I had mentioned before that some of my GK Interceptors had lost their teleport vanes. This is one of the main things that marks them as "Interceptors" instead of just regular Strike Squads so I need to fix them. Also, all of these were intact a few years ago and they've been pretty lightly used these last few years. I suspect it happened in the move to this house a few years back but who knows? Damage like this and the general crappiness of how the bases looked - even though I redid them a few years ago - were the impetus for this whole re-work effort for this army.
One of the upsides of the current Grey Knight models is that two kits make all of the infantry options in the army - one for the power armored guys and one for the terminator armored guys. They are remarkably flexible and one of my long-term concerns is that whatever updates come for them it will not be anywhere near this good. Right now the one sprue makes five Strikes, Interceptors, Purgators, or Purifiers, plus you can use it to build some characters as well if you want. The terminator kit is the same - it makes Terminators, Paladins, and any other characters you might want, plus both kits come with all of the weapon options you might want for a typical squad. It's just great!
What this means though - and if you've worked with this army before you already know - is that you have a lot of spares and leftover parts from each sprue after you build a squad. Some people use this as an opportunity to magnetize everything to ensure maximum flexibility - melee weapons, heavy weapons, backpacks so your Strikes can switch to Interceptors as needed - and it's probably a smart way to go but I bought a lot of these things already built and I am very selective in my magnetization anyway so I have not done much of that here. I'm more of a "commit and figure out how best to use a particular setup" kind of guy. Coming out of it though means I have a lot of spare parts for Grey Knights of all types.
So when it came time to deal with the damaged interceptors here's what ran through my mind:
- I could just try to combine the two squads in question to salvage an intact 5-man squad ... but there were not 5 without damage. I had already done this when I picked out 5 good ones and finished them a while back. So what was left was not enough to make another squad.
- I could just clip off the remaining vanes and call them Strike Squads now. This just felt like a give-up and it meant I would have to make 2 new Interceptor Squads from scratch. I mean I have the bodies to do it but it seemed like a lot of work when I kind of already have them ... well 90% of them anyway.
- I could just take off the backpacks they have now and paint up some replacements either for the whole squads (ensures they match) or just for the damaged troopers (less work but it could be tricky to match the paint.
So instead I went for the final option: I have a bunch of leftover Interceptor backpacks so why not clip the vanes off of some of those and use them to replace the missing ones? It keeps everything that is already there "there" and is less work in some ways. Plus the clipped backpacks are now just regular Strike packs - not that I lack those really but I like the idea of preserving them as a usable part instead of trashing them.
The downside of only replacing the vanes is a) trying to keep them straight(ish) while gluing little fiddly bits onto an existing painted model and b) I'll still have to match the paint. It turned out getting the vanes on straight while not building up a ring of glue around the base was not that tough so that worked out well. Matching the paint could be trickier but the vanes are often depicted with a blue glow around them so worst case I'll go back and drybrush some blue-white onto them and make it look intentional instead of like a screw-up. It's certainly easier (and less noticeable) than matching a whole backpack.
So what you see there is the white parts are what I replaced. I grabbed 5 packs (and a hammer - see below) and sprayed them white and then clipped them off and glued them into place. Now you might have noticed there are enough there that are not white I could have made an intact squad - but they were not intact when I started. I found two of the painted vanes broken off in a box with other GK stuff so I started by re-attaching those first. Then I worked on the replacement parts. The top of the Librarian's force staff broke off at some point and it's just gone, apparently, so I decided he would now have a hammer. In the current edition they are all "Nemesis Force Weapons" so they can be anything and in older editions they usually carry "force staves" as opposed to swords or axes so he should be fine there too. Also, I had to reattach his gun- hand as it came off too and fortunately that went without any drama.
This is after applying some paint. I was convinced these guys were originally painted with GW Leadbelcher, not Grey Knights Steel as one might expect, but if they were there was a light wash of either Nuln Oil or maybe an Army Painter shade as it's a tiny bit shinier than the rest of the silvery part of the miniature. Most people looking at them, especially during a game, probably wouldn't notice but ti was nagging at me a little bit. There's an easy solution here though - I just drybrushed some Leadbelcher onto the other vanes to even it out and now all the vanes are a little bit shinier than they were, which is fine by me considering what they do. It looks a little more intentional, at least, if anyone does notice.
 |
| Still some other work to be done here - that guy on the left's staff-hand is way too shiny! |
The Librarian got his force hammer painted with a simple speedpaint job and some leadbelcher touch up on the shaft. I think it needs a few more touches of gold here and there but I'll look at that later when I work on the bases. I also covered up the weird white spot on his forehead. Not sure where it came from and I don't remember seeing it before but it's handled now. Yes, as I approach the end of the work the perfectionist creeps out and starts getting in they way - "...enemy of the done", etc. I'm working on it.
So now I just need to go back and do/re-do/touch-up the bases and get them flocked and finished and this batch is ready for the display case - or maybe the tabletop ... maybe this weekend even ...
More to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment