Iron Warriors and Terrible Decals

I know what you're thinking, "What kind of a title is that? Are his decals crappy and yet he's showing off his squad?" The answer is kinda yes.

Hi guys, Macca here, and today I am going to show you my new tac squad, aka what a month of procrastination looks like. However, I am quickly going to change topics and go into talking about Games Workshop decals about halfway through.

I decided to change to black rims on the bases this week, I really like the brown, however I felt I just wasn't getting the contrast, they honestly looked like a 70's apocalypse movie, just brown on brown. Too boring.

The paint job is nothing too interesting, I know, but these are currently only tabletop quality. Down the track I will add some scratch marks to go with the armour chipping, I will also do more highlights on the flesh on the bare head. As it is, I'm wanting to get this army to playable in the quickest fashion, rather than going straight at a Golden Daemon.

Angry Macca and Shitty Decals:

So, at this point, let's swap topics. I used a mix of decals on these models. I used Forge World ones on the knee (for the squad number) and the right shoulder (for unit type). Then I decided, in a truly stupid clusterfuck moment, worthy of derision, that I would use the 40k Iron Warrior emblems on the shoulders, rather than embossed pads. Rookie, so very, very rookie.

This is one of the better decals, yet you can clearly see the edges of the decal in this image, about a quarter of a millimeter from the silver, however, that's an optical illusion, more on that later.

On the squad Sergeant, you can also see some crinkles on the cranium of the skull. This is despite a ton of decal thinner and a lot of time spent working on each decal (4-5 times as long as any other decals).

By contrast, this Forge World decal is almost flawless.

The Problem:

Take a look at these decals. The decal areas are far larger than the item printed onto them, this means you will need to trim. Not just that, the decals are very thick, making them incredibly hard to apply smoothly.

Further to that, have a look up close. See anything odd? That's right, that's the silver skull and the black features not lining up. This is something I didn't notice until I applied them to the miniature, as the silver blends into the pale background of the decal sheet. This then led me to 'paint' over any overhanging silver, leading to the optical illusion that the emblem is nowhere near the edge of the decal, despite my trimming.

These Black Legion emblems are perfect examples of shit printed decals.

What is this? Seriously? That's a vehicle decal, that gap is almost a millimeter!

This set of Ultramarine symbols are almost not even printed onto the decal area!

I thought at first I just had a bad batch. Then I decided to go through my decal collection (It's a big one) and I realised that every chaos decal sheet, collected from 2003-2014 (when I gave up on 40k) are all this bad. This is not isolated at all, these are very poor quality decals.

The Actual Point?

Now, I know, I whinged and moaned all the way down this page. But in the end, my point is this:

Don't use Games Workshop infantry decals. They are shit, they will potentially ruin your expensive models.

You see, I am providing context here, it's no good me just saying "these suck", it's important for me to actually show why. This is 'bitching with a purpose'.

Anyway, all this aside, I am pretty happy with the squad, the second tac squad is in a similar state, so I have no choice but to continue on and do the best I can with them. I'd like to know how other people have dealt with this problem. Has it ever come up? Have you tried your best, followed the tutorials and yet the decals don't work? Please let me know, I' love to hear your stories.

~Macca