I’ve been trying my hand at painting the first of my Necrons and I think I’ve hit on a scheme I’m happy with. I wanted something that looked aged and damaged, as the millennia spent sleeping in their tombs took their toll, but wanted to avoid the usual rusty look that I’ve already applied widely to Chaos (especially Nurgle), Orks and Skaven.
The basing is pretty simple) – I just wanted something to get him finished and in my view a model isn’t done until the base is done. Otherwise I think I’m settled on this scheme so when time allows I’ll have a go at painting up a few more.
Convert or Die 
August 24th, 2020 at 8:11 am
Looks good, and I think the paint scheme gets across the concept of an ancient warrior stalking the battlefield.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:31 pm
Thank you! I thought it gave him the appearance of an ancient statue brought to life (which I guess he essentially is).
August 24th, 2020 at 10:40 am
Yep I reckon you’ve nailed the colour scheme and like you say, no figure is finished until it is based.
August 24th, 2020 at 9:34 pm
Cheers! Yup, even if I end up rebasing him later I couldn’t show him or call him done until I’d done something. Also just discovered that the new wordpress editor was making the pictures look hellishly distorted in the reader. I’ve fixed it now but seriously wordpress, I’m spending so much time mending issues that weren’t there before they ought to be paying me as a developer *rolls eyes*
August 24th, 2020 at 9:43 pm
I feel your pain!
August 25th, 2020 at 4:54 pm
Don’t know why, but at first I didn’t recognize this as your stuff in Reader, whereas I usually notice right away. Maybe just the new mini and different style?
Anyways, I think that’s a really good looking Necron. I’ve always thought an army of robots would be interesting if I was ever to play 40k. I think I would use less of the Oxide, as I really like the way your metal has a transition from silver to a more tarnished brass sort of look. I think that effect on its own, might be strong enough. You could probably get away with painting it brass and then just hitting the shoulders and upper arms with some strong silver highlights. I don’t know, I guess that’s what I would try to do after seeing this. But it looks amazing regardless, and hopefully it’s something that’s easy to carry on with…for, say a 100 something miniatures?! I really don’t envy your army painting! I feel like I’m about spent, just getting a 20 mini Blood Bowl team done!
August 25th, 2020 at 9:24 pm
Thank you! Yeah, I do get carried away with these things don’t I? At the moment I’m looking at a mere 40 Necron warriors plus 20-odd other Necrons. Part of why I chose this scheme is that it seems very quick and easy to replicate so I won’t spend the next million years working on them. The oxidation really helps with that though, it covers a multitude of sins 😉 I’m currently thinking that the more elite units will have less oxidation and other weathering to show they’ve survived the millennia a little better but I’ll explore that when I get to them.
August 26th, 2020 at 6:28 am
Nice, so a whole army is only (gulp) 60 minis? That sounds kite doable than the Skaven at least.
August 26th, 2020 at 5:42 pm
Aye, the Skaven got to be a bit excessive! I did enjoy it though (what can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment) 😀 The Necrons will basically be the Indomitus boxset (when I finally get my hands on it) plus an extra set of warriors I nabbed cheap on ebay. If I’m still enjoying them after painting that little lot I might add a few more, we’ll see…
August 26th, 2020 at 9:58 pm
Well, your Skaven look damned good. Excessive or no. I imagine they would be quite fun to play too.
August 25th, 2020 at 4:55 pm
That looks like a great start to me.
Cheers,
Pete.
August 25th, 2020 at 9:11 pm
Thanks very much 🙂
August 25th, 2020 at 10:41 pm
This is probably going to seem meandering but hopefully, it makes sense in the end. I remember back in the day when someone came up with the idea of a rusty Necron and it seemed amazing at the time. I stumbled across some on CMON or some place similar and realized that many people at the time weren’t that great at painting rust. I think it would be awesome to see someone tackle that now (which I feel like I’m pretty much volunteering myself for at this point…) but in regards to your model. I like the scheme quite a bit. It is hard to get away from the green colors on the guns and there are only so many colors you can choose to go with and I think your scheme will stand out compared to a lot of other armies out there. I look forward to seeing some more when you get around to painting them! 🙂
August 26th, 2020 at 6:02 pm
Thank you! Yeah, there was a time when absolutely every Necron you saw was just sprayed black and drybrushed silver, to the point where seeing them in other schemes seemed really radical. I used to have a plan to do an army of clean, golden Necrons – the host of some ludicrously wealthy dead king, but it never really came together and now I’m not so keen on the idea.
I think rust is one of these things that’s both ridiculously easy to paint, and ridiculously easy to get wrong. I’ve seen a few rusty Necrons over the last month or so since Indomitus was released but not a lot that I’ve really liked. I’d be curious to see what you came up with if you were to try one or two, so I’ll keep an eye out in case you do decide to volunteer yourself to try a rusty Necron.
The green guns were partly a call back to traditional Necrons, partly just something I think looks good (and as you say it’s hard to think of a good alternative) and mostly just an excuse to try out the new Tesseract Glow special effect paint. 🙂
August 27th, 2020 at 10:51 pm
I’m seeing a few golden Necrons on Instagram that are really nice. I think Richard Gray, who is a truly top-level painter started the idea, and others are starting to copy it. If you have the means to see his version, it is jaw-dropping and worth a look!
Necrons have always had green guns and while I think there is room for other colors, it is hard to break away from that at the same time. I tried to paint a red and orange Necron Overlord about a year ago and it didn’t come together the way I wanted and so I threw that one away. One day I’ll paint some more Necrons as they always make me a bit nostalgic to when they first came out and I had a fairly small army of them painted the equivalent of Khorne Red and Bronze 🙂
August 27th, 2020 at 7:39 am
Great work on the colour scheme mate as IRO said ,at first glance I though it was my wife doing the vacumcleaning!!
August 27th, 2020 at 7:59 am
Hahaha! I’ll never look at them the same way again! 😀