Officially starting guard finally.

[micahwc]

Got all my little guys based, base coated, and dipped last night. Need to start drybrushing them all still. They are no longer a unpainted grey hoard, now they are a painted grey hoard. Pic was after basing but before any paint was added.

 

http://i.imgur.com/1rODKsL.jpg

 

Models were base coated in a two tone grey paint scheme and dipped in a black ink mix. I'm not sure if I like it or not as the ink darkened everything a lot, but I tried several other colors for shading and none of them looked right.

As an aside, I think the cadian models look a lot better with back packs added.

 

@Duz, I wish. I am starting to get comfortable with the slicing software aspect of 3d printing but I am very inexperienced when it comes to manipulating STL files. I'm getting them from thingiverse.

 

My father-in-law is starting a business doing freelance CAD work and they wanted someone with experience in 3d printing, so I bought a monoprice select mini 2 just to play around with it and figure out the slicing software. He and his business partner do CAD for a living so the STL stuff is up to them.

 

So far I've liked cura 3 the best out of multiple free slicing software titles I've tried. For manipulating STLs I've had the most success with meshmixer, but have been pretty limited to simple shapes or modifying someone else's file. I removed a turret off a Leman Russ to seperate it into a seperate print, but that's about the most I've done with STL files.

[micahwc]

Been working on a shadowsword. I will buy an actual name blade kit someday, but for now this will do.

 

http://i.imgur.com/LtDGphn.jpg

 

Each of these five pieces took 5 hours of printing. The sixth is printing right now.

[micahwc]

http://i.imgur.com/6PxjlpG.jpg

 

About 200?more thin coats to go.

[micahwc]

http://i.imgur.com/NM5qnqV.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/bIpQ8HK.jpg

 

Starting to look like a shadow sword. I've got some details left to print and glue on, and then some sanding and gap filing before it will be ready to paint.

[micahwc]

Need to print the engine, sponsons, and heavy bolters still. I'm thinking about switching to plastic card for the armor detail, although I could print that easily enough I think it would a lot faster just to cut it out from card by hand.

[micahwc]

Had a productive day today. I got the engine printed and glued to the shadowsword. I sanded it all over and filled some gaps and seams with bondo spot putty. Sanded the bondo down once it dried.

 

While waiting for the engine to print I started painting my infantry. I discovered that I could paint pretty tiny detail using my Badger Krome and it's .2 nozzle, so I got all my guard infantry painted up. Still need to do the scions and Commisars.

 

I've had a tough time getting the head lights for the shadowsword to print correctly. I've tried it twice and it's failed both times. Argh.

[micahwc]

http://i.imgur.com/JbqM0wF.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FJooIGL.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/EgjzpnJ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Fg5bUpB.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/tqmgMRC.jpg

[micahwc]

Almost done with my shadowsword. I've got all the weapons installed. I put bondo over everything to help smooth it out. I have a lot of sanding yet to do. I'm running quad sponsons with a twist; there are only two sponsons of heavy bolters, each lascannon turret has 2 lascannons instead of 1, and a third turret with 4 heavy bolters was mounted on top (theoretically for anti air). All the turrets and sponsons can move.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/pnWfLDL.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/kYA8A1U.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/gpUbBEd.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/EZyfFFc.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/cTiIUsO.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/KJv5Dc9.jpg

 

This will be part of the Valhallan First Heavy Tank regiment. Fluff says they have at least one shadowsword. It will be my armies centerpiece, my Magnus/Mortarion/Gman. It will have a name. I'm leaning towards "Glory of Valhalla", but have considered some others.

[WarriorFish]

You're making very fast progress! :tu:

[micahwc]

http://i.imgur.com/AOlSYlJ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/IJ4c6Vw.jpg

[micahwc]

Attacked it with the bitz box and primed it.

 

http://i.imgur.com/aGkbJAD.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1lUhgys.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/HSTHxxi.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ilQriW3.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/cRPag1F.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/hcJz6LB.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Y5Xtrp0.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/UScliOb.jpg

 

I'm pretty happy with it.

[Silas7]

I say, sanding it down and smoothing it over with wall filler was a good call. The over-all quality of the model is much improved, nice work.

[micahwc]

I managed to drop a box with all my infantry models in it, good news is I've identified which models didn't have the best bonds and will get to correct that issue. Erg. I've painted the shadowsword in like 3 different schemes and haven't been satisfied with it yet. Right now it's just a solid dark blue grey color that I've used on everything else in my army.

[Tyr13]

Hm... Id probably try to add some more detail to the shadowsword, the front looks a bit too smooth atm... maybe add some rivets, plasticard armour plates, that kind of stuff? I mean, its fine as is, but some rivets would probably be a good way to get it from "fine" to "awesome". :)

[micahwc]

Good point. I'll see what I can do.

[Tyr13]

Itd also make painting easier, since youd be adding some texture to highlight, drybrush, wash or otherwise mess with. :)

[micahwc]

http://i.imgur.com/F2E0t5Y.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/oholyEm.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Utvx5di.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/covhD4r.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/d6mgh4T.jpg

 

Did some basecoating and got something in happy with after a few tries.

[duz_]

Like the scheme looks good!

[iceman2160]

I wish that I could do a camo scheme that looked as good as that.  Any time I try one it ends up looking like my 9 year old dumped some paint pots on it.

[micahwc]

I cheated. I used my 3d printer to print out an airbrush stencil. Then I airbrushed it all a solid base color, and started stenciling in the other two colors (one at a time) until it looked good to me. I found the best results from sections of the stencil where there where lots of holes in kind of a row, I would spray paint, move the stencil slightly, spray it again, move it maybe an 1/8 inch and spray again.

 

If I didn't like how a section looked I just kept going over it until it looked better.

 

The closer you can get the stencil to the tank, the sharper the lines will be, the farther the stencil the more blurry the lines will be. I wanted relatively sharp lines so I tried to get the stencil touching as much as possible.

 

If you don't have an airbrush you could probably replicate it with spray cans pretty easily with a larger stencil to contain the over spray.

[WarriorFish]

I made myself more efficient.

Fixed the first sentence for you I've seen some stencil stuff online that seemed ok, but for what is mostly a glorified series of holes always felt a little pricey. Main issue was that you'd have to find what you needed, so micahwc's creation of his own stencil is a much better idea I think :)

[micahwc]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2222870

 

I stole someone else's stencil and printed it.

[micahwc]

2000 point game tonight. Don't know who against yet, the player has a lot of excellently painted Death Guard and Blood Angels. Same guy I played last time.

 

This time I will be incorporating my missile teams into my infantry squads to keep them firing longer. I will be bringing the Shadow Sword because it's a freakin Shadow Sword. I'm debating about Yarrick, I haven't really liked him so far but re-rolling 1s on the Volcano Cannon would be nice.

 

I am also thinking about maybe bringing conscripts for the first time ever, just a single large blob of 30 or so. I'm playing Valhallan, so I can bring the pistol relic and get a pseudo-commissar effect.

 

My scion battalion will show up as they have been my best far objective grabbers / assassins so far.

 

I'll probably run the tank commander punishers with sponsons, maybe bring plasma sponsons instead of heavy bolter sponsons since I'll most likely be facing marines of some variety.

[micahwc]

My list for tonight is 4 detachments, 12 command points.

 

Battalion 1

2 Tank Commander Executioners with plasma sponsons and storm bolter

3 Infantry Squads with missile launcher, plasma gun

2 Banewolves, chem cannon and heavy bolter

 

Battalion 2

2 Tempestor Primes with plasma pistol and power mauls

6x scions, 2 melta

5x scions, 2 plasma

5x scions, 2 plasma

 

Battalion 3

Company Commander with bolt pistol, chain sword (Pietrov's 45?)

Company Commander with plasma pistol, power maul

3x infantry squads with missile launcher, plasma gun

 

Superheavy Auxiliary Detachment

Shadowsword, 10x Heavy Bolters, 4x Lascannons, Volcano Cannon

 

Edit: As an aside, I wish they would let us form platoons for purposes of deployment, kind of like how vehicle squadrons can deploy together. Say a platoon consists of 1 platoon commander, 2 infantry squads, and can take a heavy/special weapon squad as an option, and then all deploy as one deployment, but act independently in the course of the game. That would help a lot with the number of placements we have to make.

Edited November 24, 2017 by micahwc

[micahwc]

I lost but it was a good game and we both had fun. Highlights include my shadowsword taking 13 wounds off a wraithknight in one shot, bane wolves killing a bunch of wraith guard, said banewold exploding and killing off his warlocks and wraith guard, and my shadowsword exploding which killed off just about everything friend and foe within 8" Edited November 25, 2017 by micahwc