Tactical Troubles

Back when I bought the "Battle for Macragge" box I started painting 5 members of the tactical squad that comes in the box. after assembly I primed with the last of my Citadel Chaos Black Spray. I prefer to use a layering technique instead of using inks for shadows, I find that using inks for shades is more work than its worth when trying to ink the right spots - in my book inks are from the ancient past, back when we primed everything by hand with Smelly Primer (an old white primer from G.W.). I've read that the inks that are now on sale are much better than the old one so I may give them a go sometime but probably not for my Angels.


I decided to finish up the squad an assemble the last 5 figures last night, today they had to be primed and that turned out to be quite a task. I usually prime a squad of 5 models at a time, I fix the models on top of a nail in a piece of wood. This makes the models easy to move around while spraying.
I was using my brand new Army Painter black primer spray, unfortunately I didn't think to try out the spray on an old model before spraying my 5 marines and the result was .... bad.

The paint seemed to bubble up and left all the models with a surfaces resembling the Citadel "Rough Coat", this was hardly the result I was going for with my marines. Something had to be done, and quick, if they were to be saved, after some google searches and forum scouring I found a guy who recommended spraying the models again, this time as very close (10-20 cm) range and with long burst - there was a high risk of overcoating the models and obscouring the details - but it was worth a try.
The second spraying helped a lot, but one model simply got too much and looked even more horrid than before, nothing short of a paint stripping will save him now. The rest of the lot are usable, but still with some rough points on the legplates and such. Whether its a bad can, another technique, cold weather or something else I cannot say, I will try spraying something worthless and figure it out later - however the Army Painter product seems vastly different to the G.W. ones I used before, for now it seems the G.W. ones are more forgiving about distance and usage.

 

Update: I just found this regarding the issue.

The Unforgiven Veterans, part 2

Yesterday I got some good advise on my army; the latest Dark Angels Codex is 4th edition, while the current Space Marines codex is 5th edition. While it is still possible to use a 4th edition army list there are many improvements in the 5th edition - even if I just use the standard marine rules. At some point the Dark Angels codex should be updated to 5th edition, but all we know for sure is that Blood Angels will be the next one.

For my planned army it didn't change a lot, the biggest change was to the veteran squads I am currently assembling. I decided to convert the two veteran squads into one sternguard and one vanguard squad.

The sternguard squad is completely assembled, however it still needs a sergeant - hopefully he should be arriving tomorrow, along with the Dark Angels upgrade kits. I've left out some of the shoulder pads for now, perhaps I will be using a few from the upgrade kits - I'm not really sure yet.

I decided to pin every joint on the models, joins between metal and plastic are usually quite fragile and pinning is very easy since you can clearly see where the center of the arm is on both parts and drill there.

Remember that plastic is very soft while the metal takes a little longer to drill, a good tip when drilling space marine plastic arms is to leave the shoulder pad off until you're finished - otherwise you may end up with a hole in the shoulder pad :).

Once the holes are drilled in both pieces I super-glue a paper clip into the model, when its dry I cut it off with about 4 mm pin for a plastic arm or about 2 mm for a metal arm. This is also a good time to drill out the gun barrel, the gun looks much more realistic if it got a barrel hole. for bolters and bolt pistol you can also carefully drill out the two side holes on the barrel. The arms are then fitted along with the gun, unless the arms fit perfectly I put a small ball of green stuff on the pin first. Once the arms and gun sits perfectly you can scape off the excess green stuff and do a little sculpting.

I tend to glue the left arm right away but keeping the right arm and gun unglued, this allows me to remove the arm and gun when priming and painting. The green stuff should be completely dry (24-48 hours) before attempting to remove the arm. Once the inaccessible parts are painted I carefully glue the arm and gun in place.
The method of pinning and using green stuff for covering gaps are mostly used on larger models where a simple glue connection would not be able to carry the weight, however I find it very useful for smaller metal models too. Plastic models are different, since the plastic glue melds the plastic pieces together the joint is much stronger than super glue on metal thus pinning is rarely necessary.

For my sternguard veterans heavy weapons I choose a lascannon and a multi-melta, since I had the bits and troops they would fit onto without much conversion. I'd like to do larger conversions but I'll save that for the plastic troopers.

To fit the weapons I used the method described above but adding a pin in the joins between backpack and tubes from the gun. I also glued the backpack on the model right away to make sure it would line up correctly with the gun

Well, that's it for assembling, now the tedious job of removing mould lines before priming remains. I've put the vanguard squad on the shelf for now, most of it is assembled but I need weapons for four of them, I'm sure there'll be some leftovers from my tactical squad.

I was in Århus this morning and stopped by Dragons Lair to see if they had some good deals, unfortunately the "cheap box" with older models only had some Ork and fantasy stuff so instead I got a new primer spray from army painter - I've seen their products before but this is the first one I'm trying out, from what I hear its just as good as GW's, if not better. A GW purity seal spray and a space marine commander had to come too.
The purity seal has a bad reputation, but from what I could gather from various forums the problems related to the matt variant in a blue can, I got a satin one in a tan can, a quick test on an old figure seemed to work fine.
When using any sort of spray varnish you should shake the can a lot and do the spraying at room temperature, the can should also be warm but i wouldn't recommending heating it like some people do.

The Unforgiven Veterans, part 1

The paint stand is up, the boxes of angels have been unpacked.

After some sorting and planning I've decided to start up by assembling two veteran units, made up of the oldest figures i have. These figures are the 4rd(?) edition metal ones with plastic arms and a bolter as standard equipment. I have a few blisters of Dark Angels veterans, a box of Veterans mk. I and some other blisters with heavy and assault weapons.

It adds up to 20 figures- perfect for two veteran squads, provided that i can model them into the weapon types i want. I never did a lot of modelling on the metal figures, when playing Warhammer the focus were to fit the models in formation rather than making the individual model's stance look good. Since i have a lot of the plastic figures i will only do minor modifications to fit the weapons.

I realised that the boxes and blister i got on sale is a odd mix of stuff, and all the plastic figures were just "standard" marines without any Dark Angels signature markings.
The metal  ones were somewhat better given that i had about 12 Dark Angel Veteran marines, unfortunately  these come with only 3 different stances and the mix wasn't perfect.

I decided to order some parts for the plastic marines (that will make up 2-3 tactical squads, a command squad and a devastators squad). The Games Workshop Online Store carry a "Dark Angels Chapter Upgrade" kit, it seems to be just what i need. The kit contains two sprues with a total of 10 marines - a good deal at 135 DKK, however the bases and special weapons that usually come with the Tactical or Dark Angels Veteran boxes are not included. I may have to find another way to get those when i put the squads together. In addition to two packs of upgrade kits I ordered a few other parts - more about those once they land.

Among the old stuff was a Battle for Macragge boxset, back when i bought it I started painting the plastic figures in a Dark Angels 4th Battle Company scheme. My plan is to continue this scheme for my army.
I will mix these models into squads made with the Dark Angels Veterans Upgrade kit to get a unique Dark Angels feel for the whole army, while still using every available figure i have.

I also installed a spell checker ;).