Rescuing miniatures can be a really rewarding experience. Often its the case that you will get a handful of miniatures at a time, but occasionally a whole army falls into your possession that needs some severe work done.
The background behind this is a little different from the usual 'bought the worst thing on eBay' story. A good friend of mine has recently decided to collect an Imperial Knight army, and he wanted them to be based. He's not the sort to take a long time to paint miniatures, being able to paint a whole army in the same time it can take most of us, even speed painters to paint a single unit, but he wanted the bases to look as good as possible. One of them was to be covered in a carpet of Tyranids, and the other was to have some deathguardesque stuff on it. Out came the box of nids that i didn't know existed, I was to use as many of them as I could and then keep the rest...
I agreed, of course, and set about sorting what had been made available out. There are lots of chunky miniatures, a Metal Hive Tyrant, Tyrant Guard and the rest being plastic. You would be forgiven from taking a cursory glance at the miniatures that they weren't too bad. However, in keeping with a lot of miniature rescues you will find. The miniatures hadn't been cleaned up having lots of bit of sprue and mold lines over them. the metal miniatures being covered in flash, and the paint job consisting of 'as many thick coats as possible and then dunked in what I was told was a can of wash.
The first part of the task was to get the knights properly based. I magnetized both bases before i went any further. I had a plague drone just laying around from conquest, so i hacked it up as the main feature of one of the bases. the knight was posed before i got it, so i made an effort to make it look like the drone had just been/was being, stepped on. lots of milliput was used, and I discovered a love for 'Nurgles rot' paint.
The second base, the one covered in Tyranids was going to be a bit trickier, So i used as many Termagants as possible, the nid collection i had at my disposal had a lot of bugs with spine-fists, and while they may not be a great choice game-wise from what i'm told, they do make sense from a modelling point of view, you only have to remove one arm, and with a big of clipping, sawing, cutting, and a disgusting amount of glue, you can make it look like you have a carpet of dead bugs. I made the decision not to paint strip them before i started. while the paint on the miniatures had filled in a lot of the details on them, there was still 'some' detail left. i reasoned that for these miniatures, lacking detail was an advantage, as the knights themselves have a very basic scheme, and i didn't want the bugs to draw attention away from the knight. I think i used 15 of them and I wanted both knight bases to have some continuity, so i used some thick textured paint from hobby craft i bought 5 years ago on the bases.
They came out rather well. Since the knights had been painted quite quickly (in an evening each) i decided not to put too much effort in to the painting. I didn't want the bases to draw attention away from the miniatures themselves. The simple approach of painting the miniatures with a basecoat, and then an all over wash and leaving it at that point i think makes the bases fairly understated, and definitely compliments the simple scheme on the knights themselves. The mud was simply painted a red-brown, and then drybrushed a couple of times, finishing off with some scenic grass clumps in strategic locations to make the bases look a little more interesting.
With the Knight Bases done (excepting of course a request to do 2 Armigers in a similar style) it was on to salvaging the rest of the army. As previously mentioned, the amount of paint was quite horrific. I spent a very long time stripping the paint off the miniatures, in total it took me a week of scrubbing, and then putting them back in to Dettol for another 8 hours, scrubbing again and again to even start to get the paint off. the paint was so thick in places even after repeated scrubbing i had to use a craft knight to cut the paint out of details. but sure enough after a lot more effort than i had expected, most of the paint was off. I had to rebuild the Carnifex, it was stuck together (badly) with superglue, with massive gaps in the carapace. while i couldn't eliminate them entirely, i could fill them in with milliput, and this i duly did. there were a few casualties, mostly in the smaller bugs, but one warrior was too far gone for even the hivemind, so what i'm left with is below.
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I based them with a mix of ballast and sand. Ballast you can find in a variety of grades from hobby stores and from the blurb on the packaging, is used by model railway enthusiasts, but it serves a purpose here as well. Usually i base miniatures as a last step. I've used GW technical paints on most of my Ultramarines, but after my RTB01 rescue where i added the same mix of ballast and sand as i have here and seen what a time saver it can be, i did the same with the nids.
I left them overnight, and then gave them a quick undercoat in Vallejo black primer with my airbrush. you can use a rattle can or a brush to get the same effect. Conspicuously absent is the Hive Tyrant. I realised as i was coming to undercoat it (him/her???) there were some gaps in the carapace that need to be filled in so it doesn't look like a poorly assembled metal miniature. It also means I can paint the hive tyrant last, and take a bit more time on it.
The next step will of course be to paint the bulk of the army. I've decided on Hive fleet behemoth. I've really enjoyed painting my Farsight Enclaves so far, so a lot more red is a good thing. After that of course the whole army will be on the way to eBay. Firstly its a space issue, and secondly, I've never wanted to own a Tyranid army, but painting them will be a pleasure i think.
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