Conversion Paradise
When the new plastic grey knights were announced, I gushed about the thought of having access to a good supply of knight-style helmets for marines. I thought I would be getting the majority of the helmets from the power armor box, but that box has a mere 5 helmets. Not only do the GK Terminator helmets fit fine in a normal suit of power armor, you get 11 of them per box, plus 2 bare heads. Check it out here.
Looking at the instruction booklet that comes with the box, it says that there are two types of helmets, one with a slightly larger mouth guard for the two-wound paladins. Apparently they get get that extra wound for having an enormous chin. Bruce Campell would be proud.
The fact is this is your box of choice if you want to go all out with your conversions. 13 heads, 15 swords, 20 tilt shields, 5 halberds, guns, ammo, you name it. You also get access to the coolest bit I've seen in a long time from GW, a decapitated bloodletter (in Soviet Russia, marine beheads YOU!)
CLIPPERS BEWARE
There's one notoriously weak piece on these sprues. One of the chest pieces has a skull and bone chained to it, hanging from the front. This isn't quite as bad as some of the new dark eldar chain bits, but it's a microscopic link.
Take.
Your.
Time.
How about the banner?
Let me tell you, this piece is one tough customer. It's not as soul-crushingly difficult as the ultramarine standard bearer that comes with Calgar, but it's close. As an experienced freehand painter, I found it time consuming but not overly difficult. My main concern is for the novice who has purchased the box and hasn't faced any difficult pieces, this banner could be a nasty surprise.
I guess that's what really took me back when I was working on this piece; it's just so much more difficult to paint than any of the other pieces in the box. All told, my painting muscles really didn't get flexed until I hit this bit.
PAINTERS BEWARE
The bottom of the embossed illustration is very confusing in terms of what's what. The demon's wings are shattered, and it looks like it's dissolving into magma-like stones. You will want to look twice before you decide what you want to do with it. This isn't just a two level affair (raised level and sunken level.) There's a large fold in the cloth towards the bottom that divides and merges the raised areas in different ways, causing a fair amount of ambiguity as to where the color should be placed. Thankfully, this also makes it difficult for the painter to really mess things up. Just remember to keep your lines clean and everything should turn out fine.
I chose a bright and colorful illustration, though I think a limited palette with a heavy emphasis on contrast would be equally appealing.
Bases, mix it up
One of the things I've been working on are freehanded urban bases, which I've been having mixed success with. I like the fact that it is unobtrusive to the model, but even a small height variation with some ballast makes all the difference in the world. The color of moss or debris also breaks up the space nicely.
It was a bit of a head-smack moment, as I had worked so hard on the previous bases for the power armor grey knights. With such a small addition of time and materials, the quality improved vastly. Even a little bit of planning ahead can change everything.
Speaking of which, this box comes with a lot of arms, much like the power armor version. Take two minutes and make double sure these are the arms you want to use. You don't want to find out at the 11th hour that you've picked the wrong arms. I was very lucky to find that in spite of my poor choices, I could make all the arms work.
After all was said and done, I had myself a handsome squad of paladins ready to cause trouble among the enemy ranks. Hopefully I can make my feel-no-pain save this time... hopefully.
I'm always interested to hear from you, what are you looking forward to the most with the new grey knight models? Gonna build a new librarian or 5? Or are you going all out and starting up a force of the emperor's finest? Let me hear from you in the comments!
