Novamarines: A Return Project

[Slyen]

Good Afternoon!

It's been so long since I've followed here with any sort of regularity. Just starting to get back to the game in earnest since leaving it by nature of life just as the Grey Knights had their 5th Edition release. Despite my best efforts a year or two back it's taken till now to get moving again and I figured picking up with the last project I was working on would be a good place to start.

The goal at the time was to build a simple and fun army that relied on the marines from the Assault on Black Reach box to form a core with some small conversions done to make them more playable. Additionally the plan was to cannibalize a marine squad from Dark Vengeance the as well as this would help bolster the numbers and give a slight variety to the marines. A final idea was to cannibalize marines from the Battle For Macragge box set, though a big part of this project was to use the sculpted tactical arrows from the other two sets.

As I said life hit and I was unable to approach the project until recently. The past couple of days I've dug through most of my stuff and found what I think is what all I need to get this back on the road. Further I decided to sit down and see how easy it would be to clear off the Dark Angels chapter icon from one of the marines and was reasonably happy with the results.

The big thing that I was worried as far as he goes for a model was how long it would take to clear him up. Over all for the one marine it didn't take to long, maybe about half an hour to forty-five minutes. Cleaning up the shavings always seems to take longer and I'm a bit surprised I had as easy of a time with it.

Now all this said I have a core army list idea in mind however, and here is perhaps the big part I will need the group think on, I am unsure just what chapter to do? If it wasn't already apparent I am not up for doing Dark Angels and I do have some ideas for a chapter to be fair but I want to look at the idea of tackling that project as an Art or True scale one. An idea I had was to keep with the idea that this is meant to be a simple army and that Ultramarines would be the way to go.

So If you've made it this far please, let me know your suggestions on how I should proceed as far as chapter and paint scheme! I even have a poor Mcragge regular that I have primed white just to use as a paint marine...

[Ch@oZ]

Iron hands maybe?

Or just simply go wild with your own idea.

[Augustus b'Raass]

Imperial Fists all the way!

[Luna707]

Mmmm I want to hear more about this true scale project you were thinking of :) have you thought of white scars or blood angels?

[Slyen]

Iron hands maybe?

Or just simply go wild with your own idea.

I have thought about Iron Hands a few times now but I think that is something I want to tackle in the future. Bionics are something I really want to learn how to do right to do them justice I think they need. That said I think you might be onto something with using this as a start to the project I want to pursue in the future rather than waiting.

Imperial Fists all the way!

I had been doing Imperial Fists as my last project but it's something I worry about picking up again. I worry about trying to pick up where I left off and figure it might be better to just start over. Yellow has always been, difficult for me to pick up. I've seen yours though and they are downright inspirational.

Mmmm I want to hear more about this true scale project you were thinking of have you thought of white scars or blood angels?

I've always wanted to do a smaller True Scale army and to better represent marines as they are in the stories, run them more than likely as Terminators. In fact when Grey Knights came out for 5th Edition that was my goal as they seemed perfect for it, namely between Hammerhand and the I believe Paladins had multiple wounds. I have always had a problem working with greenstuff though and it will take some time to overcome and potentially a teacher!

I've thought about both chapters. I'm not a huge fan of the White Scars, there is just something about the whole bike calvary concept and the Heresy era stuff from Forgeworld doesn't rub me well. I'm not against one of their successors though. White is something I could use work on. Blood Angels are a chapter I love, along with its successors. The issue is that I am currently doing Hive Fleet Kraken for my Tyranids which brought me back into the hobby. A lot of red already and I want to dip into some other colors.

Taking the original Black Reach Marines I have had and painted since 2008 along with several assorted marines from aborted projects since then I've soaked them in Simple Green for about 30 hours now. Goal is to scrub them down tomorrow as a lot of the paint was still heavy on them.

While that continues, I've primed a test mini from the Battle for Macragge set and am preparing to paint but still a bit of a loss as to chapter or even colour scheme. If anything I am thinking that perhaps working out a chapter of my own making but I was hoping for something that could be seen as a bit more recognizable by others. I've considered the idea though for just that as Silver Skulls and hinting that perhaps they are not entirely children of the Ultramarines...

One thing I think I would like to do with this is get free hand down but as always I want to use it to improve my general painting as it just seems sloppy to me.

And now a picture or two since I've been working on this post and getting them working through two films now...

[Slyen]

So progress!

I chose to do the Novamarines last night. While not a huge fan of quartered schemes I can get around that and it will give me plenty of practice for my Imperial Knights when I get to them. The other bonus is that their companies don't show any markings on their armor though I'll be running the 3rd Company I think. I'll be updating the thread title and tags to reflect this.

In the meantime here is the first step for the trial miniature. It's a bit big so I hid it.

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I decided to go with GW's Nagorath's Night to form the base of the cobalt sections of the armor based off of how dark it was in 6th ed codex. I figured it would be almost as dark as the Crimson Fists but how the paint comes off when dry is almost to the level of Night Lords purple if you get to much on. I think I'll be doing up a second test mini to try the GW base blue as I didn't realize this was a purple and see how dark it is but I feel like it is too much.

As far as the bone sections I was looking at following GW's guide for the Skitarri Cream colour that they did up for the Dune Crawler. It looks like it would be not only good looking as an off white but also fairly simple of a process.

As for the Simple Green Vats I tried clearing them out last night only to find that the Chaos black on Chaos Black was being stubborn. Anyone have any solutions? I was able to clear off a few miniatures but none were from the black reach set and they continue to soak now at about 48 hours.

[Kassill]

Brake fluid. Smells awful so I suggest doing it in a very very well ventilated place. Has worked for most of my heavy duty stuff that needed stripping. 

Looking forward to the next test mini. That is very purple-y indeed :P

[Augustus b'Raass]

Yeah break fluis will do it for you. Be very careful though nd wear glove, s tht stuff can eat through your flesh.

[Slyen]

Brake fluid. Smells awful so I suggest doing it in a very very well ventilated place. Has worked for most of my heavy duty stuff that needed stripping.

Looking forward to the next test mini. That is very purple-y indeed

Yeah break fluis will do it for you. Be very careful though nd wear glove, s tht stuff can eat through your flesh.

So I had heard that brake fluid will break down the plastics and resin that FW/GW uses but was safe to use on the metal minis. If this is not the case then awesome, I'll try it out on a less than fortunate miniature as a test run and proceed from there. I had picked up some to clear up metal minis incidentally enough. I also got some acetone free nail polish remover to try out last night as well.

After posting last night I got a bit antsy and decided to try and work over the purple while also working on a miniature that had previously been primed black to see if there was better results with black than with the white. I use GW's Caledor Sky for the new miniature while the one I have been using got some of the older Mordian Blue of which I have two pots of at least which I've next to never used.

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I'm honestly a bit torn on which to use as a base coat. The Caledor Sky comes out to more or less the color of blue that I would like to see but it is flat and would need work. I think the best way to deal with it would be to follow it up with a blue wash and then touch up with a slightly brighter shade of blue. By contrast the Mordian Blue comes out as dark but I figure if anything layering will get me to the bright cobalt I am looking for. From there I am just a bit lost as where I should go. Heck not 100% on the Caledor route either.

If anything though the good news is that I think I have figured out what the last color for the cream color gathered from the Skitarii paint guide. It just so happened that it was the first color so it's a bit hard to paint without it. The cream/white/bone portions of the miniature should be easier to do than the blue from the looks of it and I think it will be the first color in future models. We'll see how difficult it is when I get going with it.

[Augustus b'Raass]

Use white. Half of your mini is white, and having to make that white from a black undercoat si far more work than darkening your blue-one-white-undercoat with a simple wash of Drakenhoff Nightshade.

Break Fluid doesn't affect GW plastic at all (I recently found some plastics that had been in the fluid for over three years, rubbed them down and they were good to go) but it will affect FW resin after a couple of days, turning it into a rubbery substance. Make sure you take the FW resin out after about 24 hours, and the paint will slog right off. It also works on Finecast. 

 

Check out this video for a nice tutorial:

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[Slyen]

Well its been a bit since I last updated. There was a bit of break to focus on my Tyranids but started moving on this again in the wake of the 100 store celebration. In the meantime I did a thing not to long ago:

I, Slyen, rise to the challenge of E TENEBRAE LUX and vow to complete 1 Terminator Chaplain, 1 Terminator Squad, 1 Venerable Dreadnought, and 4 Tactical Squads from Adeptus Astartes of total value 1210 on or before August 15th, 2016. Success will bring eternal glory to Novamarines and failure will doom me to bear the Badge of the Oathbreaker until the year-end.

Honestly most of these aren't even constructed yet but hopefully I am not biting off more than I can chew, especially with this quartered scheme! I'm also breaking away from the Snap Fit for most of this. The Terminators are Assualt on Black Reach with some variation.

That said, the test miniatures came out nicely and I am preparing on the first two tactical squads, pictures to follow.

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One of the goals I'm going to try with this army though is making is not just playable but also to get better at my painting, in perticular freehanding. If anything the test miniatures have been a good warm up.