Finished Valkyrie with Secret Weapon Base!

It's Been a Long Time

     It has taken me a very (read: VERY!) long time to complete this model.  Rightfully so!  It's not an easy kit to assemble, even more difficult if you're constantly fretting over which bits should be painted before assembling.  This kit isn't for beginners, even the ones that don't intend to paint the model.

     This represents quite a few milestones for me.  This is the largest Warhammer 40K model I've ever assembled and painted.  This is also the first time that I've had a pre-made resin base.  I absolutely fell in love with Secret Weapon Minisatures' Urban Street bases (see previous post).  The base was so easy to paint that it almost felt like cheating.  Not cheating enough for me NOT to use it.

     I'll have some more pictures and a funny story about the Valkyrie in a bit, but first I want to talk about the base.

The Joy of Basing

     As I said above, this was a joy to paint.  I got to experiment with all sorts of techniques that I have been wanting to try.  I think the end results were pretty good and I learned a bit about different methods of applications of weathering powders.

     Before I could paint it, I needed to make sure that I could fix the flight stand such that it would sit flat on the base.  The elevated portion of the base, containing the side walk, was the challenge.  I decided that I would try a bit of carving.  I went to a hobby store and purchased a cheap wood working kit that had a few carving tools.  I looked for one that had the width of one of the "fins" of the flight stand (the typical GW one) and lucked out with one that was just slightly larger.  I then traced out the footprint of the flight stand on the bare resin base with a pencil.  I then started carving into my perfectly nice base.  You can clearly see the carved out portion here:

     Took some guts to do this to this beautiful base

     Once I was sure I was getting close to a good fit, I just kept test fitting and shaving off smaller amounts each time.  At the end, the flight stand fit perfectly!  Here is a close look at the result:

     Since the "fin" that I had carved out that little trench for was sunken ever so slightly into the base, I was sure to use a more daring amount of glue on that portion of the stand.  It seems like I have a good strong fix between the stand and the base, but I'll likely always treat it a bit gingerly just in they desire to divorce themselves of each other.

The Gunners: Frick and Frack

     The final piece I had to complete on this model was the door gunners.  I had spent a fair bit of time making sure the cabin was detailed, and I had made sure to magnetize the gun cradles to the swing arms such that I could be truly WYSIWYG if I should opt NOT to take the two Heavy Bolter door guns.  With all that work in place, I knew that I wanted to put some real detail into the door gunners themselves.  Obviously I wouldn't spend as much time as I had on some of my infantry models, such as my command squad, but I wanted them to still stand up to some scrutiny.  So here they are:

Frick on the left, Frack on the right

     I made sure that they matched the infantry but yet looked a little bit different such that they represented flight crew, not ground slogging infantry.  Their armor is fresher looking, no bullet holes or rusting.  They have flight suits so no camo spots either.  I spent a bit of time making sure those visors on their helmets had some very subtle light streaks and spots.  After all that, here's what you see of them when they're installed:

Detail work?  Totally worth it.  Just look at that visor!

     Yes, I do feel like a bit of an idiot.  I'm a slow painter because I'm still not super great at NOT painting bits of the model in less detail.  That's truly a talent in and of itself.  Dave Taylor, ex-GW man and the absolute master of the fast army, is my hero because of that ability alone.  I've see his work on his blog and everything is simple and elegant.  While he's capable of finely detailed paint jobs, he doesn't do it unless he has to for the most part.  He knows how to spend the effort on the parts of the model that the eye naturally clings to.  Maybe I'll be able to do that some day.  Oh and if you think the above photo is bad, wait until you see it with the wing attached!

What door gunner?

Summary

     I really feel that this was a pretty good milestone for me.  I'm proud of the model, but I'm also immensely pleased to have it OFF my painting table and in my display cabinet.  I've got another Valkyrie kit sitting here, but that will have to wait.  I have an Ork flyer to paint!

     I was worried that this paint scheme wouldn't fit in with my army.  I wanted the Valkyries to stand apart because they are flyers, and I reasoned that they shouldn't have the same camo pattern as my tanks.  To that end, I went with a bit of a "stealthier" look since these things will be shuttling two Storm Trooper squads around.  Just to make sure that it would still fit, I added those stripes.  I think that did the trick.  Here are some pictures with a few of my infantry to compare:

     I had some fun staging those two pictures.  Some day, when I have a table and some terrain, I could see myself wasting some time setting up some scenes with my models.  Full man-child achievement unlocked!

     I have a game lined up for tomorrow.  I think I'll be taking my Guard along for shits and giggles.  Might as well start to learn how to use them a bit.  Additionally I've been dying to mess about with a flyer so this gives me the perfect excuse.

     I leave you with a few more pictures of the Valkyrie:

Secret Weapon Miniatures Resin Bases First Impressions

I'll gladly pay someone to do this for me

     I'm not a fan of making bases myself.  I've done it, and I might even dare say that I've done it well in a few cases.  Nothing fancy, nothing amazing, but clean and simple bases for models I intend to use quite often.  When I started working on my Imperial Guard, I wanted to really try on some of those bases.  I really did put some extra effort, but still with an eye to the fact that these models were intended to be played on a table, not sat on a plinth for display.  After I finished 25 infantry models, I made an executive decision: I'll gladly pay someone to make something a bit fancier than what I'm capable of doing.

     Enter Secret Weapon Miniatures!

     The concept with my Imperial Guard, when I started, was that I would have the Veterans/Regulars have a mix of dirt and urban rubble.  Some cement blocks but some brown earth and some flock.  I then wanted the more elite portion of my army to be the real urban warfare types.  To this end I would have two Storm Trooper squads and two Valkyries with urban streets and rubble as their bases.  I found exactly what I was looking for on Secret Weapon's site.  Here they are!

     I also recently purchased an Ork flyer kit.  My Orks have a very simple base theme.  Muddy dirt.  Lots of rich browns to be properly Orky.  It would compliment the orange color that I had picked as my war band's primary color.  Looking around Secret Weapon's site again, I found this!  Painted to match, that "desert wasteland" could easily fit into my mudpocalypse theme.

Got it, opened it, and here's what I think

     The bases arrived by mail, and I was all too happy to tear into the envelope.  I should mention now that this is the first time I've ever purchased resin bases, so there was a lot of impressions to be had here.  The bases are incredible.  While the large oval bases clearly steal the show, even the small infantry bases have loads of details and importantly lots of space onto which I can place the model.  There's only a tiny bit of flashing around the edges of the bases that can either be filed off or even just scraped off with a blade.

Large Ovals

     I was worried about the sizing of the large oval bases.  The Urban Streets variety said on the site that it was 90x120mm but the Desert Wasteland one said 95x120mm.  Well I'm happy to report that they are in fact the same size and also the same size as the Games Workshop large oval base.

Same size! 

     I will have to do a slight bit of carving to get the flight stand on that Urban Streets base.  Not too much, though and I'll have to be delicate about it.  I'm thinking about getting an actual carving tool to make sure I do it as cleanly as possible.  The Desert Wasteland might need a very slight amount as well.

Infantry Bases

     The small bases are perfect.  I'll need no sort of tweaking to make a model fit, which is great.  There are a decent amount of variation, though I'm sure I'll enhance that through added bits to the base, be it flocking or painting.  I still want my Storm Troopers to look really unique, and I haven't locked in how I want to achieve that just yet.  What will be important is if I end up with metal, plastic, or resin models because I might have to do some pinning to make sure the models fight tightly to the bases.

     The only concern I could see someone else having (me, I don't give a toss) is that the added modeling material that Secret Weapon Miniatures has used  on top of the standard base raises the height of the infantry model about a quarter of an inch.  Seen here:

The rest of the men will need platform boots to keep up!

     It's not such a huge thing to me, but I'm sure that some neck-beard out there would have an absolute conniption if he thought that this quarter inch would deny his men critical cover in a game.  I don't care at all, whatsoever, and thus I'll just smile and nod.

Summary

     Good quality.  The oval bases are certainly center pieces, the infantry bases aren't so complex that you can't fit a figure on it, and the price seems very reasonable to me.  It's a dollar a base for the infantry bases and $10 for the large ovals.  If you are striving to make your army really stand out from the others around you, this might be a good route to go.  If you're tired of making your own bases, and you'd like to pay someone else to do it for you, Secret Weapons ain't a bad choice at all.

     Final note: if you do get resin bases, always make sure you wash them in warm soapy water to remove any of the mold release agent residue that might still be there.  Paint and mold release do not mix, and bad things will happen.  You will be a sad panda.