Yep

Here is a monolith, sorry for the bad pics. It looks much more silvery IRL. Really Lazy job: take an airbrush, take a tamiya silver paint, use the airbrush, use citadel washes, glue some sticks, and apply rust (bestial brown) with a sponge. Oh yeah, todays excuse for not updating my blog for a while is: Im busy, and still will be for a few good weeks.

Marinez

I retouched my previous sample terminator and did a captain. The chipping and the banner are bit off, but otherwise I feel that the captain is a decent tabletop quality. 85% happy. I'm Ninja-building marines, it seems..

Necron Rhino

I finally decided to continue my Necrons, so here's a WIP Necron Rhino.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Yesterday evening I did some fast work as purely for fun and experiment, and this was a result. I spent time about 2-3 hours on it, and the slowest thing to do was probably the base.

"In between" jobs

I stop making excuses about monolith right now and post few of my latest works;

- Chosen (speed painting)
- Grey (?) Knight Dreadnought (non-speed painting ;)



Few hour speed painting. Actually I was planning to go for a white cloak with green shades, but ended up painting a wood elf. Not happy with this one, but it only took me a couple of hours.




Yes you could say that the eagles are a little bit off, and the number 3 is not in center, but I really like how this GK dreadnought turned out to look. Actually, I got so inspired of the rusty/brown/metal scheme, that I'm gonna paint all my Grey Knights in this color, regardless it being against the fluff.

I used graphite stick on the armor to make the metal feeling, after undercoating the model with Scorched brown and Bestial brown/matt varnish mix.

More excuses

Yes. Here they come;

My girlfriend is visiting me, so I don't have that much time to paint now. This week, however, it will be back in business again, but I feel quite sad that she is leaving. Enough of that though, since this blog is about Necrons, who are robots.

I am a robot.

There is a metaphor for all of you to think while you wait a picture of painted monolith.

No lololith yet

Sorry. I will finish it soon. Shouldn't promise anything while I can't deliver. Mono is assembled, undercoated and some small details painted.. now I won't say how much time I need, because maybe then I can really finish it.

Back to work..

Necron Lord

Yippee!

Here's a photo of my latest addition. A complete squad of warriors and a Necron Lord. I'm very very happy how the cloack on the Lord turned out to look like, but unfortunately I can't provide more pictures to you currently since my camera ran out of batteries and I only managed to take 1 picture. I decided not to put the green rod in Lord's staff of light. It looks more violent now.

Speed-painting is fun.


Next addition will be a monolith, finally. It's under assembly now, and I expect it be completed by Friday as I will be going for a really simplistic approach. I also planned my preliminary 1750 pts army list;

1 Lord
-Orb
-Veil

1 Lord
-Destroyer
-Shroud

10 Warriors
10 Warriors

5 Destroyers
5 Destroyers
6 Scarabs
- Field

1 Heavy Destroyers
2 Heavy Destroyers
1 Monolith

Chippin'

5/10 Necron warriors from the first squad are now complete. I expect to complete the rest of the squad and one remaining scarab swarm before next week's Thursday. Monolith should be arriving then, and will be hopefully/finally my next project, possibly alongside with a foot slogging Necron Lord.

I did some chipping on the warriors, but I didn't bother adding any metallic scratches - maybe I still will. Now I'll settle for random ceramic armor chipping. While the looks of the chipping are unnatural, I feel they add nice contrast to the models.

Moar Daemegs

Here's the progress of Damaged crisis suit. It's not yet even nearly finished, and will be set aside for a good while now, since I already can clearly see how the damage will look like - so that I can get back to my Necrons. Probably my Necron army will have same type of battle damage applied to them, but later. First I have to finish my seriously delayed warrior squad.

I'm especially happy with the "holes", but the metal ain't half bad either. However, blacklining the metal scratches gives a bit "comical" finish,but then again, the colors are so light, that the scratches wouldn't stand out otherwise. I have to think how to make them look better..

Unfinished parts;
- Both hands
- Jetpack highlight refixing
- Both weapons, and the multi-tracker
- Base (duh?)

WIP Damage

I was testing some battle damage on a Tau crisis suit yesterday. The reason why I'm posting this to a Necron blog is that I might try to add similar looking battle damage to all my Necrons. Maybe.

The paint job this far was quick one evening's job (basecoated, plus right leg armor done partly), so I actually expect to finish him today. Tau is fun and fast to paint, once you get into the rythym, but the army overall doesn't interest me a whole lot. Anyway, here's the WIP;

Better pics?

Some work in progress things, oldies but goldies, and a damaged Töpö.

Sloooooow..

Here be my update. I was painting my Deamonhunter army mostly last week so here's not much stuff. Excuses, excuses.. well nevertheless, I'm not in a hurry with my warrior and scarab squads since my next Necron unit to be painted will arrive at the end of the month. Perhaps I buy something small in between, like a Necron Lord etc, but let's see.

Sorry for the bad photos again. I really need to obtain better camera and spend some time placing the light sources.



Family portrait;

Sad News

Good news; I bought a Monolith. Bad news; the bloody pack was having 2 front walls and 2 rear walls instead of side, front and rear. So in other words, I can't assemble my Monolith yet. I will return it to the shop hopefully today, and will ask for a refund - the owner is a nice guy so shouldn't be a problem.. hopefully.

Anyways, this means that I have to paint Necron Warrior squad 1 first, so I need even more time than with the Mono. Expect update at the end of next week. Ordering a new, and hopefully complete, Monolith will take some time. Furthermore, I will renew my Grey Knight color scheme when GKPAs are concerned. Blending Fortress Grey just takes too much time, and I want to try GW's boring "shiny" GK theme, with a twist. So albeit this is a Necron blog, I might be posting some pics of my GKPAs later as well if the Warrior squad is not finished in time.

Laters.

Necron Heavy Destroyer 1

Heavy Destroyer
-Plastic body, head, arms
-White metal heavy gauss cannon, external spine

Here be my first unit, a single Heavy Destroyer. With just 1 wound, he stands proud and t..actually he 'floats' or flies or something like that, but still proud. I'm not 100% happy with the highlighting and the base yet, so I might come back to them later, but overall, I think this miniature reaches definitely a sufficient quality for gaming purposes.

I will add another unit of Heavy Destroyers later, but that will be 2 models strong instead of just puny 1.
The paint job was fast as intended, and great fun actually. There were not too many terrible mold lines to be found from the plastic parts (the whole body), but as you can see from the upper picture, the heavy weapon was miscast and contained some molding errors. A huge maybe, but I'll fix them after I've completed a plenty of more Necrons.. and add another huge maybe. I really like painting Citadel White Metal, but their metal molds are so old, that miscasts happen constantly. I'm quite glad that most of the Necrons are plastic, because the miniature quality is better, and they are easier to fix.

Also, I didn't bother to use green stuff to fix the small gaps in some plastic parts, but that is fine for me. I'm really not that good with the green stuff, nor I have the energy to use it for a normal gaming model - maybe in Monolith I will fix something major, but that'll be it. I aim for simplicity and speed here.

So - Tomorrow begins Hari Raya and for me it means I will start preparing and priming my Monolith, which still patiently waits me in the shelf of the shop, but I will probably obtain him today. Don't hold your breath for update, since like said, I might require a bit more time with him than 'usual' (usual being 1 week).

PS. Sorry for the crappy photos. I need to improve myself seriously in picture taking.

EDIT:

BONUS

As my blog is still a bit empty, I decided to add few pics of my other army - Grey Knights. Cheers!

Delay

I was supposed to post a photo and a story about my first Necron unit, a single Heavy Destroyer, but it is only 90% finished now, as I had to play with my Grey Knights couple of games during the weekend. I lost every single one of them, but no biggie. I got to play against quite effective Necron list and got some ideas for my army.

I WILL, however, finish my Heavy Destroyer today as promised, but you will get the photos earliest tomorrow. I also almost know my next unit to be painted, which I will start on the coming Thursday. On Wednesday I have to move to a new apartment, but luckily this week there is a big celebration in Malaysia called Hari Raya, so I'm having days off and can hopefully devote some time to painting in the midst of getting pawned with my Grey Knights.

Anyways; the upcoming unit will be no less than the Mighty Imba Deep Striking Mega Ultra Busting Monolith. So, Monolith. I may need a bit more time with that than a week, because he looks time consuming firstly to assemble, and secondly, basecoat (yes, I'm doing it with brush). The painting itself should be quite straightforward however; 2 main colors, few highlights on the edges, and done. I'm still thinking whether I should do a group of Necron Warriors instead, but if I do the Monolith now, then I have it ready! I'm not too happy with painting Tanks as they are extremely time consuming with my painting technique.

Anyways, I'll get back tomorrow with hopefully some pictures of my (hopefully, again :D) newly completed Heavy Destroyer.

Planning a Necron Army

Dear all, this post shall serve as an introduction to my new Necron army blog. For those who are not so familiar with the subject, Necrons are a race in the fictional Warhammer 40 000 world, created to support the tabletop minitaure game made by Games Workshop.

To be exact, Necrons WERE a race and they were wiped extinct, but have now returned to hate all life in forms of immortal soulless machines and robots, controlled by their gods. But so much for the background story before I get sued by the Games Workshop who made the whole Warhammer 40 000 storyline and the game itself.

Games Workshop released recently a new edition of the Warhammer 40 000 rules, and this was a big setback for Necrons, so some of you may feel that starting a Necron army right now seems like a waste of time. However, firstly, the hobby for me has never been about power gaming, but more about painting and having fun. Secondly, as I happen to play now in Kuala Lumpur's power gaming environment, I feel more than thrilled to face the challenges with a sub-par army and quickly upgrade my sub-par understanding and maneuvering skills to a better level. If one wins all the time, one can't learn anything. Of course Necrons are way beyond that good level of learning - but I still claim I can pull off some wins in the future. Especially if my army is painted in a good way. You may not buy it, but the better your army is painted, the better it plays. This is simply because you don't want to lose any of your beautifully painted models but want them to pose proudly and well painted on a war torn battlefield instead!

Initial Army List

At the moment, I don't possess a copy of a Necron Codex to plan my list exactly, but the initial configurations could look like this;

2-3 Squads of 10 Necron Warriors
- Min. troops in 5th edition ain't good, but Necrons won't excel without risky playstyle, so I think I'll end up with 2 squads actually

1 Necron Lord with Resurrection Orb
- He could support the troops, and help them survive to hold the objectives

4-5 Destroyers
- The models are damn nice, full plastic (quick to paint, light to carry - although I like metal a bit more, plastic still has it sides), and provide good mobile firepower

3 Heavy Destroyers
- They are damn expensive in points, but I still feel they're needed to drop at least some of the vehicles more easily. People underestimate these now because they only have 1 wound, but I still think they're worth because of their mobility, and Str9 Ap2 can't be bad.

1 Monolith
Monolith is large, difficult to destroy, and can unleash devastating firepower against troops. Of course additional WBB and teleport tricks help too. I'm thinking about 2 actually, but they cost so much in points that I still need to think about it. And that would mean I need to put my Heavy Destroyers just in one group which is not very flexible.

10 Immortals
These are must. They absolutely demolish all troops, and furthermore, can buy time with those glancing shots at vehicles.

1 Squad of Flayed Ones
I don't think Flayed Ones are particularly good, but still, they could offer some flexibility due to infiltration possibility. These are, however, the biggest question mark at the moment

Many Scarab Swarms
Sadly, scarabs are the best Necron unit after the monolith. Luckily, I like them. They are good at tying troops, and preventing assaults to your warriors, along with other tricks of similar nature. I like Scarabs.

Well that's about the initial list. In general, I may want to avoid buying too many point expensive elements, because losing them would mean earlier phase out.

I will proceed this project by buying the units randomly, but I won't buy another unit before the previous one is finished to keep my motivation. I aim to paint two units per week, but Necrons are fast to paint, so I won't see that being unrealistic. However, likely I will end up painting only one unit per week, because I have my Grey Knights in the work as well and I also need to work. Let's see.

Paint Scheme

Most people paint their Necrons fully metallic, but I don't feel like going the traditional way here as it is boring, albeit fast. Firstly, I never liked metallic paints very much, and secondly, I want my army to look good and personal. I thought about the paint scheme for weeks and was googling daily some examples of 'different' Necrons, but managed to find very few good looking ones.

However, I recently discovered a very appealing way to paint with metallic colors from Sotavasara.net, a Finnish miniature hobby forum. One user there had painted a Dark Elves Bolt Thrower crew's armor in a very neat way with metallic colors , and I stole his recipe right away. I didn't want my Necrons to end up being like everyone else's, but I wanted to use the metallic technique so much. I thought and thought again, until I came across with another Sotavasara.net user's personal gallery, where he had painted his Tau with Dhenb stone, and there was it! I've always actually dreamed about of making a 'ceramic' looking Necrons, and the new Citadel Foundation Dhenb Stone allows a good solution for this. The color is a bit like Khaki, but not quite, and it covers well and makes an even finish even on top of a black undercoat, where the Foundation series was actually planned for.

So the result was (I use Citadel paints only by the way, call me a log head, I don't care);

Necrons

Chaos Black spray undercoat on the whole model

Necron skeleton
- Boltgun Metal basecoat
- Badab Black wash
- Chainmail highlight
- Devlan Mud wash

Necron armor
- Dhenb Stone basecoat
- Dhenb Stone covering layer
- Dhenb Stone + Skull White highlight
- Skull White fine highlight

Weapon
-Watered down Shadow Grey edging on a Chaos Black undercoat
-Watered down Space Wolves Grey fine highlight

Details
-Dark Angels Green basecoat
-Catchan Green layering
-Camo Green highlight
-Camo Green + Skull White fine highlight (if necessary)

I also may add sometimes Dwarven Bronze and Burnished Gold for some details, but as I'm aiming to go relatively fast here, yet trying to create an impressive and contrasted color scheme, I'm NOT gonna paint those green 'Lego' pipes on Necron guns. I happen to like them. Monolith I still have to think about, as I don't feel that Dhenb Stone fits it actually. Flayed Ones are another issue on my thinking list, but I'll come back to that later since I'm not yet sure if I ever buy the bastards anyway.

Bases

I'm not so much into basing (or conversions) , as I like to keep the focus on the model. Thus, I will go forward with a very simple, but functioning, basing solution.

1. Glue some sand in the base, but leave some empty spots
2. Add "none-few" larger stones
3. Spray the whole base black with Chaos Black undercoat
4. Fortress Grey Highlight (trust me, one layer is enough)
5. Scorched Brown basecoat on the edges
6. 2 layers of Bestial Brown on the edges
7. A coat of Matt Varnish
8. Grass Flock on the empty spots (sand partly, remember?)

That's about it for this time. I'm getting back into this after I've finished my first Necron miniature, which is a Necron Heavy Destroyer. I aim to finish it by monday. See ya!