Stonhinge's "I need to get off my ass and paint" thread

[stonhinge]

Okay, so I watched my local 'Ard Boyz first round this year and realized two things. First, I miss playing. Haven't played since 2nd edition, and DAMN, things have changed. Secondly, I need to assemble the army first. Also, being the type of person I am, grey plastic does not cut it. Painting, with a bit of effort, shows that you take pride in your work, and your game. Even amateur teams manage some type of uniform.

So, this is going to be the thread that does two things - first, forces me to do something each week, and post to prove it. Second, allows all my fellow Unforgiven - and anyone else who wanders in - to get on my case about not doing anything. Which, in all likelihood, will happen. >_>

So, first we need an army. And since I'm going to be playing smaller point games as well, to get back in the swing of things, we need to start with a list. Comments on this are welcome as well.

HQ -

Belial (either TLC or THSS. Leaning towards TLC)

Troops -

DWT - Apothecary w/TH/SS, Banner w/HF/CF, TH/SS, TLC, SB/PS

DWTx4 - TH/SS/CML, TH/SS, SB/CF, TLC, SB/PS

Tactical - 5-man PG, Razorback TLHB

Elites-

Dreadnought - DCCW/HF, Assault Cannon

2x Dreadnought - TLAC/ML, Venerable, Extra Armor

Fast Attack -

2x RW Support Squadron - MM/Typhoon

Heavy Support

Land Raider Crusader

Predator AC, LC sponsons

So, that's what I want. For now. What have I got? Lemme check....

A GK Terminator box - That's 5 of the 26 terminators I need, plus that spiffy Apothecary arm. AoBR - 5 more terminators, ready for modification into chainfist wielding buffers. Plus a dreadnought - well, the body at least. For the rest of what I have, I got to play with my camera. Still need to get used to taking still with the camcorder. Anyways, generic terminator captain - who is getting a demotion to sgt.

Dreadnought #1

The Heavy flamer comes from and old predator sponson. The LC was modeled up (out of just sprue) because at the time, you could put LC on a dreadnought. He was required to have big ones by a fellow DA player, who insisted that he be more intimidating than Bjorn. I may or may not trim them down a little. Here's the 3rd dread that I have -

Since it was assembled badly (seriously, a little glue goes a long way. Some parts are encased.) and didn't strip worth a darn, he's gonna be bits. $5 well spent, because this gives me a base for a metal dread, and ML and LC arms as well as the AssCannon and SB arms. ML and LC were even unpainted, albeit assembled (not as bad as the rest, though). I do have two Landspeeders ... but ... well, once is this:

The metal Ravenwing Landspeeder (It was green before I stripped it. GREEN. Offended my sensibilities, since it had DA decals on it.) While the HB is a removable part, the AssCannon is not - at least, not without a lot of work. Plus, it'd be silly to remove it, only to build one out of plastic sometime. Plus I have a plastic landspeeder, unassembled. That came out of the 3rd ed starter box. Another delicious ebay find was this Razorback:

Old school. Love it. $5. Wait - there's no turret. Hmm. Could be a problem. Wait, ebay found me this as well!

It's the 2nd version of the metal turret, completely unused! (The first version was LC/TLPG, which is now all the rage. Go figure.) Again, 5$ well spent. Both HB and LC are in there, so some possible magnetization is in the future.

That pretty much covers what I do have. I do have four robed marines for the tactical squad, and the AoBR captain may or may not be the sergeant for that squad.

This week I've finally stripped the razorback (it was blue!) ... well, it's mostly stripped. Apparently about six months in Simple green wasn't enough. I blame whatever black primer was used. Right now, I'm scraping remaining bits of paint off with a hobby knife. Going to have to repair some "battle damage" made by drilling with a hobby knife with some putty, and sand some other spots. Reminds me of some of those car shows on TV that take the car that's been sitting in a garage for years and is getting restored. Bondo is probably overkill on a Rhino, though.

Comments, praise, and kicks in the ass (when I'm behind) are welcome.

Update: I've managed to separate the base Razorback chassis into it's 3 main parts - both reads and the body - without seriously damaging anything. This makes several things easier. One, I like the single slot beveled front panel better than the two side by side flat front panels. The underside also had the "bubble" top hatch covers, used for pintle mounted storm bolters and the regular rhino top hatch as well. I plan on making molds of these, so that I can reproduce those hatches, to use on this, and any other old rhinos I happen to pick up. I've already got a spare old razorback plate, so if I pick up another, I can mold it as well. I also plan on scratch-building a vindicator panel for the front, and possibly whirlwind turret in the future. Making a predator turret is a possibility, but doing sponsons as well would probably be a bit much. Although ... since i've got the sides off, I could glue some washers in the hole on the inside of the track, and eventually make/alter sponsons with magnets in them, which would need to be done anyways for such a conversion. Or I'm making grandiose plans, thus keeping me from completing this.

[Captain Semper]

Okay, so I watched my local 'Ard Boyz first round this year and realized two things. First, I miss playing. Haven't played since 2nd edition, and DAMN, things have changed. Secondly, I need to assemble the army first. Also, being the type of person I am, grey plastic does not cut it. Painting, with a bit of effort, shows that you take pride in your work, and your game. Even amateur teams manage some type of uniform.

 

I completely agree and I'm happy to see other people with similar frame of mind! Congratulations on your commitment to start an army after so long! More interstingly is it going to be a GotC army? I will follow this with great intrerest! The Lightning Claws on your Dread evoke memories for sure - and are very well done.

 

Just by looking at your stuff it seems you got yourself into a serious and challanging project. I recall sometime ago that there was a debate about RW and non-RW bikes/speeders. People were arguing that you could get Greenwing bikes without the rule making them RW and therefore should be green (I was one of them ;))... Maybe that's what happened to your speeder?

 

I'm also very interested to see how are you going to blend the GK Termies into the Unforgiven (although making them GotG will look a bit more appropriate given their scholar archetype). Especially for the standard bearer - if you're going down this way...

 

Good luck & post often!

[stonhinge]

Yes, i plan on using the Standard bearer, but I'm do realize I'll have some things to fill in/erase. Since I am going to photo the steps I take, perhaps it'll make it easier for others to do - once it's done. I'll also be using them mostly for sergeants, so having them stand out isn't really much of an issue.

 

One other thing I mentioned that I do have, is 4 sets of Ravenwing Upgrade sprues. So I've got heads I can swap for terminators, and the typhoons are taken care of. (along with some cyclones)

[Brother Immolator]

Welcome back old timer!I see you hunt down models by people who misused them and...retrofit them!

I do the same as well.

Welcome to the rock,cant wait to see those models fixed.

 

Oh and dont trim those claws,after all the forgeworld DA ven dread has claws.

[Droma]

Welcome back to the hobby. Depending on how quickly you want to get them table ready there are a lot of techniques for fast painting that look really good when done as an entire force. Or doing an alternate paint scheme works too. I'm not super into painting myself so I made a new successor chapter with black armor, bone details, and red as a splash color. It was super quick to paint seeing as most of my work was done for me with the pray primer. Dry brushing also works really well with DA.

[stonhinge]

Welcome back to the hobby. Depending on how quickly you want to get them table ready there are a lot of techniques for fast painting that look really good when done as an entire force. Or doing an alternate paint scheme works too. I'm not super into painting myself so I made a new successor chapter with black armor, bone details, and red as a splash color. It was super quick to paint seeing as most of my work was done for me with the pray primer. Dry brushing also works really well with DA.

 

Since my goal is to have a fully painted army for 'Ard Boyz 2012, I have no need to rush. Of course, with forcing myself to do something once a week will probably let me meet that goal with no foreseeable problems. I know that I'm doing Guardians of the Covenant, so the paint scheme is set. I don't want to do just silver with crimson robes. I'll probably tone down the shininess of the silver by adding grey, probably 1:1, but I'll have to see how it looks first.

 

Picked up some washers today for two things - inside the Rhino track sections for future attachment of magnetic Predator sponsons, and for the arms of the dreads. I'd rather not worry about polarity with magnets, and putting in two on the dread arms will let me pose it with pretty much no chance of slippage. Although it's probably overkill on the plastic dread, I'm going to make all the arms interchangeable with all the dread bodies. Those metal arms might be too heavy, I'll have to wait and see.

 

I still need to source some plasticard somewhere local - all I've managed to find is plexiglass in a thickness of about twice what I'd like - and order some magnets. I've also just checked the washers on a dread arm-post, and it's waay to big. Also too big to fit in the sides of the rhino - by a couple mm. >_<

 

Oh well, they were a whole 11 cents each, I can use them to weight down termi bases or something. Only bought 10.

 

One of the rhino track sections also still has Simple green sloshing around inside it, and I can't seem to find the place to let it out. I can always drill a hole or two on the inside of it to let it out.

 

I'm also trying to decide if I want to square up the front and back slopes of the Rhino. Those who have one knows that there's bevels on the left and right which leaves a gap - and that gap has always annoyed me. I probably will, and that will let me play with my stick of Milliput yellow-grey before I try and do anything fancy with it.