Munin's Weekly Paint 2017

[Koonitz]

I'd like to think that if you give him a (low sitting) flying base, and you have your very own geriatric Necron Lord, shaking his high mounted resurrection orb at the young warrior whippersnappers that dared get exploded on his lawn. Y'know, to get them repaired so they can get off his durned lawn.

[Guildenstern]

lmao @ Koonitz

great looking necrons, Munin!

[Munin]

I'd like to think that if you give him a (low sitting) flying base, and you have your very own geriatric Necron Lord, shaking his high mounted resurrection orb at the young warrior whippersnappers that dared get exploded on his lawn. Y'know, to get them repaired so they can get off his durned lawn.

Hahaha, that would be a pretty dope conversion.

I already have the Heat Ray and Particle Destructor done, now I just need to finish the Gauss Cannon. Unfortunately, the new gauss weapons are super fiddly to paint. Lots of tiny grooves, and in my case foolishly of a lighter color than the base (black), which requires a lot of patience and precision.

[Munin]

Finished my first Afrika Korps squad (though I still need to do the final dry-brush on the bases and dull-cote them):


Because of the supply problems for Germans in North Africa (at times they were dependent almost entirely on the Italian logistical machine), uniforms tended to not be very, well, uniform. The original Afrika Korps uniform was green, but later came both tan and darker brown sets. Because new issue or resupply was dodgy at best, DAK units took on a pretty mix-and-match appearance, especially as the North African campaign dragged on. That's what I was trying to capture here.


The green and tan especially were prone to fading in the blazing desert sun (to pale, minty green and almost white respectively). I feel like I got the faded green pretty well, but I feel like I could push the tans lighter. I'll probably do a few in the next batch.


These are the Perry Plastics. They are surprisingly small and fiddly, with much more "true-scale" proportions than the Black Tree Americans I did recently. But the sculpts are really cool, they were relatively easy to assemble, and they have a ton of detail. Boot-laces, bread-bags, goggles on helmets, detailed web gear, you name it.


Overall, I'm pretty happy with how they came out. I'll be starting the next squad soon.

[Munin]

I decided I needed to crack into some more allied troops, so I painted my first squad of 8th Army Desert rats (Perry Miniatures). I still need to do the bases and hit them with a final shot of DullCote (they're still a little shiny from the MinWax wash in places), but they came out pretty well for a first draft:



My first shot of DullCote caused some odd wrinkling effects on the prone mortar crew, right down near the bottom (most notable on the loader's supporting arm). I think this was a result of the extremely cold temperatures we had here in the last few weeks. The minis were only outside for a few moments, but I suspect that was enough, especially where the minis were in contact with the supporting surface. It didn't affect the standing models because only their bases would have been in contact, but it's kind of a bummer. I'm trying to decide if I want to soak these dudes in Super Clean and throw them back in with the next batch. Decisions, decisions...

In other news, we sold our house. The upside of this is that now we can begin construction on the new place (we purchased a piece of property last August). The downside is that this means moving twice within the next year or so, giving me a little insight into how Nappen feels.

It also accelerated my plan to sell off all of my 40K stuff. I met with one of my gaming buddies last night, and he purchased both my Guard and Necron armies and all of my remaining unpainted stuff in boxes, bags, and blisters (as well as a ton of my old airsoft stuff). It was sad to let it go, but at the same time kind of liberating. Now I don't have all of this unpainted pewter and plastic hanging around in bins and boxes, eating at my soul with unrealized potential. I've been playing Warhammer 40K since the Rogue Trader days (I started with Eldar in...1988, I think?). I played through every edition until 7th finally broke me. I realized that for all that I loved the lore and the fluff, the game itself just wasn't fun, that the quirkiness hid deep, structural balance issues. It didn't help that I encountered other games with better balance and much more tightly-written rule-sets (Infinity being chief among them). Then my idiot friends got me hooked on TooFatLardies historical games (Chain of Comman and Sharp Practice in particular), and I finally ended up in a spot where I could just let all of that 40K stuff go. The fat whack of cash I got for it helped, too.

But now I'm looking forward to new projects, as I have a bunch of Infinity stuff I need to finish (including my Fat Yuan Yuan minis!) and I'm having a blast painting WWII dudes. That stuff in particular is fun because it's a limited palette (all tans and greens and flesh) and is pretty much base-coat, wash, metals bits, done. So I have the Infinity stuff for when I want to go crazy with detail, and the historicals for when I don't. That seems like a pretty good split to me.

And I'm really looking forward to the new house, because then I can really go to town on something I haven't done enough of in the last few years - building terrain!

[Munin]

Progress! I've been working on some WW2 historicals of late, including some 8th Army Desert Rats:


So that the Afrika Korps dudes I just finished basing will have someone to fight!


Here's British the 2" mortar team:


One thing that always bugs me about multi-based weapons teams is how you handle wounds/casualties. The game for which these minis are intended is Chain of Command, where casualties and "shock" on a unit are integrally important. A lone MG-34 gunner without an a-gunner working hard swapping belts for him is less effective, so you want a way to track multi-man teams. The solution to this (as it is for seemingly all problems) is magnets! The base is a 2" diameter steel plate (i.e. a washer with no hole in it), and the loader is affixed to the base with magnets like so:

Now you see him:


Now you don't:


Mmmm, magnets...


As mentioned above, in this last picture the cracking you see is what happens when you apply DullCote when it's like 3 degrees F outside - in the 10 seconds it took me to walk outside, spray my crap, and walk back in, it had already crackled like that. These guys need another coat (there's still some shiny bits from the MinWax wash), but I'll wait until it warms up a bit.