Jediguru's Riposte (updated 7/21/13) It's been quite awhile since I updated here. That's not to say I haven't been busy. Actually I've done more painting in the last several months than ever before. Warmachine though, has been the focus of my time painting miniatures and I just feel wrong about posting all my WM models on a plog dedicated to Warhammer and more specifically Vampire Counts. Thus, I haven't posted here for something like 7 months. I have started a blog dedicated to miniatures and war gaming of all kinds. You can find a link to that in my signature. I also have a plog over on the Privateer Press forums. That too is linked in my signature.
I've mentioned before that Warmachine/Hordes has a really strong following in my area and Warhammer and 40k are just not played as much, especially WHF. I have been getting in a few games of 40k with a friend and there is a smaller following of 40k players at my LGS. Figured I'd post up what I've been working on lately. I purchased a couple Space Marines halves of the AOBR set something like a year and a half ago and have just gotten to painting them.
My base coat for all the armor is plain old Krylon gray primer. I then just did base coat colors with no shading or highlights. I decided I wanted my space marines to be easy to paint so I made up my own "dip" using Liquitex matte gel medium mixed with water and black paint. After some testing to get the right viscosity, I applied it to the whole miniature and what you see is the effect. Of course it's not up to the quality of most of my Protectorate of Menoth miniatures, but I won't be spending as much time playing 40k as I do Warmachine, so I don't plan on putting in as much time or money.
Once I finally decided to get started on painting the 2 tactical squads, in the middle of painting I realized that I'm short 2 boltguns and 2 backpacks. I vaguely remembered the ebay auction I got these from did mention that a couple marines were missing some pieces. Hmm, well that kind of sucks. I decided I would try and cast them from the ones I had. Problem was I was already finished painting all of them and I wasn't sure if the instant mold would affect the paint. I recently purchased the new starter set "Dark Vengeance" but it hadn't arrived in the mail yet so I decided to wait and then use a nice fresh boltgun and backpack to cast from. I posted pictures and explained my process for casting on my blog. If you're interested you can check that out there but here are some final pics and comparisions.