Hey, Folks.
Here’s the latest group of models to join my Daemons of
Nurgle forces: 6 Plague Drones of
Nurgle, which I can run either as two units of 3 or one larger unit, up to 6.
Several months ago as I was planning out what I would be
building and painting, and when I’d be doing it, I was also trying to plan out
how I would be transporting both my Chaos Space Marines army and my Nurgle
Daemons army. I use Battle Foam P.A.C.K.
720s for each army, but the trick was how to configure the trays of foam that I
would need for each army. One problem
that was particularly prickly was how to transport these Plague Drones once
they were finished. I pondered how to
magnetize the wings, or the legs, or both, as when fully assembled these models
are a bit bulky, and look a bit fragile.
Nothing seemed to work in terms of magnetizing the wings and/or legs to
the bodies so that they would not droop due to gravity pulling the pieces down,
rather than having them positioned properly.
As I was working through this problem, my friend Josh Howery
suggested that we try to see if we could magnetize the two halves of each of
the Drone bodies together, and if that worked then I could glue the wings and
legs into whatever position I wanted to on each body half.
As it turned out, there are on the insides of each half of
each Drone body two round, flat spots that line up exactly with each half. That is, there are two round, flat spots on
inside of the left body half that line up exactly with the same sized round,
flat spots on the inside of the right body half. The following picture is a bit dark, and in
it we’ve already glued magnets onto these spots, which happened to be the exact
diameter of magnets that I had on hand.
It’s almost like GW planned on you being able to magnetize
the body halves. Hmmmm…
In any event, and to make a long story short, it
worked. Josh glued a magnet onto the
circular spots on both halves of each Drone body, put in enough magnets on each
half so that they would meet in (or nearly in) the middle of the Drone’s body
when the two halves were put together.
Simply gluing the magnets in place wouldn’t hold them when
the two body halves were put together and then separated, so Josh then filled
in the space around the magnets with Apoxy Sculpt, which is a two-part modeling
putty similar to Green Stuff but less expensive and easier to work with. (The problem with Apoxy Sculpt is that it
takes overnight to dry, and comes in two large containers, but for large
projects, it’s more cost effective and easier to work with than Green
Stuff. Josh used Apoxy Sculpt to make
the custom Nurgle Chaos Spawn as my 5th Spawn for me a while back,
which I wrote about a few months ago here.)
Taking this approach also allowed me to magnetize the two
different styles of heads that come with the Drones. As I hadn’t played any games with these
models, I wasn’t sure if I would always (or ever) use the Rot Proboscis option,
which makes the Plague Drones’ close combat attacks Poisoned 3+ instead of
their standard Poisoned 4+, at a cost of 5 points per model. Certainly Poisoned 3+ sounds good, but I wasn’t
sure it was something I wanted to take all the time. So I shaved down the plastic on the inside of
each half of each drone where the heads would attach, and glued a larger
diameter magnet there on the inside.
Then it was a simple matter to flatten the ends of all of both types of
heads and glue a corresponding magnet onto them. Of course, I made sure that the polarities of
all of the magnets were working in the same direction, so that I could use any
head on any Drone at any time.
After that, it was easy to glue the wings and legs into the
positions I wanted them for both sets of 3 Drones.
That was several months ago, and I’ve been holding off on
painting the Drones and their Plaguebearer riders for one of the last tasks
that I had to accomplish to get ready to go to Valhalla. Two Fridays ago I finished up the Nurgle
Biker Lord, so on that Saturday (September 7th) I was able to get
started painting the Plague Drones and their riders.
The process of painting them (well, washing them with
Citadel shades, mostly) went remarkably quickly, and I was able to get them all
finished in seven days of painting over 8 calendar days, committing a total of
45.5 hours to the task. Wow, that was a
lot of work for one week. I ended up
getting 10 hours of work done on that first Saturday, and then had problems
with my work laptop where it needed to be rebuilt by our IT department, and
that took more than a day, so I had a lot of free time on my hands late last
week to put into getting these Drones finished as quickly as I could. Also, the wife has eased up on giving me a
hard time about spending so much time working on my stuff to get ready for
Valhalla, and my daughter has had more rehearsals for her upcoming shows, so I’ve
had more time in the evenings during the week to spend working on painting that
I have had in previous weeks.
One problem that I ran into as I was finishing up the Drones’
bodies and started working on the Plaguebearer riders’ bodies was getting the
riders to stay on top of the posts on the tops of the Drones after each Drone’s
body halves were put together with the magnets.
These guys really were meant to be glued in place on these posts, so I
was faced with a late problem that I had to address pretty quickly.
What I ended up doing was drilling a hole into the posts of
each of the Drones’ and inserting and gluing a thin brass rod such that it was
anchored inside one body half with superglue and Green Stuff, and stuck up far
enough above the post on the outside of the body so that any rider would stay
in place when mounted on the post + brass rod rig. This was a bit challenging and very delicate
work, but with patience and perseverance I was able to get all 6 Drones drilled
out and the brass rods installed and anchored with Green Stuff in the same
night.
With the brass rods in place, the riders stay put and don’t fall
off their perches when being moved around the battlefield.
With a lot of time and working very quickly, I was able to
finish up these 6 Plague Drones and their Plaguebearer riders by last Saturday,
which was a huge relief. And with the heads magnetized, I can swap them out depending on whether I want to use the Rot Proboscis or not and by WSYWIG.
I’m really
happy with how they turned out, and would love to hear your opinion of them!
Looks amazing... you've done a good job with these guys - they are difficult to transport when they are all built as one solid piece. I did my first three that way and they are never easy to transport now. I'm building 6 more right now, and wondering how to magnetize them up - might try what you've done here and see how it goes.
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