Can't Keep a Good Necron Down!

Boy time sure does fly!

Here's a quick update showing off some Necron Warriors I painted last night.

These were painted for the annual Toys for Tots Freebootaz 40K Charity Auction, where a bunch of us try to help some kids in need have a happy Christmas. If you are interested in bidding, stay tuned and I will post updates when the auctions go live, hopefully with some high resolution photos as well.

Anyway, enough with the wordy words.

Starminer at Beasts of War

The other day I did a bit of blog coverage of the Necron frenzy that occurred when the pictures of a bunch of new necrons were released. Well imagine my surprise when I got this message in my comments section:

"What a cool Article!

Warren here from Beasts of War, would you like to put this article up on BoW we'd love to have it up there.

cheers!"

Naturally, I said yes, and today they posted my article on the Beasts of War. To say I'm happy about this would be an understatement, especially since I didn't even know Warren followed my blog.

Well, today they posted my article on Beasts of War and I thought I would share it with you.

Thoughts on the New Necrons by Starminer

Also, here is a link to the main page, where you can see the headline if you hurry.

Beasts of War Main Page

I'd like to thank Warren and the BoW team for checking my blog out and for giving me such a tremendous shout out and opportunity by publishing my article on the Beasts of War website. I've been a long time fan and member and always look forward to the new stuff, so naturally I was very pleased they noticed little ole me.

If you don't know about Beasts of War, make sure to check them out. They have a lot of great content in all sorts of media formats ranging from written article, videos, and now TV. They are even talking about radio...proper over the air radio... Not to mention they have a great community web site and active community with a very positive outlook on the hobby as a whole.

Related Articles:
Necrons Leaked - Beasts of War Overwhelmed


Links:
Beasts of War
Games Workshop

Necrons Leaked - Beasts of War Overwhelmed

Well, it's been an exciting day today if you are a 40K player, and even more exciting if you are a Necron player or fan.

Beasts of War have got a very nice scoop with leaked pictures of plenty of new Necron models, which will be available to purchase starting on November 5th.

  

So frantic and furious was the online activity that it actually forced Beasts of War to shut down their front page just to support the leak, that's just how exciting this news is.

Sure, we all knew something was up, and many people were saying Necrons are coming, but it's been an extremely long time since this kind of leak has caused a flash fire to spread across the web so quickly and cause such an overwhelming response....presumeably of approval.

Some might say these are all new designs....but they are not all new concepts. In fact, quite a few of the images of the new necrons actually were conceived of conceptually when the Necrons were first developed, back in the early days of 3rd edition!

Now, let's take a journey into the past and have a look at something older.... pictures that go back to the development of the first Necron Codex... What I have managed to do is dig up some old concept art of the original Necron development, and will present to you just a few of those classic sketches so we can see how much they influenced the new range of models, and how far back they have gone for inspiration. I think you'll like what we find.

Original Necron Immortal Concept

First, there is this Necron with the stubby looking heavy weapon, which bears a very striking resemblance to the new Necron Immortal with Gauss Blaster. There are some slight differences in the barrel, but all of the other implied shapes are present in this gun. And you can see the Egypto-tech style detailing on the shoulder and collar bone armour that is very similar to the details on the new special characters and the other Elite models.

Next we see a series of what are called "Barques" and "Barges" in the concept art. Notice the upright pilot position, and the almost perfect replication of that general control spine, as well as the ribbed shapes, engine nozzles, and gun shapes of each of the vehicles. Obviously the new models were heavily influenced, and in a couple of cases direct translations of some of these concept sketches, and what appear to be light to medium skimmer tanks.

Necron Deathbarque - Appears to be a light/medium tank - Inspiration for the Command and Support Barge?

Funeral Barge - Necron armoured transport concept fundamental basis for Ghost Ark, combined with design below for ease of manufacture?

Warmachine - Basis for Necron Doomsday Ark and Ghost Ark?

So, is that the limit of what we could potentially see for the Necrons? Or is there more. The following sketches imply that we are still only scratching the surface of the Necron arsenal, and that the possiblity for heavy skimmer tanks, and even a super heavy monolith type of tank exist and may even be in development. What an awesome thought, that the Necrons could soon have some new Apocalypse level super heavy tanks

War Altar - Could this be a Necron heavy or super heavy tank with teleport gate concept?

War Barque - Could it be a heavy or super heavy transport?

I've shown you just a few of the concept sketches that I've found, as the rest deal mostly with stuff that has already been modelled, or has been done in an alternate form. But, this just goes to show that Games Workshop doesn't throw old ideas away, and in some cases, resurrects the good ones when the time, and the technology are right.... kind of like the Necrons are doing now it seems...

I for one am super excited about the new Necron line up. I especially like the new Arks and Barges and am happy that the generic Necron has not been radically altered, so there will be no "obsolete" models, at least it seems that way at first glance. I hope this gives Necron players a morale boost and we start seeing some of those old armies that are collecting dust get revitalized, repaired, and potentially repainted.

If you have a Necron project and you want to show it off, leave a comment here with a link. I'd love to have a look!

Links:
Games Workshop
Beasts of War

Copyright Notice: Original concept sketch images used for this article owned and copyright by GamesWorkshop PLC, and used without permission, for the express purposes of distributing hobby news, freely promoting the hobby, and the free exchange of hobby related ideas. No challenge is intended.

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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.