Necron Deathmarks

I wanted to show off another cheap and semi-cutting edge idea I had for the Necrons.  It’s an idea many people have probably had.  Although, granted, part of that cheapness does depend on already having some things.

The Deathmarks are the flipside of the Immortals. You can build one or the other with the box set.  When I found a few heavily discounted boxes, I went with Immortals. This meant I had a lot of Deathmark heads, arms, weapons, and the backs of their torsos.

Now, I found uses for some of these parts, with my cheap Crypteks and the Heavy Destroyer.  But I still had a lot left, and I wondered if there was some way to use them.  Preferably a way that wouldn’t cost me just as much as buying them outright.

As it turns out, you can usually find the legs and torsos for basic Necron Warriors for about twelve dollars if you dig around online.  Even cheaper if you can find them in your local store’s bits bins.  That’s a whole box’s worth—a dozen bodies—for less than a dollar each.  You’ll usually spend that much for half as many Deathmark/Immortal legs.  Just the legs.

So, now I’ve got heads, arms, legs, torsos, and weapons.  That all adds up to models.

I glued the legs to bases and the torsos went together as normal.  The real trick was going to be putting the arms on.  They’re made for a slightly wider torso, and they also have a very wide grip on the synaptic disruptors.  It doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room.  But it leaves some.

 

I tried gluing the first two.  I struggled at first because I kept trying to put the “ball” of the shoulders all the way into the torso socket.  That just won’t work, and it led to much fumbling.  But they sit very nice about 1/3 out, and once the glue dries the shoulders are nice and solid.

Helpful Hint—If you go this route, I found (on the second one) that it helped a lot to glue the left arm to the disruptor first.  It cuts down on a lot of fumbling.

However, doing this got me thinking...  What if I used green stuff to fill in a bit of that socket, effectively widening the torso?  I made a tiny ball of green stuff—about the same size as the shoulder ball itself—and fitted that into the shoulder socket.  Then I assembled the arms around that and trimmed away any excess green stuff.

Helpful Hint—You’ve probably heard this before, but be very conservative when you’re mixing green stuff.  You don’t want to end up with a lot of extra sitting around.  In this case, you don’t want a lot of it sitting around drying and getting less sticky.  Mixing tiny amounts will be a bit more time-consuming, but you’ll get much better results

Once I had the weapons on the torsos, it all went quick.  I added the extra conduit to the disruptors, put the torsos on the legs, and then added the heads.  And that was it.  Even switching my build-method halfway through, it took a little over three hours, and half of that was just drying time on some of the bigger parts (arms to torsos, torsos to legs).

Now, using the Warrior bodies does mean I don’t get that “hood” the Deathmarks have, but I’m okay with that.  I think if we made a list of distinctive features of a Necron Deathmark, the hood would probably be number four or five on that list, and this model has all the elements before that.  It also means my Deathmarks are a little smaller than the GW model, but this doesn’t really bother me, either.  One of the jarring elements of the Deathmarks, for me, anyway, is that they’re a stealth/sniper unit and they’re some of the largest infantry models in the army.  Seriously, it’s like asking Jamal Duff to hide behind a coat rack...

However, there’s a dozen Deathmarks for about fifteen dollars, if I count green stuff.  Much better than the ten for $66 they cost normally.  About... 82% off retail, I think, if I’m doing my math right. Heck, even if you bought all the parts for this as bits, you could make ten of these Deathmarks for twenty bucks and a few dollars for shipping.

That's pretty cheap.