Wednesday, March 11, 2015

WIP: My Alpha Legion Grows


It's been a busy week, but it never feels like you have much to show for it (not post-worthy anyway) when all you've been doing is scraping mold lines for hours. In the end, there's 12 more bodies added to my growing traitor Legion.

Since my paint order hasn't made it yet, I've had little to do on these guys other than build, build, build. I've now added another squad of 10 marines and even added two extra marines with missile launchers that I can swap out when I want to take rocket launchers (since those are a PITA to magnetize).

At one time I had talked about sculpting scales on all the shoulder pads.  We all knew I wasn't going to go that far now, didn't we? In the end, I did try it out on two- and I figure I can put those on the sergeants if they look OK after I prime them.  I still really struggle to sculpt in green stuff, even with the proper silicon tools. It's just too sticky and too mushy. I know there's ways to alter your mix to firm it up, so I may have to look it up and try that. The scales came out OK, but I have a feeling it'll look pretty rough when it's primed. I made a custom tool for sculpting scales and if they come out OK, I'll show that off.

requisite crappy cell phone macro shot

I definitely made good on my promise to rough them up though. All of these guys have seen some action, and the 4-5 that have aquilla chests have been especially mangled/defaced. Trip was kind enough to swap some more Alpha-appropriate skull and harness chest pieces in exchange for the aquillas he prefers for his SM chapter. I've found that the new Marine sprues and old Marine sprues don't mix particularly well so that was a lot of scraping to get them matched up. The second squad is finally eagle free though, and I've even scraped them off of the bolters. There's still some winged skulls, but I don't think that's overly Imperial.


So there you have it. 22 Alphas ready for paint. My order should be here in the next few days and I've got two free nights this week. With any luck I'll have these base coated by the weekend! In the meantime I'll probably build a Lord and maybe a Sorcerer from the Command Squad I've got so I can paint a full basic force org simultaneously. There's so many options on those guys, it's going to be tough to nail down exactly what I want to model, especially as I've got no mounts to put them on (and I understand that's pretty much the only way to go). I'm having a tough time finding a good Chaos message board with good beginner tactics to make a final decision there anyway. Advanced Tau Tactica has me spoiled for quality of content.

~Deet

4 comments:

  1. cleaning mold lines is my least favorite thing about the hobby. time consuming and thankless.

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    1. And sometimes (well at least I do), you overclean...

      That shot of the 22 at the end is crazy!

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  2. http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/293085-chaos-space-marines-tactica-stratagems-and-tactics/ might this help? (haven't gone through it super closely)

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    Replies
    1. unfortunately most of those are kind of dated (2012) and don't really work in the current meta, if they were even good in the first place.

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