Harlequin Friday

I know today is usually Defiler Friday, but I've done little work on it this week. Instead, I thought I'd dedicate this entry to the excitement I'm feeling about the upcoming re-release of Eldar Harlequins (Please Note: I did not paint the miniature above, but thanks for thinking that).

I wanted to post these pictures of the one Harlequin I have remaining from my original harlequin box set way back in 1989.




It's funny to think that I painted this figure 17 years ago! The new figures are so superior to these old ones. I have no Eldar force, but I definitely will be painting some of these.

Defiler Friday!!

Here is my Defiler "up on blocks" as the glue dries on it's legs. I was a little worried about this part because it looked like it was going to be a difficult task to get these things in the right place. I've seen a ton of kids at games shops with these poorly built, leg-less defiler. These kids always make me what to yell, "Damn, Son! Can't you get those legs glued on? You're a disgrace!" I didn't want to be one of those kids, so I really wanted to do a good job on the legs. I'm happy with the way things turned out, and I've gained a lot of sympathy for the kids with the crooked and/or missing-legs Defilers. This is a tough kit.

Below are the bits that are miraculously going to turn into my army's general. I'm thinking of just putting them in a box, shaking it vigorously, and praying to Tzeentch that the thing magically comes out the way I want.


Seriously, when I laid out these parts to take this photo, all those theories that have been in my head for months about what parts are going to fit together became very real. It's a what-did-I-get-myself-into feeling.

You may notice that the part that is going to become the bottom half is a sawn in half Dark Angel. You may be wondering what happened to the top half (OK, probably not, but just play along). Well, I needed something to give my Defiler a little extra weight in the back to balance it's big claws int he front. What better than a half of a metal Space Marine? That's right. Entombed inside my defiler is the mutilated corpse of a Loyalist Space Marine!! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!

Eh-hem. OK, back to reality. Dungeon Con is this weekend, so I should mention that. More info can be found here. I will not be attending, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. To celebrate, here's a picture of me violating the Dungeon's strict food and drink policy.

Links, Revisited

In the continued effort to be the resource for all things Thousand Sons here are some links. Some of these I've posted before, but there are a few new good ones.

Games Workshop"s Article - This is an "official" tactica from the parent company itself. Many people complain that GW Army lists are not realistic in the gamer world as a whole. In other words, no one would play with an army they saw in White Dwarf. I'm not strategist, but I tend to agree with that. The lists featured in this article are good, but there are some errors with some of the rules (Which is funny because this is on the website of the people who wrote the rules).

Librarium Online - This is one of the first fan written tacticas I read. I suspect it was written during 3rd edition, because he's still using the old slow and purposeful rule.

Nine Legions - This isn't very well written, but the tactical advice seems right on. It made me re-think a lot of what I'm going to do with my sons especially with regards to close combat.

Warseer Forum - This thing is huge! It is a forum thread on Warseer that is at present count 222 pages and 2,216 entries long. The information is in no way organized, but there is a lot of it. It's also a good place to go if you have rules questions since a lot of veteran sons players visit this thread. There are also a few battle reports with pictures buried in there somewhere.

Alan O'Bryan - This guy is a Golden Demon winning commission painter who has a sons army for his personal use. Pictures are here. All of it's good, but some of his style I'm not fond of. I do like the yellow armor on what I think is a group of chosen(?).

Defiler Friday!

I took some pictures of my Defiler in-progress. Not much to see at this point. I did, however, magnetize the top turret so that it can spin independently of the bottom.

In this picture you can see where I epoxied the magnet. There is another magnet inside the ball joint that normally attaches to the turret. I glued these together at the same time to prevent the magnet from switching polarity while the glue was drying.

I'm almost out of my old tube of Testor's plastic glue, and I'm not sure what I'll do when it runs out. Only hobby shops carry that stuff, and I don't know when I'll get to one. In the meantime, I'll probably use super glue to keep the process going.

I wasn't sure of the safety of super glue on plastic, so I asked some friends of mine. As it turns out, my friends are pretty knowledgeable about glue. I received this educational bit from Aaron:

Generally speaking...

Plastic to Plastic = Testors model glue in a tube (contains Acetone which is why it melts plastic and styrofoam)

Plastic to Metal = Cyano Acrylate (Zap, Super Glue, crazy Glue, GW Super Glue - with the exception of its thickness, it is all the same stuff.)

The above is the rule of thumb.

I have had bonds with Superglue on plastic that were a total joke, while others were unbreakable. There was an occasion a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to remove a gaurdsman's arm that was glued on with CA and the arm broke in half because the bond was so strong. If you want to use CA on plastic, make sure the surfaces are as flush as possible, and use just enough to cover the surface. When it cures it takes on this weird crystalline form, so if you use too much it will compromise the bond. This isn't the case with most other types of glue where the more the better.

Epoxy glue essentially forms plastic around what it is glued to. That is why it bonds so well. It has problems too, but is a adequate solution to getting plastic and metal to stick.

Think of Epoxy as liquid plastic. You want to avoid using Epoxy on anything that has fine detail, or is a cosmetic surface. Epoxy, unless you are very diligent about cleaning it up will make bulbous drips all over which are hard to get rid of. If you don't mind an area of rigidity, it works great for gluing bits of foam rubber, and fabric together.

Testors glue will fail at gluing metal and plastic together. The metal just doesn't want anything to do with Testors.

The only thing that CA glue sucks at is gluing things that are porous. If you were trying to glue a rock or a bit of plaster to a base, the rock would soak up a lot of the CA and there would be very little of a bond to speak of. The more gooey the CA is (Take zap for example) the less that this is an issue. Epoxy is great for porous surfaces.

There is more than you ever wanted to know about glue. I very rarely have models break, they do from time to time, but not often. Pinning always is a good idea, but I understand not doing it that often because it is a hassle. On metal minis it is essential in my opinion unless you are gluing large surfaces.

Score (pt II)

I was in Milwaukee with Clare this weekend. While wondering around, killing time before our train home, we happened upon this used book store. It was huge three floors of books stacked to the ceiling. We walked in and I looked to the right to find a huge stack of White Dwarfs. Most of them I didn't have, but I restrained myself and only bought issues 292, 300, and 316. The double sized issue 300 was the nicest catch at $5. It didn't have most of the inserts, but it did have the paint pot stickers.

Anyway, here is a new picture of a mini I've shown here before:

It now has the final stage of blue highlight. Time to get back to the gold.

Well, I hope that the fact that this site now has a visual appeal, people will be coming back for more. Unfortunately, I have no pictures today. Still, I want to show I'm committed to deliver Thousand Sons themed information.

I do have something interesting from eBay. This really impressed me when I saw it in the September issue of US White Dwarf. I was shocked to see it end up on the auction block. I've considered painting up a few pre-Heresy Sons myself, but I have more than enough to keep me busy at the moment.

More pictures

Well, not only am I learning to use a digital camera, but I'm learning iPhoto on my Mac as well. It took a little while to figure out how to adjust the brightness of these pictures, but they actually look a lot better. Hopefully as I learn more, the pictures will get better. Also as I paint more, the pictures will get better because there will be more to see.

This first miniature is at an early stage. It only has the black under coat, one layer of Midnight Blue and another of Regal Blue. It's pretty dark at this point.


This is a miniature at the next stage. This is with a layer of Enchanted Blue. The highlights are really starting to stand out. Of all of my Sons, this one has my favorite pose.


This miniature has been seen here before. It's my second test miniature. It has the final highlight of Ice Blue and the gold trim. I was unsure how I wanted to paint the gold, so at this point, there are no highlights on it.



This is my first test miniature. I've already started to repaint it in the style I settled on with my second test. You'll see that on this one, I used the typical gold with a inking of Flesh Wash and highlights of Mithril Silver. I really didn't like the results, so I'm going to be experimenting with the previously mentioned gold mixture.