A bunch of phoenix kings walk into a bar with some scrubs...

For an upcomming game, I'm planing to field a bunch of reapers. Two OOP metal exarchs from eBay as well as 10 old metal reapers which I painted last year that are well in need of a second chance at a half-way decent paint-job. When prepping those models for painting, I dug out a bunch of other models that were still blank. The paint scheme for those is different, but any batch priming, sealing or shading makes things go smoother than individual bits and bobs.

After spending what seems like an eternity cleaning and prepping the models, I primed them black with a strong white zenital highlight, both using Vallejo Airbrush primer. There rest of the way, I painted using Vallejo Model Air and Game Air colours with a regular brush.

I'm particularly happy with the result of Vallejo Game Air Black mixed 1:1 with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and painted in several layers over the black to white primed bits to keep the recesses but change the colour of the entire area, darkening at as I went. Some of the reapers I consider a problem since there is colour in there, but hey, the others look fine. Might be useful to distinguish squads.

Here they stand after all the base colours, as well as varnish and oil shade applied. Only gems and bases to be done!

Making that post - even though it is just for myself really - motivated me to push through the last bit. Three layers of sand to tank brown, followed by Tamiya clear red for the gems and my usual alibi-base decoration.

Wraithknight with Ghostglaive

A short while ago I picked up a used Wraithknight, which I actually primed and painted yellow for a fellow local gaming club member. Since the model was completely assembled, it wasn't really possible to do get proper access to many parts. In addition, there is the obvious factor of learning faster than I can finish an army project. Of course, finishing an army is also made difficult by me being easily distracted by other models and having fun playing games, which cuts into my hobby time. But I disgress. This is the story of this "little" guy.

With paint being on him pretty thick and a number of sins visible in  his plastic, painting over the original paint job wasn't an option. So I set to taking apart the model, which had been lavishly provided with plastic cement bonds, before sticking it into methylated spirit to destory the bonds of the Vallejo primer, Vallejo VMA paint and whatever the additional colours the model received are. After letting the model soak for quite a bit, I got busy with a brush and followed up with sandpaper and scraper.

Because I had to cut apart quite some bits, like shoulder, neck, hip, ankle joints and a bunch of armour plates, there was material missing. You can spot parts of a cheap ballpoint pen replacing the shoulder joints, adding stock to the neck and providing mounting spots for the armour plates.

Using cork, paperclip and superglue to make small bits reasonably easy to handle and rod magnets to hold the magnetized bits, I first sprayed black primer, followed by white primer as a zenital highlight before applying the yellow and blue base coats.

This is the current status, before applying varnish, oil shade, decals and basing. I'll add a shot of the finished model when it's done.

PS: With shade, very basic basing, decals and jewels, together with my first and second knights (from the left) as well as the wraithguard reinforcements.

Wraithguard

A few months ago I picked up 14 metal wraithguard along with some more warp spiders. These model up my wraithguard contingent to 35 models, with another five models being wraithblades.

After removing mold lines, I cut slots into a bunch of 40mm bases with my dremel and mounted the bodies on them. When deciding on how exactly I'd mask the heads to get a clean paintjob sorted. The best masking is of course to paint things separately, With neck, wraithbone vane and collar being attached to the heads, that wasn't an option for me. So I grabbed my hobby saw and got busy! This went remarkably well, aside from some very authentic but minor battle damage on some of the vanes when I slipped with the saw.

After sanding the bottom of the bases even and sticking them on self-adhesive magnetic foil, I got busy with primer. I tried black with a white zential highlight. There is a risk of the yellow running into green, but I'll accept that.

The yellow basecoat was followed up with dark grey on the gun, joints and hoses and white primer on the loincloths. The heads I had stuck on toothpicks and painted them separately.

Here the models stand before varnish, shade, base deco and decals.

Eldar Windrider Host

Eldar Jetbikes and Shining Spears

Rounding out my Eldar army,  I needed to sort some jetbikes. Previously, I hab painted some, but had no base concept and no riders sorted. Plus, the flat yellow paintjob just didn't look good enough.

Recently I had picked up a shining spears kit. Thinking at kill two birds with one stone, I ordered another upgrade kit and 3x3 jetbikes. That also fixed me up with some spare bits for the very second hand bikes I already had.

Instant Khorne - just add blood!

Prepped for well thinned red: 68 bloodletters, two heralds and one deamon prince.

Warp Spider WIP

Xmas Painting

In the last couple of days I caught up with some of the accusingly white Eldar models in my collection. I still need to add some base gravel and do the gems, but I'm very happy with the progress I made.

A tale of two Hell-Blades

Not too long ago, as part of my first Forgeworld order, I got a Hell-Blade body with badly warped tips and missing molding. As I understand is normal, Forgeworld customer service was helpful and - furnished with the details and a picture - happy to provide a replacement part.

Having worked a bit with resin now, I tried to get the warp out by heating, bending and setting the part with hot and cold water respectively, but was unable to get rid of the bent fork look.

When the replacement body arrived, I decided to get creative and used my hot air gun turned to 180 degrees Celsius instead. Funny enough, this did the trick. I scraped off the mostly missing modling.

The path was clear: I have to built the missing parts myself and get myself another Hell-Blade for my troubles! :)

Besides the Body, there is the tail including the pipes behind and the rear frame of the cockpit, the guns, the pilot, the cockpit cover and the turbine part at the end.

I used 1mm thick plasticard to make a tail section for the spare body, with some guitar or rather bass strings for the pipes. Heavy weapon team machine guns were doubled up and inverted to make twin-linked loooking machine guns.

The gun configuration is different, but clearly recognizable as what it is supposed to be. Good enough for me!

I cut templates out of paper, transferrred the outline to plasticard and cut out the two side window frames. Then I drilled small holes in each corner and lots of medium and big holes in the to be removed window space. Then I trimmed it down to a frame that can - after painting - receive a clear plastic sheet as window.

The original pilot is human rather than space marine sized. I guess that's why the ballistics skill is a point lower ;) I used a guardsman torso, trimmed down to remove the belt and back to fit and added a pointing arm as well as a combination of two other guard arms to make it look like he's fiddling with the controls. The head comes from a Dark Venegance cultist and ended up in my bits-collection when I converted loads of the buggers to look distinct.

Now I have to decide on a paint scheme. Decisions, decisions!

Legion Autocannon Upgrade Kit

Recently, I had to prox special weapons again. This made me sort all my CSM, take stock and get two boxes of regular chaos marines to assemble with special and heavy weapons. I had ordered two autocannon kits previously, and will focus on adapting those to the plastic csm kit.

The magazine backpack attachment does not fit the CSM backpack at all, obviously the mag is meant to fit snugly on a 30k backpack. In particular the CSM backpack is thicker in the lower area and this results in the mag's rear not being in line with the backpack's rear by about 2mm, which again results in thr ammo belt ending up in the wrong position relative to the models arms and weapon.

After some trials,  I settled on clipping the tailpipes off the CSM backpack and flattening the area between them by trimming it down with the hobby knife. In addition, I took a chisel hobby knife blade to the inside of the mag and cut the two tabs on the top at about half thickness.

 

This results in the parts fitting into the right position,  but without good contact for gluing. I superglued a small ball of green stuff into the mag, coated the backpack with superglue and pressed it into the mag. As the green stuff sets, it will be slightly flexible but hold the parts in place.

I'm quite happy with the result!  :)