Necron Destroyers WIP Or Units People Hate Part 1

 

I've been reading quite a bit online about how terrible Necron destroyers, death marks, or various other units are in the Necron codex for a while now. It is easy for me to decide to paint something that will never get fielded, because I am a very fast painter, and I rarely play. I paint because I want to paint, very different than paint to play. I understand how a dedicated gamer might need to optimize his or her  painting time, and am very fortunate that I do not have to optimize mine.  Hence my next series of posts are all units that people online have urged me not to buy! I appreciate their advice, and if this army ever sees the field I will do some careful editing, however for now it is really all about painting cool toys.

In terms of speed, these destroyers took around 2 1/2 hours from start to this stage. (still deciding what to do with the ugly transparent plastic green rods). It seemed the models just spoke to me. Part of that comes from having a recipe now that I am familiar with. For instance I did not have to think about what color to paint the beetle/egg shaped carapace section. I knew it had to be dark grey, shaded to lighter grey at the edges. After painting my vehicles that became standard. The minty color I can knock out in in a couple of minutes with two color changes in the airbrush, so it is easy as well. these miniatures were quick and easy to paint, which combined with their striking form, made them a joy to paint. I really want to paint more of them now. I think a lord and a heavy destroyer should be added to the mix.  If I had simply followed the net's advice, I would have never bought these, and never gotten the thrill it was to see them add diversity and visual interest to my army.

to munge a slogan from Apple, Paint Different!

Necron Cryptic, Overlord, Lord, and Army Shots

I just finished a Necron Cryptic to add to my steadily growing force. I am a bit surprised GW did not create a box for these guys since 4 of them are auto-includes in any army, and the unit is so interesting fluff-wise. I am not sure what I am going to do for the other cryptics I need, since I can't see myself buying duplicates.

I feel like I am running out of interesting necron units to paint. Anyone have any spare plastic scarabs? Those never get old!

Minty Necron Overlord WIP

The Necron train continues! I think I did a better job painting the purple bowling ball this time around. If I keep up at this rate I am going to have to figure out how to finished all of the warriors and immortals.

I think some battle damage/rust tests are in my near future!

Lychguards Painted!

I am making good progress with my Necrons again. If you ignore the guys whose head is falling off, these guys are ready to deflect shots with their shields and protect my lord. I continued with the purple gem theme on them as a highlight, as well as blue shaded power weapons. I keep hearing that these guys are terrible in this configuration, but I have them now, and so they will be fielded. Just in case however, I decided to bulk paint the rest of my forces power weapons. this saved me a lot of time, however in keeping with Ron's recent post about only painting the front of a model, I totally forgot to turn the power weapons on the plate over for the two lighter highlights, so these are only partially completed.


Where would I be without my airbrushes? Am I even capable of painting an entire miniature by hand? Does the airbrush make me less of a painter?

Necron Lord With War Scythe WIP

My minty green Necron's finally have an HQ choice! This model is still WIP, with some areas are still pure un shaded base coat, but I really liked the way it was tuning out and wanted to share. I used the same power weapon technique I used on my Blood angels with this guy. A quick recap.

1. Prime area black
2. diluted enchanted blue base coat
3. enchanted blue mixed with white as the first pass
3. Space Wolf grey on the high energy portions.

I will go back with washes for shading, paint the rest of the power weapon, and then the rest of the details. I think the key thing here is that I was able to knock this out in a few minutes rather than hours. I can spend as much time as I like cleaning him up now. I've said this before but.....

please go out and buy and air brush. It is like magic. Imagine adding an airbrush as a tool to an already talented painter!

So do I finish this guy or just keep scatter painting the force, adding colors as I go?

Easy Necron Flying Base Tutorial

I am a big fan of easy basing, so a while ago I started experimenting with creating washes out of heavily diluted GW foundation paints. Eventually I settled on a dusty desert world look. Originally this style of basing was created for my Blood Angels, but after painting up my first Necrons, and reading that they had a penchant for destroying imperial worlds, I decided to use the same style for their bases.

Step 1: Glue a bunch of imperial debris on the top of the flying bases. Cut the debris up as much as possible so there there are plenty of grooves for the wash to settle into.

 Step 2: Prime white.

 Step 3: Using a 50/50 water Khemri brown foundation mix, paint the entire base, leaving puddles of the paint. The paint will separate into the darker blackish color, and into all kinds of the shades of brown as the paint dries. It is important to keep the paint very watery so this can happen.

 Step 4: In order to tie all the bases together, unifying all of the variants of brown, a dry brush of Dehenb stone is done over the entire base.  A 50/50 mix of white glue and water is then dabbed on the base in patches where dry static grass will be added.

 The end result is a simple base, with enough color variation to really help models stand out.

Necron Flayed Ones

Three out of five flayed ones are now complete-ish. (not really finishing any model per-se!)
I plan to add the wet blood after they are varnished. I probably won't get much more done due to thanksgiving.  I think my next major push needs to be finishing these and the guard. That will give me some interesting units to use.

So now that I am painting the bulk of my troops, what I really want to paint are tomb spiders and wraiths. Where are those models. Weren't they plastic before? I never saw one in person, but the wraiths look pretty cool to me on email. I really want to paint some, but maybe I should wait.

C'tan

Unclear on my weathering techniques, I decided to just ignore the problem for a while. I did rub off more of the powder and ended up with a slightly better result, but I think I can defer the decision for a while, which will give me more time to practice on old rhinos.

I am already painting this army in unfinished chunks so I decided to just add two purple C'tan to see how well the colors meshed with the overall look. I don't remember who suggested it, but adding purple was a great idea, and I owe a commenter thanks for the idea. The internet rocks! Ctan really don't look like they belong in a Necron force, so I tried to paint them up like purple apparitions rather than regular objects of the material universe. Also, I made sure that some of the minty green color was on each of the models in order to tie them into my royal dynasty. I am fairly pleased with the bases as well. Ruined imperial vehicles make a wonderful base for just about any army, especially imperial ones!