Preparing the Covenant for War

The last couple of days I've managed to get a bit of work done on the various miniature projects I talked about in my last blog post.  While no brush has touched paint at this early stage, all the preparation work for three more projects has been completed.  One of these, of course, is for my Dystopian Wars Covenant of Antarctica fleet.

Yes, the workers have been roused from their cabins deep below the ice-locked surface, and set to work - for the drums of war beat, and the Covenant is on the move.

When I opened the starter set I was impressed with the quality of the models - they are well designed and produced, with a little flash, but nothing a sharp blade couldn't cope with easily enough.  There are few mold lines - and most of the stuff that needs to removed is on the base - where the ship model meets the table.

There was quite a bit of flash around the edges of the tiny fliers, but some sandpaper quickly and easily dealt with that.

So a judicious use of a scalpel, as well as some sandpaper, and the models were ready to be glued.  I'm glad at this point that I couldn't find my glue, because I originally assumed the battleship would be glued together like this:

Only, after not being able to find my glue I resigned myself to flipping through the rule book and found that actually this ship can partially submerge itself - and when it does you take the top part off and place it within a template like this:

So I luckily managed to avoid what would have been a fore-head slapping moment of frustration at some later point when this became apparent.

So with all the trimming and sanding done, and the glueing for the parts that actually require it. I was ready to prime.

Trimming? Sanding? Glueing? All check.

I used Games Workshop white primer for these, and am really glad I did, after having trialled a couple of different spray primers over the last year I have found that while Games Workshop is expensive (and a company of ill repute), their primer is excellent.  I managed to run out just as I was finishing the priming of the Tiny Fliers, so all Dystopian Wars - primed and ready for paint.

Everything ready for the next stage - the painting... though I am still lost over what sort of paint scheme I want to use!

Cheers,
Giles.