Warmachine unboxing.

Got the Crxy Battleforce today from a really nice guy I met through www.gelatinousdudes.com/, a local gaming forum for the Nova Scotia area. The box set comes with Warwitch Deneghra,  Defiler, 2 DeathRippers and a Slayer. I have been into war gaming for a few years now and I have seen a lot of models, and my first impressions overall are pretty good. The models look good, they are molded well, there aren't too many flashing lines running through highly detailed parts (GW likes to have mold lines run over the fingers of a lot of models), the only thing I don't like about the models so far, is the bonejack legs are very flimsy. They bend easy , and there isn't much room for pinning the feet to the legs, or to stabilize them. This design flaw will make storage, transport, and dropping it very risky. But what can you do!

Yesterday I got my order in the mail! This will round out the first theme build for Deneghra, and is a good jumping off point to learn the game.

To add to the box set I picked up the Cryx cards so I can swap models out for different ones for the time being. I will be using the slayer as a Nightmare, and the bone jacks as Night Wretches and Ripjaws. I'm gonna head down to Monster Comic Lounge soon to order a Necrotech and Scrap Thralls,which will put this build at 35 points.When it is all said and done the army will look as follows:

Warwitch Deneghra
Night Wretch
Rip Jaw
Nightmare
Scarlock Thrall
Pistol Wraith
Warwitch Siren
Bile Thalls (L+9gr)
Mechanithralls (L+9gr)
Necrotech 


Now for the fun part. When I first opened the box and started pulling stuff out, my first reaction was, "How the fuck am I going to paint these?" Warwitch Siren is incredibly small, a lot smaller than it looks in videos or in pictures online, which is also going to make it very difficult to pin some models. There is also a lot of small intricate details, so I'm going to have to adapt my previous style. I imagine I will have to use a glazing technique to slowly build up very thin layers of paint. But we have to get them assembled first!

So what do you do when you get it out of the box? I start all models off by stripping away the casting lines. Most models are made using an injection mold system, where the artist makes a mold of the model in two halves. There are little trenches cut into the mold to help air escape when they are pouring liquid metal or injecting the mold with plastic. These two mold halves are clamped together and the material is injected into the mold. Once the material dries you have a finished piece. Once the mold is released, any material that oozed out or the seam in the mold  will create a line around the entire model, and sometimes you will get flashing, which is when the material being injected comes out of the air trenches. This all can be removed with a sharp blade and some files. 



Tools you will need:

You will need some files, an old medium or hard toothbrush, and a knife. Start by going around the model with a sharp blade top and bottom of the model. Make sure to check all the nooks and crannies and scrape off any lines you can reach with your blade. Try to keep the blade at a 45 degree angle when scrapping off the lines.

Once the lines are almost cleared up, start going over what you just did with a small file. Try to keep the contours of the model intact while you file, and use the tip of the file to clear away any areas you couldn't reach with the knife. Also use the file to smooth out any areas that may have imperfections on the surface of the model. I prefer a rounded file to prevent gouging.

Once all the lines are removed and you have filed down any imperfections on the surface, it is time to give those minis a sponge bath! You want to fill a Tupperware container with warm water and a little bit of dish soap, and let the minis soak for about 10 minutes. This is important to clear off any dust particles from filing the casting lines. Also, when they make the mini  they put a mold re-leaser onto the mold to help the cooled material used to make the mini easy to release from the mold.

It is especially important that you wash metal models because these models are most likely to have the release agent all over it due to the fact most plastic mini's are made using a pressure injection method. But I still wash plastic mini's as well just to get the resin dust off. Again... this is a very important step, and should always be done regardless if you remove mold lines or not. The reason is, when you get to the stage of priming the model, any amount of this residue will cause the primer to not stick to the model, and can even flake off later taking the paint job with it, ruining all the hours spent painting it. Once the model/s have soaked for ten minutes, run the tooth brush over the whole model , scrubbing any spot you can reach.

Once this has been done to all the models you are going to work on, you can move onto assembly, which I will go over as soon as I get all the lines on my models cleaned up. I will post in a few days on how to go about stripping a model if it already has paint on it, and how to go about pinning and assembling models!