Repainging all my Legions Imperialis bases

Hey,

I've started collecting Legions Imperialis a few months ago and painted up a small force. And it looked good, I was proud of it. But, the basing schema wasn't working well. The grey blends with the metallic models too much. I tried to make the models a warm metallic and the base a cold grey, but honestly, at this scale that's too subtle.

So, I started looking into repainting them. Mars basing is well known to work with IW; the bright colors create an effective backdrop, and the tones are similar to rust so nothing stands out too much.

I tested the scheme on 4 bases. One base would tell me a lot, but this is a game of large scales, so I feel painting up a single base would make me focus more on the detail of that single base than the general mood.

I liked it a lot! Enough to repaint some 40 bases of infantry I had already painted.

You might be wondering, how to repaint all those bases without ruining the painted models? Isn't that a chore? Well, yes and no. I already glue the little guys on the base before priming anything - I really need the plastic cement to take, because I don't want the models to pop off during handling. Especially considering my bases are all magnetized, and the base is too thin to grab, so the models are really what I handle all the time.

So, it's fine. I just painted around them. What's hard to reach doesn't need much attention, as long as it's some shade of brown or orange it's good enough. I used a small drybrush where that was needed, and it's only needed in open areas and edges.

Here's the recipe:

• Before priming, glue on some pebbles, or pipes or barrels or random bits for interest. Especially if the base is looking a bit sparse in places.
• Prime in black.
• A random wetblend of Scale75 Brown Leather and Mars Orange. Two layers should be enough. It should look random so don't bother smoothing things out, and apply paint thick, it's just a base.
• Lightly drybrush a mix of Mars Orange and Proacryl Warm Flesh, or some other beige you have around. Just lightly, mostly to pick out the rocks, and to bring up the edge of the base up a bit. I wanted the base to form a halo around the models.
• Paint all the rocks in gray, with edge highlights dots in light gray towards white.
• Wash the whole base in Guilliman Flesh. Mid-Heavy towards the middle, lighter towards the edge; if it's too heavy towards the edge you can use a clean, wet brush to dilute it a bit while it's still drying.
• Reestablish a bit of gray towards white on the rocks and such, where you feel it's needed. The rocks should still belong to the same environment, be reddish, but still be seen as different from the ground.
• Paint the rim in Musou Black.
• Edge highlight the rim, all steps and all panel lines on the base in Tau Light Ochre.

I also started applying some of the same paints to my tank tracks but I didn't finish that work yet.

Here are some pics of the collection with the new bases and a bunch of new stuff I have painted since. Thanks for looking.

Legions Imperialis Iron Warriors Rhinos Done!

Hello! Long time.

So Legions Imperialis is out and I'm all over it. Iron Warriors for now, but I'll follow them up with a loyalist Solar Auxilia army and Legio Ignatum.

For these I went a bit overboard and designed/printed some Siege Tyrant missile racks to put on the terminators. I'll upload the STL at some point. These were printed with 25nm layers, I don't think 50nm would have cut it.

So I painted a few units to start with, and want to share them and write down the recipe. I'm sure to forget it otherwise! So here's the recipe. As always, it does all the rough and high impact things first, and then just goes into more and more detail to focus and neaten up the paint job.

Step 0: Build

• I plastic-cemented the minis to their bases before painting. This is to make sure I'll be able to pull the magnetized bases and not have anything break. Had I superglued after painting, it's possible that the models would rip paint and detach. I found it to work just fine, it's easy to reach models when they're on the base like that, and they're easy to hold as well.
• Wood glue random tiny basing rocks work to create debris
• Prime in black

Step 1: Base colors

• Controlled/light drybrush of Scale75 Thrash Metal
• Paint the base for models that have it. Over black, apply some Scale75 Gray Graphene, and drybrush Artic Blue towards the edges.
• Pick out brasses in Scale75 Pure Copper
• Pick out black areas in Scale75 Petroleum Gray
• Paint chevrons
• Paint a stripe or an area using a mix of ProAcryl Bold Titanium White, ProAcryl Warm Yellow and Kimera Diarylide Yellow. One or two passes should be enough.
• Glaze ProAcryl Warm Yellow into white where it gets brighter, Diarylide Yellow where it gets dark.
• Paint chevrons using ProAcryl Pure Black. Use a good brush with a good tip, and don't go too small, or the paint will be drying on you. You need a steady hand and a good brush, not a small brush. I used a ~newish Raphael 8408 #2. Move fast, make mistakes and fix them up later with the yellows above; it's faster to make a mistake and fix it then go super steady, stress out, and then make mistakes anyway.
• Stipple Citadel Gore-Grunta Fur Contrast in places to add texture and hide rough blends.
• Apply transfers. MicroSet and MicroSol did good work, as usual. I didn't varnish all over before applying them because I don't want to affect the metal finish. I only varnished over the transfer, in satin, and you can kinda tell the difference but only if you look.
• Spot detail!
• The reds were done in ProAcryl Bold Pyrrole Red, mixed with black or some ivory where it needs to go down or up.
• The "leather" on the terminators was ProAcryl Light Umber, and after weathering, roughly accented in ProAcryl Ivory. I felt like a light color worked as an accent color, given how dark the models are. Otherwise a darker brown would have been be more appropriate
• ProAcryl Sky Blue on the power swords, mixed with ivory or black
• The lights on the rhinos I'm not sure anymore, I think it was just ivory.

Step 2: Weathering

• AK Streaking Grime for Panzer Grey all over, applied thin, and then removed by a drybrush that's had some white spirits. Because I didn't varnish, I had to go gentle or risk stripping paint. It did start to give in places but it's ok, call it additional weathering. It's only black underneath anyway.
• AK track wash over tracks
• When those above are dry, AK Light Dust Deposits applied very thin and glazed in places towards the bottom. Stipple on the base for models that have a base.

Step 3: Neatening up

• Identify volumes. Line/glaze Musou Block between them; it's really strong and works to accent these models. For example, on most marines, I have a line of Musou Black between their heads and shoulder pads, the backpack, between the torso and the weapon. Just to separate shapes.
• All black areas really need a highlight using a mix of Petroleum Grey and white. They get lost otherwise. I don't mean an edge highlight, I mean slapping paint on top to define shapes. Look at the tops of bolters for example.
• Edge highlight in Scale75 Thrash Metal where the weathering ended up too strong.
• Stipple Vallejo Metal Color Chrome where I want something to pop. Heads, tops of backpacks, bits on weapons and arms. In the terminator missile racks I used ProAcryl Ivory actually, silvers weren't producing an outline that's readable enough.

 That's it! For now at least. Thanks for looking.

Armigers Done!

So I painted up some Armigers. One Moirax, two Warglaives. I've been planning to join a local slowgrow campaign, and I need those little dudes to play.

And yeah, I'll play with the big guy. He was meant to be played with; he matches my first knight for that reason! I didn't expect to win. But it's also fine, I'll only bring it out in close company. It'll be ok.

There are many custom parts on these armigers, more than meets the eye. I got a 3d printer this year, and so I've been able to design and quickly make my own parts. Here's the list of parts:

• The melee weapons, heads and tilting shields are from Taro.
• I designed shields to mount on the thermal spears. This conversion inspired me, except I designed a tall shield that resembles the Questoris weapon guard rather than graft two of them.
• I designed shin plates. Armigers legs just don't look very graceful, with those super-thin shins and weird vertical toe guards. Their feet look like those 17th century French big buckle shoes. Yuck. The plate I designed is loosely inspired on the Cerastus shin.
• I designed upper arm/elbow assemblies that match Taro's design that I used on the thermal spears. The weapons were hanging too high when attached to the shoulder directly, esp with the shields.
• I designed and printed alternative elbows for the Moirax. The original resin bits were too fiddly to magnetize.

I modelled everything in FreeCad, with a bit of Blender to give the shield a subtle bend. I printed it all on a Phrozen Mini 8k (non-S, but I hear S is better).

Next up, let's see if I'll get more Questoris or Cerastus knights. And two more Armigers are probably in order, but not for many months.

Here's a bunch of pics, including WIP. Thanks for looking!

I got me a demon! Here are some WIP pics

I got me a Demon at Adepticon, gold in the Vehicle category!

This one took 6 months, napkin math puts it under 400 hours. But it turned out to be worth it!

There's too much for me to break down all at once. Instead of writing up a novella on what I wanted to do, what I tried, what worked and what didn't, hit me up at https://www.reddit.com/user/Bocete/ and ask. I can do a write-up on things people ask repeatedly, or if there's a lot to talk about.

Until then, here's a bunch of WIP pics. Enjoy and thanks for looking!

These pics after that are also WIP. A couple of weeks before the competition I did a photo session, with my DSLR, from all angles, so that I can comfortably browse them on the screen, zoom in, find flaws and nitpick. There's ~40 of them on these pics here that I fixed before the competition. See if you can spot them!