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Original First Post:

Index, in order completed (and not counting unfinished minis):

Nemesor Zahndrekh
Blaze, a Heroforge warlock
Szeras (old mini)
D&D Wraith
Monolith (old)
Nova, a Heroforge ranger
Last Night on Earth Zombies
Lychguard with Warscythes 1 [UPDATED]
Vargard Obyron
Necron Warriors 1
Fallen Log Base
Chainrasps 1
Terminators, old scheme, since stripped
Deathmarks
Skulls in a sea of blood
Lychguard with Warscythes 2
Pandemic Medic
Pandemic Dispatcher (two different posts)
Pandemic Quarantine Expert
Pandemic Contingency Planner
Pandemic Scientist
Pandemic Operations Expert (w/ 4 other Pandemic minis)
Pandemic Researcher
Pandemic team panorama
Pandemic team on board
Last Night on Earth Rusting Truck
Immortals with Tesla 1
Flesh Tearers Third Company, First Squad, Tacticals,
Flayed Ones, heavy conversion
Myrmourn Banshees
Last Night on Earth, Mr Hyde, the Shop Teacher
Lion Gear Base
Ruined Azyrite Steps
Lady Olynder
Chainrasps 2
Last Night on Earth, Deputy Taylor, the Sheriff's Deputy
Canoptek Scarabs
Mortisan Soulreaper
Namarti Thralls
Cryptothralls
Last Night on Earth, Johnny, the High School Quarterback
Grimghast Reapers
Last Night on Earth, Billy, the Sheriff's Son
Last Night on Earth, Zombie #8
Lychguard with Dispersion Shields
Flesh Tearers Third Company, Second Squad, Inceptors
Last Night on Earth, Old Betsy
Last Night on Earth, Sheriff Anderson
Flesh Tearers Primaris Librarian
Necron Warriors 2
Immortals with Tesla 2
Flesh Tearers Third Company, Third Squad, Assault Intercessors
Flesh Tearers Third Company, Fourth Squad, Assault Intercessors
Necron Warriors 3
Hasmoteph the Resplendent, Necron Lord
Flesh Tearers Captain (AoBR)
Cursed City Crow Objective Markers
Akhelian King
Mouse with Mushroom
The Mummy
The Wolf Man
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Frankenstein's Monster
Dracula
Tyranid Termagants
Flesh Tearers, Tenth Company, First Squad, Reivers
Necron Warriors 4
Kruleboyz Gutrippaz
Necron Warriors 5
Tyranid Genestealers
Radukar the Wolf
Karlina von Carstein
Kruleboyz Hobgrot Slittaz
Necron Warriors 4.5
Tyranid Barbgaunts

Progress is slow, Law School takes priority. Sucks, but well, it's responsible. I've gotten a little bit of painting done though: I've almost finished base-coating the 5 un-painted Lychguard w/ warscythes I picked up off ebay a while ago. The other 5 are very simply painted and washed, I might just keep the level of paint that's already on them and just to highlighting and updates, it seems light enough.



I've been working on paint-stripping, I bought a jug of Simple Green which works well on layer coats, but even after days and days soaking and a vigorous scrub, barely removes the blue undercoat of a bunch of ebay Warriors I used as my test case. Might have to go get something better.

And I need to do this because a pile of Kromlech Space Egyptian Weaponry arrived yesterday!


This stuff is gonna be used mainly for various HQ mods. I have an older Overlord in need of stripping, and a Cryptek I made out of the new Overlord that you get in literally every box that both require new weapons, posted below. The Cryptek is gonna get one of the Technostaves, and the Overlord will get a Khopesh. The status on that Overlord is how my poor warriors were painted before stripping, hopefully I'll have a before/after for you guys up soon.

The red on the Cryptek ties them in to the colours I use on my Canopteks. I have a second official Cryptek from ebay that needs stripping and painting to join his brother, but first things first.

Not too much to show here: mostly just did the last bit of base coating: the red that I use for jewels (and also to mark Canoptek and Cryptek stuff, but that's not what this bit is doing).

Been doing tiny bits of painting in between studying. I managed to miss one model on the red pass (because it was the one who I had to finish up the green first), and then gave each model a wash of Nuln Oil. Eventually I intend on getting some more varied washes so I can match better to the purpose, but for now my one wash will have to do.



That was technically a few days ago. Today I had a much more productive painting session. Fixed up the blade-up guy who was missing his red basecoat, and got most of my next layers down. All the purple went up to the next shade lighter, gold got highlighted, green got the next layer up (pretty happy with the coils on the warscythes), brown got some edge highlighting (I need a smaller brush though, I had such trouble controlling this one, I felt like I was painting the centre of each section of the staff instead of the edge each time), and the guy on the far right got the next layer of silver done as well. Just need to do silver all the way across, but keeping any joints darker like before, do the next layer of bone (keeping the space between the 'teeth' darker), and figure out how to start that 'gem' effect with the next layer of red, and then it's just edge highlighting left on this batch!

Finally finished up those Lychguard! I learned a lot doing them. In the end I'm actually pretty happy with them! The green glow turned out fantastic, although I'm not comfortable enough to have them actually shed light or do any OSL techniques yet. The red gem effect also came out OK.



I wouldn't have been able to do it without new Christmas brushes and paints! I also got a pile new models for Christmas that will be joining us soon, one of which has already hit the painting table. You can see the two big models in the background of the photo above: a night/doom scythe that I intend to magnetize, and a Monolith that I intend to play with green stuff to make it look hewn out of stone. In addition to those, I got a new box of immortals, a new Szeras, and a beautiful Zahndrekh that, being already primed, I couldn't resist throwing on to the painting table!



He should be very striking: that gold chest plate will really make him stand out, it really looks like early Roman pectoral armour painted up like this.

I did another coat of paint all around on Zahndrekh, just highlights, gems and glows left!



Not a huge visible difference on much of him, but it brightens up a lot of him across the board, most notable in the purple and bone.

I also realized I forgot on the previous models that I only wanted the front face-plate of the models to be bone and keep the back of their skull in steel-silver. So Zahndrekh will reflect that, and I may return to the Lychguard to fix that on them.

I also did a little modelling; I had bought a while ago a damaged Overlord without any weapons, so I stuck one of my Kromlech khopesh's on him. I think it looks great in the pose! Just a shame about the damaged cape.

Had a very productive day! I finished Zahndrekh a few days ago, but forgot to put the white line edge on his Staff of Light, and the glue smudged off the paint on his elbow. Everything has been fixed now! He stands triumphant and far superior to his Lordly brethren!


I bought some of the GW texture paints to experiment on bases. I don't have many shades, so this is Agrellan Badlands, Nuln Oil, and then drybrushed with Karak Stone and Screaming Skull. Wish I had Agrax Earthshade instead, or Lahmian Medium for my own washes but alas. I don't think simply watering down the paint would have the same effect.


Lastly, got Szeras and a custom Heroforge miniature for my D&D character. I haven't decided on cape, shield or cloth colours for the D&D miniature, but Szeras is all base coated. I'm doing his staff, second vestigial arm, and head separately, so I can get his chest properly painted first.
Szeras and Blaze

Finished the Heroforge mini. The character is named Blaze, and is a Hexblade Warlock, imbuing his weapons with powers bargained from mysterious figures.



I'm not as happy with this mini as with my Zahndrekh. It's smaller scale I think (possibly 25mm not 28mm?), or is just a smaller person, and requires a more naturalistic approach than my sci-fi death skeleton robots. The cloak came out perfect at least! But the face and clothes... ugh. Oh well, learn for next time!

Lots of work on Szeras over the last week!



Got all the second coats on and edge highlighted the red and purple, and began building up the green glow. Just need to spot highlight the metal, finish off the skull, yellow-green and yellow to the green glow, and then start working on his flashlight and staff!

Question for y'all: what would be the most appropriate colour to have the flashlight shine? Green would be an obvious answer, but something feels off with it to me. I've had some things like computer interfaces and Canoptek creature lenses in blue, so perhaps a pale blue light would work. Alternatively I could just have it shine a more realistic yellow-y light? What do you guys think!

Thanks for the feedback! I'm leaning the same way on the flashlight. Will start working on it soon. First, I built 5 Tesla Immortals yesterday after I finished the readings for my 11 hours of class today (Law is fun!), so I'm going to do a batch of priming soon; the other Szeras parts, 5 immortals, and 1 or 2 more D&D Heroforge minis, for my girlfriend's character and potentially an old character of hers.

I primed my Night/Doom Scythe a while ago, and I've started painting the interchangeable portal/gun, but I'm waiting on the main part until I can get access to the university 3d printer to print of a cockpit that somebody on Dakka iirc kindly made public.

Szeras' body is almost all finished! Quite happy with the spine especially of the head: a mix of Mephiston Red, Abaddon Black to darken it, and Reikland Fleshshade to thin it out and give it a more body-fluid tone did wonder as a wash over my usual bone.



I couldn't decide on skin tone for the skull, so I went through several versions of ruddy-to-pale. I think I like the splotchy end-look is not bad for a decapitated head though. Alas, the red blood seeping from one eye ended up a bit ABOVE the eye as well, but otherwise I quite like it. Next step is his staff (which I went and snapped in two when trying to bend it straight because Finecast), his head, and his flashlight.

Meanwhile, I got a few other new toys. I now have WAY too much on my painting table! I've started with some of my old ebay Warriors (primed in an unfortunate blue that won't come off in Simple Green), and also have built 5 Tesla Immortals, and a few more fun things:

My girlfriend said she'd consider playing Age of Sigmar, so I started looking into their armies and fell in love with Fish Elves. So I impulse bought an Akhelian King, and boy was it harder to put together than a Necron! Not as annoying as Tomb Blades, but trying to fit the harness on without breaking it... it was the fiddliest model I'd worked with yet.


Until of course somebody near me sold me Lady Olynder. I'd wanted this model since I first saw it. I don't intend on playing Nighthaunts, but rather intend to use her to proxy a C'tan, painted to complement my Necrons. I have some... fun ideas for how to paint her in a unique way. But oh man is she terrifyingly delicate! I'm surprised the only thing I broke was one of the rose vines for the base! I was terrified for literally every part of her, she's absolutely tiny (except still towering over all my non-vehicular models).


Lastly, I finally got the Night Scythe canopy, courtesy of Ouze. Not quite as good as his versions (I got them printed cheap) and my first try and green stuff to get it fitted. I thiiiiink it'll work out still?

Considering I broke Szeras' staff AGAIN while finishing up painting, yeah I'm gonna absolutely destroy Lady Olynder. I just do not have gentle hands.

On that note, Szeras is finally done! Except I forgot to do the white edge to the blades again, but still worth posting. The green glow came out amazing again, and the blue flashlight actually seems to have worked, thank god. First time doing anything like OSL, so that was stressful. Definitely the best-painted model in my army now!



Next is probably just going to be those handful of warriors, but I've started basing for Olynder and my Immortals as well. Maybe I'll just do it all at once, who knows!

I also ordered a whole pile of more Ebay fun stuff, some which will get some fun and to my knowledge unique conversions. Stay tuned!

Thanks! I'll need it.

I know the warriors are supposed to be next, but Olynder is just too exciting...

Base coats and wash done!

Too much on the table at once, put Olynder aside for a while until I finish less interesting pieces. Still putting along with base coats on the Warriors, Immortals, and the Doom/Night Scythe.
No pictures of the Warriors, because they still have ugly blue (I only just glued the arms and heads back on now the chest is base coated), but pics of the Immortals and the Scythe!

Immortals:


Cut up pieces of sprue became the famed Necron green crystals after I saw one on my eBay Warriors. They work well! Regretting doing the basing before gluing on to the base though, none of my glue seems to hold the immortals very strongly to the texture paint...Just need to base the weapon frame and the head-stripe, then on to washes and layers.

Scythe:


The canopy looks fantastic! Not quite as smooth as if it were a natural part of the model, but not bad for a first try. Still have to base coat the guns, the gold, and the red front-plate, and do more work on the underslung additions. Decided to switch up how I do my guns. Previously they were simply Leadbelcher + Nuln Oil, but now I'm thinking they'd look better as Black + dulled metallic edges. More contrast with the silver bodies.

Lastly, I picked up what will hopefully be my last big purchase of Necrons for a while.

Obyron, an old metal Lord, 5 more Teslamortals, 2 destroyers, and a little special something for some conversions in the back.

Ok I say last big purchase. Buuuuuuut my friend is giving me a pile of Glaivewraiths for conversion, and to do that properly I need a Doomsday/Ghost Ark, AND maybe two boxes of Sicarian Ruststalkers, and probably some more claw hands... So stay tuned to see what happens!

Had a battle with my friend's (UNPAINTED! He keeps telling me he's gonna start painting any time soon...) Ultramarines Primaris army. I lost in the end, but it was pretty close call. No good terrain, just played on my table.

Opened up the game by throwing my Olynder-Deceiver into one flank, where she killed an HQ but then died.


On my other flank, 10 Scytheguard (mix of my new painted and some unstripped ebay finds) plus Obyron (unstripped ebay find) plus, out of picture, a grey-plastic Cryptek and a painted Zahndrekh, absolutely demolished a Captain, a unit of Intercessors, and then next turn was one wound away from dropping Guilliman and another unit with him. Zahndrekh was MVP, especially when he removed the brutal Guilliman buff.


In the centre, 10 Teslammortals (half unstripped ebay, half WIP) and 5 Gaussmortals (old paint job) did fantastic against infantry, but couldn't really do any damage to this beast of a tank.


Ultimately, my first turn destroyed a signficant portion of his army, but his first turn he got no less than 6 VPs in a single turn, and while I ended up only losing by 1 VP, I could never quite make up for that brutal turn.

Oh man it's so hard not to buy things second hand. I'm just starting that Idoneth army, bought the Start Collecting box which I'm slowly putting together, then somebody locally is selling 20 Dark Elf Corsairs as part of a bundle. It's taking all my self control not to get the whole bundle for those Corsairs, swap out some heads and weapons with the ones I'm not using from the Akhelian Guard to pretend they're Akhelian infantry, use them as an arrow-shield ahead of my Namarti... But the bundle comes with a whole pile of other Dark Elves, some of which I don't really have much use for. Some of which I don't even know if they have rules anymore!

Anyhow, here's my very first kit-bash:



The banner snapped off as I was going to strip the model, so it's gonna have to get reglued after the rest of the model is stripped, and I'm thinking I might reduce the length of the handle of the sword a bit, but otherwise he looks awesome as a Standard Bearer Lord! Luckily the extra hand in the Akhelian King box for the special character is armoured enough to look passably Necron.

It's hard to stay focused with so many fun toys! I'm prioritizing the Warriors right now (and I'm gonna touch up my Heavy Destroyer when I do), and then my girlfriend insists that the Monolith go next because it is, she says, hideous, and she doesn't want to have to look at it like that anymore. I concur. No offence nameless previous owner!

It's currently exams, so I get to do some painting as study breaks. Haven't painted in a while due to a whole pile of essays (4 in 7 days!), so here's where I left off before that with the Immortals and Warriors. Both are currently on the shelf until the Idoneth get built, then the Warriors will go back to the table.



Edit: I lie, I did basing on the Warriors over top of that grass. It came out well, the grass's movement left room for some nice deep cracking.

It’s a natural feeling scheme though, I’m surprised more don’t use it. The royal colour for an ancient dynasty! I like your gold Immortal markings, those fit well! I’m experimenting with a plain white mark for mine, we’ll see how good it looks over bone .

Going is still super slow; 2 exams down (Contracts and Criminal Law), 3 to go (Public and Constitutional, Torts, and then Public International Law).

In the meantime, I got a nice snap of how well Olynder fits in with the rest of the army! Considering she's barely started, she looks surprisingly good next to the other units!

Finally got one of those Detolf cases for my models! No more sitting on an over-crowded shelf gathering dust for these robots! Was a bit of a pain to put together, but with my girlfriend's help it went moderately smoothly.



Not bad!

No, it’s the official model. Bad light plus a pretty awful paint job from e-bay. Planning on adding green stuff texture to the panels to make them look like rough stone blocks.

Alright, 3/8 done modelling the stone blocks on the Monolith. Some are coming out better than others, but all in all I think it's coming together! I have to get at least base coats down on a pile of models over the next two days for a game on Thursday so only boring pictures for the next few days.

As is my wont, I rocket back and forth between things. After my hands got tired with green stuff panels, I aaaaaalmost finished my set of warriors. Just need to do the gun highlights (should I go grey or steel for edge highlights?), and body highlights (currently it's just base and wash)

I know one is missing the barrel of their gun, and the other has a painted barrel rather than the green (I have a pile more with painted barrels further down the line), but I'm wanting to experiment with gun barrel effects later so it's useful to have a barrelless gun right now.



Shortly after this I got a quasi-lightbox set up, so look for better pictures in the near future!

Edit: Uh, the picture looks pretty terrible in the smaller version, click through for a better version.

Thanks for the kind words everyone! I got in a 1k battle yesterday, and spent the 2 days before the battle hurriedly painting the models for that battle that weren't yet base coated. That's 5 Immortals, 8 Warriors and 1 Overlord all from stripped to at base coat, not bad in my opinion. Obviously they're below true tabletop quality, but at least it meant I didn't have a strange motley of grey blue and black models on the table along with my actually painted models. This is also my first attempt at a quasi-lightbox, now that I got a second table lamp for painting and photos. Much better!

The full 1k painted up (at least vaguely) for battle! You can see in behind my old style, with block colours and silver faceplates, contrasted with my newer models with the bone faceplates. Finally a chance for Szeras and the Kromlech swordverlord to see battle!

The battle went well, my first win in 8th edition! 1k is a good level for Necrons, RP feels more like it did in 7th at that level. Also getting 4 Tomb Blades return from RP over the course of a battle, in a 3-model unit? Not bad.

I only remembered to take a single picture though! This poor Blood Angel marine, about to be dismembered by the Kromlech Overlord on the centre objective.

Remember my D&D character from the first page? Well, he's hit level 6, which means when he kills a humanoid he can rip their spirit out to serve him for a day as a slave ghost. Not sure how our cleric, with his odd relation to life, death, and undeath, will respond, but this means I needed a new miniature!

I've only done the base coat for most of it, and the first layer-coat for about half of the cloak, but so far I think it's coming along well. You can tell which areas are still only base coated because a lot of the paint has already chipped off on edges where I haven't hit it with the next layer yet. Looks like I'm gonna have to get a varnish to seal this one in, it's much more likely to chip than my Necrons! Will have a purple wash eventually to match the magic smoke on the D&D character's mini.

Aaaand, finished! Only a few days to do the whole mini, not bad. Not very happy with the hands, they didn't come out quite skeletal enough, but the rest of the model came out perfect! It's slightly large to realllly be a spectre in D&D, and a bit small to be a Nighbringer Shard in 40k, but I'll just use it for D&D and look at building up a scenic base to mount it on for WH40k.

Finished modelling the Monolith! Took a whole pile of green stuff (I ended up losing less and less per stone block as I got on), but I think it looks like a lot of fun! Right now I gave it a quick rinse to get the last dust out of it before I prime it, then it's on to the fun of painting!




I also updated my cheap home-made lighbox by building something wild out of printer paper and scotch tape, as you can see in the pictures above. I think it looks so much better!

Painting begins! The grey stone is the mass of the piece, with the obvious green power glow, and a silver for the engine pieces. I'm likely to dullen the silver more than usually, as the grey stone will be dirty and weathered (I'm thinking same technique I did for the base of the Grim Reaper, dark grey than a brown wash than a more sandy stone dry-brush).

The large arch will be gold, and the corners will be purple with gold accents. Should make a striking model without being an eye-sore.



I've since noticed that I forgot to put the green in the crevices of the emblem on the front of the model. That was a quick fix, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see it fully base-coated. I'm also seeing that my pictures managed to perfectly obscure the crystal. I painted it in the same green as the tendrils, so they'll blend in.

I agree! I hate seeing those plain black panels. They need SOMETHING to break up the silhouette, and I don't have the steady hand yet to free-hand on them (I've seen some beautiful pieces with people painting Egyptian-style friezes, this one linked here jumps to mind, which also inspired me to do the energy arc effect), so making them 3d was really the only other option. Plus I've never seen it done before, so it seemed natural.

Anyways, here's the base-coat, with all the colours blocked out. I think the scheme looks good like this. I was originally going to do the big arc in purple as well, but my girlfriend said gold would look better, and I think she was right!



Next I've been working on all the green, bringing it up to a glow and seeing what I can do with the central crystal. That'll be a new thing for me, all the gems I've done thus far have been round, not angular!