[Personal Work] Cyriss Reflex Servitors

The next models in the army I chose to work on were the Reflex Servitors. These little guys have some interesting rules, with advance deployment, counter charge, pathfinder and dig in, they lurk at the fore of your army and blow themselves up on contact with the enemy.

The models themselves are pretty easy (one part models, something I miss greatly from the MKI days), with little major clean up. There are a few things to bear in mind when building these (and all other servitors, as well as anything else that PP may chose to put on their new flight stands in the future). 

Firstly, much like with GW's stands, the socket designed to accommodate the tip of the stand is not really fit for purpose. You will not get a decent connection and your models will keep breaking off the stand if you don't take some steps. Grab a large drill bit (I use one from an electric drill I use to build my scenery and tables). Use this to bore out a large, deep socket that fully encloses the top of the flight stand. This should lightly grip the model to make sure your connection is tight.

The next thing to bear in mind is that the flight stand is designed to fit in to the standard bases, which have an off center slot. If you look at the tab on the flight stand, you will notice that it does not cit central to the piece. Make sure you get it glued in the right way round to keep the stand central, or else your servitors will be flying very off centre.

The final issue I had was that the flight stands are made of a fairly "greasy" plastic which does not really take to superglue very well at all. I ended up using a combination of the depth of the sockets I drilled, and a small blob of blu tac (green stuff would be better but I didn't have any mixed and the blu tac was by my light). This will react oddly with the super glue and cause it to go off slightly and set faster. I do not advise doing this on most minis (though some swear by the trick) as it gives a weaker bond, but for a piece like this it helps set the glue slightly, allowing you to leave it to one side to properly bond while you work on other things.

You can see on the finished assembly, I pre based the model, as well as undercoated it as a whole, meaning the flight stand is not clear. Ultimately I am not too bothered about see through parts, and this army will not be a display/comp piece, so I want to make it as quick and painless as possible.  Again, for a comp piece, I would have a very different method, but I want these guys on the table and painted ASAP.

In terms of painting, I chose to stick to the studio scheme. I don't tend to do this, and had visions of a khaki/weathered army. Ultimately, speed over ruled creativity, and I can drybrush metal when I have to.

The full six were painted from undercoat to finished in one sitting (I broke for lunch in the middle) and I think they took about three hours total. So thirty mins per ball, which isn't  too bad. I have plenty more models to paint and really can't make this a major endevour . Overall I think they look fine on the table and the quicker I can get these done, the more time I can spend on the more important parts like the casters and the Prime Axiom.

I used the paint guide in the Cyriss book, but used washing and layering with some drybrushing to keep it quick and dirty. I will be blending on the casters as they will be the focus of the army, but for the rank and file I don't think they need it.

Hopefully there is some useful information that you can use in building and painting your Cyriss. Next up will some Angels I think.

[Event report] Lock and Load photodump 1

I didn't take as many photos as I had hoped at the event, and my attempts to get the cabinets are terrible (and others got photos elsewhere, so I am sure you have seen it all by now).

Here is the first of two photodumps of the 2013 Lock and Load, mainly focussing on terrain ideas I want to steal.

[Personal Work] Convergence of Cyriss - Light Vectors

I thought I would start out my chronicle of the building and painting of my Convergence with some of the jacks. The main draw of this force (for me at least) is the chance to run far more jack heavy than I would in my usual warmachine games.

I started with the light vectors as there would be no magnetising needed. Due to the way PP sell their light kits, you don't end up with multiple weapons configurations per box, so there would be no need to make any combi-jacks.

Opening up the five kits I had aquired, I was faced with a mess of parts (only three of the kits are shown here).

Each vector has the same core chassis, three legs, a lower and upper chassis and enough knee pads to cover their modesty. The slight difference comes with the Mitigator and Diffuser, which use the small round plug to attach the arms, and the Galvinizer which instead has those arms plug into its head unit.

I had decided to abandon my plans of clever colour schemes and top end painting as I want to get the army on the table as quickly as possible. As such I have resigned myself to the studio scheme (something I rarely do) and am not doing as thorough a clean up job as I normally would (just as well as restic/hard plastic/spruless plastic continues to be a pain to properly clean up).

Just as well as I found all five of the kits had suffered the same miscast on the lower chassis. Each one has three engine block details , and one of these had been blown out in molding in each case.

In terms of building, there is nothing too drastic to worry about with the kit. The only issue I had was that there are two leg designs with the kit, one of which is extended straighter. I found that upon assembling the mini, I was left with a very lopsided jack, with one longer leg, leaving the other two feet floating.

I decided to mitigate this by matching up identical legs where possible (on of the benefits of buying on masse I suppose), which left me four jacks standing properly, and one that will need a small rock to prop up his one smaller leg.

Having messed around with the heavies, I found similar issues, and this may well have been dealt with by heating up the legs and reposing. Certainly this was necessary with the heavy I have assembled so far.  Its not the end of the world, but something to keep in mind when building your vectors.

As previously mentioned, the Galvinizer, with his buzz saw arm, assembles slightly differently to his fellows, with his arms in his head, and the connection points at his waist cleverly serving double duty as "glowy bits".

I pinned the guns of the other two jacks onto the chassis for extra stablity. The connection point is fairly small, and I get impatient waiting for superglue to dry, so a quick pin (drilling into plastic is as easy as it gets), saved my patience and let me crack on.

The only other thing to pay close attention to is that there are two different knee pads to match the two leg designs. The only difference is in the connection socket on the back of the part, so pay close attention. I shaved all the plugs down anyway to get the parts as tight to the leg as possible, but if you are going for a stock assembly its worth keeping in mind.

I will return to update this post with the final jacks once I get some decent pics.

Till next time, where we look at some servitors.

[Personal Work] A convergence is coming.

Yup, I bought in to the shiny new faction. Though what I am planning is not so shiny (not using metals as the main colours I think).

I'm going to try to do some step by step stuff for this as damn these kits are pretty hectic, so hopefully the blog will become a resource of more than just ego stroking for a while (but don't worry, that will still take place too ;) )

First up, the group shot.

I picked up everything that was available at the event, ending up with the following:

2x Battlebox (for the lights)
2x Heavy Kit (for magnetising)
Diffuser
Prime Axiom
Aurora
Axis
3x Angels
2x all four servitors
2x Token Set

So a pretty decent starting point for the faction (though I would have preferred a few more infantry to get us going, as good as the Axiom is).

Hopefully I can get things glued together over the next few days. This is going to be a gaming army not a display army so don't expect too much from it.

First up I think we shall tackle the light jacks.

[Personal Work] P3 results are in.

Its been a while since I posted as I was working on something for the 2013 P3 competition at Lock and Load. This ended up taking up a lot of time and I didn't paint much else.

In the end I managed to secure a silver for the model (as well as a silver for my Revenant cannon which is on the blog if you want to check it out). I'd hoped to progress to a gold, but was just off the mark. I got a lot of good feedback from Meg and Matt and  have lots of stuff to focus on this year in hope that I can return to the States in 2014 to try again.

If nothing else this model is much brighter and more contrasty than anything I have painted, so that's progress.

It almost makes me think about painting a Troll army... almost.

So, here he is, Krump of the Hunters Grim.

Handbags at ten paces [Personal Work]

I'm currently running a Journeyman league at the club (players start with small armies and each week add a couple of figures to work up to full 35 point games).

Part of the league involves scoring points for your painting. I decided to run my Minion Gator faction to force me to actually get some paint on them.

So far I have painted a warlock and a unit, and by the end of the league (two more weeks) I'm hoping to get a beast and a solo done too. That represents about half a 35 point army.

The models are being speed painted, and I am using my airbrush to do a lot of the heavy lifting, which has been good in terms of developing my airbrush skills. Still got a way to go yet, but its been great finally spending some time with the kit.

So, here are the models so far.

[Personal Work] Epic Deneghra

With the changes to the meta in the UK scene, I have finally sold my soul and am playing Epic Deneghra. I've had the model since I got in to Warmachine, but never really used her as the Goth Wedding Barbie looks just bugs me.

I'm starting a new scheme for my army (hopefully this is the last one) so this is the test piece for the scheme. The green cloth and glow is a departure, and I am trying to up my blending and contrast across the army.

I still need to hit the model with some varnish, then add the last few light hits, but she is ready for the table at the very least, which is just as well as I am using her in an event next week.

Hopefully I will get her companion jack Nightmare finished up in the new scheme...

[Charity Work] Farrow Brigand

Its been a tough month for painting, just not had the time/energy I needed to do anything meaningful.

I have done a small 40K unit that I will post eventually, but in the meanwhile here is something I painted for the Orange Crush army, which is a charity drive that I have taken part in for the last two years.

Each painter paints one (or more) models in an orange theme, which is then put into a 50pt list, which is then raffled off for food hunger programmes.

I decided that, rather than make his clothes orange, I wanted him to be an orang-utan esque piggy with orange fur.

If you want to try to win the army, then you can go here and bid for it.
http://www.razoo.com/story/Thrallharvest2012

[Personal Work] Cryx Solos

End of the month (or start of the new month) and time to put up my entries for the PP forums painting challenge.

Each month I have to paint 5 points of models for my army. I've made most months, but skipped at least one... its amazing I can barely get five points done in one month, but what can you do.

These guys took a swim in the paint stripper and are nice new schemes. I'm starting a new colour scheme for my Cryx and the Pistol Wraith is the first of the new scheme. Still need to iron out a few kinks, but he's good enough for the table.

Oh, and no the blue smudge on the back of the bloat thrall is not supposed to be there. Need to clean that up before I varnish him.

Hope you like them.

 

[From the Workbench] Bloat Thrall

I've been plugging away at my repaint of the PP bloat thrall for a few days now. There is so much flesh to this model that its quite an intimidating one to paint.

Still lots of work and some clean up to do but he's slowly coming together. Not sure how well he will turn out, but he's never really fielded at the moment so he doesn't have to be top notch.

So, here are some shots as work was carried out on the mini.

Enjoy...

Golden Thrall win this weekend - Cross Games Tiers for Fears

Played (badly) in a tournament this weekend, didn't do so well, but picked up gold in the painting.

Tom (the TO) took some pics and this one really caught my eye.

Its quite moody (the light was low down there) but the blending is starting to work on the DJ at least. Need to paint some new casters and solos though, I have learned a lot since painting some of these models.

Golden Thrall

Just a quick note to say I have opened up a sister site to this blog covering my painting competition The Golden Thrall.

http://thegoldenthrall.blogspot.co.uk/

Please check it out , images from the past years winners will start to appear on the site soon.

Thanks.

[Personal Work] Finished Cannon Crew

Well, its been a fun ride, and now the first of my Rev cannons are done.
Zombie Han Solo will hopefully bring sharpshooting skills to bear and they will do me proud on the battlefield.

One more to paint, and I guess I should repaint my Captain Rengrave as together they make for a pretty decent shooting unit.

Enjoy.