It has been a while since I last posted. I have made tons of progress in this time. I have finished up my Chaos Space Marine army for The Big Waaagh tournament and I have actually started up a Necron army.
Back when we were playing a few years back I had a Necron army. It was horrible. We had just started playing 40k and I didn't have a clue. I sold it off and started playing Chaos. I have now come full circle.
There were a reasons that led me to decide to start up a Necron army. The first was the cost. You can build a crazy cheap Necron army. All you need are two battle forces ($75 from thewarstore.com) two boxes of troops ($56 from thewarstore.com) and a lord ($15). This gets you a viable functional army for about $150. This makes Necrons one of the cheapest Warhammer 40k armies available.
The next reason was time. Since I have been using my airbrush more and more I have actually gotten pretty good with it. I figured I could straight crank out some Necrons. My biggest challenge was going to be running metallic paint through it. This turned out to not be a challenge at all.
I am going to let you in on the secret of running Metallic based GW paint through an airbrush - alcohol. I saw on a couple of forums people talking about thinning down their metallic paints with rubbing alcohol to run them through an airgun. I was a bit skeptical but sure enough it works. I am using 91% alcohol that I bought at Wal-Mart. There is one that is around 75-85% but I figured why mess around - go for the strong stuff.
I took an old bottle of half dried out Boltgun Metal and put an equal amount of alcohol to paint in the pot and shook it up. I then poured it over into my airbrush pot and man it was weird looking. There were lumps and sliding sheets of paint and all kinds of strangeness. I decided to go with some more alcohol to break up the lumps and gave it another couple of good shakes.
I then hooked air up to the brush and sprayed a piece of cardboard a few times. Dang if it didn't work.
Feeling confident I took the brush to my black-primed necrons. Wow. Talk about easy.
Since then I have ran about three or four pots of Boltgun through my airbrush. It really is just a breeze. The best ration for alcohol to paint that I have found is right around 1:1. Maybe a bit more on the alcohol if it is a bit dried. Just play around with it. I don't think you will ruin anything if you get a bit much in there.
In my next post I will go into more detail on how I am building my Necrons.