Tuesday 6 October 2015

Losing your bits


The Decurion Auto-Take

This week, I ha' been mostly painting Tomb Blades.  They are remarkably sturdy given their delicate construction and long flight stands.  Flight stands are rubbish most of the time.  They might be transparent but they don't exactly fade into the background and start to look really grubby and scratched almost immediately.  They are also very brittle and not designed for clumsy, ham fisted gamers to knock around the tabletop.  And what is that stupid bubble that always seems to form inside the stem?

Comes with a variety of options and plush, leather interior

I have managed to snap the flight stand off my second Ghost Ark now and I haven't even played a game with it.  Fortunately I have learned the hard way how to replace them.  First off, keep all the stems that you get in kits with flight stands.  You always get too many, usually of differing lengths allowing you to adjust the height of the model.  Also, don't glue them to the bases.  If you put too much glue on then they look awful and you'll never get the stems back out if they break.

Rust effect $99 extra

Having said that, if the stem is too narrow to fit snugly into the base or model, then you might have to use a bit of glue to widen it, but never glue it to the base imho.  Use the spares as replacements when you inevitably snap the damn vehicle off it's stand during a game.  Or you could just not bother with flight stands at all I guess.  I've seen a few gamers do this.  In fact, you know what?  Do what you want.  Its your hobby.

Oculus VR headset comes as standard

I also finished my first squad of converted(?) warriors.  I wanted to repose them in silent, uniform ranks as if in stasis or awaiting command.  So I chopped all their legs up and some of their arms.  I literally chopped up every joint in the leg, actually removing the kneecaps and reversing them to make the legs straight.

I wanna be a skybourne ranger..

This got really boring after a while.  I mean life threateningly boring.  Right up until the point where my scalpel clipped through a tiny piece of Necron leg and sent it spinning across the room into a murky, little used corner.  So I'm reposing the remaining 10 warriors in a kneeling position which requires much less dismemberment.

Knobbly Knees competition.  Pontins, Blackpool 1958

I don't recommend reposing Necron legs like this. Of course, if you enjoy crawling around on your hands and knees for half an hour searching amongst the fluff and detritus for a Necron kneecap (about 1.5mm in diameter) which pinged 15ft across the garage then by all means go for it.  If, on the other hand, you find this sort of activity distasteful then you could try Tripwire's relatively sane way to reposition necron warriors. I only read his blogpost after chopping up my warriors, so more fool me.

Awaiting orders

I now have a high beam camping penlight in my possession which I use to systematically quarter and search the floor area for lost model kit components.  I'm getting quite good at it.  Apart from that time when a Broodlord claw was actually stuck to my sleeve rather than on the ground.  Dave Weston's method of hoovering the carpet over the dropzone and inspecting the bag afterwards may also be quite effective (see the comments section of that post).

The old guard

9 comments:

  1. Still never found that Zoanthrope vent, although I keep coming across the one I didn't use and think hey I've found it! Meanwhile the Borrowers stil hold one of my Cerastus shoulder joints hostage, as well as a complete Lictor and there's also something else pretty spectacular I;ve lost and thought would be uncovered in the transition to the man-cave but it did not surface and for the life of me I can't recall what it was... this hobby does things to the mind man!

    Meanwhile the Warriors look fantastic, although could you miagine if that was the standard pose and how we'd all complain about how static it was, blah, blah, blah and then you wnet and foolishly spent hours posing them that way! Ha, ha, insane. And I think the second from right wins the Knobbly Knees competition, Pontins Blackpool indeed :)

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    1. Fantastic news, that may paint me as a massive egotitst but I did just follow your link to my own blog to read the comment you referenced and the kep point here is I was able to read the blog post! I can't access my blog at work, apparently they don't like us looking at blogs, forums or games related enterprise. It can be a bit hit an miss though and some of blogs and forums manage to sneak under the radar. Anyway, it would transpire that because your link to my blog goes via blogspot.co.nz it has gone Stealth and Shrouded under the eyes of the Inquisition so I should be back on track for keeping up with my comments. So thanks for the link, I'd have never found this back door otherwise!

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    2. The Borrowers! Yes! I didn't think of them. Its the only logical explanation sometimes, along with the Sock Fairy. I'm also delighted to have tunneled a back door through your security system at work. Thanks.

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  2. For the flight stands, I recommend that you drill out the hole is the model to 3mm, snap of the bit that voluntarily snaps off if you look at it funny, use the rest of the flight stands as is. This works fantastically for all my vehicles and drones, and I haven't had a breakage since I started doing this.

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    1. Not sure what you mean. Show me on games night.

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  3. I magnetized all the Hive's Gargoyles at the belly where it typically breaks; but the Hive mind has admittedly gone loony for magnets here. . . .

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    1. Yeah, Gargoyles were my first encounter with flight stands. Glued every single one of them in my ignorance. I've magnetized the bases to a metal tray now which makes transportation slightly less hair-raising at least.

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  4. thanks for the shout out - but I'm not as smart as advertised; I did the first 20 the way you did. Only those who have gone through this can know how hopeless it makes you feel.

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    1. It wouldn't have been difficult for them to create the sprue with posable legs. Ironically, some of the Necron vehicle drivers, sitting down in fixed positions have legs detached from the hip on the sprue. Puzzling.

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