The Perfect Base

In a previous post I showed a picture of a 30mm base I was working on. Well, I finished it, and it didn't even take too long (not compared to the custom bases I was building from breadboard and plasticard anyway!), and it's a hell of a lot better than all my previous bases. It's indistinguishable from a normal 30mm base (with the recess filled in), it's faster and easier to make, and it's much more scratch resistant. I think the real breakthroughs were the improved components I got my hands on, slightly thicker 30mm base that's just deep enough for everything, and me getting a little better at soldering.

Since this was an early prototype I didn't want to spend too long on the miniature on top, so I grabbed a Haloclix Cortana mini that I had lying around. Not only would there be no virtually assembly or painting involved, it would give me an opportunity to try and fit all the components - including the LEDs - in the base for a real "worst case scenario".

And it turns out it was a worst case, for one main reason. Cortana pretty much had to be right in the centre of the base, which meant that the LEDs had to sit right in the centre inside, which meant the battery had to be pushed out to the edge, where it just didn't quite sit right. As a result it's a bit fiddly to get the battery to actually work, and it can slip just enough to cut the power while handling the mini. But I think I might be able to fix that in future bases, and it won't always need to be pushed that far out anyway. So overall this base was a great success!

While I'm very happy with how the base worked out, there is a small problem with the overall miniature. Light from the base just doesn't reach her head, and it's only really her feet that light up. In the light it doesn't look that bad, like she's a hologram and there's just a little extra light "leaking" from the projector in the base, but in the dark it doesn't work very well, and my paint job just makes it worse.

The base model looked very un-detailed, so I wanted to use a wash to bring out the detail and depth a little. I also thought I could probably do a better job of the "data lines". I tried to strip the paint off, but Dettol didn't seem to have any effect, so I settled for just a wash on top.

I primed it with Purity Seal, then carefully painted on a 1:1 mix of Asurmen Blue wash with Lahmian Medium, making sure it didn't pool too much. I then added pure Asurmen Blue directly into a few areas where I thought it still needed more contrast, like the face. I then varnished it with Purity Seal.

While this did help a bit with the detail, it darkened the figure a lot more than I expected. It looks more detailed but less transparent in light, and I think it just has even less light reaching the upper parts of the model in the dark.

Overall though everything worked out quite well, and it didn't take much time at all. In fact I mostly finished this model over a month ago, but for some reason I wanted to finish Daedalus before finished her and posting pictures. After all, he was assembled and working almost a year ago, I figured he deserved to be finished first. Besides, if I didn't finish him before finishing her, I probably would have been too busy making models with the new bases to ever get around to finishing him.

Just for fun I decided to take some pictures of them together, and those photos came out really well:

Master Chief model

When I first heard of Heroclix, I thought it was a great idea - miniatures of my favourite comic book characters? Yes please! Special bases that keep track of wounds and abilities? Brilliant! Then I saw the models and could not bring myself to buy as single one, they were that awful. At least to someone who'd seen plenty of brilliantly painted Games Workshop miniatures up close.

When Haloclix came out, the models looked a little better. Maybe this was because, between the full-helmed Spartans and the alien Covenant, there weren't many human faces - the part where we can most obviously see the lack of quality. Although to be honest I think they actually are of a slightly better quality. Anyway, I went ahead and picked up a few. It did occur to me a while back to try to touch them up a bit, but I just never got around to it.

Then I played Halo 4, and finally had the motivation to get myself a nicer looking Master Chief:

I forgot to take a "before" photo, but basically he looked something like this:

I didn't want to put too much time into this so I tried to keep it simple. After moving it to 25mm base (and removing the rather crap looking pistol and filling the hole with some liquid greenstuff), I carefully painted on a coat of Army Painter Quickshade (and moments later dropped it onto the carpet and had to spend the next quarter hour picking off minute carpet fibres with a pair of tweezers), then edge-highlighted the model with the appropriate colours. I did put a little more work into the shotgun, which I thought needed it, and washed all the metal and black areas with a black wash, plus I tried to make a couple of dodgy spots look like battle damage (I'm really not sure if that's what they were supposed to be or not), but that was about it. I didn't even paint over the liquid greenstuff; I figured it was close enough to the armour colour that I couldn't be bothered to try to mix up a better match.

I don't really like quickshade all that much, though it does work very well for a few things in my opinion. The reason why I used it here was because I didn't think paints and washes would stick very well to the miniature as is, but I figured a varnish should stick just fine and would give a better surface for painting. However, using a plain varnish would fill up the detail somewhat, and as it was already rather vague and shallow to begin with I was afraid this would significantly reduce the effect of washes. Quickshade, then, was the solution. It has a brownish colour, which worked well enough on the green but not quite so well on the black. Luckily a Badab Black wash over the black areas fixed that.

I coated the model with Games Workshop's Purity Seal. There was snow on the ground outside, so I was very worried about the notorious "sugar coated frosting of doom", but it came out perfectly - in fact I've never had any frosting effect with it. I've experimented with a number of brush-on matt varnishes, and none of them are as good as Purity Seal. When I look at the models that I know I varnished with it I don't see any evidence of any varnish at all, while on all my other models I can tell that there's an outer coat. That might be because, despite my best efforts I always end up brushing it on too thickly, or because it's never truly matt and always at least a little satin. I don't know, but regardless I'm done with them.

While the quickshade darkened the armour more than I would like, overall it came out better than I expected. Plus it took a whole lot less time than usual. This isn't my favourite Master Chief model; I consider this a practice piece, hopefully I'll get around to fixing up some other Haloclix figures eventually. Perhaps I'll try stripping off the existing paint and making a fresh start, or using purity seal and regular washes instead of quickshade (hopefully it will create such a thin layer that it won't fill any detail).


Just for the fun of it, I came up with some 40K rules for Master Chief:

Master Chief 140 pts
WS 5  BS 6  S4  T4  W 3  I 5  A 3  Ld 10  Sv 3+/4++
Unit Composition: 1 (unique)
Unit Type: Infantry
Wargear: Power Armour, Energy shield, Bolt gun, Bolt pistol, Frag and Krak grenades
Special Rules: Stubborn, Relentless, Eternal Warrior, It Will Not Die, ATSKNF, Combat Tactics, IC
Options:
- Replace bolt pistol and/or bolt gun with:
    * Shotgun, sniper rifle or combat knife: free
    * Plasma gun, plasma pistol, power weapon, or heavy bolter: +10 pts
    * Thunder hammer or missile launcher (with flakk missiles): +30 pts
- May take special issue ammunition: +10 pts
- May have one of the following:
    * Jump pack: +25 pts
    * Space Marine bike: +35 pts

Obviously he's a Space Marine. I basically gave him a Captain profile, but with an emphasis on shooting instead of close combat. I gave him stubborn and relentless because, well, those are two words that describe him pretty well (also relentless supports his shooty-ness). Eternal Warrior and It Will Not Die were an attempt to represent the way that he gets shot but then recovers in the games, and the basically the way that he's pretty unstoppable. Finally I gave him weapon and vehicle options to represent what he can use in the video games, including some more powerful ranged options than usual, like the plasma gun and heavy bolter. Basically, I thought he should be a shooty character.