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Morning all! I guess introductions are in order. My name's Tek, pleased to meek you. I was a regular Dakkaite up until leaving the hobby in about 2012. My last post on here was about 2012 I think? 2020 being the year that it was and those Necron models in the Indomitus box triggered a spark in me, so here I am. Once lost and now returned, my first P&M blog in nearly 10 years.

The first thing I want to say is I'm a modeller and painter first, gamer second. I will play with this army, but my main focus is fielding an army which looks cool. Necrons sometimes lack character, and the single-pose GW plastics means most people's armies looks relatively similar.

My focus for this army will be conversions, customisations and fielding a fluffy and good-looking force of angry robots. Before getting the box I was thinking of a large Destroyer cult, with lots of focus on twisted bodies and customisation. I am really attracted to the idea of the destroyer lore, I like the idea of Necrons who have abandoned the idea of reversing the bio-transference, and who are now focused on being the best robots they can be. Like Number One from Battlestar Galactica. With the new rules, I am leaning toward creating a Fringeworld, full of wily crypteks and a Szeras stand-in who are intent on making the maddest destroyers imaginable.

This will evolve over time, but let's start with my first model, the new Szeras. A fantastic sculpt. I just didn't like the whole magic man-melting staff part of the sculpt. It's a cool thing, but I wanted the focus to be on his body and the glowy globe, rather than a big squirt of brain-matter. So my first step was to cut off the melting fella and convert the bottom half of Szeras's staff and convert the big bracelet thing into a large gauntlet.




MUCH BETTER I think! The sculpt is focused, my eye isn't distracted by extraneous stuff. I also removed the skirt. I'm not mega on all the extravagant draperies on these sculpts, so I will be removing most of them. I will keep them though as I am likely to find uses for them.




The model is completed, based and painted so I will upload painting WIPs shortly. Thanks for visiting. It's good to be back!

Weclome back! I like the editing you did on him, definitely less busy and more focused on the figure itself, like you said. I'm looking forward to seeing it with more paint!

Seems to be a lot of us coming back recently...
Loving what you’re doing so far.

 amazingturtles wrote:
Weclome back! I like the editing you did on him, definitely less busy and more focused on the figure itself, like you said. I'm looking forward to seeing it with more paint!

Thank you! The new sculpting & molding technology means GW can do so much more. But I feel like they don't need to in some cases. This is a great model, too much visual noise does it a disservice. Here he is with paint!



I'm going for a worn copper for his carapace, and the 9E style Necron metal colours. I've added purple wash to the metal, I think it looks otherworldly and weird.



Here he is with the staff all painted. I thought the globe thing would look good painted as if it were molten metal. I'm really playing with warm / cool tones over the model.



Pretty much the same angle but with a dark background. Base is yet to be finished. I will paint a load of bases all at once. The plan is a reddish soil to counter the cooler tones of the metals.

Great mod to this figure - really like what you have done there and I am inclined to copy

Great work with playing with warm and cold tones, even across a single piece of metal.

That's pretty awesome. The conversion works well. The colors are fabulous. Looking forward to more!

That is quite a break,I think my biggest was 5 years or so.

Great work on the conversion, Szeras is quite a fiddly build without the converting. It is so well done that I did not even notice at first, always a good sign when the initial look is not jarring. Really cool painting as well, looking forward to seeing more.

Worn copper is one of my favorite looks! I see it a lot where i live, and it's just an excellent color, cool but with a lot of depth

Thanks so much everyone for making me feel so welcome back.
@petrov - go ahead and steal! This is just about the only idea I've ever come up with, I usually steal all mine from more talented people!
@gwyn - thank you. The colour temperature is something I'm taking quite seriously, having never done so before.
@youwas - cheers mate. More coming tomorrow.
@listentome - Thank you so much for the kind words. Your P&M blog is incredibly inspiring. I hope you enjoy what's to come.
@amazing - me too! Copper and teal are some of my favourite colours. Teal will play a larger role in the wider army. I finished my reanimator tonight so I'll get that photographed tomorrow.

That's a hell of a comeback, nice subtle conversion work and a great paintjob! Can't wait to see more Necrons pop up in this space.

 Viterbi wrote:
That's a hell of a comeback, nice subtle conversion work and a great paintjob! Can't wait to see more Necrons pop up in this space.

Thanks for the kind words. Next is a very simple conversion and paintjob of the Canoptek Reanimator. Because I'm going down this "Cryptek's Workshop" vibe, I've decided that everything needs to be a Necron. No drones, no automatons. Everything is a sentient robot in a specialised body. The Reanimator needed a 'cron head and the Crytothrall head just fit perfectly on the peg without any need for modification. Result! I repositioned the smaller arms and chopped a few things out of the base to tidy it up.





I pivoted on my colour scheme and will be adding turquoise to large panels / shoulders. Also adding in lots more black to joints to help break up the silver. I have only just noticed my camera is slightly out of focus. Something to work on for future pics.



You can see my intended red base style. I love basing, so like to do big chunks at once but thought it would be worth doing one now as a proof of concept. I'm working on my big converted Skorpekh Lord today, you can expect pics of him later. I'm proud of how original he is :-)

Fantastic. All the color mottling on the metal really stands out on this one.

 youwashock wrote:
Fantastic. All the color mottling on the metal really stands out on this one.

Thank you! Since painting a few more models I've realised that the bright silver on this guy (achieved with a can of cheap Wilko spraypaint) makes layering washes MUCH easier as the base silver shines through marvellously.

The next unit I finished last night are 10x immortals. I'm using these fantastic upgrade kits from Wargame Exclusive. Really great models. Assembly was pretty cool. The resin is soft enough I could carve it with a scalpel. The usual hot water was needed on one or two parts but certainly nothing out of the ordinary. I bought these initially because I got given a leftover sprue of Immortal parts which a mate had left over from assembling his Deathmarks. I had to improvise a lot of the left arms but all told they came out really well. The sculpts are VERY detailed and I found myself rushing some parts as it was taking me so long!




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feth it, it's Friday. Let's go for a double post. Here's my recently modeled Skorpekh Lord. I mentioned in the thread that I left the hobby some time ago. I kept an old bitz box kicking about my house for 10+ years after leaving the hobby and it's full of all kind of goodies. I've had this incomplete Space Crusade Chaos Android Dreadnought in there for ages, and it's finally presented me with the perfect use. My custom Skorpekh Lord uses the arms from the Indomitus model and a few Necron bitz on top of that Dread base. I am SO happy with how it came out.





The bullet traps in those armpits made the model look spindly and bottom-heavy, so I cut up some plasticard to make some shoulderpads. With paint this should tie the model relatively well into the Necron aesthetic.

The hoods on the Immortals look amazing. Really changes them up. And, wow. Throwback Skorpekh Lord is a delight to see.

Cool stuff Tek, I like how you did the mottling on the metal bits and that energy glow is very good.

Your mods really make the army your own, well done sir!

Ha, i like that change for the lord a lot. he looks so much more robust and dangerous!

 amazingturtles wrote:
Ha, i like that change for the lord a lot. he looks so much more robust and dangerous!

Thank you! I'm one of those old school gamers who wants every model to be unique. This was the perfect opp for that. I'm also glad you like the old dread @youwashock! Here is is completed

I have entered this guy in the monthly Dakka painting challenge. It was a great way to keep me motivated. Thanks all for the kind words so far.

A classic walks again. Turned out great!

Nice conversion and paintjob, looks like he walked out of an 80's B-Movie (in a very good way!).

@youwashock, thank you! He's going to look great on the battlefield
@viterbi I take that as a great compliment. I think he ended up looking like Doyle Frankenstein from Misfits and that's not a bad thing either. Exactly the same energy!

Bit of an update after a hiatus. Working on some Wraith stand-ins. As I said before, I don't want any Canoptek units. I'm figuring out the fluff for my force, and I'm thinking that when this lot went into hibernation, there were very few canoptek constructs available (for whatever reason). And so the decision was left that the Crypteks would stay awake and watch over them all. Now they're waking up to find they've been tinkered with over the long millenium into horrifying robo-monsters.

I really like the old metal wraiths, but they're going for silly money online, so I figured I would make my own. I swapped my SM Indomitus half for another Necron half and bashed the Skorpekh Destroyer bodies together with some Wraiths. They came out great, I think.



I'm going to want to field a few more than this. I currently have three but will be looking to build around 10.

I've also worked on a second HQ unit. I'm really happy with my Skorpekh Lord, but I had a vision of this giant robotic nightmare for a centrepiece to the army. So I'm making a counts-as CCB out of a Triarch Stalker. I've mounted the Skorpekh Lord torso onto some homepade piping and stuck him on the front. He'll be running with a staff of light and res orb, but I'm waiting for a GS cable maker to give his all kinds of bizarre tentacle action.




The head is a Cryptothrall head which I was using on my Reanimator. I'm not going to ever run reanimators, so I'm thinking I need to convert them into something. I've seen Spyders done, but I'm formulating a plan to turn both of them into Heavy Lokhust Destroyers.

I have never been a competitive gamer, so I don't care how this army plays. My planned army list is really for my own personal fluff and the modelling opportunities. The planned list is something like:
Skorpekh Lord
CCB
20 Immortals
10+ Skorpekh Destroyers
10 Wraiths
8 Lokhust Destroyers (2 Heavy)

I have plans to build a Hexmark and some Crypteks too. I just want a force of bizarrely modified Destroyers, going all out for death or glory!

Morning all, happy Friday. Big update today so this will be a triple post. Updating the modelling which has been going into this force. Before we start I apologise again for the poor photography. I'm using my phone in unideal lighting conditions. I really just want to log the work, rather than take great pics at this point.

The first post is my Heavy Destroyer kitbash. The torso, arms and weapons come from the actual Heavy Destroyer kit. The head is a Deathmark head (I think) and the body is a cut down and converted Canoptek Reanimator.



It's the same reanimator from earlier in this thread in fact, which is why it's partly-painted. I realised I was never going to use the unit, but I wanted to use the model. I love how this came out. I've clipped off the reanimator orb things - I will add more cables here (always more cables). I've also not used the right arm - I will be replacing this with a cable too. You can see some okay shots of the green stuff cable work - this tool is a game changer. I would not be able to do this conversion without it.







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Second post of the day is my converted Hexmark Destroyer. I like the idea of the Hexmark. Apparently they're not too good in the actual game, but a spidery, six-armed robot cowboy is too good to pass up. I'm not super keen on the official model; I don't like the big ball on its back and I don't like the green pipes running down the arms.

I wanted to have something immediately recognisable, but I had a vision of a hunched-over tentacle beast, something reminiscent of the squiddies from The Matrix:


I thought about adding in all the eyes, but it didn't look very Necron-y. What I ended up with pleased me a lot.



It's a shortened Wraith torso (I have loads of these left over from my Wraith conversions), connected via a thick GS pipe to a set of Skorpekh Lord legs (which I have left over from my SL conversion). The head comes from my Heavy Destroyer (above) and the green stuff tentacles are capped with pistols which come from something Necron, I have no idea what. This came out almost exactly as I wanted. I think there's a few tiny details still to model, but this will get painted up very soon.


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UPDATE #3!
For my third and final blog update, the modelling on the Command Barge is complete. As this is a big (and weird) conversion, I wanted it to be as recognisable and WYSIWYG as possible. It's about the same size, slightly larger than the CCB. The weapons and modelling hopefully sell the "super overlord on a chariot of doom" vibe.




Here you can see I had to remove the big arms to model the torso. The model has a scratchbuilt left arm holding a spear of light made up from little bits from the Praetorians kit. The head is a Cryptothrall (I like to think it makes the Lord look like they started their journey as a Deathmark and have been updraded to this new form). The right arms are a greenstuff pipe with another Praetorian hand and the missing arm from my Heavy Destroyer. I couldn't think of an easy way to give the Lord a Resurrection Orb, but then I thought. "Wait, aren't those big shiny orbs on the Canoptek Reanimator essentially just ROs?" As I was already clipping those off the Reanimator, it made all the sense in the world to add that on. Also it works with my fluff of these guys abandoning their hope of being "normal" again. This robot doesn't need a hand, they never want to put that orb down :-D



Added more GS pipes (I can't get enough of these) and I'm happy to call it done. For the underslung gun; the Triarch Stalker has a huge Twin Heavy Gauss Cannon and I wanted this to look more like the simpler Gauss Cannon hanging underneath the CCB. So I glued on one half and I used some styrene pipe and a few gubbins to make what I hope looks like some kind of targeting array or something. Added a bit of chipping too, but honestly this is unlikely to be noticed :-)




That's that. I'm painting the CCB today - let's hope I can get some updates up here soon. There's a few more pics in my gallery if you want to take a look. Cheers

First update of 2022! Well, the Command Barge is finished. I repainted a lot as I was getting really down about this conversion. Finished the paint and I'm a lot happier with it now.



Next, the Wraiths are nearly all painted. I'm enjoying the blending on these. I've even been blending the metallics as painting loads of silver is BORING!



They still need basing, I've barely started that. I've made a start on modelling up my "normal" Skorpekh Destroyers. Every model in this army is converted, so I couldn't leave these as stock. The first two got basic arm repositioning.


And the big lad got what I _thought_ was a simple head swap. This turned into a nightmare, as it was so fiddly. It came out great though, so I'm pleased



Lastly, I have been kitbashing Lokhust torsos onto Skorpekh legs. I don't have any hovery platforms in my force. I think they're a bit too clean, and the skittery and slithery elements are far creepier, so I've tried to keep it consistent. They came out absolutely great, I think. I will make big greenstuff tubes for the left arms. Almost like ammo feed belts or something, or power cables.