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It works!!



I found a good drawing on the web of the vein pattern of a preying mantis wing & copied it onto regular old transparency film... and viola! Instant veins on the wings without mucking up the background. This is just the prototype to see if the concept works. I'll be making my own veining pattern specifically for the wings, then copying that for the final product. I can make the veining in any color I want (based on the inks of the printer) so I can experiment a bit. Not too shabby. The veins show up better than this if you push the transparency tight to the wing, but this was the best I could do in order to take a photo.

That looks awesome git. Seems like you and whale are pretty inventive.

I think the rollover is determined to thwart us!

Edit: Ooh, very nice. And much more insect-like as well!

Perfect solution, man those packs are going to be something special. Glad we decided to leave the underside blank now!

Awesome solution looks awesome! (Can't believe I typed that...)

*shakes head* Arakasi......
It does look awesome though Gits!

Sweet. That is really cool. Good thinking.

As if this thread wasn't stunning enough, great idea guys!

Ah! there we go! I knew patience and an infinite amount of dakka brains would prevail! looks spot on for the wings gits, well done, looking forward to seeing a complete model now!


Nerdfest09

Glad you guys approve. I was pretty full of myself last night once I discovered that this really was going to work. Hat's off to WM for being a great sounding board while this idea was being created. There may be a bit of a pause in activity as the rest of my week & weekend is really mucked up, but I will continue to work on the vein thing even if I don't post any progress.

Well, trotted my Mantis Warriors out again last night for my first game in a Badab Campaign at our FLGS. Lost (of course), but it got interesting near the end. First 3 turns were disastrous. Turn 1, an NPC appears in the middle of my army, charges my terminators and kills my termie librarian... probably the most important figure in my army and getting my opponent half-way to one of his victory objectives without his raising a finger. Turn 2, chaos termies drop in next to my normal termies and wipe them out with special weapons fire (combi-meltas & combi plasmas). Turn 3, nurgle marines and nurgle raptors wipe out my other termie squad with special weapons fire & an assault from a raptor w/ lightening claws. To give you an example of how things were going, he fired 14 special weapons at my termies, all 14 hit and 13 wounded... and I think I only made 2 or 3 saves. In turn 4 and 5 what troops I had left shoot their brains out. I ended up killing his 7-man terminator squad even though it cost me both of my tac squads and I *nearly* killed his super terminator character (damn las cannon rolled a "1" to wound) which would have allowed me to tie two of the 3 objectives... maybe all three. My Razorbacks are both getting battle honors and the little, intrepid ML squad really did themselves proud.

So what started off as an exercise in agony ended up to be a pretty fun game.

Funny bits:
- Raptors w/ 2 meltas firing at close range into the back of my immobilized Iron Clad for multiple turns and unable to roll anything more than a "2" for damage
- Rifleman Dread firing multiple times into the side of an immobilized chaos rhino for a quick kill point and unable to roll anything better than a "2" for damage
- Oblits unloading their plasma cannons into my last two termies, every shot scatters & only succeed in killing one of their own raptors

The wings are stunning! Dipped, clearly, in awesomesauce. Neat little batrep - what's an NPC though outside of RPGs?

Yep that will do the trick! I must admit I wasn't sure what you meant by NPC either. Clearly not a Non Player Character.

It was just part of the scenario. Yes, a "non player character".

"The Ghost of Sphincter" or something like that. Appears each turn in a piece of terrain like a Lictor. The person who's turn it is gets to pick & rolls to see if he comes in there, if not, he pics another piece of terrain & rolls, etc. He attacks the nearest thing w/ 5 power weapon attacks, then disappears until the next person's half of the turn.

He killed a couple of odd marines here and there, but never really did anything significant after that first turn. Considering one of the victory conditions was killing all of your opponent's HQ, and he had null zone and gate so he would have been *very* useful vs all the invulnerable saves my opponent had... it was a major setback.

That NPC name

I was going to ask if it was a special scenario or something. Thanks for answering before I could type!

Well, that wasn't actually his name in the scenario... but after he killed off my libby, that's pretty much what he became.

Just an aside. My melta gunner ended up in a 3-way tie for second in the MoTM competition last month. Space Potato has a new challenge up for June. "Works in Progress", preferably unpainted. So if you're working on something really neat, you might want to enter it! Here's the link: June Mini of the Month Competition

His name was Skrall LOL

Hmmm... well, I didn't really do a real bat rep, but I thought I'd grade my units, for my own memory if nothing else.

HQ: Termiator Librarian - F (got an A in dieing though)
HA: Terminator Chaplain - F (ibid)
Elite: Terminator Tac Squad (combat squadded) - F (ibid)
Elite: Iron Clad - C+, illuminated Demon Prince early and added to wound total that eventually killed him, got immobilized early and was ineffective from that point on. Did absorb an astounding amount of fire power though & survived the battle.
Elite: Rifleman - C-, I have the impression that he was useful but I can't for the life of me think of how. Probably helped with the demon killing & absorbed shots that could have gone elsewhere
Troop: tac suqad 1 - B, killed a chaos termie with bolter fire and one more in CC
Troop 1's Razorback - A+ with honors (helped to kill demon prince, greater demon, chaos termie and put two wounds on uber character)
Troop: tac squad 2 - C, killed a chaos termie w/ bolter fire
Troop 2's Razorback - A+ with honors (helped to kill demon prince, greater demon, chaos termies & gave shelter to last surviving devastator)
Troop: 5-man sniper scouts - C, after being rudely lash whipped by the demon prince, they stood their ground and managed to put a wound on him before being shot to pieces
Hvy: Devs - B+, gutsy performance. Helped to kill demons, blew up a rhino, killed a termie (I think) and one survived the battle, even after getting charged by the Ghost of Sphincter. Stood their ground as the chaos terminators were advancing around them on both sides.

I think the terminators go back in the box. Without a LR transport, the lack of anything much better than a bolt gun really limits their utility (I did have two cyclones which got to fire on the demon prince once).

My opponent put his Oblits in heavy cover and essentially took control of 2/3 of the board that way. My deployment didn't help as it was clear I did not really understand how sphincter was to be used (neither did my opponent, if the CO wasn't there, we would have both done it wrong). This made my troops particularly vulnerable to the NPC. In any case whatever blame there is falls squarely on my shoulders. I don't think any of the other options I have painted to field with this army would have made any difference. Plasmas & meltas kill regular marines just as easily as they kill terminators. I need to get some assault troops painted up or I think this scenario will simply repeat over and over again. Though the flexibility and amazing number of special weapons and toughness 5 models in a chaos marine army is really hard to match up to for vanilla marines.

Wings look awesome that way!!! I take back my comment on them being "too dull", that's great!

Also, too bad for the loss... I didn't know you had Terminators painted, though... Did you hide them from us?

No, they're just old ones. I never like the paint jobs on them anyway, even when they were new. They're destined for an acetone bath and a re-paint... or not. I have more effective units to re-do.

You can always deepstrike the termies just need scouts with a homing beacon its not the most reliable thing butbetter then walkin across the table

Gits, the new wing idea looks awesome (way to go WM360). Sorry to hear about your batrep. We gotta get you a W.

Well, the termies with the two missile launchers started on the table for obvious reasons, but the other combat squad deep struck on the pod with the homing beacon. Didn't help them. With everything in his army loaded with plasma & melta they got blown to pieces anyway. With most of his infantry at T5, the storm bolters were pretty useless.

Thanks Moltar!

I cant take credit, it was pretty much all Gits. I was more of a idea filter from the grazillion suggestions and ideas.

It looks great btw, pretty sure I forgot to comment

The hard part is going to be figuring out a way to glue it down snugly without having the glue ruin the paint job or the transition between the film and the wing. Capillary action will try to draw the glue in-between the layers leading to a very odd glue line under the plastic. I'm going to mock up a couple of other wing sets to experiment on (going to need them anyway when I build these guys for myself). I'll try some spray adhesive & some gel superglue... or very small amounts of normal superglue or white glue.

I think it's best to paint and assemble the wings separately anyway.

Do they make that paper in a single side adhesive?

I don't think so, it's intended to just lie on an overhead projector so no adhesive would ever be necessary.

Spray mount?

That's one of the options DE, I'll fiddle with it over the next few days.

How about those printable transfers you can get, so you print the pattern onto the transfer sheet and then cut it out and apply like normal? Can't remember their name if I do I will post it up.

Reaper Man 2020 wrote:How about those printable transfers you can get, so you print the pattern onto the transfer sheet and then cut it out and apply like normal? Can't remember their name if I do I will post it up.

I've tried those before with previous Mantis Warrior projects. Quite simply put they don't work as advertised, and the larger the decal the worse the results.