Scythe Part 3 & Arcanicon's Limited Ed Figure

Soooo...  I got to green stuffing the wing last night.  I also filled gaps and made the ridge on the top of the wing.

I know it looks messy BUT I will sand it back so it is smooth and wing-y... From another angle:

With some luck I will get the other wing built on Thursday night. 

Now, in other news. Arcanicon XXX is on this year to commemorate the event players have the option of buying "Barry."  His stylized after the Arc logo of the last few years.  Hand sculpted by Craig Cussians he looks pretty damn good.

He is dressed as a robot grim reaper...  sooo a Necron lord.

Here is Barry next to a current Necron Overlord:

He is alittle short but otherwise well worth the $16 being asked for him...  I know I will be getting one (or more as supplies last)!

B

Scythe Part 2 PLUS Necron Tomb Crawler

 My project to build a Necron Night/Doom Scythe continues...

Well, I got to cutting last night and was able to assemble the frame for one of the Night Scythe's wings.

I got to this point by cutting circles of plasticard that were 1 cm smaller in diameter than the wing section below it.  I then cut circles out of one side of the larger circle.  As the larger circles got smaller the holes cut into them got larger.  Thus the tapered look for the wing.

Here it is from another angle.  I know the tip looks messy and the curves are not exactly smooth BUT once I gap fill with green stuff and sand it smooth...  It should work the trick. (Knock on wood).

Here is the underside of the wing.  I was originally building the two wings so that when reproduced I could sandwich the two halves together to make a complete wing for each side.  There would be then 4 wing sections used to make two full wings. (which is why the bottom is flat for the wing join).

I am beginning to doubt this plan however because the wings are starting to look rather thick as it is. 

Will have to see once I have a working wing master.

In other news I found this little gem on the internet.  Looks great!
It is called a Trinity Tomb Crawler:

It is obviously the new Necron walker.  I like how they have left the driver off of the model so that it does not interfere with GW's IP.  Add a Necron warrior torso, head and upper arms and this would work well I think. 

It is advertised as: Large miniature: approximate height of assembled Crawler is ~90mm.

It retails for 33 Euros...  Never heard of the company though... bitspudlo.com

Will have to see if this pops up in GW's next wave of Necrons...  If not I think I will give one of these bad boys a go...

Project Night (Doom) Scythe

Well kids,

I am back again.  This time reports are in and the rewrites are almost done.  I have been on school camp and come back relatively alright.  Time for a project.  Something ridiculously silly.  Well, I have found my project.

I got to reading the Necron book over the weekend and I really got into the story of the raider moon that sends sortees of Night Scythe and Doom Scythe fighters to torment and capture the population of the planet below.  I also like the idea of fleets of these flyers as part of the first wave of necron invasions.  Result...  I need some.  Now I know that they will be in the necron 2nd wave (or are rumored to be anyway) BUT Arcanicon is coming up in January AND I am not terribly patient. Sooooo...  I will be creating a generic "Scythe" kit out of plasicard, green stuff and whatever else I can find in pieces.  I will then recast these parts in resin.  I will then build, paint and play with an army of these things.  (I hope)

This is by far the most ambitious project undertaken on this blog soooo bear with me...
First of all let's look at the "bird" in question: (see right)

I have decided to start easy and build the wings. Using the necron pilot as a reference I scaled up measurements for the wings.  I then looked at what I could buy in plasticard.  I will admit.  I think the wings should be around 18cm long...  Mine will be as large as I could get out of plasticard... 16cm...  I will either make up for this with the cockpit area or...  I might let it go.  Either way I will be close... I hope.

I got together with my buddy Drew yesterday to discuss the project and we banged out a few sketches and ideas.  Here is the most coherent of our notes:

And here is the beginning of the work:

I am measuring and cutting both wings at once.  Trying for symetry here...

I have measured out the wings and have started to cut.  With any luck I will have one wing ready to show by tomorrow.

B

Back in the Saddle

 Due to life being absolutely diabolical I had taken a hobby break for a while.  This included playing games, as well as the usually painting/modeling shenanigans that I get up to.  As many have seen in the recent week or so I have made a concerted effort to bring the hobby back so to speak.

I had a few mates around the other night and we threw together a few games of Warhammer fantasy.  My buddy Dave brought along his work in progress ogres and a few cold frothies.  I pulled out my poor neglected skaven and banged out a 2400 point list.  Now I will spare you the play by play.  I started strong and conceded in the bottom of turn four when the entire centre of my army disappeared. I would love to claim that it was because I had not played WFB since… April?  And to some degree that is true BUT Dave played the game well and I would not want to take that away from his game.  Mark took Dave on in round two and their’s was a tremendous slap fest.  It was really enjoyable to watch. 

Monty's Dragon

Which brings me to my point.  I had let life get the better of me for way too long.  At some point, when life gives you lemons, skip the going postal business and they don’t drink proper lemonade here in Oz soooo…  Remember the best part of the hobby.  Sit across the table from a mate and push some toy soldiers around.  Sure I got killed and sure I am not sure that skaven is the right army for me BUT  playing just one game had me thinking of all the silliness that I could get up to next (hobby wise).  Necron walkers or flying saucers… Or maybe finish the new bitz to my even more neglected Tomb Kings.  Really inspiring.

While it didn't get to shoot in our game this thing scared the Bejesus out of me!

Even more than that though…  IT WAS FUN!  There were laughs, tears, naughty words and fun moments in abundance. It was exactly what I needed.  More than going out to bar or hitting a movie or reading a book.  Sure I like those other things but ours is a hobby where friends get together and roll dice, talk smack and have fun.  I am sure I am not revealing anything new or exciting to most of you BUT if you have forgotten the simple pleasures of a fun game…  I highly recommend you find an opponent and take your boys to the pitch.

Till next time… (Oooooo. What do to next???)

B

Dave's WIP Fire Belly

Monolith and AWESOME NEW GUARD STUFF!!!

Necron shenanigans continue with a serious look at one of the worst models in my collection.  It is an old monolith that was used in a small Battle Tour to US retailers just prior to the model's release way back when.  It was painted and assembled by a co-worker at GW back in the day and was used to back up my necrons on that same battle tour.  It was assembled in a hurry and painted in a few hours (if that). 

Side 1

Corners were needlessly cut and the model looked really crappy.  There were over primed parts that had paint drips.  The dry brushing was awful.  Detail painting…  none done.

The flip side... or the dark side of the monolith...

The top was broken off at some point on the battle tour (never to be seen again).

The corners of the model weren’t assembled properly so there were lots of gaps that were green stuffed badly as a quick fix.  All bad.

Here you can see the paint cracking and a few paint drips sanded back to bare plastic.

I spent literally a few hours the other night working off frustrations with several pieces of sand paper and this old beast.  I have to say that I have never used sandpaper on a model before and besides making a heck of a mess it worked really well. Might have to try that again some time. 

The monolith still looks... not so good, but it looks much better and given a little more fine sanding and some paint I reckon it will start to look the part again.

In other news… It appears that Victoria Miniatures has severely ramped up their game in a very short period of time and all of the pictures plus MUCH more are hitting our e-shelves in the next two weeks.  Got these pictures off the ol Facebook.

The first shot shows us the arms to go with my favourite “laser rifles.”  If I get enough of these I won’t have to convert the arms of my Forgeworld Tallarns.  This gets better all the time!  (You can also see their new squid face models.  Cool but not what I am wicked excited about.)

The next shot shows us one of the new Pith Helmet Heads, mounted on a Victorian Torso with the new Rough Rider legs and arms.  I am VERY impressed!  Very impressed!  These models and more will be out next week (or the week after).

 

Next week releases:

Pith Helmet Heads

Balmoral Cap Heads

Brodie Helmet Heads

Squid Heads

Victorian Torsos

Rough Rider Legs

Rough Rider Arms

The week after that:

Victorian Legs

Laser Rifle Arms

Laser Rifle Sprue

Return of my old Blue Necrons

So about a thousand years ago it seems I worked for GW corporate in the states.  One of the two times I worked in Baltimore happened to be a few months before the last necrons were released upon the world.   Having friends in low places and a homicidal need to take on insane hobby projects I offered to paint an entire necron army in a week and be the Gumby at the Baltimore GT.  2001 maybe?  Anyway,  I was handed 50 warriors on the sprue, a lord, and one destroyer.  I converted a really bad monolith out of a drop pod and I used two of three pots of Polished Blue paint I owned to crank this puppy out (while working full time and having a house guest at the time… sleep is for the weak apparently).

 Sure they are not flash but hey I got the project done and used the new rules on unsuspecting middle of the pack players (random draw).  It was a blast.

 Eventually the necron stuff came out and painted an army to match.  It is really basic and is not anywhere up to my standard these days.  The whole army is metallic blue with shadow grey bases and black weapons.  Don’t even get me started on the crappy snot green base rings.  YIKES!

Anyway….  They look bad and their rules were horrible soooo they were destined to never see the light of day again.  (Or at least until new rules came out.)  Fast forward to last weekend.  New rules.  The old blue boys came back from the grave and I gave them a hard look.  

They are neat.  They just need help. 

Money is tight at the moment sooooo fixing them sounds like the challenge my hobby needs.

The first step (besides getting rid of those hideous green rods) was to source a pot of Polished Blue.  Now I am not sure but I think GW hasn’t made that colour in almost 15 years.  Let’s just say I am determined.  I found a pot here in Melbourne for a reasonable price and now I am truly back in business.

The pictures look awful I know.  New setup.  I will hopefully have everything looking better soon.

Soooo as you can see below I have stripped the rods off the warriors (you can see all 54 stripped in the first picture).  I drilled a hole in the gun barrels and ran a paper clip down the inside of the guns.  I am going for a thin laser beam effect here.  I will be highlighting these to no end later.  

More soon.

B

Getting Back in the Groove/ A Review of Some Tiny Tanks

Well it has been a while since I have gotten into some proper hobby on this blog.  I have to apologise.  Life has gotten well and truly out of hand in just about every way.  Outside of hitting the gym I have very little to help my state of mind.  This in mind I sat down to have a little hobby fun the other night.

Now this is a bit of a departure from my usual GW focus on this blog BUT my good friend Dave has been talking up Plastic Soldier Company’s kits for quite some time.  I thought that if they were half as good as the man said… well, it would make for a good diversion (and maybe get me motivated to get cracking on something bigger).  Plastic Soldier Company is mainly known for hard plastic, multiple part kits that they scale up and down depending on what they are selling.  That is to say that their 28mil Russians are the same models in the same poses only bigger than their 15mil Russians.  Same sprues.  Same everything, only in different sizes.  I have looked closely at the 28mil Russians and I have to say that they detail is pretty horrible compared to standard GW kits.  I have a Flames of War (mostly painted) German SS force that was missing tanks so I picked up the PSC Panzer IV box.  At $33 AUS for five tanks I was not expecting much (it is well cheaper than Battlefront). 

I was shocked when I opened the box.  Clearly I had not read the box other than to make sure I had gotten the scale right because I missed the fact that it contained the components to make 3 different variants to a Panzer IV (very different ones too).  Each tank and all of its bitz fit on one sprue. Seen here with the variants in question:

There were tons of parts!  I actually had to read the instructions.  Since there were no words I was initially nervous but I did not have any reason to be.  The kits were a joy to put together.

 I opted to make all 5 panzers the IV Ausf H variant.  Not only does they best match what I am trying to do with my infantry but they also look pretty cool with the extra armour.

The plastic is cut cleanly and crisply with good detail and very little flash to shave off.

I was able to build most of the 5 tanks in the time it took me to watch the original Tron.  Which is surprising given how many parts you have to stick together to make each tank.  The pieces fit almost seamlessly with almost no effort. 

Putting these tanks together was exactly what my hobby needed with the impending Necron Bomb being dropped in retailers everywhere tomorrow.  If you are into the 15mil love… run (do not walk) to your closest shop to get some of these.  They are cheap and amazingly fun to put together with none of the hassle of resin.   Here is a Panzer IV with a few other models thrown in for scale: