To those of you who have painted Crisis Suits: Is there some process to it that makes it not such a pain?
Getting back in behind the arms and in between the body and jetpack is really killing me. I can't find a way to do it cleanly.
On the plus side I'm almost done with my shield drones. I love the drones. I wish you could field units of them. Not like Heavy Gun Drones or Gun Drones, but something like...
Drone Squad
Unit size 4-12 Drones
Up to two Gun Drones may be upgraded to Marker Drones or Shield Drones.
Up to two Gun Drones may be upgraded to Sniper Drones Heavy Gun Drones.
If a Heavy Gun Drone is Taken, it may replace one of it's 2 burst cannons for a Marker Light at no cost.
If a Marker Drone is taken, it may twin-link it's Marker Light.
Something like that. Maybe splitting it into Gun/Marker/Shield Drone squads as one choice and Heavy/Sniper/Shield Drone squads as another. Maybe some special character that would let you essentially field a drone army. Throw in the FW turrets. It could get cool.
The drones were a lot of the appeal of Tau to me. The Battlesuits too, but they were very secondary. I don't use any drones because they're fairly ineffective. I think some more complex drone squads could get a lot more interesting. If they had some more interesting aspects, instead of just X Gun Drones that aren't terribly effective (though I have used them and had them really shine a few times), I could overlook the effectiveness for the coolness. Just my thoughts.
Umm paint on the sprue not after assembly
ReplyDeleteThe haughty "Umm" is a bit annoying, especially because of the implied "noob" that goes afterward, but I'll just ignore it from here on.
ReplyDeleteI had actually never even heard of painting on the sprue until...probably a week ago? The idea intrigues me. I typically paint in pieces, off the sprue anyway. I can definetly see the advantages, but I can't imagine how cutting it off the sprue wouldn't hurt the now painted piece.
What I normally do is something like glue body and legs together on the base so I can "use" the models while I paint the other bits and then assemble as I finish things. I couldn't really do that with the Crisis suits and I got impatient. I've considered trying to pull them apart, but it seems like an utterly terrible, if not impossible idea.
I was kind of just hoping someone would have an idea other than "You're screwed. Do it right next time.", which is all I, or my roommate, could come up with :)
Assuming you're starting with a black undercoat (most people seem to) then just be sure that it has a good coverage of everything. That way, if you can't get to a fiddly corner it will be in shadow anyway. I've not had real trouble with getting at least a base coat in the gaps of my two suits.
ReplyDeleteYou can see my helios suit on my blog at: http://ghostnebulae.blogspot.com/2010/01/inquisition-monitoring-station-zeta-4.html
The final picture has a close up.
What colour are your suits? If they are the same green as your shield drones then it shouldn't be too hard to get some paint in the nooks and crannies and let the rest be covered by black.
PS: Painting on the sprue is cool, but I never liked having to scrape off the paint from the glue mating surfaces afterwards. The way I see it, if you can't get a brush in there, most people won't see it so don't worry about it.
I like gray primer...it makes things difficult sometimes. I like it because it's a good primer and it's easier to cover than black, but easily covered with black.
ReplyDeleteI was going for a very similar look to my Fire Warriors and Shield Drones. Green on all the armour, black joints, glowing recesses, tin bitz on some metal. I'll probably drybrush the gunmetal over the black joints like I did on the interior of the shield drones.
I got the green back there, and I don't think it will be terribly difficult to repeat, but it was a royal pain. Ah well, I only have to do it 2 more times :)