[Hobby] Of Milestones and Housekeeping

Good morning, Dear Reader. How are you? Are you solvent? Staying hydrated? Getting your stretches in?

I have been off work for two weeks now with a chest infection, which has given me time for rest, and reflection, and gentle enrichment, and playing fifty hours of Darkest Dungeon. But! I have had time to achieve some achievements. 

Behold - the last models for my Necron army as it stood when purchased, the ones I've been actively avoiding for thirteen months because I disliked building them and felt painting them would be worse.

They've come out better than I anticipated, and were more fun - they took about three hours from primer, including drying time. As I've shared the photos around, multiple people have remarked on the dark bronze looking real good, so here's a recipe.

Prime Grey Seer (Citadel)
Basecoat everything but weapons/engines/cables Iridescent Bronze (Liquitex)
Basecoat weapons/engines/cables Iridescent Bright Silver (Liquitex)
Wash everything but weapons/engines/cables Translucent Raw Umber (Liquitex)
Wash weapons/engines/cables 2:1 Carbon Black (Liquitex) and Thinner Medium (Vallejo)
One thin coat mask, shoulder plates and any other armour Deep Violet (Liquitex)
Two thin coats vehicle hulls Dioxazine Purple (Liquitex)
Paint weapon barrels and energy cells any old silver (Citadel Chainmail)
Paint eyes and ankhs and controls/lights Bleached Bone (Citadel)
Paint Gauss weapon barrels and most energy cells Hexwraith Flame (Citadel)
Paint Tesla weapon barrels and energy cells Nighthaunt Gloom (Citadel)
Drybrush hero rocks or other base details Terminatus Stone (Citadel)
Base Agrellan Earth (Citadel), with some blended in Armageddon Dust (Citadel) on larger bases
Paint base rims Zandri Dust (Citadel)

There are a couple of variations. I'm currently experimenting with Citadel Tesseract Glow - I used it for the nebuloscopes, the eye orbs on the Tomb Blades, and I quite like it, but it's a bugger to keep mixed. I may at some point redo all the Gauss weapons with that. I also think two coats of Diaoxazine Purple may be overdoing it, losing the rather nice sheen of the single layer purple over metal, but I'm committed now and for uniformity's sake I shall keep going.

I've also moved some pages around on the blog: you will now find a comprehensive Index of the warzones in Sector Maledica, the warlords responsible for them, the armies they collect, and the Narratives we have Forged.

There are showcases for my Chaos Space Marines and Necrons, as well as Garbutt's Primaris Astartes, currently with rather potato-tier photography but we're thinking about organising a little photoshoot the next time we meet up.

Finally, of course, I have done consumerism. Codex: Necrons for tenth edition 40K is on the horizon, and I had a voucher - a gift from my former colleagues - which covered six-sevenths of the cost. Firestorm had a Black Friday sale on, and while I normally eschew this sort of thing (it's the Friday after Thanksgiving! I'm British! Why do I care?), it was an opportunity to pick up the Ruined Cyber Hub and Monoliths that I want to start my Necron battlefield going.

Matt the Kraken pointed out that my existing Chaos terrain set is probably more Kill Team in nature, with all the walkways and ladders and so on; the Necron table is going to be more rigged for "proper" 40K, with some nice tall ruins that can be arranged in the traditional facing-off L around the centre ground and some blocky pieces for squads to hide behind, and above all more space to move giant vehicle kits around on. 

The plan is to paint one set of my GameIn5D boards in dark arctic colours, snow and black ice to match my Night Lords (and Wood Elves), and the other will just have a blast of all the Zandri Dust spray paint I have left to suit my Necrons (and Tomb Kings). Two 4' x 3' boards, too small for "proper" games but adequate for the Incursions (and Border Patrols) I generally play at home. 

I have enough trees, living and dead, to occupy space on fantasy-type tables, although a fantasy-type building or two wouldn't go amiss, and I also have a TTCombat tomb corridor set that I haven't even put together yet for playing corridor fights in Kill Team (or Warhammer Skirmish).

Just need to paint it all. Ideally without getting distracted by the Legionaries and Venomcrawler and Master of Executions I bought for the Night Lords, or tripping and falling face first into another 500 points of Necrons, or actually putting some paint on Cursed City's swarm of skellies, zombies and absurdly Slavic vampires. We'll see how long that lasts.