I'm a stripper! Part 2

The tank from part one has soaked in Superclean for a few days now, and here are the results after running them under warm water and scrubbing them with an old toothbrush.

With the black paint gone, another layer of  orange was revealed beneath. 

The metal parts were stripped clean! 

 All-in-all, I am quite pleased with these results. The metal in particular was stripped down to looking almost like new again! The Superclean did what Warfrog told me it would do to superglue: it completely eliminated it! Thus this model is mostly in pieces now. The under layer of orange-yellowish paint was revealed when the black was removed, however the superclean had a tougher time dissolving it on the plastics.

Just add some tall grass and more debris and it look like a scene from an Imperial junk yard!

 These plastic bits, and any bits that still has some paint on it, were put back into the Superclean. Also, I placed into the jar the following models that my pal Brian Hunter gave to me. I think these guys will end up joining my Celestial Lions squad at some point, but who knows for sure?  Once I have them cleaned up, I'll have them ready for whatever fate awaits them!

The next batch of strippers. 

I'm a stripper!

A paint stripper that is!

Tonight I have begun the process of soaking a model tank in Super Clean. I'm only using a big-ass mason jar that I picked up at Walmart for like  $13.00. I put the model in first and poured the Superclean on top of it. Warfrog's Turtorial will teach you more about this stuff (and then some).

A while back, July I think, I met the legendary Necron Bob who was in town to give his old army to Da Masta Cheef. You can find out more about this event, that Da Masta Cheef titled The Demise of the Black Consuls, here and see pics of the other models as well. I ended up with one of his models, a Black Consul 2nd Edition era Vindicator.  I am probably going to turn this into a World Eater Vindicator. This model's paint scheme is thickly applied and I didn't want to paint over it for fear of losing details, so it just has to be stripped.

It is now sitting in the jar in the first pic, in fact, it's in that pic, going through the early stages of the stripping process. I will check on it again tomorrow night and see how it's going.

Orcs! (with a 'C')

"Hi, you might know me from other posts in this blog!"

Following up from the last post, civil-wars-of-empire, I have chosen Orcs. I sorta hinted at that with the last pic in that post. I love Orks and Orcs, and I have been itching to get back to my Orks, I have kind of figured out how to paint them fairly quickly (when I apply myself that is). Plus, it's the only army that I have a rule book for and my current budget is too tight to justify dropping $50 (each-I am a completist) for the others! I figured that as I do up my fantasy Orcs it would also encourage me to finish up a few of the 40k Orks that have been in painting station limbo for way too long. Also, painting these things will be a refreshing break from many years working with Space Wolf Gray and Shadow Gray paint...

Dabbling in the Army Builder and rummaging through my mini-closet, I pulled out two complete boxes of Orc Boyz, a box of Gobos (sans 5 gobos that I turned into gretchen), an Orc Chariot (already assembled and base-coated, the arrer boyz and twin-choppa orcs from the 6th ed starter set, 4 giants (original Maurader giant, Giants of Albion set and the current plastic giant), 6 bases of painted Snottlings (originally painted late in the 40K 2nd edition era as Shokk Attack Gun ammo! A now redundant role) and 6 trolls. Not a bad start and some interesting options. Being that this is intended to be a temporary respite from 40K, I have no intention of expanding this army much (see previous comment regarding a tight budget). Although I may be forced to address the lack of artillery, but we'll play a few games and see how they fair as is.



And this is only 4 units!

So as sort of an intro to this new project, I wanted to showcase a few of the painted models. This 1st Orc Boy pictured at the top of the post is one of the twin-choppa orcs from the 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy starter set that warfrog gave to me when he decided that WFB just wasn't his bag. For the longest time these models (including the Empire ones) saw life and action as D&D minis for my 3.5 campaign. They died in droves over there so I'm sure they can replicate those results again for me in WHFB.

"Wot? No 'igh-lights on me teef?!"

This guy was painted up a few years ago when I discovered that I was running low on my precious original Bilious Green paint, I came up with a mix to extend the life of it ( I discussed this in more detail in one of my waaagh-plane posts ). This model is the standard that all of my basic Orcs (and Orks) will aspire too. I have other examples that are arguably better, but this guy just works. A particular feature of this model, and something of an experiment, is his rusted choppa. Looking at weather gardening tools, industrial machinery, farm equipment, etc, it occurred to me that these real-life tools are just as effective and useful despite their apparent age and yet everyone paints orcs as if their crude and beaten weapons just rolled off the forge! Including GW's painters! So in this boy's hands you can see the two extremes of what I was going for. For something a bit in the middle of these two examples, check out the Sword of Rust on the Boss model in my orky-love post. The other day, I added a few silver scratches on the rusty blade to indicate that this old weapon has seen some recent use.

I can not introduce this next guy without mentioning my dear friend Redbird. I introduced her to D&D (everyone's gate-way to a wider world of gaming and geekery in general, yes?) and the 1st game we played was done using the old Heroquest board as the dungeon. I had the leader and ruler of this dungeon be an Orc priest by the name of Zodbog Badgrub who captured Redbird's character and was plotting devious things to do with her when she made her escape. Zodbog would be a reoccurring nemesis for years to come. Well, Zodbog was this model:

Zodbog Badgrub. Hunting red birds since '01!

Granted, he was unpainted at the time, or primed black. I forget. Over the next....gosh, 12 years I would dabble on him, until employing the same techniques used on the orc boy above. Just the other day I added the final details to his staff and sword and glued him altogether. Despite the years of use and paint dabbling, in actual man hours of work I don't think I spent more than 5 hours on this mini, I just never focused on finishing him until the other day when I realized I needed to use this model for the 1st time in the role that it was created for!

...still, I wonder if I ought to put something else on the base? A snottling or a skull or something? See, I just don't know when to quit!

He wears that sword like it's a punishment! LOL

 So, these models are the bench mark that the rest of the horde will be reaching for! The next few posts will track the progress of this army, stay tuned!

-Neverness

Our first 6th ed game

Last night Warfrog and I got together to try out the new Warhammer 40,000 6th edition rules system. We chose 1000pt each, I took Space Wolve and he chose Tyranids. It was supposed to be a toss-off kind of practice game, but as is typical when we play, we totally got into it and didn't stop until after 2am! I took two Runepriests so I could play around with the new psi rules, my classic landspeeder to see if the tweaks to skimmers could be experienced, 2 Rhinos each with a 6-man squad of Greyhunters, a pack of Longfangs, a Lonewolf and a drop pod with 5 Wolfguard.

I'll let Warfrog explain the hilarity of this situation! LOL

We took a bunch of pics and Warfrog is committed to doing a battle report in the next few days, and talking about what we thought of certain rules. I had a few WTF moments with a few things, but in hindsight I get the 'theatrical' elements that GW was trying to achieve with this edition and they sort of make sense when I think about them from that perspective. As is typical, my dice stole the show and blew our minds- as my Runepriest could attest too.  :)

Anyway, it was more fun then either of us thought it would be, so look forward to his write up. Once he posts it, I will add a link on this blog post.


UPDATE: Here's Warfrog's report: http://warfrog.blogspot.com/2012/07/first-run-with-6th-ed-tyranids.html and I am adding my additional observations to his comments thread. So continue over there please (it's like a comic book cross over!)