Flintfish's army

flintfish · Post by **flintfish** » 21 Jul 2009, o 08:06

It’s been a while since my last production post, but now I have started a new project…

I’ve discovered there’s a wargaming club 10 minutes walk from where I live. I payed them a visit two weeks ago and they seem nice and active so I decided to join them. Only "problem" is now I need an army…

After thinking about it for a while I decided for a vanilla space marine army. Not that hard to paint, plenty of plastic details for conversions and I like the background story. It also seems like a good choice for learning the game. If someone has any ideas regarding army lists feel free to comment, but this is what I thought I start with (1500pts):

Captain with jump pack, storm bolter and relic blade
3 tactical squads, rhinos, missile launchers and meltas, power fists for the sergeants
1 assault squad
2 dreads with autocannon & lascannon
1 thunderfire

The plan would be to start with the troopers and the thunderfire, and then build the rhinos and dreads out of paper until funds and time allow for acquisition. (Long live paperhammer...)

flintfish · Post by **flintfish** » 21 Jul 2009, o 08:18

A few days have passed (forum down...

) and the first boxes have arrived in the mail. Sadly some where on backorder but at least I have stuff to start with. I decided to order a command squad and a box of devastators as well to get some more variation on the models available, and as extra stuff for conversions. The first tactical squad has been assembled and is ready for some paint. (I have left the weapons and packs of, but I put them in for the picture.)

Click to see full-sized image

After a bit of thought I have decided to paint these up as imperial fists. A not so bright yellow with red shoulder trims/eagle. I will add some battle damage and wear to make them seen not so fresh from the factory. The plan would be to undercoat them black and then airbrush the yellow base coat. Never tried airbrushing before but if it works it would save insane amounts of time…

BTW Gareth - this is NOT a fast painting challenge...

Under any circumstance I will do a test figure and see if it works...

Post by **Nameless** » 21 Jul 2009, o 08:59

BTW Gareth - this is NOT a fast painting challenge...

good luck anyway.
imperial fists colour scheme? check our forum, one of our members had absolutely fantastic IF minis posted somewhere. He's not active anymore, I think nick was Komrad (or Komrade?).

Post by **mahon** » 21 Jul 2009, o 09:48

man, you chose a difficult color scheme with all the yellows. especially if you decide to use dark primer...

flintfish · Post by **flintfish** » 21 Jul 2009, o 12:29

The black undercoat will only work if I use an airbrush for the base coating. Otherwise I will probably die from boredom. I'm off from work today so a good day to try out some airbrushing. I turned the balcony into a small painting studio, and once I got the paint/thinner/water mix down (20 parts paint, 17 parts thinner and ~8 drops of water worked really well) and tweaked the compressor settings it wasn't that hard to spray. Patterns will be different

, but just covering a figure with paint wasn't that hard.

Click to see full-sized image

Not that bad for a 1st try, but the black undercoat took a few (5-6) coats to cover, but it worked really well in the end, and if I have a full squad to paint I doubt I need to wait for the paint to dry either (this time I used a hairdryer to speed it up...). Airbrushing should really speed up the base coating process, especially on something like a rhino...

Need to go over the minis again and prepare better though. Seems like I missed a mold line and some "plastic flash" from filing was left as well. This really smooth basecoat isn't that forgiving it seems. Now "all" that is left is finishing the mini. Still some weathering techniques I want to test out for this, so far I'm very happy with the outcome.

BTW. I saw Komrad's fists and they're really good. I think I want a sligtly less bright yellow, but we'll see how this turns out.

shakes · Post by **shakes** » 22 Jul 2009, o 23:40

army looks decent, just a couple small changes id make. i haven't played any 40k in about 2 years but i personally wouldnt put melta's and rockets together, melta's have to short a range. nor would i personally put power fists with heavy weapons. to points heavy. id put plasma guns instead of meltas for squads that will have heavy weapons and get rid of the power fists. for squads that have melta's id keep the power fists and take no heavy weapons. just personal preference and the game may have changed more than i think in the past couple years.

Neolis · Post by **Neolis** » 23 Jul 2009, o 12:02

shakes wrote:army looks decent, just a couple small changes id make. i haven't played any 40k in about 2 years but i personally wouldnt put melta's and rockets together, melta's have to short a range. nor would i personally put power fists with heavy weapons. to points heavy. id put plasma guns instead of meltas for squads that will have heavy weapons and get rid of the power fists. for squads that have melta's id keep the power fists and take no heavy weapons. just personal preference and the game may have changed more than i think in the past couple years.

The new rules let units of 10 space marines split in to 5 man squads during placement. Its not uncommon to see the 10 man groups carry wild mix of weapons if the plan is to split them in 5 man groups for objective capturing.. So the 5 man team with melta and power fist can be racing toward an objective in rhino or razorback. While the heavy weapon team with 4 regular and one heavy weapon takes a position to do cover fire from terrain. Plus that missle launch is a free upgrade.

shakes · Post by **shakes** » 24 Jul 2009, o 02:14

thats rad, forget everything i said

should be a solid list, i look forward to seeing some fully painted mini's.

flintfish · Post by **flintfish** » 24 Jul 2009, o 19:29

Glad to see someone agrees on my choice of army

And now to the important stuff - da paintin'

I have been experimenting with methods to fast paint this - basically base coat -> wash shade -> drybrush highs -> ink glaze to harmonize the color, and at least to some degree I have been successful:

Click to see full-sized image

The yellow looks pretty good. Closer to Komrads then I had intended but it looks good on the table, so I’ll keep it. I have yet to add battle damage and wear to it. Basically I run into a little snag. I realized I didn't want to use the transfers that came with the marines. I just want black fists without the white circle (smaller transfers should be easier to attach to the curved surface as well), and besides there are no tactical/assault markers in black, only white, on the supplied transfers... Thinking done - blank transfer paper for laser printers and some microsol/set ordered, but it should take a few days before it arrives so test painting have stopped for the moment. To freehand all those fists would probably take me a year.

So far I'm fairly pleased with the way it turned out, but I'll see if I can strengthen the highlights on the read parts. The ink glaze (might have been a wash

considering its strength) more or less turned it all back to a uniform red...

Cyberpaddy66 · Post by **Cyberpaddy66** » 25 Jul 2009, o 04:11

Looking good but I can't help notice the red outlines on the shoulder pads have drifted onto the yellow a bit

Chest of Colors forum

Flintfish's army

Flintfish's army

First squad assembled

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First test figure, part 1

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First figure nearing completion...

Re: Flintfish's army