Ace Debonair

I'm back, and I brought some friends. A mixed bag of slightly Dragonball-inspired Eldar Guardian Defender / Storm Guardian NPOs for Kill Team, leaving me with just the Farseer, Six Jetbikes, Wraithlord, Swooping Hawks, Fire Dragons and ten Striking Scorpions left to paint before my eldar are completely finished. Alright maybe I bought a few too many things there, but at least most of them were cheap with the magazines and stuff.

This is all fantastic stuff; I've got a bunch of Necron warriors for my nephews to fight, plus a couple of the big three-legged guys I've forgotten the name of who would make great heavy brawlers. This looks like it'd be a fun challenge for them! Also I like the colour you've used for your terrain, as an aside. I'm currently thinking something in Space Wolf Grey contrast for my ones, but the reddy-orange looks good too.

Ah, a kindred spirit! I always paint every single part of the model separately, still on the sprue, at least up to the point where I'm going to apply washes/drybrushes/other things to bring out the details. Getting the base colours blocked in on-sprue helps me have less anxiety over which bits are even slightly visible on the completed model so I don't beat myself up over missing bits. My other habit: I can't generally have any other plans for the day when I start painting, otherwise I just stress myself out about being on a timer, even if I'm literally eight hours away from going out. I don't know why, since eight hours is enough time to paint and base a couple of models to my usual tabletop standard, even taking my perfectionist attitude into account, I just get panicky about being "on the clock". I can 100% recommend using spray primers, though, which I always do outdoors. I've never used a mask, but I have managed to spray-paint the flagstones white once or twice over the years. Generally I prime the entire sprue, but I also tend to get snow-blind as to what's done or not done so it often takes two attempts to get it right. But it's so much quicker than trying to prime everything by hand even with that taken into account, and these days having hobby time is harder and harder, so speed always wins out for me. My only other advice is always go for white or other light colour primers if you're going to use contrast paints; they're designed for use on top of light colours, and painting an even layer of white (or other bright colours) OVER black paint is a righteous pain in the neck. I can say that with the regret of way too much experience in that field!

As somebody who habitually gets really obsessive about it and paints literally every part of a model before I stick any of it together I can say, with the absolute certainty of someone who's done it this way for twenty years(!), that plastic glue works work just fine over paint. I can also say from plentiful experience that the glue does hold on a bit better over time if the paint in question is either really, really thin (like contrast paint) or scraped/filed/scrubbed away, but it's not 100% essential to make the parts stick. Oh, Unless any of the bits involved are resin, in which case superglue is definitely your friend, and ALWAYS dry fit parts first because superglue doesn't give second chances

That seems fair enough. I hadn't considered the idea of just making the 'power' swords into Wraithbone swords, that's a clever solution.

By a stroke of luck, I'm actually painting some Guardians now to use as NPOs next Christmas, so the timing on these is really good. EDIT: I'm a month late to the party on this topic, so actually *my* timing is awful The only minor quibble I have is that there are only five chainswords available for the Storm Guardians in the current kit, alongside seven power swords, and we have enough of a headache tracking all the book-keeping without counts-as-combat weapons that happen to look like power swords. Admittedly, that might just be a 'me' problem, and I have no problem house-ruling things a bit to make it easier for my nephews (and me, if I'm honest ) to keep track of. Also, if this was an intentional design decision (now I'm more awake I can see why you don't want squad-wide power weapons), then fair play.

I've been waiting a long, long time for this update to the Swooping Hawks. Finally, models for my favourite Aspect Warriors that don't look like they're trying to be fully 2D. They really look - dare I even say it - as good as the Scourges for the Dark Eldar, which up until now has been my all-time favourite kit to paint and assemble. I'm genuinely excited to get my hands on them! I like some of the other Aspect Warriors too (I didn't expect the Fire Dragons to come out looking this good) but the Swooping Hawks are the definite winners for me.

I couldn't have done it without the videos you found, that's for sure, so many thanks again The only test left is to see how well it plays with the magnets holding it together, but that's coming up on Christmas Day, Emperor willing. EDIT: After two tests on seperate days, I can confirm the buildings work well enough to be playable, but probably need another magnet or two for stability. Lesson learned - always add one more than you think you'll need!

Brothers, forgive me. I'd uploaded these pictures to my PC a while ago and then completely forgot to get them on the forum. Above is the complete building A from Hivestorm, brought to you through the power of SCIENCE magnets, easy to assemble and take apart. More pics in the spoiler below! Hopefully this proves to help someone in the future, and if nothing else, let it stand as a testament to how much easier it is to use magnets to build terrain than might be expected. I went from clueless to pretty good at it in the space of two walls, thanks to the aid of my fellow hobbyists.

I'm pretty sure the idea is you then proceed to buy one of the Killzone terrain sets, either with that multi-level stuff or set in a space hulk. It's a starter set, after all, and ultimately they want more money from you. That's one of the reasons I'm surprised the Death Guard Kill Team can't take options from the regular plague marine kit; force people to buy the starter for the sorcerer, and then get them to buy the regular plague bois for the better weapon options. If the MDF terrain is a hit though, we'll probably see more of it in future, and I wouldn't be surprised if the designs become more audacious (big buildings, non-imperial terrain that they shy away from making in plastic, that sort of thing).

Ok, so: The circumstances in which I play Kill Team are as follows. The game is house-ruled like crazy and simplifiied down to the lowest possible amount of stuff to remember for the benefit of one of my nephews, who has learning difficulties and just likes to roll dice so his dwarves can be awesome. This effects my viewpoint on how this should work by a lot, so I feel it's important to state that context up front. That said, I feel like a key thing to determine early on is just how different you want these all to be from each other. For example, what level of difference would you want between a basic Blooded trooper, a Veteran Death Korps Guardsman, a Brood Brother, and the existing profile for basic Marksman Trooper NPOs? Giving them all their own special rules seems redundant, (after all, at that point why not just use the existing Kill Team's rules as they are), but making them all function identically might not be what you want either. There's also the question of granularity, for the lack of a more appropriate term. Presumably the point of making NPO datasheets will be to have less profiles than the existing Kill-teams have, but how far would you want them pared down? To use the Blooded for the example again, you could theoretically trim the contents back to Blooded (Marksman), Blooded (Melee), Blooded Leader, Enforcer and Ogryn. Heck, you could just count the Enforcer as another Blooded Leader, if minimum number of profiles is the goal. Better still, in that regard, would be to use the existing Trooper NPO stuff (both brawler and marksman, as appropriate) for the majority of the Blooded, and the Heavy melee profile for the Ogryn, leaving you with just needing a profile(s) for the Blooded Leader(s). I'm of the mindset that there is no shame in leaning on (or outright using) the existing NPO profiles, and the goal should be adding the absolute minimum of additional datasheets and special rules, but I'm aware that that doesn't mean everyone else would want the same thing. People who mainly play the Blooded might want something slightly more potent to represent their guys with, for example, even as NPOs. So I think it's important to first work out what level of complexity you'd want before tackling a project like this, and whether the goal is maximum amount of customised datasheets or maximum integration with existing stuff. EDIT: oops, left out a few words EDIT: Left out a lot of words, actually

My Brothers, I must report on my progress with this experimentation with magnets and terrain It's been... an overwhelming success! (My phone camera is a damaged potato, but I'll get some actually viewable pics soon ) I magnetized nearly every part of it - there's a couple of small buildings that just clip together, no glue needed, so I've left them as they were for now. The Killzone Volkus terrain has a lot of different connection types, which meant a large variety of approaches were needed, so thanks again to everyone for your suggestions, and especially to Brian Blaire for all the super-useful videos - every time I got stuck I came back to this thread to watch something to give me an idea of how to proceed. May The Emperor/Dark Gods/Other Deity of Your Choosing bless you all, and may your hobby projects flourish!

By Gork, I fink 'E's Got it! Orkz is best at lotsa fings, an' talkin' proppa is jus' one of 'em. Gud werk, ya big 'ard green git, now gerrout dere an' keep krumpin' gitz. 'Oomies lissen betta wen you bop 'em on the noggin', well, 'cept da one ya just krumped!

That is a really cool idea, but the way the new stuff goes together is a bit less modular - some of the walls are just really tall, with obvious gaps for the floor to rest in. Still, the magnets *should be* arriving today sometime, so I can give this all the old college try soon. Hopefully.