Triarch Praetorians WIP

I decided to go with Triarch with war scythes.  I like the way the shaded blue power weapon portions stand out against the green. Unfortunately I forgot to paint the other side of the weapons when I was batch painting the lychguard, so I have to go back and do that before I can complete the staff. When I was painting the death marks and was doing the red eye/sensor thing, I went ahead and painted the red sensor on these guys as well.  These guys were almost painted by mistake. It was like the excess painting from other units spilled over and I realized that I had nearly completed a unit without thinking about it.

The 40k question. Will I field these? Eh, maybe. I've been knocking around the following list idea for a 2k list.  I am thinking primarily NOVA format. Basically I want to hold two or three objectives, and let my arks contest of they survive to do so.

• Overlord WS orb  //middle objective
• cryptic tremor staff //middle objective
• cryptic tremorstaff //objective 2
• cryptic tremorstaff //objective 2
• cryptic meltastaff //objective 2
• cryptic meltastaff //objective 1
• lord WS orb //objective 1
• 
  
• 4 9 man necron squads
• 4 ghost arks //one at objective 1, one at objective 2, one at the middle objective, one floater
• 2 10 base scarabs //one at objective 1, one goes for the middle objective
• 1 3 base scarabs //hangs out near least threatened objective according to setup
• 1 spyder gloom //grey knight defense objective 1 limited scarab regen
• 1 spyder gloom //grey knight defense objective 2 limited scarab regen
• C'tan with writhing world scape hangs out near most threatened base for late game suicide attack

There are three objectives that the nova open focuses on, objectives, table quarters, and kill points.  They get swapped around depending on the mission, but an army needs to do well in all three to succeed. I believe if I can slow game time down, and make it difficult for the enemy to get to me, I can contest 2 of the remaining three objectives late game using my arks. Eventually my opponent will get to me, which is where a load firepower should help. I think I just need to avoid early assault to give myself time to shoot. The scarabs and the C'Tan function as suicide troops if my world shaking difficult terrain does not work. Gloom Spyders provide anti-grey knight defense, with scarabs as a carpet moving forward providing distance threat.


just an idea....

Deathmarks or Units People Hate Pt 2

These could have been tesla equipped Immortals, which would have added the first tesla equipped troops to my army, instead they are Deathmarks. The rules for these guys do not make much sense to me. Short range assassin snipers that show up just in time to be shot during the other players turn. Despite that, the story behind these guys, that they are the assassin class of the Necrons, and the cool cycloptean look of the models themselves ensured that I would end up painting a squad. Usually I can imagine fielding even the worst units. These guys take the cake. I think they are going to sit nicely on my shelf next to their Necron brothers, and simply provide me visual entertainment.

When I was prepping my second batch of neurons, I stripped the sprues and dumped the contents into open box lids. It turns out that it takes very specific arms to make theses weapon configurations work. Much like the Ghost Ark, where I failed to read the fine print, I found myself trying to dry fit each arm to each weapon. One of minis looks like his shoulder is being torn from the socket. But I suppose that is what you get when you are a short range in your face sniper without any close combat ability! I added red as a new color for the army, and plan to add red gems/lights to the tops of the ghost arks. I used the purple color again, on the weird dangling balls on the back, as well as the embedded globes on the back armor. I am slowly settling on the the scheme that purple means weird warp technology, red is non Necron eye sensors, and shaded blue/white are power weapons or gauss cables for cause weapons. I think those colors will add all of the contrast I need for the army.

I've got a batch of triarch praetorians on the painting table now. I think those guys are considered useful in people's army lists, so they might see some action on the tabletop.

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.