Pinning practice

Found the Blood Angels codex at my FLGS this weekend, only took three tries. I enacted my master plan when I saw it was in and picked up a deck box (red of course), a Widowmaker Marksman, and a Koldun Lord. Because I have two papers due this week, I spent about two hours last night and another hour this morning assembling models. The bad result of this is that I haven't gotten a whole lot done on the papers. The good result is I got a lot of pinning experience in, relative to my pinning experience previously. Both the solos have the single-foot tab that PP seems to be going with for new minis, so I reused my Wardog basing tactic by drilling a hole in the tab and cutting a notch in the base, which worked well once again.





The Koldun Lord is mostly two odd pieces: the legs and the body/cloak. The real oddness is in the angle that the two meet, wherein the legs nuzzle right up against the cloak, and that the cloak is a little too long. If you get the body halves to meet up tightly so there's no gap, then the cloak reaches further down than the feet which makes attaching the base a challenge. If you make sure the cloak plays nice with the base, then there's a big gap in the body. Add in a sparsity of contact area between the halves and you have a mini that's a bit of a challenge to assemble. In the end I employed another Wardog tactic of running a pin between the two halves of the body. This didn't work nearly as well as it did with the Wardog, but it did provide some extra stability, which was the point in the first place. I had to strike a balance between the cloak and the body, so there's a bit of a gap between the body and the cloak which will require some green stuffing, but more on that later.

The Marksman's gun was an ill fit, much like the Rocketeer's rocket (which I'll get to in a minute), so I bit the bullet and decided to pin it. The available pinning surface isn't that big, which made me reluctant, but the only way to learn is by doing. It turned out really well and the hands are flush against the body. I've been reluctant to do this kind of pinning in the past, but this victory gave me confidence to give it a go with the Rocketeer.

Though no one is reading this now, there might be some in the future, so future astute readers will recall that I got a Rocketeer in my last batch from my FLGS. When I was assembling that batch, I had a hard time getting the rocket attached. Like the Marksman, the rocket and hands were a separate piece that attached at the wrist, a small contact area and a pain to pin thanks to the psuedo-pin nubs on the hands. I tried to just glue it in, but it just wouldn't stick. I left the rocket unattached at the end of that session and came back to it this morning. Since the Marksman had worked out so well last night, I thought it'd be nice and quick to pin the Rocketeer this morning. Turns out I was overconfident. Though the assembly is the same as the Marksman, I had a bear of a time pinning the rocket on. I drilled four holes in the rocket before I finally got one that would work well. Most of the problem I have with pinning these delicate bits is just getting the hole in the place I want it. I haven't figured out a good way of making a pilot hole yet. I've been just digging the point of an Xacto knife in and twisting it around, which is murder on the blades but kinda-sorta-somewhat-not-really effective. Still, it's the only tactic I have at this point. Once I finally got two holes to match up properly the rocket went on easy.

Way back when I first got started with Warmachine, all of a month ago at this point, I knew that HMcT had some Khador he wanted to get rid of, so I did some reading about Khador in preparation. This was when I was still getting back into gaming, hopefully a topic I'll post on eventually, so I wanted to get some pewter in hand to get painting. Reading about effectiveness of models and also taking into account which models were visually appealing to me, I got a MoW Kovnik to get back into the swing with. This was a mistake on two fronts. First, HMcT had a Kovnik in the collection that became mine, so I have two now and I'm not sure I'll ever play in a game big enough where I'd want to field both. Second is that the Kovnik, like all MoW, comes in many tiny pieces. I cleaned all the pieces, but assembly was intimidating and I soon had HMcT's collection to occupy myself with. The result is that the Kovnik still sits in his blister, unassembled. Having had this extended pinning practice, I think I'll go back to the Kovnik much sooner than I would have otherwise as I feel more confident now that I'll be able to pin all the stuff that needs pinning. I'd still like to get some two part automotive epoxy for assembly though. I had some years ago that I partially assembled a GW dreadnought with that I haven't been able to rip apart despite my best efforts. Pinning plus the epoxy would be a solid bond, which is all but required with the Kovnik. If I get it together, not only will I have conquered a model that put me off previously, but I'll also be able to paint a model that appealed to me initially and have a Kovnik that fits my paint scheme as well.

Now I have a bunch of green stuffing to do. The bases of the Marksman and the Koldun Lord need to be filled and there are gaps to address on Kovnik Joe, the Winter Guard officer, and the Koldun Lord. I also need to do some minor repair/patching on the Rocketeer where my drilling went awry. Since my last post I based all the last batch, except the Rocketeer, and got some paint on the Wardog and some Winter Guard. I have a game with HMcT on Thursday and I had despaired of having my new arrivals ready, at least good enough by my standards of based and primed, but with the work of the last dozen hours or so I'm feeling better about the chances. I need to write now (papers, not blogs), but when I break for lunch/inspiration I'll do the green stuffing, then hopefully I can prime tonight or tomorrow to have all my new pieces ready for Thursday. I'll also need to do some list bodging to account for the new solos, mostly looking to swap the Koldun Lord in for the MoW Kovnik. Maybe I'll get some pictures together too, and I'm going to try and bring a camera on Thursday to try and get a battle report together, which will be a new experience for me.