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Really happy with the end result. It’s not intended to be any specific Adeptus Mechanicus forge world, uses a bit of inspiration from the Ryza colour scheme, but also one of the Kastellan robot schemes.

The orange took a stupid amount of steps, uses Jokaero base orange, then an Xpress paint used as a glaze, then a shade finally Hot Orange to highlight. But happy with the vibrancy of the result. And a good example of why you should buy your paints in person, the Jokaero orange was nowhere near the brightness I was hoping for!

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The scouts are from Tyranid Attack, the old boxed game that was kind of like a slimmed down Advanced Space Crusade. Enjoyable enough as I recall, but I bought it back then mainly for the models. As you can probably tell if you’re a regular reader, I get a bit erm, skittish when it comes to holding onto projects. So I like to bounce around wherever my inspiration takes me. As a kid that took me through several space marine chapters. And alas no, I never used to strip the minis before repainting.

Considering how much paint is on these bad boys they don’t look awful. I mean they’re rudimentary and the details on the chests and faces is a little filled in, but still. However no more. Enter the hero of the hour:

Only £4.99 from the local B&M (think slightly upmarket dollar store) I found this stuff through a forum post or possibly facebook a few years ago. It’s great, takes paint off plastic and metal, doesn’t damage the models and doesn’t smell too bad. Erm, disclaimer though, it looks pretty awful….

Eugh. Can’t say you weren’t warned! Drop in the models, leave them for half an hour or so and it’s wicked witch of the west time.

Then five minutes with hot water and an old toothbrush and tada…

You can see the right leg and left armed are stained red (told you, he was a Howling Griffon in a former life). A few stubborn bits in the crevices, but chuck him back in for a second bath and ready for the reveal.

Can’t tell these guys are pushing 30 can you? Very happy with the way they cleaned up.

Finally after a fresh coat of contrast paints the Eagle Warrior Scouts are now ready for get on a table. Or more realistically stand around in a cabinet waiting for the rest of the army to be painted. But still, very happy with the results.

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Based using Luke’s base ready mix to fit in with the Eagle Warriors, whom this’ll be supporting.

Really proud of this guy, I always liked the build but to finally have it complete is a great feeling! Now just to finish painting my Stompa and I’ll have both of my custom big guys done.

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Missed something? Well recently YouTube has had a few videos on making terrain from water pistols. Midwinter Minis and Black Magic Craft being two of the culprits. And it got me thinking, which got me purchasing, as inevitably happens. Obviously mine won’t be quite as grand, but then I don’t get none of that sweet YouTube money!

My original intention was to build something vaguely 40K / Legion cross over, like industrial terrain. But seeing these two pistols on Amazon (a snip at £7.99 Prime) instantly put me in mind of Necrons. So yeah, here we go.

I want the pistols to stand on end. I’m thinking some sort of gateway, of yet to be determined purpose. The first step is to cut off the handles and bases, which was surprisingly hard work. To be honest, if my wife wasn’t working in the next room I’d have bust out the dremel.

That’ll work. Erm. Imagine the Intercessor is a Necron Warrior.

Next step is a base for these. I want a raised dais between them and some sort of gateway. I’m not sure if that’ll be implicit or obvious. I don’t know if it’s a warp gateway or just a marker. But hey, if you want all the mystery draining out of a thing go watch the Star Wars prequels…

I stood the pistols on end and did some doodling. Rough sketches in hand I went to my new circle cutter jig on the hot wire cutter and chopped two circles.

With the circles cut (and two small pieces of filler for the gap), it’s all ready to be based. Because I’m lazy, and it’s right next to me, the base is going to be foamex/palight (foamed pvc or whatever you want to call it). If it warps I’ll cut some thin mdf and base it on that. Saving myself a trip outside to the garage in the rain, always a hobby win!

Hot glue applied and the foam is stuck to the board. Next step is to figure out how the gateway works and mount the pistols. I’ll probably have to patch some of the holes I cut removing the handles too, we’ll see what shows.

Then rocks, ground cover and it’s ready for painting. So expect water pistol Necron terrain part 2 to be along very soon!

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I even tried freehanding the logo. Not done any freehand in years, but it works ok. As always I take too long to actually get the brush into position and make the first stroke, so the paint begins to dry on the brush. But happy with the result. I do have some laser printer decal paper though so I’ll just print out a load of Eagle Warrior’s logos at various sizes. I’ll share the file when it’s done.

The first bike is also complete and has a couple of emblems on there. I’m really impressed with the bases. They’re the volcanic island base ready mix from Geek Gaming. Literally just smoothed a bit of their quick dry glue on there with a clay shaper, then dip, shake and, erm, done. I’ll need to get some spray varnish, my usual Vallejo brush on stuff won’t work very well here.

As you can probably see in the background, my other Eagle Warriors are coming along. They’ve all been base coated with the talassar blue (the hard bit). Next is the white, then the sponging, then the details and highlights and done ish.

I’m also doing very well resisting buying more marines until these are painted. Just hope I can get them done before the new ATV comes out, or my willpower may crumble!

The post Eagle Warriors Update appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

Now if you read my previous post about Primaris Marines you will be correctly assuming that I bottled it on the quartered Novamarines scheme. But I really like the contrast Talassar Blue and Apothecary White. Plus side is the Eagle Warriors logo will be easier to paint.

They’re a pretty straight forward Codex chapter, so I’ll just be painting up what I’ve got before I start thinking about random conversion stuff. The Whirlwind I previously posted will become and Eagle Warrior. I also have a venerable dread kicking around somewhere.

So far, as I type this, I have 1 outrider and 1 intercessor pretty much done. I’ve ordered some basing material from Geek Gaming, which will be here Monday.

There’s a great video on youtube by, erm, crap hang on… here it is. Midwinter Minis on painting Ultramarines in the Space Marine game style. I’ve used a bit of his techniques in here, the sponging, the heavy wash in places. But I still wanted it bright and breezy to contrast with the black bases. Really liking the Templar Black contrast by the way.

I haven’t actually had a goal when painting an army since Band of Brothers over on the seemingly defunct Ammo Bunker forums. Here we have a target! Once our starter sets are painted we’re playing our first game of 9th Edition. Maybe a battle report will happen? Who knows.

Until then I’m enjoying painting my Eagle Warriors and we’ll see how far down the rabbit hole I go!

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I was originally inspired by the AWE Striker from GI Joe (man I loved that thing). I also spent too long looking at the conversions on Under The Couch.

The buggy is simple plasticard with four bike wheels, the crew from a landspeeder and erm, that’s about it. I’ve detailed it with a few Ravenwing parts and it’s already primed. I’m going to try out the Black Templars Contrast paint, so it’s undercoated in Wraith Bone spray.

Once the Ravenwing Buggy is completed I think I might have to move onto the Ravenwing Trikes!

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This project is also going to be somewhat of a redemption for me. Many years ago I had a job interview at White Dwarf mag to be a junior layout something of other. Interviewed by none other than Paul Sawyer himself. Part of the process was bringing along some minis you painted. Despite me doing a lot of conversions even back then, I took along something that I thought would fit more with the GW ethos. I only have an abysmal photo, but amongst others I took the terminator sergeant shown below.

The painting was as good as I could do back then, but the lack of imagination shown bothers me even now. To be fair I was hopelessly underqualified (I wanted to be a webdesigner back then, no idea how I got an interview with a portfolio of nothing but site designs!), but the crap minis I took still bug me.

So first stop, YouTube. My fellow Yorkshirelad Luke has a great video on stripping plastic minis using meths (erm, in the English sense of the term). And it works, possibly better than other stuff I’ve used, it’s hard to tell as it’s so dependent on what was painted on the mini in the first place.

I stripped them as clean as I could, then gave them a coat of the GW Wraith Bone spray. Next was the Skeleton Horde contrast paint. I’ve only tried a couple of things with contrast paints and had mixed results. I’m learning that’s because they all behave differently, which is odd. Dark Angels Green is more like an ink. Skeleton Horde is more like a wash, willing to flow around. I found if you slap a lot on, then remove it from the highlights wiping your brush each time, you get a nice result. In fact I think it’s my favourite contrast result so far. You also end up with a paper towel like this:

Below are the three squads. That’s thee ten terminators I got with Space Hulk. Then two I got free at a GW store event (I know, right?). One metal rogue trader flamer marine. And finally my pride and joy, one of the very early guys (9th from left below), who’s going to take pride of place in a squad.

Here’s the look I’ve gone for. I’m not going classic deathwing terminator colours. Instead I’m trying to evoke a proper 80’s feel. So checks, hazard stripes, dags, they’ll be everywhere. Metals will be muted, then I’m going to try and pick out the edges and bone details as best I can.

My freehand is awful, so I did the glove and knee pad width white paint as tidily as possible. Then I broke out my unipin fineliners and drew in the squares. Happy with the result.

So I’m going to have three squads of deathwing terminators (two of which will let me play some Space Hulk, the whole point of this). I’ve got Tyranid Attack somewhere, so the four classic terminators from that I’m taking liberties with. They’re going to be dark angel green (gasp). Got high hopes for again, a solid 80’s feel. I might even throw in a deathwing power armoured marine or two for kicks.

Hopefully I’ll keep up the momentum and do my entire Dark Angels army. But I’m realistic so starting with the Terminators is a specific, attainable goal. Yes I’m a software dev during the day!

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The shell of the Rhino has been kicking around my hobby room for years, left over from the KIV Guard vehicle conversions. But I didn’t just want to buy an existing conversion kit or go to a bits site, I wanted to make my own launcher.

Here’s the parts list:

• Valkyrie launchers
• The tail stabiliser fin I removed from my Stormtalon conversion
• The ammo box from an IG lascannon
• The cover from the sponson lascannons of a Land Raider
• The vents from the back of the Land Speeder typhoon rocket pods
• The turret base from a Razorback
• Styrene, plasticard and foamed pvc

Have I mentioned that I really love my bits box? Years of buying random lots on eBay and kit bashing kits rather than building them out of the box has made it very healthy. Maybe my bits box needs a post on here?

Anyway here’s the assembled turret:

(I’m learning to take photos with my phone camera in manual mode. Apologies if there’s a learning curve but should help me sort out the depth of field and light issues I tend to run into).

Here’s the final assembled Space Marine Whirlwind. A very simple result from a fun bit of kit bashing, but I’m super happy with it.

And the more eagle-eyed of you will recognise the Chapter icon on the door. I’m trying to get the hang of 3D printing things that small, but the shoulder pads are killing me so I might end up buying decals.

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An alternative I’m considering is to have just the feet printed out, the rest of the wheel could be modelled easily. Well ok so could the feet, but there’s no way I’m making 48 of the same thing in two scales, I lack the patience and consistency to pull it off.

Finally I could just abandon the idea of 3d printing all together, make one foot at each size and cast them in resin. Which is eminently doable of course, but lacks the ‘cool shiny’ of 3d printing, which I’ve never played with before.

We’ll see. If I go Shapeways route I’ll put up a link so other people can buy them if they wish. Might be useful in various projects. If it works I might do a few other random parts through shapeways too, could be fun..

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