Necromunda bulkheads finished (or: rusting plastic is amazing and therapeutic)

The announcement of a new Necromunda made me (almost) as giddy as the (still teased) return of Adeptus Titanicus. I pre-ordered the box and it arrived just in time for the december holidays. Unfortunately (aside from the hassle of moving) I find a curious handicap when it comes to Necromunda. I'm victim to a variant of the Paradox of Choice. Knowing I can do anything I find myself unable to choose. Last week I solved my Necromunda problem by dropping choice from the equation. I'm going assemble the boxed set exactly according to the suggestions in the manual. I can always pick up more models to start converting later. But, as with any other boxed game, I will follow my stern rule to paint scenery first and the models second. I find it reduces the risk of having pretty models running through a grey plastic world. For Necromunda this means painting a bunch of bulkhead doors (and some booby traps and consoles). Here are the bulkheads.

The sad thing about rusted terrain is that (if done properly) it tends to look like a zero effort job that belies the actual effort that went into it.

I like rust. There are a million ways to paint it and (almost) all of them are cool. Rust adds color, from deep red-brown to bright orange. You can even get away with adding some blue/green to it. It is (almost) impossible to paint unrealistic rust. You can water down some random orange or brown paint and splash random rust splotches on models (preferably on the metal). Painting rust is quite therapeutic in my book (you can't really mess it up). As there is always more to learn about rust (and I want to up my airbrush skills) I decided follow this tutorial by Kenny 'Yo Dawg' Boucher about weathering terrain. I may make light of his introductions, but his tutorials are downright amazing.

I won't mind if I don't have to dot rivets in the next few months.

After airbrushing, washing and taking rather more hours then I want to think about dotting the tops of rivets with GW Ironbreaker, I could safely spray the bulkheads with some Vallejo Polyurethane Satin varnish. Then I decided to add hairspray and put weathered paint on some of the doors. Unfortunately I discovered that a) you can spray too much hairspray on a model (it turns white) and b) while removing hairspray you can scrape off paint under the tap even when it is 'protected' by a layer of Vallejo Polyurethane Satin varnish. In all I had to wash most of the doors and I'll have to stick to pretending the grayed bits on some of the doors and bulkheads are 'just as planned'. I did add a few bits of paintwork on some doors and barricades and I think it looks reasonable.

In the 40th millennium the day of the tentacle draws ever closer....

A special mention has to be made for the tentacle. I love that one bit of scenery to death. It also gave me a chance to add a bit of pink to the autumn valley of rust. Between airbrushing and edge highlighting I decided to try a precise application of wash to the recesses for a change (my usual preference is one humongous blob of wash). I think it worked. All in all, my bulkheads are done, the tentacle is done, the skull coin (I don't know what it's for yet) is done and all that remains are some boobytraps, a few consoles and pre-painting all the bases (and all the miniatures). In other words I'm well on my way to trying this game (assuming I don't get distracted halfway through painting this).