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Wonderful job at the tournament! Congradulations

Seeing your army the Best Painting isn't a surprise. Seeing that you play DE Best General isn't much of one either.

Congrats!

The image of my blue die sitting on the table showing a "2" when I needed a 4+ keeps replaying in my head . Although I suppose it was balanced out by me rolling a 6 for the result of a glancing hit on a Stormraven in Game 3 to immobilize it and force a draw!

Thanks to everyone for all the congratulatory messages!

@Warboss Gutrip: I'm probably not going to do full battle reports but I'll put up some quick impressions in a later post.

@Just Dave: As you said, Incubi are definitely next. I'll probably paint a squad if eight first and then start on some Wracks. Which will mean that I'll then need a Haemonculus. I'm almost through the giant stack of boxes of models I had at one point so we'll see if I finish those up first or if something else catches my fancy. This decision is complicated by the fact that the store gave everyone who took part in the tournament a coupon for 20% off one receipt!

@Imperial Monkey: I put up a weathering tutorial on Page 3 of this thread. You can also click through the thread to find the series of WIP posts for my Warriors which show the process pretty well.

@CalasTyphon216: Sure I'm up for a game. Send me a PM when you know what your schedule's like.

I actually didn't take pictures because I was so keyed up on playing the games! Also, the staff and other people were taking a lot of photos so I was pretty sure I could get some off them! Here's one taken at the end of the movement phase during my first turn of the tournament.

Wow. They really look great all together on the table.

The green glowing runes really give the model some extra "pop"! I also tried a horned head just to see how it looked. I think the horned look is growing on me, especially since I went for an all white helmet. I realized that a big part of what was bugging me about the horned helmets was the default GW paint scheme. For some reason having the top of the helmet black made the models look a little goofy, like they were wearing skullcaps with widow's peaks, or something like that! The white helmet really helps differentiate the Incubi as an elite unit on the tabletop. I just wish the Incubi were more viable as a foot unit so I could deploy them at the start of a game instead of hiding them in a Raider. Although I suppose if they're not out by Turn 2 I'm probably not using them right! I also repainted the back trophy racks blue to help frame the helmet and let the bronze horns stand out more.

Overall I think it's a big improvement! Agreed ?

Hmm... liking the overall effect but he's a bit over chipped IMHO.

As much as I love EVERYTHING else about this blog...

I can't quite accept the chipped white. Maybe it's just a little done? The rest looks absolutely fine, and it may just be the photograph, but at the moment I can't quite get on board with it...

Of course, it's still really well done/absolutely amazing/better than anything I could do in a million years; it's just compared to what I know you're capable of (ahem *scourges* ahem) it isn't quite there...

<3 the glowing runes though.

The green runes definitely work really well. You might want to feather out the glow a little wider to soften it up as well as use a slightly lighter green on the runes themselves to make them pop just a bit more, but they still look great as is.

Brass horns and white helmet... Golden. nuff said.

Weathering that appears too strong to some... The Incubi are in the thick of it, getting dinged all and struck all day long, they should be more weathered.

As far as thinking you're not using the Incubi properly if they're not out by turn 2, don't worry about it. In my last tournament, I actually kept my Wyches in their Raider for a whole round. They kept to the edges, taking Lance Shots at Terminators for most of the game and didn't do anything until turn 4 and 5 where they swooped in and dumped some poison shots to finish off a lone Marine before zooming off to claim an objective. Tactically, they were more useful as a threat than in combat for that first game but they still played an important role in the battle. Much like Wyches, Incubi are the sort of unit that can be held back to deal with threats reactively rather than pre-emptively. Anyone who's seen them in action before will remember how quickly they can chop up a squad and that lesson will keep your opponent 18-24 inches away from wherever the Incibi are positioned. In one sense, you don't always have to "make up your points" to measure a unit's return on investment. If you create a safety bubble for other squads and prevent your opponent from getting KP's on the charge just by keeping your Incubi as a counter-assault unit, they've fulfilled their role in my mind.

I think he looks REALLY good. Such close-up shots are almost always unforgiving on models, so I think once he's taken at usual squad distance he'll look brilliant.
Definitely looking forward to you getting some Wracks too! That 20% off could go well with a Razorwing too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mechanicum Jon wrote:@Imperial Monkey: I put up a weathering tutorial on Page 3 of this thread. You can also click through the thread to find the series of WIP posts for my Warriors which show the process pretty well.

You could also filter the thread to just Mechanicum Jon too (button under his profile picture) which could help whilst having all the brilliant work in 1 place!

I'm sure the jury didn't struggle much to decide which army deserved the "best painted" award...

Congrats on the tourney, and on flooding the GW site !

Congrats on winning and the new incubi is looking good, apart from the chips on the white: possibly a little to many!

Its perfect! Dont change a thing..

Congrats on the wins, Still loving your work on these guys.

This looks really sweet!

Earlier in the thread I mentioned that I had some bad Finecast casts that GW replaced. The replacement box also turned out to have two bad casts. However, this turned out to be a good thing overall since I can now field two units of 8 instead of the two units of 7 that I had originally intended out of buying three boxes.



These are the first Finecast models I've worked with and I have to say I'm not overly impressed. Right now I'd have to say that I prefer plastic and it's a toss up between metal and Finecast.

The Klaives in particular seem to have been slightly misaligned in all three finecast boxes. It's not noticeable on the tabletop because of the way they're posed. But when you look closely, especially at the fingers, you'll see that they don't quite line up. This also means that the top of the Klaive needs to be shaved down to hide the difference in height between the two halves. All in all the cleanup job on these probably took me longer than it would on plastic or even metal models. A lot of this was because the material is so soft that I constantly have to pay attention so that I'm not taking too much off or accidentally cutting off a fine bit of detail. On the plus side, they are MUCH easier to glue together and stay together much better than metal models.

I've kept the heads and the back vanes off for ease of painting.

nice job overall

Is finecast really that crappy? I've not yet had any... my flgs still has a lot of metalboxes. Especially when it comes to something exotic like Chaos Raptors

Glad to hear that your misfortune turned into a bonus of sorts.

As for the quality of Finecast, I share your sentiment. While glue does set really quickly compared to metal, it's not enough of a bonus feature compared to metal to make me like the new material. It is often misaligned an, as you pointed out, so soft that you just can't apply too much pressure or else too much material will be removed. So basically a 15-minute clean-up job turns into 2 hours.

When It takes 30 minutes more to clean up a Finecast Heamonculus than it takes to clean, pin and glue 3 Metal Hive Guard, something just isn't right.

Can't wait to see those 2 units all ready to go. They'll be fearsome sight on the battle field.

Finecast in itself isn't that bad
I have the following things in finecast: incubi, haemonculus, wracks, raptors, plague marines, skaven warlords, archaon, etc
the only thing that was really a problem was the incubi
even after using hot water to straighten the klaives, they keep bending out of shape and/or curling in the case
also i believe the problem with the halves not quite linning up is universal regarding the incubi box atm

Congrats on the trophies jon, very well deserved!

Re the incubi, why not reverse the helmet colours, so you have a brass / bronze helmet with white horns (for instance). The white stands out a little too much for me, as it doesn't really tie in to the rest of the colour scheme imo, whereas reversing it would still give you that accent colour, yet the bronze would tie in nicely to the rest of the mini.

Good call on the green runes to whoever suggested that, looks great!

On finecast, I now have 10 mandrakes due to miscasts, but I'm not complaining! And yes, I absolutely will be using them at some point, somehow, somewhere, for some reason!

The incubus looks really good, though I think that the white helmets should be spared the usual weathering so that they stand out a little more. In the same vein, maybe the armor could be a darker shade of blue so that they say stick out a little more.

hey jon how did you go about doing the feathered wings on your scourges?. Awesome log by the way I totally stole your marking on your raiders

Congratualtions on the trophies. You're army is beyond well done and you more than deserve them. Personally though I've always imagined Incubi more pristine, but what you've done you've done very well. Eager to see some more done.

Loving the Incubi. Keep it up

Felt like putting up some thoughts and observations on a number of scattered topics today, so here we go!

1. Enthusiasm: The Contagion
I had the pleasure of watching a friend get really excited about getting back into the hobby after about 8 or so years. He heard that Necrons were getting re-released and I offered to take him down to the local FLGS to take a look. It was just like we had stepped back into our old high school gaming group admiring mini's, discussing possible conversions and trying to decide what units should be purchased first. The difference of course being that now that we have jobs we can afford to think about buying an entire decently sized army in one go! Seeing someone so enthusiastic was surprisingly motivational.

2. Incubi Progress
I'm almost done basecoating the Incubi bodies. I'll put up some progress shots tomorrow. It's actually pretty useful to be getting so many, sometimes conflicting, opinions on the paint job. It sort of lets me look at the model with a fresh pair of eyes to see what could be improved. Sometimes it takes several iterations, but the end result tends to be much better, as you've all seen with the development of my Khymerae scheme. Although in this case I'm happy with the way the scheme is now. The one thing I've done is tone down the weathering slightly. I was really eager to get the first model done and was slightly too liberal with the paint chips. I don't necessarily think that there were too many chips but I do think that some of them were a bit too big.

After reading your comments I did stare at the test model for a while trying to imagine it in other colors. But I realized that for me the white face-place is a key feature of the Incubi's look. It was probably ingrained in me twelve years ago when Dark Eldar were first bundled in the 3rd edition boxed game and Incubi featured in White Dwarf! The old Incubi models are still my favorites out of the original DE range of mini's.

@Dark_Gear: That being said, you did come up with the perfect justification for them being a bit more banged up. It fits with my background too! Thanks for the very well written tactical tips as well. I'm also thinking about keeping a unit in reserve to keep those pesky kids out of my backfield.

@CalasTyphon216: It's good to hear that the misalignment problem is combined to the Incubi since I plan on building a bunch of Wracks. Misalignment is the one problem that's generally un-fixable!


3. Erotica is using a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken.

@Dahlberg66: I had a look back through the thread (can't believe it's 15 pages long now) and it seems that I haven't given a detailed tutorial on the Scourge wings. I was thinking of typing it out just now but the problem is it's fairly involved and will need some more thought. The short versions is to basecoat each layer of feathers with a different brown, do several layers of very light drybrushing, wash the darkest and lightest layers with Devlan Mud, and re-drybrush. That's your feather of a technique for today, I'll try to put up the whole chicken tomorrow.

I love how this army looks and feels. I'm very jealous of your talents displayed here. I espeacially love how you've done the etheral sails and the markins on your Raiders. Fantastic stuff! (I couldn't do that if I tried).

On a related tactic's question: What would you field against a 2'000 pt Blood Angels Mech list? I keep having to play this guy and I have'nt had much success of late with my list, so I am llooking to other DE player's to see where their heads are at.

Mechanicum Jon wrote:Felt like putting up some thoughts and observations on a number of scattered topics today, so here we go!

1. Enthusiasm: The Contagion
I had the pleasure of watching a friend get really excited about getting back into the hobby after about 8 or so years. He heard that Necrons were getting re-released and I offered to take him down to the local FLGS to take a look. It was just like we had stepped back into our old high school gaming group admiring mini's, discussing possible conversions and trying to decide what units should be purchased first. The difference of course being that now that we have jobs we can afford to think about buying an entire decently sized army in one go! Seeing someone so enthusiastic was surprisingly motivational.

I know when ever I look through the window of GW (I very rarely cross the threshold) it's full of 'kids' but I think it really is a big kids hobby!

@Dahlberg66: Here's a quick tutorial on how I painted the Scourge's wings. I've re-posted some photos from the thread so people don't have to go back through the thread to find reference material!

The finished squad:



An the wings. I still think this is a really cool image!



There are basically three “Sections” of feathers.

Section 1: Dark brown
Section 2: Warm brown
Section 3: White with black tips
Section 4: Turquoise armor (There’s a tutorial on Page 3 so I won’t go into this Section here)

I paint the wings as follows:

Step 1: Basecoat Section 1 with Calthan Brown + Chaos Black mix. Basecoat Section 2 and 3 with Khemri Brown.

Step 2: Do a “damp” drybrush of Bestial Brown over Section 2. A “damp” drybrush is where you dilute the color with about a 1:1 ratio with water and then proceed as you would with a normal drybrush technique. The point is to tint the base color and develop a softer texture. An airbrush would probably be easier but I haven’t got one!

Step 3: Very light drybrush of Deneb Stone + Khemri Brown mix over Sections 1 and 2 to highlight the feathers.

Step 4: Paint the ends to the feathers in Section 3 to about 1/4 to 1/3 the way up the feather with a Khemri Brown + Adeptus Battlegrey mix. This is to create a smoother transition from the browns into the black.

Step 5: Paint the tips of the wings in Section 3 with Chaos Black.

Step 6: Do several successively lighter drybrushes of the feathers in Section 3 with Skull white (except for the black tips of course!).

Step 7: Wash Section 3 with Devlan Mud and wait for it to dry.

Step 8: Do a very light drybrush of Skull White over Section 3 to re-highlight the feathers.

Step 9: Paint the wires and armor bits on the wings.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Steady progress on the Incubi, the basecoat and preliminary washes are done:



@worldwarme: I'd encourage you to give my techniques a go! I'm actually quite confident that I've developed techniques that can relatively easily be repeated by other people. I don't even think that there's any that I came up with on my own either! As for Mech BA suggestions, first I don't think you should or even need to build your list with an opponent in mind. A balanced list should give you the tools to feel like you can threaten any opponent even if you aren't completely optimized against them. That being said, at 2000 points the main thing you need to make sure is that you have 20+ darklight weapons in the army. This might sound like a lot but you can try figuring it out in your head or rolling it out with dice against Razorbacks with smoke up or otherwise in cover. But I wouldn't go full on darklight spam since you also need some anti-infantry to round it out. I've found a big beast pack to two to be a pretty good investment for counter-assault and screening purposes. And despite FNP, Venoms are still a great investment. I'd also recommend a couple shock prows for light tank-busting and anti-infantry.

@monkeyh: True, I'd actually be really interested in a spending by age bracket breakdown, although I doubt that information's available anywhere!

Thanks for the tutorial, although I don't do dark eldar it's still extremely helpful. The incubi look amazing already, so I can't wait to see them finished!

Looking good Jon! What did you do with the bat wings by the way? I have my first set of scourges on order and want to see what folk have done with them

Those Scourges are SO BEAUTIFUL.