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 kabaakaba wrote:
Do scouts, there's never enough scouts. Also they're a little bit a step aside from standard tacticus marines. On other hand, paint armor type you have the lest.

What do I have the least off?

I don’t have any modern scouts, or sternguard. (Plenty of old ones)
I’ve got a chunk of phobos armor, but no reivers. Or KT specialists.
I’ve got 5 new terminators.

The primed pile, for reference:


If I do the scouts I’d have to make the call of grass or snow for them. Which I’ll have to do someday eventually…

Mmm, it's can sounds like heresy but why not snow covered grass? New scouts are great. Good sculpt and lots of details.

 kabaakaba wrote:
Mmm, it's can sounds like heresy but why not snow covered grass? New scouts are great. Good sculpt and lots of details.

Most of my old scouts are done in a woodlands tiger stripe camo. (2 are actually in a night/urban greyish scheme). Way back in the depths of time I hadn’t fully committed to Ultras, and still was mostly BA. The scouts were generic camo so could swap as needed. This was before I based anything. Minis just got their bases tidied up with a basic solid black.

When I started basing, the rest of my Ultras got snow bases. But should I put my green camo scouts on snow bases? Nope. They got grassy meadows, like my Eldar (and undead) This also started the scout exchage program. When it came time to paint some Eldar Rangers, they put on their warmest gloves and hit the arctic tundra to keep tabs on my marines. Parity was maintained.

Until the phobos marines. They broke with their firstborn brothers in the 10th company and put on white tiger stripes to blend with the rest of the force. Realizing the pact was broken, when the Striking Scorpions decided to start infiltrating, they put on colors of their maiden world bases.

Which brings us up to the current dilemma. The scouts have a legacy of woodlands camo. But my modern army, including the modern recon element, is in white.

I saw snow covered green tuft in Vallejo range I think. And it should recreate the link with your old forces. So it's snow base with a bit of covered grass. And you can do a mixed stripes, like damaged green under newish white. It should should looks great. Like M2 armies cover their main camo with white washable one on winter.

 kabaakaba wrote:
I saw snow covered green tuft in Vallejo range I think. And it should recreate the link with your old forces. So it's snow base with a bit of covered grass. And you can do a mixed stripes, like damaged green under newish white. It should should looks great. Like M2 armies cover their main camo with white washable one on winter.

I’m not sure I’m up for doing a new scheme. At this point I’m more for uniformity.

—

Some build progress:

Some parts still dry-fitted, but getting together. Started cleaning the fist arm. Will look into if it’s work magging the under arm gun.

I suppose the obvious question is, what is the oldest model or set of models you have that need painting?

Alternatively I would go with the dreadnought or Tiggy?

I’m torn on what to do choose for mine, either Calgar, an honour guard/victrix squad, or head into the archives and dig out something else, potentially Iwa Jima, but I’ve not even started the prep on that yet so it would be a long slog!

Dreadnought is coming along nicely! What weapon load out are you going with for it?

 JordySteve wrote:
I suppose the obvious question is, what is the oldest model or set of models you have that need painting?

Alternatively I would go with the dreadnought or Tiggy?

I’m torn on what to do choose for mine, either Calgar, an honour guard/victrix squad, or head into the archives and dig out something else, potentially Iwa Jima, but I’ve not even started the prep on that yet so it would be a long slog!

Dreadnought is coming along nicely! What weapon load out are you going with for it?

I think my oldest models are an old scout and 2 deathwatch marines. Which are on my to-do list. But I need to pick and clean/prime shoulders for the DW. And the scout is a little silly.

Dread is not going to be ready in time. He’s going to be magnetized, at least the main gun. But the plasma is probably going to be the primary build. Not sure about the gun underslung on the fist.

Paint up the victrix. They are such cool models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:


I think I’m going to go for a pointing pose, with the gun arm at rest. Just pieced together at this point. Need to give props to the posability of this kit. I’m not saying that every joint is fully articulated, but there is a LOT of range.

My other morning project was magnetizing the bases for all the remaining nids. Including re-doing all the ones that popped off when I was shuffleng models around last week. Slight change in procedure. I did the normal press the magnet into a ball of green stuff, then place under the base and squish down for max contact. But this batch I put a smear of superglue on the base where the GS would have contact. While some magnets pulled away from the GS in use, the most common place for failure was the GS/base connection. Hopefully this will fix that.

So now that (most) everyone is magnetized, do I have enough boxes?


Short answer: Yes.

1 9LX
2 9L
3 4L
2 lipped inset trays\

The only model that really needs to be in the tall box is the winged tyrant. The trygon just barely fits into a normal 9L, but since I have the one with the extra headroom, he can sit in that one.
There are a bunch of models that need the full space in the 9L box. They get one with no extras.
The other normal size 9L contains models that need just a little more hight then a 4L provides, but not all of it. This gives me room to use the box to house one of the extra trays. Those are not tall, but neither are old school gaunts, ripper swarms, etc.
Which are so low, that I can put an extra tray in their box.
The other two 4L boxes are for the bulk of the nids who don’t need a lot of headroom, but don’t squeeze in a nice as termagants. Like the genestealers with arms everywhere and the jumpy hormagaunts.

Note: This is not as packed as well as it could be. I shuffled some of the stuff from the Combat Patrol box to other spaces, but I’ve still got the 20 termagants (which could be fit in with their peers) and the barbgaunts (which would need a full hight 4L, but not the 9L they are in now. The gargoyles are also not currently maged, but there to show roughly how much space they would need. If I was a lot more careful placing minis, I might be able to move everyone out of that box. But it would get real snug in the remaining boxes, and be a jigsaw puzzle of claws, wings, and talons getting anything in or out. So we’ll let it stand at 6 boxes total, with 2 having bonus trays (one of which I probably could consolidate away)

After filling up all these boxes, I have 3x 4L left. for other armies. I needed to evict my Soulblight spearhead from it’s box for this project. (Don’t worry, they are home safe now). I should probably get some more 9Ls. A quick check shows that the Necron Doomstalker needs the bonus headroom in the 9LX, the normal one is not tall enough. And as I eventually plan to grab the Nightbringer, I suspect he will as well. A few assumptions here. One that I will end up magnetizing the Necrons (likely) and the other that the Tyranids will continue to live in their travel boxes. I keep thinking it might be time to get another display case. Either another tall narrow one, or a more expensive wider one that could hold more armies.

Anyway, enough rambling for a Sunday. Enjoy your weekends all.

I like the pose on the dread. Very dynamic.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
I like the pose on the dread. Very dynamic.

Thanks. I’m at the having fun again putting him together. Past the decision paralysis step. Cleaned up the secondary guns, fitted the flamer, and now working on the main gun. Should be easy to mag, looks like 3x2mm should work a charm. It does come with two parts to mount the cannons on, so I could mag at the top of that. But I think that might be too small a point for the weight.



So change of plan. Looking at the calendar for the month, I remembered that I’m traveling for the last week. So going with something simpler, which will be reivers. Plus I want to get them done so I can field the CP before 11th drops.

Edit: Just did the edge work on the Assault marine. So he’s off to be decalled an based. But space free for the reivers. Last 2 Assaults will need to wait some more.

Main guns are magnetized, the little gun is just dry fitted. Glued up the joints, so all set. Unless I feel he needs more bling and purity seals.

Oh yeah Nev.... that's really cool.

I just glued the little guns in with the big weapons magnetized.
If anyone complains about WYSIWYG, I have an old metal dreadnought I can throw at them.

On my Redemptors, I found that the main guns would stay in place with no need for magnets, but the fist guns needed magnets. I didn't even try to make the nipple guns swappable, I just put the frag launchers on and called it a day.

Gitsplitta wrote:Oh yeah Nev.... that's really cool.

Thanks!

Tommygun1918 wrote:I just glued the little guns in with the big weapons magnetized.
If anyone complains about WYSIWYG, I have an old metal dreadnought I can throw at them.

Owning a Dreadsock means never having to take crap from younger players. One perk of being an old git is that we have minis that double as murder weapons.

ZergSmasher wrote:On my Redemptors, I found that the main guns would stay in place with no need for magnets, but the fist guns needed magnets. I didn't even try to make the nipple guns swappable, I just put the frag launchers on and called it a day.

Magging up the main gun was not hard at all. It almost seemed that the guns were designed to take 3x2mm magnets. But a friction fit probably would have also worked.
Getting the small gun set up would require so work getting everything aligned, so I’m not going to bother. I’ll just use a little poster tack once painted and probably never change the options.
I glued the stombolters on. Never been a huge fan of frag launchers. Historically it’s mostly been a wash about what to take, They had slightly difference depending on the range band. I haven’t crunched the numbers recently. But the SB are generally less variable, and more traditional, so are my choice. They probably would not have been hard to mag, but why? Tiny bits easy to loose, for almost no game impact.

So now I need to figure out what to build next. Probably more Necrons.

Reivers are going. Base grey seer down, got the first brown on the sarge. Slow progress.

That is a very impressive Space Marine and Tyranid Army collection!

 UR-025 wrote:
That is a very impressive Space Marine and Tyranid Army collection!

Thanks. I’ve put a lot of work into them over the years.

--



Layers getting slopped around. Progress is progress.

 Nevelon wrote:

After filling up all these boxes, I have 3x 4L left. for other armies. I needed to evict my Soulblight spearhead from it’s box for this project. (Don’t worry, they are home safe now). I should probably get some more 9Ls. A quick check shows that the Necron Doomstalker needs the bonus headroom in the 9LX, the normal one is not tall enough. And as I eventually plan to grab the Nightbringer, I suspect he will as well.

Think you've saved me from some future hassle here.

I already have a 9L box for storing larger models but only realised recently that it might not be tall enough for a Doomstalker.

Do you reckon the Void Dragon would fi tin the 9XL as well?

Also really nice collection by the way.

 Del Mingus wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:

After filling up all these boxes, I have 3x 4L left. for other armies. I needed to evict my Soulblight spearhead from it’s box for this project. (Don’t worry, they are home safe now). I should probably get some more 9Ls. A quick check shows that the Necron Doomstalker needs the bonus headroom in the 9LX, the normal one is not tall enough. And as I eventually plan to grab the Nightbringer, I suspect he will as well.

Think you've saved me from some future hassle here.

I already have a 9L box for storing larger models but only realised recently that it might not be tall enough for a Doomstalker.

Do you reckon the Void Dragon would fi tin the 9XL as well?

Also really nice collection by the way.

Thanks.

I do not have a Void Dragon, so can’t answer that question. I can provide a point of reference though.


I set the tape measure inside so the length was a little shy of the top, but I could press the lid down until it touched. I could have tried to get a more precise answer, but am still working on my first cup of coffee, and the angles of the pictures is going to mess things up anyway. Close enough for government work. It will also depend on how thick your magnetizing solution is. I have both a sheet of flexible black magnetic sheet and a layer of steel in my box.

We’ve got a usable interior space of roughly 7.5 inches. Looking at some quick numbers online, that might be barely enough for the Nightbringer. Might see a little bend in the scythe or swirly crap when the lid goes down (which happens with my Trygon in a 9L box). Also, remember that my measurements are rough, I’m undercaffeinated, and pulling numbers and size comparisons out of random google searches. But those random incredibly reliable internet facts also put the Void Dragon at about an inch taller than the Nightbringer. So probably too tall for the 9XL.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate the effort you've made to measure this out.

Looks like it'll be better to go for a larger size.

As you say Nev, every little bit moves you forward!

Decided to skip ahead a little. 2 guys in front have had their white cleaned up, and their apothecary white done. Next up will be to nuln oil their undersuit bits and camo. Plus cleanup. Wanted to make sure I got at least some guys done. Not that the ones in back are that far behind.

Also the free mini of the month getting work. Almost ready for washes.

Man, the white armor with the blue shoulder really looks fantastic.

Have you changed your technique for white armor? The armor plates on these guys are really well-defined, without going into black in the shading.

Gitsplitta wrote:Man, the white armor with the blue shoulder really looks fantastic.

One perk of sculpted shoulderpads is I get the post-decal look while still a work in progress. Normally I need to wait to the end for that white on blue pop of the look. They are up for camo, so they won’t stay this clean for long

JoshInJapan wrote:Have you changed your technique for white armor? The armor plates on these guys are really well-defined, without going into black in the shading.

If I was going to keep these guys in pure white armor the next step would be highlights with a clean white. Right now the armor is just apothecary white over grey seer on a basic white prime. The contrast paint is really a pale grey wash, not an actual white. It does do a great job of bringing out the details in the armor, without a lot of work. Elbow joints, back of the knee, etc will get a nuln oil wash to separate them from the rest of the armor. Which is a little odd, as in full power armor I don’t differentiate that bit. But the phobos seemed to need a little bit extra for some reason. Not sure why I made that call. I could dig back into the blog and see if I explained my thinking.

White armor:
Prime white (rustolim rattle can, like eveything I ddo)
Grey Seer base
Apothecary White contrast all over
Nuln oil the soft armor in the joints
For clean white amor, edge highlight with a pute white, like White Scar (I forget the name of the pot I’m on right now, they go clumpy fast) This lets the otherwise shades of grey armor read more like a pure white.
For camo, tiger stripe the hard armor. I use 3 colors which I’ll need to doublecheck. dark grey (mechanicum), light grey (dawnstone), and a pale blue (elf grey). This is an organic proccess. You want the stripes to branch and overlap, and mostly cover the base armor, and mostly stay the same direction. But not entirely, and there should not be a pattern. While the bulk of the stripes can be done in one pass each there needs to be a touch up step where I got back and redo some colors. Not only does this help fill any blank spots I missed, but ensures that the last color is not always the stripe on top. They should weave over/under each other.
I generally don’t edge highlight the camo armor, but have been known to give the cloaks a little edge to help them pop a bit, and seperate the fabric from the armor worn underneath.

Basically done with the marauder. Marines need dome cleanup and detail work, but are almost there. Next up is to get their 3 brothers done to finish the squad.

Happy Pi Day to everyone who uses a MM/DD/YY date format. Go out and eat some math; it’s delicious! And have a great weekend all.

Great work Nev, as usual!

I like the camo on the armor. The first Space Marine models I ever bought, back in the olden days, were painted in that same camo scheme.

I enjoy painting camo. You don’t really need to worry about being tidy. See a mistake? Slap a blotch over it.

The other 3 got their contrast white on. Next step is the nuln oil on the joints.


Take care out there today; Beware the Ides of March.

They way you're doing the white reminds me of how GW used to do it way, wayyyy back in the old days. Always loved that technique.