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Oh man, I'll be having whatever you are drinking because no one is able to stop you! Look at all that good looking work in such a short amount of time!

Yeah, things went pretty well last night. I'll be posting pics pretty soon (within the next 12 hours). When I do post the pics, the remaining stuff should be done. Stay tuned!

Hey back:-)
I'm afraid I have no idea about a lot of these figures except to say they are impressive, you have done a great job already by giving them a second life with your painting style. I am actually building my space hulk as a model maker rather than as a gamer so am completely out of my league here. I tried reading some of the posts about points and types of figures & while I sort of get the gist I still have no real idea. That said I can still appreciate great art so keep it coming and well done again:-)

ps: Good luck with the Hirst molds you want, I don't actually have those specific molds & there usually isn''t a lot of threads with them (haven't seen one in ages) so I would be very interested in seeing yours when you get up and running with it.

More, better pics to follow. Just to prove I did it.

Challenge complete. 8 working days, 2000+ point Necron army. DONE!

Hail the new Necron Overlord!

Now if only I could paint mine that fast excellent work for 8 days, tell us how your game goes once you field your Egyptian space robot zombies

Oh wowwwwww! If only I could work at half this pace. Incredible work and over such a short time Well done!

@TheDraconicLord: lol, thanks a bunch. You can get a lot more stuff done than you think! It's just a matter of setting deadlines and sticking to it. You don't even need ridiculous deadlines. Just come up with a plan and make consistant progress. Even if you painted 200 points a month, that's still 2400 points worth of stuff in the year. At that rate, all of us could have nicely painted armies in not a lot of time.

@asJarra: Thanks a lot! It was a project to really push my limits and see how much I could get done on my ridiculous time frame. I'm a tiny bit burnt out right now, but I'm making some slower progress on one of my three Warmachine armies (Retribution of Scyrah). This project is already about halfway through and I'll post some pics with what I've done so far.

As far as playing went, I had the chance to play a 2000 point game with my Eldar buddy. I tabled him on the third turn and my one unit of scarabs were able to chew their way through THREE tanks. We then played a doubles game where each of us had 1500 points and my side was doing reasonably well but ultimately lost. My partner decided not to bother with any objectives (when I thought he was sitting on one the entire game) and we lost by 2 points because of it. It was still a great amount of fun!

Pics from the game:

The next project!! - Continuing my Retribution of Scyrah army (aka, create an excuse to buy a Hyperion).

A little bit of a background on this project:

Initially I had no interest in elves. I already played Legion of Everblight and Cygnar. I had one hordes and one warmachine faction and was pretty happy with that. Then, I started getting into the idea of getting an airbrush. I watched all of awesomepaintjob's videos along with ichiban painting. I scoured the internet for more information on airbrushes and then eventually bought a compressor and two airbrushes. I ended up with the Badger Patriot 105 and the Badger Renegade Krome. Badger then released the Minitaire paint range and me, not having a dedicated airbrush paint bought the set.

The selling point of this set were the ghost tints. Mythical new paints that allow you to colour model after pre-shading everything else. Technically they're not a new idea, but for our hobby they're pretty new. Amazon had them on sale for half off and I bought them. Then, Lester Bursley released a dvd through Miniwargaming (which I am a member) using these ghost tints to paint a devilfish. I liked this effect so much I had to try it.

I came across the Retribution of Scyrah battle box. There was enough plain surface area that it would make for an ideal test of these techniques. Being that it wasn't an army I played, I figured that if it didn't work out I could just give away the battle box and call it a day. Well, I did alright with the battle box warjacks. I really liked the effect and I wanted to push the envelope and see if I could scale the effect down to infantry. I tried it on a unit of Invictors. This was a lot more challenging but I did it and to me, the results were awesome.

This is where I dropped the project to concentrate on the Necron project. Now that the Necrons are done, I've decided that I will continue with my Retribution project. So, to complete them to a reasonable level I have the following things to paint:

10 man unit of Mage Hunter Strike Force
Strike Force Commander (UA)
4 man unit of Stormfall Archers

2x Mage Hunter Assassins
Eiryss Mage Hunter of Ios
Ghost Sniper

Lord Arcanist Ossyan
Dawnlord Vyros
Adeptis Rahn
Ravyn, Eternal Light

Then eventually, when I care enough about her to finish her, Kaelyssa, Nights Whisper.

Here is a picture of the completed army to this point. This includes a Manticore, Chimera, Griffon, a full unit of Dawnguard Invictors, and their UA.

WIP pic of the current project:

Aaaahh, beautiful to see such an enormous tide of metal on a table top, slowly advancing, slowly destroying EVERYTHING Glad you had fun with your new army!

And my compliments to your Eldar playing friend. His vehicles look fantastic with that color transition.

Please post away your Retribution army. I really don't like Warmahordes that much but I do like many of the minis and that faction is one of my favorites: Very angry anime like elves

Geeze you're fast TDL, you must have posted while I was working on the Ret post!!

haha, yeah, imagine my surprise when I posted and saw all that new info

PS: Ghost tints?! I never heard of this before, time for some google-fu!

Yeah, Minitaire ghost tints. I used the green one on my Necrons. Effectively they're translucent paints that allow you to do all of your shading in other colours (commonly black, grey, white) before tinting those colours and retaining your shading layers. It's amazing stuff. It also allows you to do interesting layered effects.

Falhurk wrote:
Yeah, Minitaire ghost tints. I used the green one on my Necrons. Effectively they're translucent paints that allow you to do all of your shading in other colours (commonly black, grey, white) before tinting those colours and retaining your shading layers. It's amazing stuff. It also allows you to do interesting layered effects.

I'll have to watch youtube videos once I'm not work-blocked but I like what I read. These tints will probably allow me to create a much better good looking "Cold-Metal" than with glazes.

Thanks mate!

They're really nice for metallics as you can actually get coloured metallics to look right. Although I've never given that a try. I think I will use it on my Cygnar when I get around to painting it. (double stormwall hoooooo).

If you have any questions on how it works or ways you can use them feel free to ask away, I'll happily offer my impressions and opinions.

Hmm, I'm a little disappointed no one's commented, but here's the progress from earlier today. I don't know that you can tell the transitions too well from the crappy camera I was using, none-the-less, still progress.

I, at least, can see those transactions well enough and they look mighty good. That blue to purple is very interesting. How long does it take to create such a blend with those Ghost tints?

I've been away, sorry about that DCM. It really doesn't take much time if you're handy with an airbrush. I might have spent a total of 4-5 minutes per guy?

Alrighty, finally kicked off the Ogre project tonight. Got the first 9 models done. My deadline is absurd as always and I only have 8 days (9 including today) to finish the army.

If I recall correctly the total army comp is:

1 Slaughtermaster
1 Butcher
1 Firebelly
1 Bruiser BSB

10 Ogres w/ironfists
8 ironguts

5 leadbelchers
5 leadbelchers

Sabretusk
Sabretusk
Sabretusk
Sabretusk

3 Mournfang Cavalry

Ironblaster
Ironblaster

Total: 41 Models, 9 down. 32 to go.

So, a quick update. It's been a while, but I actually finished the Ogres quite a while back. I never finished the Ret, but the next project approaches. 2000 points of 40k orks before Foodhammer (November 25th) along with ~100 wounds worth of Dwarves.

Pictures and more details will come in the next couple of days.

So, it's been quite a while. A couple of years now anyway.

I completed a couple of big projects after the ogres including about 150 Orks and 100 Goblins. More recently I've created/joined an escalation league for 40k. I had sold off my painted Orks, Grey Knights, Orks again, Necrons, Goblintown Goblins and kind of regret doing so now. But, no time like the present to start a new big army project.

The way we're doing it is we're starting month 1 (end of January) with 500 points. Then, every successive month is an additional 250 points. This keeps things manageable for basically everyone. Of course, I went ham and decided I'd test my modelling prowess with some custom molds and cost-saving measures which I've documented to this point. Hopefully you all find this of interest.

Introducing: Project Dark Eldar

I started by acquiring/purchasing the following:

2x Start Collecting: Drukhari
Gangs of Commorragh

I then went ahead and acquired:

1x Box of Mandrakes
1x Voidraven Bomber
2x Razorwing Jetfighters
1x Box of Scourges

And finally I got used:

7x OOP Old Incubi
Metal Drazhar
Metal Haemonculus
Metal Talos

When starting, I got excited about painting the jetbikes but have abandoned that mid-paint to focus on my first 500. Which will consist of:

1x Archon w/blaster
5x Trueborn (4x Blasters)
1x Raider
10x Mandrakes

Based on my purchasing decisions you're probably thinking "pitiful bastard doesn't even realize he has nowhere near the right amount of blasters or Mandrakes. Stay tuned on how I overcame these particular challenges.

Okay, so first step was getting some of these dudes built but when looking around for schemes, and ideas. I was inspired by this photo as I really liked the idea of the shielding on the face for blasterborn. There were only two problems. First, I had no access to as many blasters as I was going to need, and I was short on blaster-face-hats.



So, I did what any sane, perfectly-normal hobbyist would do. I decided to make my own!

Step 1: We're going to have to mold some parts.

So, I got some non-hardening, sulfur free (very important) wax-based clay and built a form out of some off-brand lego blocks. I then embedded my parts and what I figured would be reasonable air channels into the clay. In hindsight, I don't think I'd put the channels in like this again (except the primary channel for filling). I'd just cut away material to make my air vents. It's also important to put in some keys (holes/indents etc).



Step 2: I got myself the Smooth-On Cast trial set which comes with SmoothCast 300 (resin), OOMOO 30 (2 part silicone), the release agent, and the sealant. I chose the OOMOO 30 after talking with the silicone sales guy about the idea of viscosity and how it applies to small detailed parts. In the future, though I like the OOMOO 30, I'm going to try another (Mold Max 25) because the working time is shorter, but the cure time goes from 6 hours (OOMOO 30) to about an hour and a half.



Step 3: Mixing equal parts of the OOMOO 30 together. It's SUPER IMPORTANT to well mix it, you have about 30 minutes to work with it, so take your time and eliminate all colour streaks in your mix.



Step 4: AFTER MIXING pour gently into the mold, letting the silicone do the work. It should come out like a thin 1/2 inch wide stream and you should pour it into a corner of the mold, letting it naturally cover the rest which will avoid more air bubbles.



Step 5: After the first side is poured, I get rid of the clay, and make sure that the plastic bits are pushed back into the half-poured mold. We then spray it down with some mold release agent:



Step 6: We pour the other half and repeat that part of the process. Once it's done we can pour a test cast. We do this by rubber banding a couple pieces of cardboard around the mold to ensure it stays closed and there's even pressure so our parts don't come out warped. I injected the mixed resin (2 part resin, mix fast but well, until clear really) with a small plastic syringe.



Step 7: Wait about 15-20 minutes (with this particular resin) and demold:



Step 8: I look for defects in the cast, and then cut in some additional air vents to address problem areas. Mostly this one worked out okay.



Step 9: We do it a bunch more times until we have enough usable parts!




Automatically Appended Next Post:
The task of clipping out the guns, filing them, gluing everything together is a bit arduous. But, Here's some of the results.

Awesome

I've been wanting to try out bits casting myself for things like OOP bret stuff and suchlike. Seems eminantly doable

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Awesome

I've been wanting to try out bits casting myself for things like OOP bret stuff and suchlike. Seems eminantly doable

I actually have been experimenting with full models. Not for resale obviously, but for my own purposes... I'm in the midst of painting them up, but can you spot the forgeries?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also have JUST received some old Incubi that I am going to want more of (I loved the old models). So, I was intending on doing up a mold or two for them.

Okay, for myself this weekend:

Mandrakes:

Boltgun on the weapons
Fire in runes, mouth and eyes
glaze of chestnut ink on the pants
Seal with glosscoat
Oilwash
Clean up with mineral spirits
Rust
Dullcoat
Gore/blood

5x Trueborn + 1 Archon with blasters
Raider

Begin the armor tinting with those.

Okay, so we got some progress done on the infantry:




And the first Archon



And the first raider!!

That Raider is really sweet.

 youwashock wrote:
That Raider is really sweet.

Thanks!! I like how it's shaping up. I'll get to play with some fallout hobbies stencils for the flag which I think I'm going to magnetize to make easier for transport.

I'm debating with myself over edge highlighting it.. I love how it's shaping up, and don't want to ruin it. I'll probably practice on some jetbikes first.

That Raider is excellent!

 goblinpaladin wrote:
That Raider is excellent!

Thanks! I'm hoping to have some additional progress on it tonight. I want to do something pretty cool on the flag.