-Crisp & Grey- A NZ blog (May Update - I painted a Dragon!)

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**Moltar**

Exciting Knightley things on the horizon. Looking forward to them!

**Hart**

Heh new kid on the block here...

Awesome models dude, I'm only on page 10 but I skipped to the end briefly to leave a comment before I wade back in to read the entire thread

Fellow Kiwi here, me and a friend have just commited ourselves to picking up the hobby. I've chosen to go with Dark Angels, but I really want to eventually get a full custom chapter. So I've been trawling through these P&M blogs for inspiration.
Loving all your work, especially the use of DA and DW bits to mod your GKs.

Will post (hopefully) more constructive comments when I finish reading through this epic blog.

**Nashbashem**

Looking forward to seeing all this

**Miss Dee**

The walker looks like its from ghost in the shell.

**Knightley**

An update? seriously? what is this? the twilight zone....

Back at work on day two, new laptop and a spare hour for lunch, what to do? what to do? I know lets upload and show my fine freinds on Dakka Dakka all that they have missed!

So drip feeding photos to you as a good pimp.... erm blogger should below is where our adventure left off.

I threw on some air defence and missile onto a couple of rhinos

- Sorry about the focus

Everything got primed

The felblade started with a nice edge highlight

Aaaaaaaaaaaand then I got side tracked

Edit: how rude, I didn't respond to those who posted
@LDP - well we've both had a game on the board now, so what did you think

@Gits - Oh yes, had an awesome time over xmas, had the little lad in a small santa outfit that his grandparents went mental over

@Graven - I'll post his pics once Dakka stops deleting him

@Moltar - Thanks mate, await no longer eh?

@Hart - Greetings from Auckland! where the temperature is always muggy and uncomfortable

I hope you've had enough time to read through the blog and I am eager to hear what you've got to comment on

@Nash - good to see you bud, hope you've been doing well

@Miss Dee - I drew some inspiration from there good spotting.

**Gitsplitta**

That fell bade is a true behemoth!

**inmygravenimage**

Stonking work my friend. The fellblade is magnificent, but I am lov-ing that AA turret - what's the bits origin there?

**Nashbashem**

So much cool stuff

I bet painting that Baneblade is going to be a challenge in its own right

**Knightley**

@Gits - oh yes, and requires a ton of paint as well!

@Gaven - I'm glad you like it, the AA turret is made up from the TL-AC from a contemptor dreadnought and the circular bit is from the aegis defence line

@Nash - oh yes, massive challenge!

Update: so typically I get side tracked a lot, below is what got me side tracked yet again, there will be bits in a different color to represent things I learned from the process and if I were to do it again I would do it again differently.

GAMING TABLE!!!!

Yep, you read it right, I decided I was going to make a modular table that could be taken down and stored with the minimum space required so I went about coming up with a design I think fits the bill, I did some online checking of prices and materials and hit the ground running.

First up were the raw materials
The top boards

And the other materials to support it

If I were to do this again I would have cut the top boards my self, as I have a small car I would not have been able to get a full board back home so in the above instance I asked the staff at the home depot to cut the board for me, unfortunately the size of the boards varied quite a bit some edges were 2ft others were an inch shorter on a side, this means the board isn't quite 6ft by 4ft. The things you learn eh?

**Knightley**

Next up is a singular board, most of them are 2ft by 2ft, but there is variation due to the cuts done by the pleb at the hardware store, Each board has a 90 degree bracket in each corner for making it more rigid, the top was first drilled, then glued before being screwed down, again to make it rigid and the result was exactly what I had in mind. The screws in the top were also countersunk just a little to keep the heads flat with the board, this means when its painting you wont be able to tell where the screws are.

Top

Underside

Things I learnt from this stage: The top board was very very easy to sand back, so in hindsight I would have cut the base boards to from the 2ft square and sanded any over hand back to square. the underside I was pretty happy with, getting the screws in wasn't easy because I kept hitting my knuckles on the boards due to having a small tool

I swear this hasn't happened to me before...

**Gitsplitta**

Knightley wrote:
the underside I was pretty happy with, getting the screws in wasn't easy because I kept hitting my knuckles on the boards due to having a small tool I swear this hasn't happened to me before...

As long as your tool is big enough to get the job done...

**Knightley**

I figured I was doing it wrong because my knuckles hurt at the end. Oh well that's one thing being a young teenager taught me, if you want everything to come together you have to knuckle through it

So next up actually took place over two weeks, looking after a tiny wee human can be demanding on your time, and made much harder when he falls asleep on your chest, 2-3 hours just sitting there listening to him sleep, pretty darn magical if you ask me

I got 4 boards done

Then I got all six completed - followed up by drilling the holes for the bolts to line up with each other then put it all together.
Top view

Bottom View

The toughest bit here ended up being I wanted to get this part done before it got to dark outside, I rushed the dilling of the holes for the bolts and as a consequence one or two of them don't line up as I would have liked. If I do it again, I would wait till better light

**Miss Dee**

oooh Legs ....

**Knightley**

I do love me some legs

Oh speaking of legs, guess what's next!

Now that the table was done I needed to bang something up to keep the table off the ground, I had considered getting run of the mill trestle table legs, but after checking out the back of the shed I noticed I had quite a few cut offs from the deck. After a quick sketch and mock up I figured I could make my own and save me some money

Considerations for making these legs:
1: Had to have the table just below my hip so I could bend over the top
2: The leg spaces had to be wide enough to fit a GW case between them (additional storage locations)
3: Sturdy enough that you could accidentally lean on the table and not flip it over.

After a week (also moving house might I add!) I had made the 3 legs

And here it is in the new house

Note the shelf in the background, very handy to store models and stuff on it.

There wasn't much I would have changed about this stage, Perhaps made the trestles a touch wider, they are currently 2ft wide with risers on them to stabilise the table from below. Being wider would mean there is less chance of it slipping around.

**Miss Dee**

Is there a face and body to go with the legs?

**Knightley**

Heh yep there is, there was even a small human attached to the central area at that time as well

sadly Dakka doesn't count her as wargaming related :(

Update: Next up is some taping of all the sides, then lining out 12" from the centre line and lining out diagonal deployments as well, I used a pretty hefty tape with nylon running through it for extra protection.

The paint used is an acrylic house paint that I was told is very hardy and difficult to chip, perfect!

After I had done two coats I then added ballast to a smaller pot and started adding texture to random places on the board, once that was dry out came the large old brush and I threw some dry brushing at it, two stages, snakebite brown then bleached bone. I then put some ogryn fleshwash into the airbrush and went over all the textured bits. what I didn't take a picture of was I then did some black to make scorch marks, but you'll see that in later pics.

I learnt the most at this stage. The tape while an awesome idea didn't form a good base for the paint to stick to. If I were to do it again I wouldn't use the tape for anything on top of the board. Then with the paint I wouldn't have mixed sand in with the paint as I ended up with sparse coverage at points where there should be. If I were to do it again I would do one base coat, start the second but throw sand on the bits I wanted to be textured then do another coat over the top of that sand.

**inmygravenimage**

This is a very cool alternate plog. But bro, please stop using the blue, it's making my eyes bleed

**Gitsplitta**

Seconded! I have to highlight it to read it.

**whalemusic360**

Are you both using the classic dakka? I was having the same issues

Pink is much better.

**Gitsplitta**

Yes. Can't stand the "new" dakka. Too busy... too much crap everywhere, too many drop down lists so it takes more work to get where I want to go.

**Miss Dee**

Its purple not blue

**Knightley**

@Graven - Cheers matey, I've changed the coloring for you, I use the white scheme for Dakka so I can sneak a look at work without getting to conspicuous

Update:

Added flock to the boards, and in these pics you can see the black used for scorch marks.

All done

This part was pretty self explanatory, however had I known how much grass I would have gone through I would have got another container as some of the later sections of board have less grass on them. Another thing I learned and had to fix later was adding a varnish or hairspray over the grass so it didn't come off when touched

**Knightley**

And all finally done

Also found a picture of some of the terrain making I did one week - FYI the terrain isn't painted just yet so no more pics till its done

Over all I am pleased with how it came out, plenty of things picked up so if I ever make another one it will be even better. if anyone has any questions about the build let me know.

Next up the other thing that side tracked me from my Marines!

**inmygravenimage**

Much better

great board. And what other thing apart from MiniMike?

**whalemusic360**

Not going to lie, I thought it was going to be grey.

**inmygravenimage**

^ With squiggles!

Hey, nearly @ 100...

**lipsdapips**

Wow! So keen to play on that board it's almost as though i've...played on it...already
It's a great board though in all seriousness, more thrilling crusades to come im sure xD

**dantay_xv**

That board looks great Knightley

**Knightley**

@Graven - well its more like many little things, see below

@Whale - that got a great chuckle out of me, had my work mates looking at me quite weirdly.

@LDP - That was a pretty awesome game though, it was a draw IIRC?

@Dantay - Thanks mate, greatly appreciated.

Update: well what was the other thing that kept me off my Grey Knights? those who peruse my gallery at great length will recall I have two other marine armies, you know ones that I had painted when I was 14 and 19 year old.

You remember don't you?

no?

I may have glossed over that but here is a refresher
14 yo me was awesome

19 yo me was just as cool

So while my brother was over from Canada eh, we had a marine vs marine game and he used the UM's and I used the DA's at the end of the game he made the suggestion it would have been cool to face the exact same army as the one he was using, thus was born the next large project, making two armies the same point value, then painting it and playing with it. after a quick whip around I realised all I needed to buy was a vindicator, 3 bikes and a Tactical squad. Once that was brought I did a tally up and both armies were mirrors of each other at 3100 points, not bad eh?

So into the simple green for six days they went (the DA's had many many many coats to get through) and I started the clean up process

An extremely messy 3 weeks let me tell you!

**Knightley**

So I got all the models in a state ready for priming

Then waited for my spray primers to turn up and got to work

I made a mistake and figured the scouts should get a blast of bone before their armour, if I were to do it again they would get armour first then I would paint on the bone.