The Purplecrons now have a MONOLITH.  Well, sort of.  It’s paper.  Twelve sheets, to be exact.  Three more and I could have built a ‘friggin Thunderhawk.  So many sub-assemblies and layers.  Took quite a bit of ink to print out the swatches to match the paint colors too.

Closeup of all dem deathmarks.  I first tried out the color scheme for the army on one of them, and it sold me on it.

The plain Necron lord with Rez orb was an interesting piece to build.  I never do seem to get any good photos of the sculpting work on the cloak.

a shot showing the regular necron warriors.  Painting 32 of these guys was an effort.  8 points of white, 18 points of silver, 7 points of green, 2 shade washes and 2 spots of black were applied to each figure.

The auction is still up on ebay right now.  Please feel free to bid on it.

I’ve had these finished for a while now, but broke them out last night for some photos.  T-Pain (Short for Talos Pain Engine) works amazingly well with my allied Wraithlord.  Larry here usually bites the dust after he and his wracks burninate a squad, but Anthanaz and T-Pain are amazing in 6th ed.  Need a bastion smashed?  Warlord wrecked?  Dominate a daemon prince?  They’re up for it.

To help cover the cost of rebuilding and replacing things from the fire, I’m selling my Necron army I’ve been painting for the past few months.  It’s up on ebay now at the following link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pro-painted-Necron-army-Warhammer-40k-/320981244734?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abbf91b3e#ht_500wt_1414

There’s more pictures on the ebay page.  The auction is for 2 night/doom scythe fleyers, 2 Catacomb/Annihilation Barges, a Necron Overlord, a Necron Lord with custom sculpted cape, Two Finecast Cryteks, 9 Deathmark snipers, 32 Necron Warriors and the new Codex: Necrons.  I’ve got over $300 and thirty hours put into the project, and while I did enjoy building and painting it, I’m hoping to get a bit money out of it.

I’ll try and swap out the pictures tonight with some more recent ones.  The bases have all been covered with black sand drybrushed in dark grey to look like ashes with a few skulls and bones scattered among the many bases.  One of the barges pictured here is not finished in the picture, but it has since been completed.  All the vehicles are magnetized to accept either vehicle option.  The auction included additional paints and boxes to carry the figures and vehicles.

So I discovered this model kit while browsing Ebay a few months ago and decided to pick one up on a whim.  It was about $30 after shipping.  The box art may say “Metal Bug”, but this is without a doubt the tank from the Metal Slug series of games.  I used to love playing Metal Slug back in the day, and thought it would be a great addition to the Emperor’s Knuckles army as a counts-as predator tank.  I wasn’t certain about the scale at the time, but as you can see in the photo below, it is in scale with 28MM figures.

The problem with trying to use this tank as a counts-as in 40k comes when you realize that despite being in scale, it is supposed to be a small tank and all the tanks in Warhammer are Xbox huge.  I ended up keeping the color scheme from the games with a lot of added weathering.

Now, the name gives away the fact that this is an obvious bootleg kit.  Knowing that, I was expecting the parts not fitting together too well, but that wasn’t so much of a problem with MOST of the kit.  The vulcan cannons on the side did not fit well, so moving them around would have been impossible without having to constantly pull them off and push them back over the pegs.  I opted for using magnets installed into the holes in the round part of the cannons and on the ends of the pegs.  This made the cannons stick out to the side an extra eighth of an inch, which is actually a good thing, since the natural placement was too close to the main turret.

Another gripe about the kit is the effort they took to make the turret have a dual ball joint connection that was supposed to give it mobility, yet the design of the pistons does not allow it to move at all.  I thought about getting mechanical pencil springs and using them to make the pistons hinged and mobile, but there would have been no good place inside the hull wells to secure them.  The makers of this kit would have been better off to either have the pistons not extend all the way into the turret or just design it so it doesn’t rotate in the first place.  It was difficult and quite frustrating to get the ball joints in place only to realize the rest of the kit restricts any sort of movement.

One plus of the kit is it’s attention to detail.  There are a lot of parts to the engine and suspension that are present, though they are not seen on the finished model.  I would expect this from a higher end historic tank kit, and I personally enjoyed the extra detail it provides, but most people who would just want the model to look the part for a desk decoration or game piece will just be annoyed by all the extra fiddly bits.  More extras are a little metal bullet that doesn’t really fit the scale of the tank, but the loophole on the back means its probably supposed to be a keychain charm.  Decals were included, but I chose not to use them on my build.

Here’s the Blood Ravens recolor of my papercraft Stormtalon template.  I built this in about three hours.  Owning a Silhouette SD cutting machine really helps cut back on the time it takes to make papercraft models once you know how to program the cut lines.  I’ll do a tutorial on it later.

I built the Contemptor Dreadnought from plans made by Eli patoroch.  I had to modify the arms a bit since it seems the weapon arms did not include a part for the joint between the guns and the shoulder.  The foot part was also colored incorrectly on his template.  Some of the parts were inverted, which I corrected in the recolor I did.  A few of the parts required tabs which were not present.  Still, mad props to the guy for making such an awesome kit into paper.  I plan on giving this to another player who’s been wanting one, but is having difficulty paying rent, much less ordering stuff from Forgeworld.

If anyone wants a copy of my modified plans with the corrections I mentioned (including dual autocannon arms and silhouette automated cutting paths) just email me and i’ll send it to you.

I just finished my test build for a papercraft template to make Stormtalons.  The engines and assault cannon turret rotate on the model.  I’ll go back later and add in the other weaons options once I get a few built.  As it stands, its actually a pretty simple model to build at only 3 pages of parts.  Once I get the Silhouette programmed to cut out the parts in the template I’ll have a few squadrons together in no time.

I decided to add some craftworld allies to my Dark Eldar army.  Went for a white and red color scheme.  The little dragon skull is a pain to paint on everything.

I still need to do a bit of work on the wave serpent.  I plan on using it to shield my wraithlord and talos while they trudge across the board since it’s AV12 and hard to score a penetrating hit against.

Here’s my wraithlord, Athanaz.  Went with a single brightlance for the weaponry.  Its nice that the kit comes with multiple arm poses, but I really wish they would have done the same with the legs.  Had to chop them up into segments, drill a large hole in the lower thigh and upper shin to pin it together with a hollow metal tube that could be bent to the desired pose and greenstuff the joints back.  Hollowed out the front knee section and popped it back on.  That’s a whole lot of work for just a slight change to the pose, but it does make the model look more interesting.  The brightlance is held onto the handle grip by two metal pins so I can swap it out for the other weapon options.  If I want to use the wraithsword, I’ll just leave the brightlance on since I used some leftover talos bits to make an in-built executioner blade on the end.  The spiked forearm guards from the talos kit fit unnaturally perfect over the wraithlord’s shins.  They snapped on without glue and the cuts in the edge slide perfectly over the soulstones in the sides of the lower legs.

Another shot of Athanaz.  I used the metal spikes and blades bits from the talos kit in place of the back “wings”.  This gives it more of a corsair look that helps it fit in with my dark eldar forces.

My Dire Avengers.  I like how they look, but they’re less effective than kabalite warriors while costing several points more.  I built an exarch for them, but the bladestorm ability is overrated in my opinion.  Using just five dire avengers is the cheapest option for allied troops in terms of points, so I guess the serve their purpose even if they perform lousy in-game.

My farseer on jetbike.  I call him Ohno.  The jetbike is made from the front plate of a new style reaver, the main chassis and guns of a craftworld eldar jetbike, leftover blades from a dark eldar raider and the engine from an old style dark eldar reaver.  I used a 40mm base and a modified building buttress as a stand.  I never really spent too much time on basing, but I tried some new things with these guys.  The little green tuft things look ridiculous when they’re just in your hand, but make convincing shrubbery once applied to a textured base.

I still have to do the highlighting, but this will be the color scheme for the necron army I’m building.  The purple is actually a ceramic stain that is VERY bright.  The color scheme works great for the overlord and deathmark, but the necron warriors look like they’re wearing football shorts and shouldrpads.  Oh, and the Command Barge is going to be hell to paint.