Wounds and verious battle scars

[Wysten]

Just curious as to whether it was normal for me to take a knife to a model to make it look sangicantly more worn or battered.

 

At the moment, I am experimenting on slicing the armour to give to make the armour look more beatup to make it look more like it had seen years a service, and hopefully marking the intendations with a mix of boltgun metal, sliver and a dark wash. Has anyone here had experience in such methods?

[Growler67]

Practice your experiments on the sprue frame so you don't end up trashing your model bits. You can judge the effects and refine your techniques relatively cheaply and without consequene on the frames. Just sayin.

 

I wouldn't characterize it as normal or abnormal. Some people do and others do not. I've seen it done mostly on display and diorama pieces and not so much with gaming pieces. YMMV.

[Grizwald714]

I add knife wounds and bullet wounds to a lot of my models. Well I've done it for my Wolves anyway because of of their fluff and the fell of the army I use an exacto knife I make 2 parraell cuts on an angle but not that deep so it makes what I guess u would call a wedge. For the bullet wounds I use the same exacto Knife make sure it has a good tip or it will slip as my which trust me is not fun. Or u could use a small drill head. If u use the knife just give it a little pressure and turn it till u get it the depth want it. I then will take the Knife push out words 3 or 4 times away from the center to make it look like the arm out cracked I think this gives it a lot better effect then just a whole. Another thing about bullet wounds I found it tends to look good if u group several of them together like he got a 3 shot burst to the chest or something. I personally like to add quite a few of these effects like one model might have 3 bullet holes and 2 knife. Just do what fells right try a test model first to make sure u like the results. I think battle damage can add a lot of character to your army expecially a sw army. I have won serval best painted awards with mine and like I said I have battle damage on my marines if I wasn't on my iPad I post some pics to give u some examples.

 

(Sorry I can't Spell lol)

[Growler67]

For bullet holes in vehicles,the simplest is an "old school modellers" trick. Hold a pin with a pair of pliers, needlenose. Hold the tip of the pin over a flame, there are various ways to create a flame - just do so safely. When it's hot, push the pin into the armor or wherever to creat the bullet hole. You should be able to get 2-3 good ones before the need to reheat. The end result is a clean hole exactly where you want it with an outward bulging edgeline. Entry angle can be varried for different effects. Again, you can practice this on the sprue frame before applying the technique to your models.

 

I suppose this technique could also be used on Power Armor. Maybe modified to use he side of the pin instead of the tip. That could produce a "glancing/searing" damage effect to the Ceremite/Adamantine material it is made out of. If you wish to create "casualty" models then a few "penetrating hits like those I described above would be more appropriate.

 

Then just apply paint to get the proper visual effects and you are done.

[Orphus]

This is something I always find strange. Starting out with 40K I used to think the concept of painted on scratchs silly. But I have seen some amazing painting examples that can trick the eyes and like. I'm not a fan of mutilating models anymore but if done correctly it can add to the sense of a model. For severe tank damage you could use a souldering iron ( start at a distance, always at a distance!!!), or a heat gun (same as previous applies).

[Wysten]

Interesting, in all honesty, I myself am fairly terrified of marking my figures in a way I don't want to. So I am only really experimenting on one model, then probably on the sprees as described. Just as said, I could understand the more codex chapters being less damaged due to less proximity to close combat, just with space wolves I imagine their brawling style would result in their armour getting quite battered over a lifetime of use.

 

The pin technique does sound most interesting, something I'll probably have a mess with before I poke a model with it.

[Growler67]

In reading the Ragnar Saga, there is mention of plasteel repair kits and such for battlefield expedient fixes to their armor. Ragnar and others squeezed the "putty/cream" out of the tubes and smeared it onto the damaged and weakend parts of their armor. I imagine that when they return to the Fang or otherwise have some extended downtime, their armor gets a going over by the Iron Priests and armoer servitors so that they ar once again in the best condition the next time their Wolves deploy for battle.

 

Astartes armor does not stay beat to heck, it only looks that way during the course of a battle. SHowing battle damage on the armor of your models may be accomplished with just painting techniques to show scorching and chipping away of the paint rather than mutilaton. Pick a spot, paint a black area of the size you want the damage to be, generally smallish. Then within the field of black, paint some boltgun or other dark metal color, leaving the black border visible. Looks best on the corners of vehicle armor but I guess it can be used on infantry models as well. The black will rpresent the scorching of the armors paint and the boltgun or silver or whatever will be the naked armor underneath. Experiment with different shaped areas as sometimes a glancing hit will be elongated looking like a burnt slash paralell to the ground and may only scorch the armor paint and not necessarily burn down to expose bare ceremite and adamantine.