Star Phantoms

[Slann]

looking great I always liked these guys .

[Ithmaril]

Thanks, Slann.

So, I finally finished off those bases, did some fitting weathering on the Marines' legs (You just can't stomp through that kind of dust in a ton of metal armor and keep it clean), and toned down the shoulderpad rim white. Not perfectly happy with the result as I had to rush a little, so many projects, so little time. But I screwed myself anyway with the whole process... because time-wise, they're waaay beyond what I'm normally investing for straightforward rank and file.

Anyway, here's the result.



C&C still very welcome, and still not sure what fate awaits those guys.

[Bigred]

I think their fate should be to be joined by a small combat squad of matching Astral Claws. Then you can taunt us with a series of awesome Palace of Thorns diorama pics.

[Aldramelech]

Love the bases, all good.

[Ithmaril]

Bigred: That miiiight just work, but they're not really diorama-quality, and cheap-a*-Macragge too. On a different note, I don't have room in our small apartment to place it (I don't even have a gaming table). So it would kind of be a waste.

Aldramelech: Glad you like, thanks!

Sooo, after some careful consideration, a muster of what stuff I have around to work with, and some more planning, it's decided- I'll do 1k points of them to get some 40k gaming again, and then maybe expand them. Not really a difficult decision in the end, because I don't need to buy to much, and let's be honest, there are more challanging projects than doing 1k points of Marines. And if I don't want to keep them in the end, they'll sell better as a painted army.

Some help with army list building would be very much appreciated, though. If you'd like to help a painter in distress, head over here: [url]http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?p=19164#post19164[/url]

[ChrisW]

wow,

i love the effect you managed on the shoulder pads with the blue, looks like they polished up before the battle.

i've been thinking that a lot of my armies look too neat, how did you do the weathering? or how would you 'dirty-up' armour plates or tanks for example (if you care to share)

[Ithmaril]

Sure! A good example of how I'm doing it (and I'm far from an expert) would be [URL="http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/tt193/ithmaril/Rhino1_fin.jpg"]my PH WE Rhino[/URL]. Now this is exclusivly for Tanks: To get a "dried mud/dust" effect, I collect fine sand (almost-dust), mix it with some model sand, and glue it on the model after the initial paintjob where the movement through terrain would splatter it (again, have a look at the pic). Then, I paint it with scorched brown, drybrush by mixing in more and more iyanden darksun, and use some glossy old GW flesh wash where it's supposed to look still wet. Note that the best thing to do here is to take a short and dense brush and work with very little paint, and pat it on, with occassional strokes into different directions. On the Rhino I've shown again, I went a wee bit too much over the top (less normally is more), and there's also an example of how to not do it on the front, on the right side of the small "3 - IX" marking, where I brushed the dust on horizontally, and it looks terribly fake.

If you do this, you can also add spots where the vehicles' varnish/camo pattern splintered off by painting patches/lines of black on armor plating ridge,s and adding some metallic colour, leaving black lines.

On these Star Phantoms models, I didn't care so much and just took a dense, short brush to apply (again very little pigment of) snakebite leather first, and one more layer with Iyanden Darksun, drybrushing from below to the top of the power armour plating to go for a very dusty effect. Nice and simple.

Hope that kinda helps.

[vman]

these guys look so awesome

The weathering is fantastic, its so nice to see dirty "realistic" looking space marines

[Ithmaril]

Thanks, vman.

So, as I'm still planning out the army list, but need to keep my hands busy from time to time, I'm trying a wholly new approach (for me at least) towards this by doing the bases before I even decide on the details of the final model constellation. Here are some unpainted ones:

[Aventine]

Is anyone in your area making a rebel chapter?