail price on the GW website. As a loyalty bonus to people that buy from the store they play in rather GW or the Internets, most stores will give you a little break.