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Author Topic: Kill Team - Down with the Sickness  (Read 1990 times)

Offline Daeothar

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Kill Team - Down with the Sickness
« on: December 11, 2018, 10:21:11 AM »
I recently got my hands on the Kill Team book, and I liked what I saw. It will accomodate the use of miniatures from existing 40K armies, so it should be useable with a minimum of effort.

Should.

Because all of my armies are basically 3rd / 4th edition, and with some shoehorning could be used in 5th, but not beyond. Which is due to me stopping to play 40K around that time.

So I could use my existing Necrons, Dark Angels or Imperial Fists, but I would be missing out on some of the more powerful options available to more modern armies. And since I'm not about to hamstring myself in such a manner, I decided to start a new force especially for Kill Team.

I had been doing that for Shadow War: Armageddon, but by the time I had my squad completely converted (I was doing up a squad of Khorne Marines), it became apparent that the game was essentially a dud, and we never played it locally, even though I had big plans for it.

The unit building was completely different for that game though, so my Khorne squad was not really suitable for Kill Team; No terminators or Raptors are allowed, so I should be converting a couple of extra Marines to make it playable. And then I realized that 'normal' Chaos Marines are also a bit meh in the rules, and Thousand Sons or Death Guard is where it's at.

But then it dawned on me that I still had a pristine box of Dark Imperium I got for my birthday back when, collecting dust. And it contains an ample helping of Plague Marines! So I unearthed them, and started glueing them together, only to realize that the force in the box was lacking certain units, which I required. Such as a heavy weapon.

And it all spiraled out of control from there...

I ordered a cheap sprue of snap-fit Plague Marines, which gave me another three Marines to play around with.

In the meantime, I had decided on my force's composition, and even though I had not been planning to, there was no other option but to convert several miniatures to match my list, and adhere to WYSIWYG standards. Meaning taking the Massive Cleaver from the Terminator Lord in the box, and putting it on a Power Armored Marine. Which then required me to replace his shoulder pads as well, then do some sculpting to cover some unsightly holes etc, etc.

I also had to add a Plasma Pistol to the Unit Champion (also from another Plague Marine character). No matter he also carried a Plasma Gun on his backpack; this should give me the option to give him that in the list as well, should I be so inclined.

Another Marine received a Flail in place of the stick grenade he was holding. this flail was from a Skaven Plague Monk; perfect match I'd say. Coincidentally, this is the conversion I'm most fond of; the entire pose has just the right flow.

Finally, I added an Icon of Despair on the Champion's backpack. It's made from a Plague Monk bannerpole, a Nurgle icon from the 40K Chaos vehicle Sprue, some bells, also from a Plague Monk banner/icon, and some plastic rivets on the back of the icon.

The Plasma Gun Marine, the Blight Launcher Marine and the single Poxwalker (an easy way to fill up those last three points) luckily were just stock.

And after tatting up the bases, they received a basecoat of white, as I had decided early on that I wanted to paint them mostly with washes.

So the armour received a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone, and the shoulder pads a couple of coats of Army Painter Green Tone. the skin was done with Vallejo Light Skin as a basecoat, and a wash of Army Painter Military Shader on top of that.

All the rusted steel/iron metals received a basecoat of Vallejo Chocolate Brown, and that's where I'm at right now.

More to follow soon...
« Last Edit: December 11, 2018, 10:23:14 AM by Daeothar »
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Offline Exiledadmiral

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Re: Kill Team - Down with the Sickness
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2018, 06:40:44 PM »
They look great so far! I really like the breakdown of what colours and washes you've used.

Offline beefcake

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Re: Kill Team - Down with the Sickness
« Reply #2 on: December 12, 2018, 06:26:56 AM »
Cool!


Offline Daeothar

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Re: Kill Team - Down with the Sickness
« Reply #3 on: December 12, 2018, 10:18:28 AM »
Cheers guys. :)

I did some more work on the iron/steel parts last night. Did a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone all over them, and then stipled on a 50/50 mix of VMC Chocolate Brown and Vallejo Panzer Aces (or something like that) Light Rust. I purposely changed the mixing ration of the stipled paint throughout, to create as much tonal variation as possible.

Then I finished off with a technique I had not used before, so it was a bit of an experiment: I used Vallejo Weather Powder (Iron Oxide) mixed with water, and applied it. Very thinned down in some places to let it run into crevices, and almost paste-like stipled in other areas, mainly the flat surfaces, to create some texture to the rust.

And while the technique seemed to work (kinda), I'm just not happy with the results. The colour is off; it's somehow more purplish compared to what I was going for. In other words; it's not nearly orange enough. Also, and this is probably because of my lack of skill with this medium, the pigment has flattened out some of the detail, and the initial build ups on the flat areas has sunk in as well.

So now I'm left with a not quite rusty colour (at least not in combination with the other colours on the miniatures) with very little definition. To be honest, the original result of a single coat of Chocolate Brown was actually looking better! It certainly looked like old rust. Especially with the light edge highlighting of metallic paint I was planning.

I'm planning to fix this by first sealing in the pigment with a coat of matt varnish, and then reapplying the wash to get the depth back. Possibly, I will brown/blackline the details instead (or in addition).

Worst case, I will take off as much of the pigment as possible with cotton swabs, reapply a coat of chocolate and decide how to proceed from there.

The Studio Ghibli Man of Iron a couple of threads up is not helping either by the way; that's exactly the finish I was going for, but so much better executed...

So; no pictures of this stage; I'm just not happy with the result.

Oh; and I'll try to get a few better pics up this evening; my desklight and phone camera combination is not producing the best of results, especially with the pictures reduced in size. I only noticed after I put them up on the forum... ::)

Offline Ultravanillasmurf

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Re: Kill Team - Down with the Sickness
« Reply #4 on: December 12, 2018, 06:17:40 PM »
Good planning.

Offline tim in saskatoon

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Re: Kill Team - Down with the Sickness
« Reply #5 on: December 12, 2018, 10:11:10 PM »
Oh yeah! These are going to be awesome!

Is your champion going to be named Draiman?

Offline Daeothar

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Re: Kill Team - Down with the Sickness
« Reply #6 on: December 13, 2018, 08:21:52 AM »
Cheers guys; much appreciated :)

My planning did go out of the window a bit last night, as I ended up spending my time preparing a new RPG campaign I will be running in the new year. It's taking a lot of prep time, and with the holidays coming, I'm not sure how much of my spare time I can devote to hobbying, so I'm taking as much of a head start as I possibly can :D

Yes; there will be miniatures, but I won't be able to show them before the new year, because some of my players also visit (and post) here, and as they are still completely unaware what setting we'll be playing in, I'm keeping the entire project under my hat until then...

Is your champion going to be named Draiman?
Someone got the reference! :D

And yes; he now has to be, doesn't he? The name is even suitable somehow too...

Offline Daeothar

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Re: Kill Team - Down with the Sickness
« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2018, 10:18:15 AM »
Well, a bit more time has passed since the last installment than I had anticipated, but these are busy times...

As I posted earlier; I was not at all satisfied with the result of the weathering powder rust I had applied. But after they had sat on my desk for a couple of days, as I pondered what to do, the colour started to grow on me. And since I already had been satisfied with the actual effect, I decided to just push on.

First thing to do, was to fixate the powder. I had applied it mixed with water, and I knew it would just come right off, if I painted over it, so I decided to seal it with a matt varnish.

However; being impatient, I had in the meantime already painted on the bronze, and I didn't want to dull that down (just yet), so I couldn't use my regular method of spray on varnish. So I went out and got myself some brush-on Windsor & Newton matt varnish from the art suppy store, and dabbed that on (as opposed to brushing, since that would pull off the accumulated rust effect again).

I was a bit apprehensive about this approach, but in the end, it worked pretty well, and the stipling even added a little bit of texture to the rusted areas too.

Then I wanted to do a pin-wash of a very dark brown/black on those areas, but I didn't have the right materials. And being the stupid git I apparently am, I didn't bother checking the multitude of tutorials on this matter and just went ahead with what I thought I knew, and got myself a bottle of isopropenol. Because I thought that was the stuff to use when making a pin wash.

It wasn't...

Turns out I confused the information on two separate topics (fixating pigment powders and pin washing). And using isopropenol as a wash is a guaranteed way  to completely remove all paint from the area! The fact that it's known as cleaning alcohol should have warned me, but as it was, I luckily found out when I mixed the paint with the stuff on my palette, which is coated with so much layers of acrylic paint that it's twice its original weight by now.

And as I saw that the isopropenol was beginning to melt off layers of paint, I realized my mistake and stopped right there. I dabbed off the liquid with some paper towels, and retreated to contemplate what went wrong.

So I turned to Youtube, and quickly caught on. Isopropenol is used to fixate pigment powders, and white spirit with oil paints is used for pin washes.

Easy mistake to make, right? Right? Anyone? ::)

Yeah; so with that learning experience out of the way, I grabbed some black and burnt umber oil paints, a bottle of white spirit, and made my first pin wash.

And what a revelation that was!! :o

For me, this was the discovery of the year. No more faffing around with 0000 brushes and acrylic paints thinned with water and flow enhancer just right, doing everything by hand, usually with many, many little mistakes to correct. This stuff just flows, nay, runs right where you want it, in very thin, and perfectly even little lines.

I ended up black-lining many other parts as well, especially armour plates and cuts, scrapes and other hard edges. It's super easy, and I can't believe I never before tried it.

For certain I will be using this method a hell of a lot from now on! 8)

The end result may be a tad shiny (as exaggeratedly visible on the great cleaver, on the right in the picture), but nothing the final coat of varnish won't cover.

So after this little triumph (it's in the little things, isn't it :) ), it was just an easy application of some very thin edge highlights, just on the pronounced, raised edges, and even then just sparingly, of Vallejo Model Colour Oiled Steel, before I turned my full attention to the bronze areas.

These I gave a wash of Armypainter Dark Tone first, and then a very thin wash of a 50/50 mix of Vallejo Model Colour Light Turquoise and Sky Green, repeated here and there for effect.

The metals now only require some more black-lining in certain parts where it needs to be a bit more pronounced, and some actual black paint in holes, grilles etc. But the extremely oxidized look I was going for has been achieved.

As usual, the picture does not do the effects justice, but on the guy with the flail (second from the right), the rust effect can be seen best, especially on the Plague Knife, and the raised spoilers/trims on his backpack, and also on the guy with the Blight Launcher (third from the left), on the gun and the backpack vents.

Oh; and I also did the base coat on the bases already, so I can better see the match up of the colours against the eventual base colour. White bases really throw off the colours as perceived otherwise. No worries; they will be finished in a more pleasing look in the end... :)
« Last Edit: December 20, 2018, 10:28:16 AM by Daeothar »