Monday, February 28, 2011

Venom Mark II, Airbrushing Dark Eldar

Here is a pic of my second Venom.  It looks a lot like the first venom.  I tried a couple of different things while building it, but kept coming back to my original design.  At least it will match my other one.  I put the hanger-on on the other side, added a shortened raider spear, and added some splinter rifles to the side.  I thought it would be cool to have the pilot with his sidearm out, ready to pop a Mon-Keigh.  It is about 30% painted or so.  I did all the work so far with an airbrush, and will pick out the details now to finish it.  This took about 3 minutes to put this amount of paint on it.  Vehicles love the airbrush.
Here are some pics of my Ravagers.  I also started to airbrush them, and like the look so far.  I like the Chinese feel that they have. 
This one took about an hour or so of drybrushing, dark lining, and highlighting.  I later airbrushed the sails a bit.  This one is a little further along, but still needs a lot of paint.

If you look closely, I am holding a magnetized head of the sponson gunner.  I wanted to be able to switch out the dark lances and disintegrator cannons and found that the head of the gunner really got in the way of taking out the gunner and replacing the gun.  Once the head was removed, you can remove the gunner very easily.  With the way the arms, gun, and weapon mount work together, you don't really need to glue anything in place.
Great model.
Here you can see I magnetized the front weapon mount.  Pretty easy really.  The weapon shield/mount stays together well with a press fit, but the gun would always come apart when I tried to put the mount into the front of the raider/ravager.  This way the gun stays together when you put the magnets together.  I have found that the gunner holds the gun pretty well without magnets or glue, so a weapon swap is pretty easy.  I magnetized one, but found it is not really necessary.  We'll see if they hold up after a few more games.
Here are my Reaver jetbike squads.  You can see I have a lot of work to do still on the pilots, and the bikes, but they are coming along.  The rear three were painted in a more conventional way, but I like the yellow addition to the cowling.  The pilots are probably going to get a yellow racing stripe down their racing leathers as well.
They look pretty impressive all together.  Just two more raiders to finish assembling and basecoating.  Don't worry, I am going to do something about those nasty yellow fronts.  I will definitely tone them down a bunch.


Airbrushing all three ravagers, the venom, and twelve reavers took only about an hour.  That included set up and clean up time.

One last thing and then I will shut up, If you get an airbrush, I would invest in some good airbrush paint.  Mixing is a hassle, and I got the yellow wrong so I had to do it 3-4 times.  Then I got it too thick and you can see some splattering on the ravager sails and reaver cowling.  The red paint was airbrush paint and I just poured it into the airbrush.  The yellow I mixed myself and was at first too thin, then too thick.  Too thin meant it disappeared after it dried, and too thick meant it splattered.  Live and learn.

10 comments:

  1. Wow. I know the models are a work in progress but are they sharp. Makes me wanna throw all of mine in the garbage and start over.

    Great stuff.

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  2. Love the Venom mark II and ravagers! I might steal that second sail idea :)

    Also, interesting take on magnetizing the weapons. An alternative idea I had when I started magnetizing my raiders and ravagers is to glue the gunner to the weapon, and instead magnetize only the barrel of the weapon. If you look closely, it's the only real difference between the Dark Lances and the Disintegrators. I haven't done this yet since I'm using only Dark Lances for now, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

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  3. Larry, I have seen your stuff. If you decide to throw your stuff away, I will send you a self addressed, postage paid box, because your stuff looks great. And it is all done. I am jealous. I especially liked the hellions, really great work.

    Tame. Great idea on the dark lances and disintegrators. I will have to look into that. I like to have my models as simple as possible without losing the ability to swap things out. Thanks for the idea.

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  4. I'm going to have to agree with the other guys. These vehicles are looking outstanding. It looks cool to see them all together too. I have to get an airbrush now.

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  5. Hi again,

    your flying armada looks really impressive. I once again have two questions though. :)

    1. From the gaming point of view, it seems you equip your venoms with the default weapons set - twin-linked splinter rifle and a splinter cannon. Weapon choice aside, it looks as if you used some weapons from the previous DE edition to represent rifles, which seems a nice idea to me, conforming to the "use all the leftovers" approach. As for the splinter cannon, did you use one available from the Kabalites box, or just used the Vyper gun?

    2. It appears that you mounted both weapons under the hood of the Venom, fixed in place and pointing straight forward. Gaming-wise again, don't you think it affects the flexibility of the vehicle and hinders its defense?

    3. Double aether-sails look awesome, and I'd really like to add those to my vehicles. But then again, don't you think it hinders the cover options available to the vehicle (as it's silhouette becomes about 15% larger)? I'm not sure if rule-wise the sails count for targeting and cover issues.

    Then again, the overall menacing appearance of your army may win you some battles without a fight :)

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  6. Elvin,

    Thanks for the comments.

    1.The weapons have been giving me a headache. In game I will always use the two splinter cannons. Currently, my MK I has has two splinter rifles from the raider box. The MK II has two splinter cannons from the original dark eldar warriors. I am going to swap out those with two new splinter cannons underneath. I could probably get away with telling people they are armed with two splinter cannons, and only hardcore dark eldar players would even know the difference, and even then probably not care.

    2. I hadn't thought about that, and maybe should mount them on an under the nose turret. Then they could shoot anyone anywhere.

    3. I like the twin sails too. They really look like a pirate ship with both sails. I tried them lower, and looked like they would knock the pilot over when they moved. You could set them lower if that didn't bother you. I think if you find any terrain that these bad boys can hide completely behind, it probably will cover the second sail too. I am not a tournament player yet, so I primarily model and paint, and play for fun. I am competitive all day at work, and play mainly for fun. If I am not having fun at a game, I am wasting precious time. I like to win, but don't let games raise my blood pressure. I think if you put double sails on, at the lower level, you would probably be ok as long as they were bent and out of the way of the pilot.

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  7. Thank you so much for your patience in explaining all this to me. :) It's just that I've just unpacked my first Vyper and now I'm trying to figure out the details of conversion.

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  8. no problem elvin. At lunch, I tried mounting some splinter cannons onto some reaver leftovers and making a rotating turret to put either on the nose where the guns are now, possibly a little lower like a falcon nose mount, or above the pilot with a standing gunner. I liked the look of both, and need to do some more cutting and dicing before I decide. Good luck on your first venom!

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  9. Hi again,

    that's the guy who asked a lot about how you did your venoms ;)

    So I made a couple of those and wanted to show you the results, since you insired me a lot.

    Here goes the first: http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=85088

    ...and the second one, more heavily modded to fit the Venom's lines better:
    http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=87669

    Hope you like them,

    Regards,
    Evgeny. :)

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  10. Thanks for the update elvin, and the shout out on heresy!

    I really like your venoms. The railings look great. I also really like the over under splinter cannons. I may have to try that too. I thought it might be cool to have them out over the sides in the rear area on pintle mounts.

    I also liked the wings you used. It gives them a sharp, aerodynamic look.

    Very nice venoms.

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