kraye cygnar themed list

[thedrake]

So I have just recently taken the plunge into Warmachine and while looking over the miniatures for the past couple years, I vowed that if I ever did get into the game, I would definitely get Kraye - just based off the awesomeness of the model. After reading up about him I had the same thought as Tauren with the civil war looking army. After some research I got some heads from Perry Brothers line of minis and here is my test Gun Mage Captain Adept (I know, you would think I would have painted Kraye first...) I am still trying to improve the quality of photo and paint job-


He is kinda shiny, and I have hit him with a couple layers of dullcote and some other matte layers but its not working too well.

A unit of rangers is up next for the head swap, but it might be a while as I'm trying to learn the basics of the rules, and Kraye isn't the best for learning the basics (right now I'm using the battle box +B13 mainly), and I don't have them yet.

So any comments and criticism would be appreciated.

[HellecticMojo]

love it love it love it.

It could be the paint that causing the shininess. What paint you using, either way this is purely awesome.

[Tauren]

Now that is awesome! =)
I love it.

[WintersChill]

Approval +1. Very cool.

[PG_Agamemnon]

Nice head... I may do that myself for one of mine.

[scotty kahn]

That is a very cool idea. The head swap really works well. Make sure to share more as you get them done.

[thedrake]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. My next purchase was going to be some trencher commandos, but I'm going to get some rangers instead so I can continue my conversions. I will try to take some wip pics this time.

As for the shiny, its not the paint - I'm using a mix of vallejo/gw/p3 but I was trying to add extra protection using a gloss varnish and I'm having issues getting it unglossy. I'm going to try the vallejo paint on matte and see what that does.

[Mugu]

+1, looks great. I don't really notice any shinyness, but gloss varnish won't help you get unshiny. I use testors dull coat usually.

[thedrake]

the gloss coat is for protective purposes (i know the gloss coat isnt gonna make it less glossy ) but it gives more protection then just dull coat. I sprayed it with dull coat after the gloss layer to remove the gloss, but its still uber shiny (closer to the first pic rather than the others). but its a learning experience.

[thedrake]

due to a late christmas present from my in-law i have a mini update.

here we have our set up, my normal working space is being blocked by a pack n play:



couple heads chopped off and glueing to bases:

[thedrake]

one conversion:

[thedrake]

second guy:


and a group shot:





as you can see I left a couple of the rangers with their normal heads. I wanted to be able to keep the leader apart (so no hat) and the other guy/girl would have been beyond my greenstuff abilities.

hopefully i can get some paint on them in the next couple of days. i have been painting kraye off and on as well, so maybe i will get him done and posted too

[thedrake]

i did have a thought about painting the rangers. i know they are painted with green cloaks (studio colors) because they are sneaky sneaky and it makes sense so they can hide. that being said i was thinking of painting their cloaks the grayish/bluish color that the gun mage is painted to tie them all in. thoughts? ideas? because right now i dont know how i want to paint them, and that is a problem because i want to paint them.

[loftybloke]

These look good. It'll look great on the table top with the theme throughout the army. Any thoughts on modding the jacks? Maybe just saddle bags and stowage?

Looking forward to more

Lofty

[Mod_Plarzoid]

Very nice! This force will look amazing! If you do another hood, could you take WIP shots and walk us through your process? The hood looks great!

[Crusader85]

Great job on the head swaps, your greenstuffed hoods look great. I second the request for WIP shots. Great color scheme for the army as well, can't wait to see the whole army together.

[thedrake]

I don't have any wip pics of the hood, but I can try to explain how I did it. Eventually I will get around to another unit of rangers, and when I convert them I will take more pictures and do a wip with pictures of making a hood.

I spent about 20 minutes trying to write an explination and it didn't work, so hopefully tonight when I get home from work I will put a hood on the other guy that usually has one. I was looking over them and I think he needs a hood, as well as a couple guys need googles.


As for the 'jacks, I really hadn't put much thought into them. I like the idea of the stowage and saddle bags, but I'm gonna have to see what I can come up with.

Also, vallejo paint matte rocks

[Wargame_junkie]

Those are some pretty sweet conversions, I like the head swaps.

I had a similar idea for my Kraye army that I never followed through on, more so with the 'jacks. I wanted to sculpt saddle bags and all sorts of extra pouches on them to help the scouting force carry supplies.

I look forward to seeing more!

[bluecardinal]

The head swaps look great and the colour scheme is great. I'm looking forward to more fully painted models. As for what colour to paint the cloaks, I was thinking a brown colour and then maybe add the blue/grey colour in as decal in cloak or on the model. You could make them look like scouts but have the blue colour tie them in with the rest of the force. It's just a thought.

[thedrake]

So I tried to make a tutorial for the hood. lets see how this goes lol:

Here are a couple tools that I was using to start things off:

Petroleum Jelly, because you need some lube to keep the green stuff from sticking you your tools/fingers/whatever you dont want it to stick to. basically you stab the pj with your tool and your good to go



Modeling tool, although an exacto knife could probably work in a pinch (I use the tool and my exacto)



next comes our ranger we will be working on:



and our small blob of green stuff to make the hood:

[thedrake]

First we want to flatten out the green stuff:



and place it on his head:



then we pinch it down a little below his chin



view of it from behind: see how its kinda loose still?

[thedrake]

from that point we start using our tool to attach the green stuff to the model.

I think i missed a picture, but we need to use the tool to kinda push the hood away from the face.



then we need to go back to the head we cut off, and look at where the folds or dimples are:

[thedrake]

ranger pics

[thedrake]

and here we have the new ranger with the other one I did:

[thedrake]

also, i tried to add some goggles to this guy:

i put a strip across his eyes


then used my xacto to try to kinda get some goggle looking things



I don't know if that helped at all, but thats the gist of it. feel free to ask questions if anything is still as clear as mud

[PG_Agamemnon]

Looks great so far. One piece of advice though. Replace the rifle barrels with brass rod or something. It may not seem like much to you now but those are the mostest bendyist parts to any PP model I have seen. After changing out two units and seeing the results...well they are 100% better. It was well worth the time and effort. I get lots of complements on them.. especially from anyone that has or had rangers.

You can take a look at mine, link in my sig.

[thedrake]

So I totally got lost in your thread a couple weeks ago, so thanks for that. Anywho, what size rod did you use with your rangers? also how did you add the silencer part.

Also, your stuff is sweetness, love the checkers and how much you actually have

[loftybloke]

snip

I don't know if that helped at all, but thats the gist of it. feel free to ask questions if anything is still as clear as mud

Great write up for the hood. I rarely use GS other than to fill gaps/add rudimentary facial hair to models (I made a norse style WHF mortals of chaos army one time. Vikings need beards ya know?), but I could definately follow this guide, cheers

Have you decided on a paint scheme yet?

[PG_Agamemnon]

For the rod size I am not sure to tell you the truth. I picked out the barrel size based on it being small enough yet still able to get a piece of brass tube to fit snugly over it. A local RC shop is where I get mine. They have a large selection so it was basically a fit game with one of the rangers in hand.

Make sure the rod is smaller than the ranger rifle barrel. You do not want to end up with pinning problems when you drill down the barrel portion attached to the stock. Use a pin vice to drill the entire length. When I used my dremmel the hole did not go straight due to the upper portion of pewter heating and expanding. This led to another problem down the road. Because the drill bit came out the top and ruined the barrel above the stock I just filed down the entire barrel. The brass rod glued down nicely but has since come off multiple times. That is the only model that has given me any problems. The only other tricky part was the female sculpt with gun slung on her back. It was a little difficult to get the barrel into a believable position/angle.

When you pin make the drill hole as long as possible. This will take a while but is well worth it. If you drill to short the leverage of the barrel end will eventually tear out the top of the drilled portion. I had this happen on a couple of other models I have done in the past.

Since I made my own barrels it was nice to lengthen them just slightly. The original sculpt felt more like they were carrying BB guns.

Thanks for the complements. You can easily have a force this size... get something every week and paint it. Paint while watching TV or movies at home or just sitting around talking. The wife doesn't like it but is finally getting used to it.

By the way nice GS work. Sculpting is something I have not done much of yet.... yet.

[thedrake]

@ loftybroke: for a general paint scheme, I think I'm going for a gray/blue for jackets and such, with some part being more of a traditional cygnar blue color. also I think for the rangers, they are going to have green cloaks, but have the blues/grays to tie them in. As for the jacks...we will see still lol.

@ agamemnon: thanks for the info, now I'm gonna have to change all them guns before I get to paint them...lol, I think I want to add some more bits and bobs to them though, so if anyone has ideas, I'm up for it.

Now on to the update.

So its a small one, as I explained the rangers are getting gun makeovers, so they are on the back burner for a minute or two. So instead we have Kraye! I don't think I did justice to the model (as it is amazing!!), and I don't think the pictures do justice to my model (but I think they are good enough).

[thedrake]

Well, thats it for now. Hopefully in the next couple days I will get some brass rods and get the rangers guns fixed up. I also have a centurion on order, but until then, I have the rangers, the starter box, and another heavy (I wanna magnatise it so I can have it be all three). But that should keep me busy for a while.

[Phlippieskezer]

I approve. Kraye is way too cool.

Also.. That GMCA is AWESOME!

[PG_Agamemnon]

Sorry to cause you lag in painting them... you will be very happy with the results though. Nice Kray by the way. There are so many things I need to paint and so little time.

[loftybloke]

Nice scheme on the guys above, the GMMCA really does look good. The rangers will do well with this colour scheme i think, heres to progress!

[thedrake]

So I gots a mini update. My hobby time has been reduced to a few hours a week (like 2 on sunday) due to looking for new job/working on things in order to be more qualified for new job. anywho, i finally have my rangers painted, too bad I only have crappy pictures (trying to take photos next to baby's bed without waking baby is a bad idea - so photos got taken elsewhere).

Here is a WIP photo of replacing gun barrels for my rangers:


basically i cut off their old barrels, and used 1/16 and 3/32? brass rod to create a larger barrel and a ramrod holder below it. don't quote me on the sizes though, i can't remember off the top of my head. in another thread it was mentioned that brass tubing or aluminum tubing might work better, and while i agree that it would look more like a barrel i didnt use it. in the end i learned a lot to apply to my next unit which i picked up today (im thinking, just a bit of tubing at the end to make a silencer kinda looking thing, plus make it look like a barrel). im also in the works of building my centurion (seriously...whats he fighting with a spatula?) and painting my cyclone. once they are done, all i will need is two hunters and i think this list will be done. which will be an accomplishment for me, i have never had an army completely painted for any game system that i have ever played (i would always get the army about 85-90% finished, then get distracted by something else).

[thedrake]

As for pictures of finished ranger group, they are rough pictures but here they are:

group with focus issues from camera



group with focus issues on where they were supposed to be looking:



slightly better shot of the cloaks from the back, although the one guy is way out of focus



and close up of guy with green stuff goggles:




In the end the paint scheme I went with were the traditional green cloaks, but with blue lining. gray jackets (though you really cant see that much of them) and gray hats. brown leather everywhere else and a nice white creamy stock color for the guns. also to tie them in with the rest of the army, their knee guards were painted the same scheme/recipe that i did kraye's shoulder guards and something on the gmca. basically that little bright blue is what will tie the whole army together.

[PG_Agamemnon]

Nice job on the conversions. It is so worth it to replace those barrels.

[thedrake]

So update: Cyclone. Its not completely completely finished, not sealed or based, but i'm not sure if i want to add weathering/battle damage. i think he needs it, but i kinda dont want to do it, and not sure how much weathering would be a good fit.

Front:


Sides:


Back:


plus want to repaint the eyes red.

As far as what I have left to do for the list, I have 2 hunters on order, my second unit of rangers need to be head swapped/painted and my centurion is waiting for his base to come in, his arms to be attached, I want to do a couple more changes to make it look a little closer to the artwork (i need to lengthen his spear, and add green stuff to curve his bracer - he's about 60% assembled).

[FoeRender]

So far.so good , nice pace as well .

[Defenstrator]

The Rangers look sharp with the gun barrel replacement. I may do that on mine.

I can see what you mean about the Cyclone. Between the blue, grey, and stell he's a bit monochromatic. A bit of weathering might dress him up. I'd suggest some rust, both to make it look battle worn and to get a bit more colour on it.