Speed Painting: Protectorate of Menoth

Ever since my son was born, I've managed very little in the way of hobby time, and even less in terms of actually playing games.  Funderhammer is the Pressganger for my FLGS, and he told me that they were starting a Journeyman league in a few weeks.  I had been feeling a bit stir crazy, and some of you might remember from this post that I already had an army, brand new in the box, waiting to be played.  I discussed it with my wife and she was willing to give me one night a week for gaming.

If you're unfamiliar with Privateer Press' Journeyman League, the basic idea is that each player starts week 1 with a faction's starter box, and the point size of the games goes up every week or two.  You earn points for playing games, but also for building & painting new units.  By the end of the league, you should be pretty close to having a fully-painted, tournament-sized army.

But wait - I need to go from not building & painting at all, to building & painting a couple of new units every week?  On top of that, my chosen faction (Protectorate of Menoth) is traditionally mostly white, a notoriously tricky color to paint?  I was gonna have to come up with some ideas, quick!

Any thoughts of "competition quality" -painted models quickly went out the window - we're aiming for quick 'n dirty "tabletop" quality here.  These models were mostly going to be painted in 30- or 45-minute chunks of time that I managed to carve out of the days I'm on babysitting duty, and are meant more to shake the rust off than push my skills.  Washes & drybrushing are the rule here, not the exception - once I have a basic 50-point force finished, maybe I'll take more time on a few "centerpiece" models, but not now.

Here's the technique I came up with:

Every model was primed with Army Painter Matt White Colour Primer.  When they were dry, they all received a heavy coat of Army Painter Soft Tone ink (but GW Seraphim Sepia works well, too):

This pretty much leaves the models khaki.  (Note: this would be a great, super-quick way to make a khaki army, Imperial Guard players!)

Next, the models receive a heavy drybrush of off-white (I used Reaper MSP Bleached Bone):

Next, the purples were done with Vallejo Model Color Magenta - this is several shades lighter than I want the end result to be:

Next, the purple is heavily washed with Army Painter Purple Tone ink:

The metallics were painted with Vallejo Model Color Brass & Vallejo Model Air Steel:

The brass was washed with Army Painter Soft Tone ink, and the steel with Army Painter Dark Tone ink:

...and that's pretty much it.  On models with a LOT of metallics I might do a quick drybrush with Vallejo Model Air Chrome, and when the whites get a little too muddy I occasionally make a glaze with Vallejo Glaze Medium + Army Painter Pure White to bump them up a bit, but usually that's more on infantry units.  Quick, easy, & "good enough"!

Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard

...finishing out my recent Protectorate of Menoth purchases, I picked up a Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard:

(If there's one beef I have with the Army Box deal, it's that they give you the Exemplar Errants but not the Unit Attachment, which I've literally never seen anyone NOT use for their infantry-type units).  This would have been the absolute first set of models I'd have bought to expand my collection, but no one had it in stock locally, so a trip to eBay was necessary.  This should be the last of my Protectorate purchases for a bit...

Monolith Bearer & Initiate Tristan Durant

I picked up a couple more models for my Protectorate of Menoth force today:

That's a Monolith Bearer & Initiate Tristan Durant.  These two models kept coming up in my search for "must have" units, and I think the Monolith Bearer is an awesome sculpt and look forward to painting it...  

More Protectorate of Menoth

Shortly after acquiring my Protectorate army, lars4life & I wandered into our FLGS, where he presented me with some models for my birthday:

Sweet!  A Vassal of Menoth and a Paladin of theOrder of the Wall!  (I bought the Devout myself).  The menoth force is coming together quick!

How To Get A New Warmachine Army (Without Really Trying)

Admitedly, I've been pretty out-of-the-loop regarding wargaming for the past year or so.  Talking with lars4life on the way to Adpeticon, he was telling me about the new All-In-One Army Boxes from Privateer Press, and they sounded like a pretty amazing deal.  I resolved to see if the PP booth had any when we got to the con.

The Privateer booth only had Khador (have it already) and Skorne (not interested).  My main interest would be Protectorate of Menoth or Cryx, neither of which was out yet.

When we got our swag bags, there was a Warmachine battlegroup included, and mine was Protectorate of Menoth:

(Fun fact: the first Adepticon I ever went to, I received a Menoth battlegroup - I gave it to lars4life so he could have a second force to run Pressganger demos.  The next year, I got a Protectorate battlegroup again, and traded it for Khador.  Okay, so it's really not that fun of a fact.  Deal with it).

I really like the fluff for Protectorate, and actually left Adepticon with a little bit of my spending money still in my pocket, so I resolved to hang on to it and keep an eye out for the Army Box.  Lo and behold, the next time I visited my FLGS, what was sitting on the "new arrivals" shelf:

The Army box is a tremendous deal at full MSRP, and my local shop sells Warmachine for 20% off everyday, so I got all this for a little over a hundred bucks:

...which is a steal.  I started doing some research about what to get next, and one of the models that kept coming up in the forums was Gorman di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist - well, lars4life & I took a painting class at Adepticon taught by PP's Matt DiPietro, and he gave us a model to practice on - that model?  None other than Gorman di Wulfe:

So, thanks to a free Battlegroup, a free Merc model, and a great FLGS, I wound up with a brand-spankin'-new 48 point Warmachine army for just over $100:

That's an insane deal - I've bought crusty, covered-with-three-layers-of-paint models from Craigslist that weren't much cheaper.  Next is to get it painted and on the table...

Khador Manhunter Solo

I finished a Khador Manhunter Solo the other day:

...this was probably one of the first models I bought beyond the battlebox because it's a highly recommended addition to a Khador army, but it's been unfinished forever - because the *&%#@ arms kept breaking off.  Every. Time, I. Turned. Around.  Every time I opened my bag the GD arms would be broken off.  I finally scraped & drilled the sockets, stuck them on with Super Glue and Green Stuff, and have resolved to throw it in the ocean if they break off again.

Painting was pretty unremarkable, except I came across a bottle of Reaper Flesh Wash in my newly-filled dropper tray while I was working on it - I have no idea where it came from, as I didn't buy it, and don't remember getting it as a sample in a swag bag.  I was even hesitant to try it, as it looks VERY purple right out of the bottle - but I wasn't really happy with how the skin tone was coming out on this model, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  I was really pleased!  It's much more natural looking when it dries than GW's Baal Red wash or the Army Painter red ink that I've been using lately.

Khador: Vladimir Tzepesci, The Dark Prince

Another model I finished recently:

This is Vladimir Tzepesci, The Dark Prince.  I originally started this model quite a while ago, but it wasn't holding my interest, so it got thrown in my bag.  I dug it out recently because I've resolved to finish all my partially completed/needs repaired/etc Warmachine models before moving on to new ones, and I sat and sat and tried to come up with a novel technique or conversion for this one... turns out, it's just not a very interesting model.  Really.  He has some neat abilities that I want to try out, but as far as the model goes it's just not terribly compelling.  So, I just finished 'em off and ran with it...

Khador: Battle Mechaniks

Hey, look at me - I actually painted a unit for the first time in over a year!

These are the Khador Battle Mechaniks that lars4life got me as a birthday gift... two years ago, I think?  They've been primed and knocking around in my bag since then.  While we were at Adepticon we decided to go downstairs one night and make use of the open hobby area, and next thing I know they were 90% done - a few touch ups, some clearcoat & basing and they're done!  Cetainly not my best work, but not bad for shaking off the rust...

Building the Colossal

So, I spent the first part of the year trying to get my hands on a Khador Conquest - My FLGS had one, but I never seemed to have the extra cash in the budget, and I went to both Adepticon & Origins with the colossal at the top of my shopping list and cash in pocket, but none of the vendors had one.  I finally resolved that it was going to be my "must-have" purchase at GenCon - but a couple of weeks before we left, I happened to find a seller on eBay that had the model for $20 less than my FLGS (which is usually 10-15% cheaper that MSRP).  As much as I love to support my local shop and the vendors at the cons, It's hard to pass up saving forty bucks on a model that's this expensive.  I ordered the model and got to assembling it shortly after we got back from GenCon.

My first order of business was to thoroughly clean ALL the mold lines, flash, etc., from every piece of the model - I had spent a lot of time lusting after this model, and a lot of money; I was damn sure going to build it to the best of my abilities.

Initially, I was impressed with how little work the three main body pieces needed - unfortunately, this trend did not continue:

It was a really poor choice to put the mold vents on a perfectly round area

The wide, flat expanses were the worst - some entire sections needed a skim coating of putty, which was sanded flush after curing to make it flat.  Liquid Green Stuff made this job a lot easier.

It was hard to tell if the leg joints were supposed to be flat, or the offsets were intentional - either way, they didn't work.  The whole area needed to be reshaped

Air bubbles on the shoulder needed to be filled

Lots of flash on the feet / rear legs.  Surprisingly, the metal parts of this kit were overall easier to work with than the plastic pieces

I actually ran out of heavy-gauge brass rod while building this model, and paperclips weren't gonna do the trick - to improvise, I sawed the heads off of some machine screws. 

This actually worked quite well, and was extremely sturdy!

After the legs fell apart for the third time, I added one of the machine-screw pins there, too

\

The legs falling apart required a lot of removal / re-shaping of the green stuff work I did previously.  The Testor's Sanding Films were a lifesaver here

Cutting the cork for the base - I had to dig out a big sheet of cork from my supplies for this project

Base layer glued down

Cutting smaller "rock ledges" to allow me to pose the legs more dynamically

Mostly finished base

Ready for primer

...needless to say, the kit was a bear to put together & finish to a decent standard.  I've never really worked with a 28mm model this big before.  I've heard that the Forge World Titans can be a huge pain to build, but I've mostly heard people attribute that to the age of the molds - Privateer Press really can't use that excuse.  I have some (albeit very basic) experience with casting, and even to a rank amateur like me, some of their choices on where they placed the mold vents puzzled me.  Also, this particular model could have used a bit more detail with the instructions than the included 4"x5" diagram - I built the arms wrong THREE FREAKIN' TIMES until I finally figured it out (the "collars" that the hands attach to are fairly plain, but have to be attached in a particular direction for the arm shields to attach properly).  Soon, I'll be painting this model using some techniques I've never tried before - check back soon!

Priming Over Magnets

In my previous post, I had pics of how I added magnets to the Khador Heavy Warjack kit.  Next, I had to find a way to primer the model without completely covering the magnets - while they are neodymium magnets and are very powerful, they're small, and a few coats of primer / paint / clearcoat over them will greatly diminish their effectiveness.

Luckily, I found a solution in the toy section of my local drugstore:

Silly Putty!  (Note: in the past, I've had good results using poster tack, but the store actually didn't have any.  I've also bought Silly Putty at the dollar store before, so it might be cheaper if you want to stockpile it).

I probably don't need to explain the concept too deeply: you pull off tiny bits of the Silly Putty (work it for a bit to get it soft) and press it over the magnets:

After that, you can prime the model as usual:

After the primer dries, you can pick off the Silly Putty:

After the primer had dried, I roughed in my basecoat color (Vallejo Model Air Fire Red) around the magnets:

Since I plan to paint the model using zenital airbrushing, I'll have to paint the model with the magnetized bits attached - to make this easier, I went ahead and basecoated the backsides of the magentized bits:

Since I was using the Model Air paints, it took 3 or 4 coast to get adequate coverage with a brush.

Next, I gave the backs of the pieces a coat of brush-on Citadel 'Ardcoat:

...I wish the reason for this was some cool technical tip, but the truth of the matter is that I needed to transport the model unassembled, and I wanted to protect the pieces from getting chipped up in the box:

...the backs will be sprayed with matte varnish once finished.  The process of covering the magnets with Silly Putty will be repeated when the model is airbrushed.

Magnetizing the Khador Heavy Warjack Kit

...a while ago I bought the Khador Heavy Warjack kit - This is a single kit that allows you to build a Demolisher, Devastator, or a Spriggan. I didn't want to limit myself, so I decided to magnetize the interchangeable components, so I could use whichever one I wanted.  As this was the first model I've built in a loooong time, I was a bit rusty, and it took me a while - I didn't document the entire process, but here's the highlights:

The interchangeable parts for the warjack are the weapon arms, shoulder pads, heads, and the armored shroud covering the head.  The basic process for all the bits is the same - drill a hole slightly bigger than the magnet as deep as possible in each side, fill the hole with a tiny bit of superglue and Green Stuff, press the magnets into the hole, and remove the excess.  You have to make sure the poles of the magnets are aligned properly.

Magnetizing the shoulder pad

The middle part of the arms of this model were really weak and kept flexing - I built them up with several layers of Citadel's Liquid Green Stuff, and will file them into shape when it cures.

Magnetizing the front carapace

Filing excess Green Stuff after it has cured

Drilled out the barrels of the cannons on the Spriggan shouldpads

Mostly finished.  Since the head is almost completely concealed by the armored carapace, I opted to just use a single head, since magnetizing it would be awfully fidgety, and they're so small that they'd be waaay too easy to lose

...and that's about it for the build.  Next I have to find a way to prime it without covering up the magnets...