My Son
A couple of months ago my son (then 6 years old) asked if he could start a real army...and while on holiday, exploring an unfamiliar city, we came across a hobby store. In holiday-mood, the kids could pick a toy for the rainy days. My son stopped at the Games-Workshop shelf and asked "Can I have one of these ?". "Sure, but only one small box." was my answer. So he was, with dad's help, exploring the different army's.
I suggested Space Marines and Imperial guard to him (as dad already has a nice collection of the emperor's finest), but he said "Dad, which of these are enemies of your armies ?". I was shocked, why not the righteous path of the Imperium like his dad ? Well, shocked as I was I pointed out the enemies of the imperium...and he chose the Dark Eldar, because they looked the vilest of all.
My own son.....a traitor.....(sigh)
Well, two weeks ago he finished his first Dark Eldar miniature:
Last month we started painting. Then my daughter asked if she could paint some of his miniatures, but he said no, because he wanted to paint his whole army. Having witnessed the whole ordeal with his army, she naturally asked if she could have an army of her own. Hoping for someone following the footsteps of the Imperial creed, daddy said "Yes, ofcourse".
Next we searched the website of GW so she could choose an army. Browsing the armies, she chose Necrons, because they were robots and had scorpion-like ships in the arsenal. Maybe I could turn her to the good-side if we would go to the local GW-store, so she could see some miniatures in real. Well, that wasn't the brightest idea of daddy either. She managed to select the three most expensive boxes of the Necrons altough we agreed she would only get one box of infantry. She held on to her choice of Necrons and I managed to reduce the amount of boxes to two. The only requirement she had was that these Necrons could be coloured purple and/or pink.....Well, here is her first finished model.
Maybe you would think that dad had a great hand in these miniatures, but that wasn't entirely the case.
With my son, the assembly and painting went as followed;
- Son chose figure and weapons.
- Dad checked the codex for legality and removed the mold-lines
- Son glues the mini together, only the difficult arms with weapons are done by dad.
- Dad does the cleaning and undercoat (black).
- Son drybrushes two layers of green and the basic skintone, basic hair, basic metallic parts of the weapons and the base for the blue parts (skull-white)
- Dad does the washes for the skin, metallics and the blue parts (transparant blue) and does some retouching and lining in the face.
- Son does the sand and the grass.
With my daughter, the assembly and painting went as followed.
- Dad checked codex and removed mold-lines
- Daughter glues the body-parts, dad the head and arms.
- Dad does the cleaning and undercoat (black), and mixes the metallic purple and metallic pink.
- Daughter does the drybrushing of purple and pink and the metallic part on the gun.
- Dad does the eyes and weapon (white and transparant green) and the wash on the metallic part of the gun.
- Daughter does the sand and grass.
Well, although they are both enemies of their father, daddy is quite proud of what they have achieved with these miniatures.
The only problem now is the rules, maybe the standard 40K rules are a bit too complex for them to have a fun game.......
Any great ideas are more then welcome.
