Curt’s Basement

So yeah, that primer worked great…except for the fact i didn’t even have enough to finish priming my Leman Russ. It is 90% done, all i need to do is prime the top hatch, crewman, pintle mounted auto-cannon, and the spot light but i ran out of spray. Oh, and the two side mounted heavy bolters. The can i got was the biggest they had at $10 bucks. I might be able to shake a bit more out of it, but i doubt it. Sigh…

Didn’t get much done today. Still have nine troops to put together, i spent nearly two hours cutting, trimming, and shaving legs then decided to work on the tank. Looking pretty sweet though so far.

So that’s pretty much it for day 4. It is pretty fun working with the spray, it covers so well. Glad i used it instead of trying to paint on an undercoat with a brush. Thanks Curt

So yeah, not that it really matters i did not have a chance to do a day 3 report yesterday. Progress was made though! I now have a full ten man squad all built with an extra sergeant. So now i only have nine more men to assemble and to finish the tank. I am hoping to get that done today.

I had a chance to test out my matte black spray as a primer on an extra tank tread i had lying around, just to see how it spreads. It worked beautifully, a quick burst from the can and i got a nice fast drying even coat of primer. So things look to be going well.

I am hoping to have the assembly done today and maybe even the whole lot primed up. Then i will be spending time reviewing more painting vids on youtube and reading as much as possible on painting before i start. Atleast i have the color scheme picked out already. I may post my example from the army painter in Dawn of War so people can get an idea of what i will be aiming for.

Is it a big deal to not use modelers putty or what ever it is called to fill whatever small gaps between pieces you may have on your models after assembly? Or will the primer fill most of those? I don’t have many gaps, most models have none, but to get some poses the way i wanted i have slight gaps. My tank also has a slight one on the front of the main chassis. The bottom piece had warped a bit and it made it tough to glue it together right, and when i got it right it still managed to separate a bit due to the warping…

So i am finally sitting down to put a few pics up of my adventures so far in warhammer miniature modeling. They are nothing to amazing just yet, but it is better then nothing. So without further ado!

By the way, the flash media thingy is annoying. It would not let me sort my photo’s in the order i wanted! So the pics are not in order. Clicking on the pic will open a window with the pic and the description and title, those will help explain it a bit.

Yep day 2 is now complete. I feel like very little progress was made today, but in reality i did not do too badly. I was unable to work on it as much as i had wanted today, but i have still managed to complete two sergeants (number two came out pretty well i would say, very happy with his pose.) aside from accessories like grenades and belt items. I also now have nine torso’s with legs ready to go. Took me two hours to be all anal and shave those legs, torsos and heads as near perfect as i could…

I am really noticing the size difference between the guard and space marines. The guard seem so tiny! I am figuring for my flamer and grenade launcher guys i will leave their weapons off until i prime them, may even leave them off until i fully paint them too. It will be hard to paint them up while they wield their special weapons.

I am hoping to have atleast one full squad all glued up tomorrow. I am also planning on hitting Ted’s Hobby shop after my interview too see about scoring some primer spray. Then i can finish my Leman Russ I figure tomorrow i will see about putting up some pics. Whats a good photo sharing site? Flickr? Photobucket? Taking suggestions/recommendations!
On a side note i think i may have actually finalized a color scheme. I have a strong potential in mind. I ended up playing a skirmish in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade today. I was playing in the army painter working on the colors for my Underdogs. I had two potential schemes but they both seemed to be lacking something. Then, having a brain storm, i decided to play with them a bit and combine the best elements from both schemes together. I ended up really liking the color scheme. So the skirmish was so i could see my colors in action, lol.  Obviously dawn of war is not the best place to plan your overall colors due to the limitations of the painter, but i still find it works better then the crappy one on the 40k website.

So i guess that really sums up today. Two completed sergeants and a squad of dismembered troops, woohoo! So ends day 2!

So day one of my army building saga has come to a close. I spent most of the afternoon/evening clipping, shaving, trimming, and finally even gluing my Leman Russ battle tank. It has been a very enjoyable day. I forgot how much i enjoyed model building and the like.

I turned on Band of Brothers for inspiration while i played with my tank. I assembled the treds and attached it to the main chassis. I did some work on the main turret and a few other parts of the tank but left them unattached to the chassis to make priming/painting later on easier. Thanks to Curt’s tip though, next vehicle i build will be primed before any assembly work. Seems to make more sense.

I have been taking pictures, so eventually i will post the visual guide to my Warhammer odyssey. Tomorrow i will be assembling the troops. Going to leave the completion of the tank until i can pickup some primer spray.

I am very much considering my color scheme choices right now. I do not have a set one in mind just yet. It is not something i want to rush into just yet, i may even ask for opinions later on. I figure once i am fully assembled then i will truly tackle the color issue.

My only beef with the box set is that they do not provide you with any other build options for the Leman Russ. It came with the plans for the Demolisher configuration but not the hardware to build it. So it is a stock Leman. I can’t even put on the optional side mounted dual heavy flamers that Leman Russ’s have the option of selecting. But it is all good, i am going to have more tanks later on anyways

So that has been a rough break down of my experience thus far. So ends day 1…

Well, for anyone interested in collecting armies for Warhammer 40k, here is a nice little site i stumbled across. The bonus tot his one is it is a Canadian based site, which means it is nice discounts on Canadian prices! Their prices seem to be on par with Le Valet although i am not sure what the shipping fee’s will be like.

Example: Battle for Maccrage originally $85, on this site it is $63.75

The site itself is very well done. It has some nice flare and design to it in the form of a fun themed medieval bazaar. Well worth the look. Just head over to the shopping section and click on the “Miniature games -> Warhammer 40k” sections.

Enjoy!

Hobby Kingdom.

They have a store in Burlington Ontario!

This is so damn cool.

Well well well, what do we have here? It seems that fate smiled upon me today and delivered unto me a huge-freaking-box of miniatures. Actually, it’s not that big, but it’s stuffed to the brim with sprues. I’m both excited and nervous. I can’t wait to get started putting things together and painting them, but nervous of just how long this is going to take to get done. I’m determined though! I’m going to see it through to the end and have an army of marines all built and ready to go in no time at all.

As you can see, there’s alot of sprues, and each sprue has alot of little bits and pieces for each marine. Unlike the starter set, each marine in this box is in alot more parts than just two or three. The only thing that worries me is gluing together the wrong parts. I also have to decide if I need an upgrade kit or not before I start assembling them (it looks like I won’t bother at this point, though). Once they’re glued, they’re glued.

The box contents are: 1 Space Marine Commander, 5 Command Squad Space Marines, 15 Tactical Squad Space Marines, 5 Assault Squad Space Marines, 5 Space Marine Scouts with sniper rifles, 1 Razorback, 1 Dreadnought, and 1 Predator.

Oh, and yes, I also got my Castles and Crusades books today, which is cool. It’s basically a version of the d20 system that’s been turned into a very 1st-edition style D&D game. I figure if we want one of our classic 1e-style jaunts again, we can try it using these rules sometime. They seem even simpler than the 1e rules (and, best of all, alot more unified).

So, as I mentioned briefly in the shoutbox, I painted up all my Tyranids yesterday. Here’s how it all went down.

I got up, milled about for a bit, and then set up my painting area by 11:30am. I had a better idea of how I wanted things arranged this time, so that helped. I looked over the Tyranid painting guide in the Battle for Macragge book. The ones in the book are painted up like those from Hive Fleet Behemoth. This means that their armour plates are blue and their skin is red. Not a fan of that combination, but I didn’t feel especially creative with the Tyranids, so I figured that was how I should proceed anyway.

Unfortunately, for the blue sections of the Tyranids, you’re supposed to use a turquoise colour. I have no turquoise. I figured it would be a simple enough matter to just mix up some paint and I’d be set. The fates conspired, however, and I couldn’t for the life of me get the colour I wanted. Worse yet, I was very nearly out of white at this point. So instead of doing it exactly like the book (which is even harder cause the foundation paints I have are not the same colours as the regular citadel paints), I just decided to dry brush the armour with a light blue. This, thankfully, turned out pretty good and I was getting energized about the whole thing again. Because I was already working on the Tyranids and would need to reuse all their colours for their scenery things (spawn points, whatever), I figured I’d do them at the same time. And the spore mines while I was at it.

After all the dry brushing was done, I set out to start doing the red basecoat. This was a bit trickier than I’d imagined it would be. For starters, the red I have is a bit duller than how they should look, so it was a bit difficult to eyeball, and having thoroughly destroyed all my brushes with my apparently-savage painting the day before, I had some trouble working it between all the highly detailed bug bits on the models. There were alot of black primer areas showing through the paint, so I had to do another coat. I eventually got it to look reasonable, though I might want to do some detail touch up later on.

I then moved on to highlighting. At first, I tried simply mixing white with red, but the pinkish mixture didn’t look so great. So I tried with a yellowish tinted mixture (can’t remember what I mixed now), and at first it looked better, but once I finished I wasn’t sold on it either. So, I then tried a dimmer pink colour for the edges and was pretty happy with that one. It doesn’t look AWESOME, but it looks decent enough, so I motored on. This is around when it became painfully clear that I need to really learn how to thin paints and apply more layers to achieve gradients. It’s all a learning experience and I’m glad I’m learning. The downside, of course, is that miniatures are expensive.

After that, I tackled doing the claws and teeth on the Genestealers. Only after I finished and looked at the book again did I realise that their claws are actually supposed to be a black/grey colour and not a bone colour. Oh well, I think it looks nice how it is. Artist license, right? I did the Termagants hooves and claws with the correct grey colour and it looked nice as well. I also did their guns in the same colour. In the book it looks kinda like their guns might actually be Boltgun Metal, but they’re supposed to be bio-engineered weapons, so I just made them a greyish colour. Somewhat of a half measure, if you will. As with the marines, the eyes and teeth were very hard to do. I had a decent time of it using a toothpick, but I imagine I might get better results with a pin. I’ll have to try that on my next mini-with-eyes.

Lastly, with the Oscars in the back ground and the hour getting late, I began basing all the minis. This was actually pretty fun. You “paint” some PVA glue on the base. This is basically woodworking glue. Then you just dip the mini in the sand and move him around a bit. Dust off the excess stuff and let him dry. Once dry, just paint it black and then once that dries, dry-brush it brown. It came out looking really nice, but I haven’t added any grass yet, as I’m not 100% sure how to do just little tufts of grass poking out of the rocks. I also took this opportunity to cover up some blemishes on the models with a bit of “mud” from the base. It blends stuff really well and looks really cool when it’s done. I finished this all by 11:30pm, exhausted and with the worst back pain ever. But it was very fun.

I don’t know why, but the time really flies while I’m doing this. I hope I don’t get sick of it too soon. Now all that remains from the Battle for Macragge is to do the scenery and then it’s all done. I also bought a Space Marine Commander for after that stuff so I have the bare minimum for a regular force (2 troop units and 1 HQ unit). I don’t know if I’ll blog all this stuff though, it might get pretty boring to read.

Games Workshop holds it’s on little convention in Toronto on the 21st of June. Tickets are $35. Anyone want to come?

More details beyond this very long link.

PS: I imagine everyone has forgotten about the whole Gen Con thing we were going to do this year. If anyone wants to still do that, we should probably start making arrangements soon.