Here’s a bit of a bolt from the blue with a couple of completed units from this basically abandoned Necron project. I rediscovered the Necrons at some point recently, and I had put so much effort into them and quite a few were pretty close to completion that it seemed a shame to totally abandon the work. Plus, I started playing Acolyte (collaborative Kill Team) not too long ago, and one of the ideas I have in mind for a campaign is pitting the players against the combined forces of a deranged Dark Mechanicus “heretek” and his cohort of mindless servitors and other associated ne’er do wells, and the Necrontyr he is allied with/unwittingly serving. With one eye on this possibility, I picked out the scarabs and ten Necron warriors that were not too far from being finished and resolved to get at least a couple of units out of this project.
Of course this project has long since abandoned the pretense under which it started, namely to speed paint a Necron army, largely relying on the airbrush, and in the process concoct some sort of “formula” for churning out nicely painted armies quickly. I sold most of the models in a big clear out a few years ago. I stopped using an airbrush at all about 10 years ago. And as I mentioned in my last post in this project log, my formula, involving numerous masking steps and tonnes of fiddly sub-assemblies, was absurdly over-engineered and undoubtedly took more time than if I’d just painted the models normally.
Starting with the scarabs, all I had to do with these was base them. I mounted most of them on 1.5mm plastic rod, drilled corresponding holes in the bases, and arranged them 5 or 6 to a base. Scarabs can move through matter and by cutting some of them in half I was able to hint at this ability and also get even more little bugs out of my stock of painted ones, by having the back halves burying into and the front halves emerging from the bases.
I spent way too long deciding how to base them. I originally made up a batch of martian coloured red brown sand scatter (using pigment powders and baking soda), but the models looked very ho-hum on these bases, since red-brown is quite prevalent on them. This set back meant I shelved the project again for a month or two before I decided to try them with my already mixed up sandy desert basing material (which I made for my Blood Bowl Orc bases). This looked great, especially once I added some grass tufts that included some very bright pink strands. The cold blue of the Necron armour contrasts wonderfully with the warm sandy colour, and the pink tufts echo the bright red of the Necron lenses and weapons and add a touch of alien-ness to the bases.
For the Warriors, a bit more work was needed. I had more or less finished the torsos, legs and arms. But the guns and heads had to be finished off and then they needed to be assembled. This job was incredibly annoying and in my estimation the joins didn’t look very strong, so I ended up resorting to thick super glue and a sprinkle of baking soda to set and seal the joints.
This baking soda joint is notoriously strong but can look quite ugly, but since these Necrons are old, pitted, rusted and generally not in the best state of repair, any baking soda crust that is visible just adds to the overall effect.
I did have one gun that lacked a moulded on hand (probably something I did at some point in the past), so for a left arm I did a modicum of conversion work, cutting it off, scuffing up the end and putting a load of old cables and whatnot hanging off the end like it’s just lost an arm. If I did this project all over again, I would do more of this sort of thing to reflect the “it absolutely will not stop until you are dead” Terminator vibe and the reanimation protocol rules the Necrons have.
I like these units so much they immediately won a spot in my tiny little miniatures display cabinet and I hope I get a chance to use them in a campaign in the future.
Now what remains of this project are another 10 Warriors (honestly, unlikely to ever be finished) and 5 Immortals (really cool, but as with the Warriors, needing their guns and heads painting before they can be assembled and based).
Below is one final shot of the Warriors marching through the assorted paraphernalia that is the secret to this desert basing: averland sunset paint for the underpainting, homemade desert sand scatter made from baking soda, pigments and small plaster rocks, neon pink grass tufts, iso alcohol and scenic cement for fixing.
