Necrons get reinforcements!

A few years ago I acquired a box of random Games Workshop Necron stuff. Some of it was already built, some painted but most was still on sprue.  I really had no idea what was in there, but figured its time to get it made up, painted, and added to my OnePage Rules Robot Legions army.

I fixed the broken bits and touched up the paint job on the stuff that was painted.  They’re the older type of Necrons with little green plastic tube weapons and I considered a full spray over and repaint.  But looking at them, aside from needing to tone down the lime green bits they were acceptable, so I just did the minimum, threw them on some new larger bases and called them done. 

There were also some beefy looking Necrons with heavy weapons already built but not painted. I figured out that they could be built as snipers, and I had the options still on sprue.  Sadly, the plastic glue welds were too strong so I couldn’t change them over without breaking the model.  So, no snipers for me! 

For the rest, I found some build instructions online and put everything together. As ever with Games Workshop models these are insanely fiddly and have FAR TOO MANY little parts.  I was constantly curing them with the refrain, “why is this in three parts?!” Anyway, its done now so on to the painting.

I stuck to the same scheme I’ve used for the pervious Robot Legion figures.

1. Black undercoat (spray)
2. GW Leadbelcher spray basecoat, dome as a rough zenithal effect to get the main colour down.
3. Tinbitz for unit commander and special weapon demarcations.
4. Dark green for cables
5. Light green/yellow mix for the glowing ball thingies.
6. GW Waywatcher’s Green glaze to give the rough impression of a glowy effect.  Sort of.
7. Gloss varnish on the green glowy balls (to imply glass)
8. Simple basing with fine sand (for larger bases I added a few tufts for visual interest).

On the big tower things, they seemed to have stone encasing the metal bits.  I’d considered a couple of options here, grey stone, black, or a dark green.  To keep in with the theme/tome of the army I went with dark green and unusually for me I did a crude edge highlight to emphasise the greenness of it.

Overall, these additions will take my One Page Rules Robot Legions army to around 10,000pts.  I’m not sure if I have anymore Necrons lurking around the darker ascents of my “Lead Mountain” (“pile of opportunity”), but there may be a few rogue singles knocking about.  I’ll paint them up to join the others if I find any more.

I checked the Games Workshop’s website to identify some of this stuff I’ve added and turns out it’s the following.

• 1 Overlord
• 5 Assorted “leaders”
• 60 Necron Warriors
• 21 Immortals
• 21 Scarab Swarms
• 1 Canoptek Spyder
• 1 Night Scythe flyer
• 1 Convergence of Dominion set (the three towers)
• 3 Tomb Blades (little flying machine things)

Anyway, here’s a few pictographs of the various bits and bobs finished off.

The Night Scythe flyer

Convergence of Dominion set.
Not sure what this is but I'll use each of these in OPR, probably as a
Death Fortress or something.

Scarab Swarms!

I imagine these would burrow up from the ground so did some
emerging from the sand.

The Robot foot troops

A tin head is for the special weapon chap.  Added ton shoulders make the unit leader.

Canoptek Spyder.  Nice little model I think.

Tomb Blades.  I think these were supposed to be on GW's fiddly
flying bases but I didn't have any, so brass rod and a decent base will do.

Reminds me of something out of Star Wars.

I like the way the Robot pilot is basically welded in!

Some older Necron models.  I left them with the green plastic rods and just
gave them a touch up paint job.

Some "leaders"

This chap is a VERY old original metal Necron model.

This is an older leader figure I think. It was broken
so I added a few bits on and called it a day. It'll do.

A couple of leader figures?  I painted them slightly differently.

Immortals. Shame I couldn't change these into snipers.

Necron Destroyer Arc

Following on from my Necron army, I've acquired and painted up a Necron Destroyer Arc. This was a second hand purchase which was on the sprue.  I didn't have an instruction booklet which made constructing this beast a bit of a challenge!  I got through it with only one mistake though, so that was good.  Obviously it too far longer to build than normal though.

I went for a standard silver paint scheme, with my added bronze and gold highlights.

Anyway, here's the finished article. I'll look forwards to seeing how it performs on the table using One Page Rules.

The pilot clearly has his hands full controlling this floating war barge.

I still struggle with the glowing effect, but I think this one worked out OK.

Necrons

As One Page Rules (OPR) continues to occupy our gaming schedule, one of the notable things about it is that it's made me excited to get some old armies I never started (or finished) painted and on the table.

Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 rules are so heavy and complex that getting a new army on the table is daunting to the point of, well, not actually doing it. The thought of having to wade through the incredibly un-fun process of trying to learn a new army, finding out the miniatures your bought are rubbish in-game and you need to buy all new units, only to have those new units altered and downgraded in effectiveness three months later is just awful.  As a result I have a variety of Warhammer 40k armies that just never made it off the Lead Mountain. Some of these have been lurking there for many years!

OPR is very different. Fun, stable, balanced (seemingly) and easy to play, its army building freedom and enjoyable rules mean that the route from sprue to table seems highly achievable. Having sorted out my Tyranids, its now time to move onto the Necron half of the old Indomitus box set.  I never really thought I'd get these miniatures onto the table (for the reasons set out above), be here we are.

So I delved into the Indomitus box and found that there's still a bunch of space marines unmade in there too! I've never really got on board with the new space marine "Primaris" sculpts. I mean, they're OK, but I really do prefer the older marines, now retconned as "firstborn" (and no doubt on their way to being discontinued), so I guess that's why these new models are still languishing here. It is what it is I guess, but there just something I find "generic" about the new larger miniatures that just doesn't seem right to me. And the new floting tanks they have are a serious misstep in design. Again, in my view.

Anyway, I digress. I retrieved the Necron sprues from the box, broke out the "instruction" booklet and began the tedious process of assembly.

Lurking at the bottom of the pile...Indomitus

Ugh...plastic hell. Just give us the models! I've bought work here...

Indomitus has a rulebook in it, which I already had a copy of

Model building is something I don't enjoy at all, so this part of the hobby is a tremendous chore for me. I much prefer single cast models for that reason, but here we are in multi-part hell again.  

Thankfully, these Indomitus Necrons are push-fit models that makes assembly (once desprued, cleaned, mould-line scraped, and generally prepared) a bit easier, but these minitures are INCREDIBLY fragile. I mean they look good, but Games Workshop seem to have forgotten that they produce gaming pieces, not display models. These little toys are going to be handled, pushed about, knocked over and otherwise roughly treated in the melee of a game (and the transportation to and from said game).  They're simply too fragile for such treatment. How fragile you ask? Well, I broke a couple of bits just trying to "push fit" them together! The air was also blue as several times I snipped off and cleaned up a tiny bit, only to glue it on, look at it, and think, "why the heck was that a different part!? It could easily have been moulded onto the other bit.  Weapon tips in particular seem to do this.

The first four done

Anyway, I'm looking forwards to getting these down double-quick, as they should have a very simple paint scheme. Mostly metal I need to make a decision about the accent colours. With these fantasy miniatures I prefer to follow the box art usually, but I think I might move the default green into a more aquamarine or teal colour.  

Not sure...TBC

Continued...

I've made some progress this weekend, and I've constructed and nearly finished painting the Indomitus Necrons. I also nipped out to my "Friendly Local Game Store" (FLGS) to pick up some paint and accidentally bought a Canoptek Doomstalker. It'll come in handy no doubt.

A simple black undercoat with a overspray of Leadbelcher spray paint (from Games Workshop) did the heavy lifting and basically the figures were table-ready at that point.

However, I did a bit more work on them. Weapons are painted Tin Bitz, and the heads and shoulders of unit leaders (and heavy weapons robots) got a similar colour.

Commanders and "heroes" are painted with gold trim. I figured the more important a robot became in the amry the more precious the metal they would be adorned with. The only other colour I plan to use is green. Cabling is dark green.

I have to make a choice about what to do with the well established "glowy bits" on the Necrons. I don't have an airbrush and my attempts at object source lighting techniques in the past have been a failure. So...do I go for it, or do I go a non-glowy direction? Not sure yet. I've watched a few YouTube videos on how to do a simple effect so I may take the plunge.

The Final Leg

So, after mulling things over for a while, I decided to have a go at "the glowy bits". I used a bright green, a yellow dot, and a green glaze.  I found it worked for the small details, but I'm not happy with the larger glowing balls.  The yellow bit needed to be built up with a blended/glazed approach. I'd thought the glaze over the top might do that but sadly no.  I may try to fix it later but for now I'll accept the sub-par finish.

Overall though, I'm happy the army is done (once I complete the base edges).

All told, it took 6 hours to build the platic models, and about 3 hours of painting to get to the end.  Maybe another hour for the bases, which takes time as the technique i sue means it takes a couple of passes to get the PVA glue to take the various materials.

for these bases I used Minibits (Pendraken) Coarse Sand and Fine Sand layered on each other. Its an interesting result, although on the larger bases I may add a couple of tufts for a bit of further interest.

Glowing effect worked OK on the eye here

The leader and heavy weapon warriors among the crew have "bronze" colouring to denote their status

Jolly nice model this

Dirty Down Rust paint liberally applied to the desert wreckage.
I feel like these larger bases need something extra.

The glowing effect on the larger orbs hasn't worked well.

The Robot Boss

The basic warrior. Its a quick and simple job.
I think the glowing orb effect works well enough to add flavour.

Again, the glowing eyes haven't quite got what I wanted.

Dirty Down Rust again. The PVA Glue reactivated it, bleeding into the sand.
A nice unintended staining effect!

Now to get the Robot Legions onto the table...