Painting My Rhinos

Woo! I got my paint brushes (and magnets) in the mail on Saturday from miniwargaming.com. I bought their Taklon brush set which has varying sizes from detail to large tank. I got a free tank brush months ago from one of their sales and been using it for my Rhinos and it's been awesome. I'm no artist, but I know I'm not a fan of the horse hair brushes so far, and these taklon bristles have been a lot more smooth and clean, so I bought a bunch more. I painted 3 of my Rhinos with the old mechrite base scheme already before I got my Ruddy Brown, but I based my new Baal Pred with the new spray paint to give the updated scheme a try. The process is now: Ruddy Brown Primer, Devlan Mud wash, Red Gore, and highlighting is actually on hold. I'm not a fan of the Blood Red paint; sorry, it's not a red, it's an orange and I need to mix it darker or find something else for my highlights. I added a ton of icons to my Rhinos for some character, but this has set me back as I really need to learn how to paint wings. So all my winged icons are on hold for a bit, but I also had a bunch of purity seals added. Since my armor is red, I decided to go for a green seal to contrast the armor. I basically did Knarloc Green foundation with a Thraka Green wash for the seal and Dheneb Stone foundation and Bleached Bone for the parchment.

All I gotta say is I'm really happy with the way they turned out. Even with the different basing the color ended up looking all the same. The pic has one painted the old way and the one with the Baal front armor was done with RB primer. The only difference was the texture of the RB primer vs mechrite. It felt rough and it absorbed the wash and Red Gore, in a good way. There was no pooling or streaking; it just held the paint where I put it. You'll notice the Angel Icon on the Baal pred is lighter; that's what the primer looks like vs the end result with the Red Gore. I just need to finish the icons with wings, add some boltgun metal to the tracks and smoke stacks, paint the head lamps and the Rhinos will be done. I have a pile of vehicle accessories like more doors, hatches, gun mounts, etc based and washed, but I needed sleep before I could finish painting them. I also started 3 more tac marines with the new scheme. I based 'em red, then painted anything black I wanted next (like joints and tubes), then washed 'em down. I'll do the Red Gore today and finish them up and post pics.

All in all, totally psyched to have new brushes to get the job done right. Oh, one thing I did start doing was a tip from Jawaballs. For the detail work, I started doing the thing where you put the detail brush in your mouth to lick the brush and twist it to a point. I thought it would be weird and taste bad, but it's really a great way to get the bristles moist without overdoing it by dipping in water, plus it keeps the point. For detail work it's great, anything more and yeah, you're just eating paint, lol.

Let me know what ya think so far! I'll update as soon as I can.

Magnetizing My Rhinos

So another one of the hurdles that was keeping me from finishing my army has been wanting to magnetize as much of my models first, before assembling and painting them. Awhile back I ordered a couple different sizes of magnets from Miniwargaming.com so I could finally stop making excuses. After finishing a good number of my 40k tokens that I posted about earlier, I decided to switch gears and get some models done. I hemmed and hawed about how I was going to do this, but when I sat down with the models and magnets in hand, this was probably one of the simplest mods I've done or probably will do, since magnetizing the troops will be a smaller, more delicate job than the huge rhinos.

So as I said this was simple. I used the 1/4" x 1/16" Disc Magnets to ensure they could hold the weight of the finished HB or HF sponson of my Baal Pred. I measured out the distances needed inside the hatch here to make sure the magnets had actual contact in both situations of a door or a sponson. With the one magnet on the hatch itself and the other on the sponson, they had full contact and were spaced perfectly! Now for the door, I needed a spacer to make up the distance to the magent in the recessed area. I snipped a piece of sprue, filed it down to the width of the door and tested it: perfect again! With the sprue spacer and the size of the magnets they had full contact and perfect spacing. I started by using the rounded GW file to remove the rivet from the center of the inner rhino hatch to provide a smooth surface for the magnet to adhere to. Applied a dab of super glue and let it set.

Next I decided to magnetize my sponson options, eventho I feel I'll never A) use HF on my Baal Pred and B) never field a normal Pred that has las-cannons as an option, I still felt like I want the option or maybe something would change come next BA codex. This was a bit more tricky trying to decide how I wanted to mount it. I contemplated using Oni's method but I wanted to retain the up and down tilt of the guns for some reason, don't ask me why. So what I did was just cut above where he did to leave a bit of the arm that sits between the two gun halves. For this I used the 3/16" x 1/16" Disc Magnets. In general, go with Oni's method. I would too, but if I switch now, they won't all match up and I'm OCD when it comes to stuff like that, lol.

 (Click for closeup)

As for the other parts of the Rhino like switching out for a Whirlwind, Rhino doors up top, Pred turret, and the little hatches I decided that them being on top, I'd just let gravity do the work of holding them on. Trying anything else would be too complicated for all the options. Next up will be my Land Speeder, with magnetized options for the missile launchers, MM or HB and the HF or AC underneath. Should be a bit more of a challenge. Then will be my Heavy Weapon, Special Weapon, and Sarge in my tac sqaud.

As a general update, I've also started priming everything that I finish in Krylon Primer Gray. This eliminates me from trying to decide between priming in either white or black depending on the model as I have the full foundation paints and I wholly endorse them as a base paint, so the primer color is almost a moot point. Plus the can is labeled "primer" so it's gotta be right for the job, no? And it's only 3 bucks at Wal-mart and it has the angled nozzle so you can do passes in wide lines instead of a centralized circle.

My Necron Army (a WiP)

I did state and intend this blog to cover my first army, the Necrons, not just my Blood Angels successors. I didn't find it necessary to start a second blog just for them as the blog is mostly just my "workspace" on the internet, just like my work table at home. So, some background, first. I got into 40k via Dawn of War back in the day and was in love with the lore, read everything I could on Wikipedia (before they started taking it down). Necrons were my number 1 choice for the campaigns in Dark Crusade, many, many times. I just wasn't sure about the hobby/minature side of 40k, and never got into it. Then I played my first game as a proxy using my friend Seth's Khorne army as my necrons (oblits as heavy destroyers, Rhino as my monolith, etc) vs my other friend's Tau. It was a blast to play and I said the next day "I need more." Thanks go to Seth who egged me on to play that day for the first time. And thus began my spiral into the 40k hobby. I did some searching on the net and found the Necron Battle Force to be the best value and got it from a combic book store online that sold it for much cheaper than GW. I set up a production line to create my dudes and got enough up and running in the week I got the box to play 1000pts that weekend.

(Click for detail as usual)

As far as my lists go for battle, I've played them about 10 times so far, and never repeated the same list. I'm still learning what works and what doesn't. I've tried different combos of Destroyers, Heavies, and Wraiths. I tried a Warrior heavy list by cutting the Lith, but got cut down myself. Otherwise I've been able to hold my own with a [6W/3L/1D] record against Tau, Nids, and two different Chaos armies. And I only have what was in the box, so it's about 1500pts, 40 some odd Warriors, a Lord, Lith, 6 Destroyers that normally see action as Heavies, and around 15 bases of scarabs. As for painting them, the pictures follow below. I've left their arms off so I can paint the chest easily. So I have about 40 Warriors that look like the picture on the right, ready to go at a moment's notice.

They are primed black, painted once with Mithril Silver, then the chest is covered in Bleached Bone, Goblin Green in the rib cages and eyes, and Blazing Orange for the symbol, neck supports, and you can't see it, but the spine as well. I do a second coat of green to make it stand out more and then go once more with Bone to cover up any green that may have got onto the chest. I thought of making the legs Midnight Blue, but I like their current look more, so they may just stop there. The scarabs I'm particularly proud of. They are definitely something different looking with the contrasting orange and green and the blue legs. Destroyers are currently the same setup as the Warriors (you can peek at some in the army wide pictures above). I was also thinking of making their skimmer bodies blue, to be a big brother to the scarab look, but that may not happen. Finally, the Lord and Lith are unpainted as they will be done when I have better skills in painting as they will be center pieces and I don't want to mess them up.

So there you go, my first army exposé. Always feel bad when I have long posts, in case someone will comment "TL;DR". Either way, hope you enjoyed it and I'll update as I finish the army. Worst part of building a Necron force? Each warrior flayer is 5 parts to construct... times 40... plus the same for each Destroyer cannon times 6... ughhhhh! That's a lot of cleaning of mold flashings!