The Shire and everything after: 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.