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September = Fast Attack

So, since I had previously been working on Necron warriors, I kept all the scarabs handy for this month.

These are among the most basic plastic models GW has, being exactly 1 body piece, and 1 stand piece. You can combine several on a base to make a swarm. Most people do 3 per base, as that's standard wound allocation, but I prefer 4 or 5 to a base as it makes them look more beefy.

Here is a shot of the bases during construction:

Unfortunately, I forgot to get photos after I finished basing and priming, and remembered while halfway through painting the metal portions.

And the finished models.

Another month down!

Again, these are painted to a very basic standard with the intention of going back and adding further detail, colours, etc. But my main goal right now is to get this army done to a consistent and playable standard at the very least...then come back later and touch them up, and add some special detail here and there.

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The subject for August was elite, so I painted a small unit of Necron Flayed Ones. I would have painted more, but I didn't realise I only had four models, and my budget demanded I not purchase any more for the time being. Fortunately, the minimum unit size for Necron Flayed Ones is only four models. Naturally I will be expanding on this unit, as I rather like how Flayed Ones perform, especially as a roving unit with Necron Immortals or Warriors putting down fire support for them.

I really like them though, because they play on the imagery of zombies, but are a bit more horrific, as they use that primordial fear as a weapon...even though it seems the Necrontyr Psyche in these creatures is damaged, longing for life, and wearing flesh in a grim mockery of life.

I started with a white base coat. Usually for metals, I go with a black base coat, as it makes it much easier to create shadows. However with the abundance of flesh, I felt white would be better. It certainly sped up the paint time as I didn't have to do multiple coats of flesh paint on top of black to give it a smooth surface.

 I then gave the models a wash of Asurmen Blue, over the entire model. The reason was threefold. 

1. It helps to pick out details on a white primed model more easily if you give it a thin wash before painting. This made it much easier to determine where the skin was and where the metal was.
2. I am painting my Necrons to have a bluish chrome type of finish. Starting with blue in the shadows helps to further that tone.
3. Dead flesh has blue undertones, so this then becomes a starter base of a blotchy blue on the decayed flesh.

After the wash, I then painted Boltgun Metal on all of the metal bits, careful not to get too much on the flesh. I wasn't worried if I did, but it pays to be tidy as it means less touchup painting later, especially if you are going to use washes as a majority part of your method.

Next, I broke out the Ogryn Flesh wash, and went over all of the fleshy bits. I kept it undiluted, and painted it on into all the tears and rents, and in all the folds of skin. This gives the skin a blue and ruddy blotchy fleshy appearance right off the bat. You can continue this process with other colour washes to reflect decaying skin, or build on it with rotting flesh, or even pink flesh to represent different tones of flesh and different points of decay, from just flensed, to old and moribund.

I chose to leave it as it as this point, but plan to come back and add more detail to the flesh. Besides, with the touch of blue, they also appear to be perhaps from some Tau volunteers.

The base is first painted with a 50/50 mix of Chaos Black and Brown Ink, thinned so it just absorbs into the sand. I then lightly overbrushed codex grey over the still wet base. This actually has the effect of a touch of blending on the edges, as the dark paint bleeds through. I then hit it with a final highlight of codex grey when it was dry, and tidied it up by painting the ring of the base in two coats of thinned Chaos Black.

Again, I'm keeping thins simple right now. Note that there is less shading on the metal of these models. This will be done later one as I add more models to the unit, and I will use some washes and inks to give more depth and help tint the metal bodies. But these are now ready for the table top, so Job done! 

For now...

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Time for a bit of blog catching up. While my blog has been a bit dormant, that is not an indicator of my hobby progress.


In July I started seriously focussing on finishing all the Necrons I have. You may wonder why, as the net wisdom is that Necrons are not that competitive (though I disagree heartily), but the simple reason is that I'm a sucker for Terminator like Death Robots. So I broke out one of my old school necron models for kicks and will endeavour to update the look and translate it to the more modern plastic Necrons. I aim to finish the year off by focussing on and completing whatever Necrons I have kicking around. And perhaps if there is anything left, pick up one of the new Forgeworld Necron Tomb Stalkers.

Here are some basic build pics. I've got the old school Necron there for comparative purposes, and to get an idea of scale and style. There are a lot of design cues still present, but it's interesting to see how they have been redesigned. I also tossed the scarab in there for nostalgia. I do plan on using that original paint scheme (or a version of it) on the new Necrons.

Notice I built these Necrons to be standing more upright than Necrons are typically depicted. I don't like the hunched over look as they remind me too much of Igor hunchbacks and don't seem menacing and looming enough. I wanted them to be more reminscint of CSM-101 Terminators than undead ghouls. However, to do this, I had to modify the necks so the heads would sit properly without looking up as if they are distracted by something in the sky. A couple snips with a clipper on the control rods and the heads could be pivoted and positioned much more convincingly.

Finally, I have done a bit of a test to see what I can do with tinting the green rod. Below I have used some Asurmen Blue and washed it onto the green rod sprue. You can see it actually dries fairly evenly, despite being a very smooth surface. I like this because the tube does retain some of the green tone, but looks more 3 dimensional, like there is a substance floating inside the tube.

I also did an experiment to see if I could get the tubes to look not so shiny and toy like. Some would suggest using a matt seal, and that will probably work. But I have figured out an alternate method which involves lightly coating the tube with liquid plastic cement - sorry, no picture. I think that it looks rather nice in person, but am unsure if I will pursue that, as I rather like the colour tint. I will decide later on in the project, and will probably just assemble the green tubes stock for now to save on some time.


And here are the Necrons I finished painting in July, though I actually built 20 more Necron Warriors.

Of note, these are strictly painted to a simple standard to get them table ready. I did not colour tint the rod, as I was testing, because I still want to experiment with that. And I have not yet added the extra should scarab shell detail, as I want to do that detail on the army as a whole.  So to give them a finished look, I played off the green rod, adding some green glowing elements to the gun, as well as the eyes (hidden in shadow) and gave them a bit of a green wash to represent poison on the bayonet blade.