This idea of converting a Necron Wraith to look like it's "phasing in" was not my idea, I only executed it. After talking to one of my friends at my FLGS, he explained to me a cool idea he had for making a few Wraith conversions. He wanted to expand his unit and thought if he made some of them to look like they were phasing in from a piece of terrain, he could use the extra bits in the box along with some careful casting to create a few more models.
I thought it was a killer idea as well and he let me try my hand at making the whole idea work. This is what I came up with.
It was actually much easier to do than I thought it would be. That being said, there were a couple of things that had to happen for this to work best.
The model now sits on a 50mm base instead of the normal 40mm sized base. The extra space was needed to fit the terrain on there. I called up Jeff from Dragon Forge and let him know what I was working on and the idea I was trying to convey. He had the perfect 50mm blank base that I could use. Once I had that, it was a matter of assembling the rest of the pieces.
Until recently, I've never been a big fan of "blank" bases, but the more I do with making my own pieces, the more I appreciate having them to work from.
The model, or the half that is there was an attempt at casting my friend did. That was all he could get really. I borrowed a single Cities of Death terrain panel (I don't know which set it was from) and cut it up as my wall. Both the model and the wall section required some cleaning and trimming to get them to match as best as possible. Even then, I needed to do some greenstuff work to join them together.
I told my friend that the terrain had to be something with considerable detail on it. This would not work with a piece of plasticard or foamboard stuck to the base as the wall. In this case, we aren't building a model that happens to be on a base as much as we're building a base that just happens to have a model on it. We needed to have a very detailed base for this to have a chance at working at all.
I used the larger portion of the wall as the part the Wraith would be coming out of and used what I cut off the top as side braces along the underside for added stability. The rest are smaller details I added to make everything look convincing. I added a couple of Secret Weapon skulls to the ground after I added some greenstuff to the corners to vary the height of the ground and make it look like dirt had collected in corners.
I used two different sizes of basing material as well for added texture. The first layer was a very fine ballast that covered the whole base. The second layer was a much more coarse material that was added only in a few key spots.
All in all, I think it came out pretty well and makes for a cool looking model. Definitely something that will stand out on the table and isn't your average Wraith conversion.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
How I improved the level of my basing
How to paint Necron vehicles (black armour with green highlights)
How to build your own custom sized bases
