It's this time of the year that usually the hobby slump kicks in. Having most of Christmans off, lots of late nights, lie-ins, the dark and miserable days [and we won't mention the fact I have to go out to the Man Cave now which is less appealing] means quite often I get demotivated. The fact is I'm keeping my mojo ticking over, doing tedious but essential jobs. I'm slightly overwhelmed by what I still have before me but thats down to trying to do lots of things at once so progress is much slower. That being said the night is getting a lot of attention [for the time being] I want to get him based and basecoated, possibly with washes too and then try and move onto other things. Funnily enough the 1.5-2 hours hobby time that used to be beyond my patience now feels more like a limitation, I just want to get on.
Now the Knight has been 'textured', following the same
principle as the Cerastus I stippled on Vermilion art acrylic. I looked
for a black or even a green in Home Bargain but no joy. I;ve got loads
of the Vermilion though so just went at it. I also figured that when I
did the highlights on the Lancer I stippled a couple of times so I did two coats of stippling to build up the texture. I may live to regret this as the paint dries with an almost rubbery feel so I have serious reservations about how this will cope should it be scraped by a nail or somesuch.
With that in mind I decided the basecoat would benefit from being a bit more hardwearing so I picked up a can of Army Painter Angel Green undercoat and spryaed it on top.
I'm definitely impressed with the spray, it provides a really good under/base coat. I'll be considering using it in addition to a black undercoat on future Dark Angels. But the texture has come out fantastic. Not sure if it'll be significantly more durable but it certainly feels like the green is bonded to the red and successive washes, colours, highlights and varnish will hoefully add further protection.
Not forgetting this is a plastic model anyway so they're a bit more forgiving when it comes to knocks and scrapes.
I keep dry fitting the beast which gives me a thrill, wastes time as I build up/break down all the parts. The remainign red bits and metallics are next.
I'm also Warplock Bronzing anything else that needs doing - some odd Ravenwing bikes, the remaining Knight weapons, some terrain pieces and the Jetfighter so there'll be a really mess of odd things that will depress me as nothing feels like it's getting finished but in the long run those tedious jobs that have to be done are being done at the right time.
If you saw the news over Christmas you'll know certain parts of Lancashire, Cumbria and Scotland got a bit wet. In fact Croston, a village just a few miles up the road was all over the National news thanks to the level of damage suffered. Croston is in fact where Otty lives but I think he avoided the worst of it. His wife was offering to care for other folks kids while they cleared any damage so I imagine that level of charity means you're not suffering as much.
For me though this was my garden, with it's impromptu water feature. There were some doubts but I was convinced the man cave would not be flooded and very glad of the base we had put down. This was the worst flooding we've ever had but from past experience we knew it could potentially happen. I think I'll be confident the shed base will overcome such a downpour in the future.
On the plus side the drainage of the field behind has been improved over the last five years so you can see just how much water receded over 24 hours after the rain stopped.
Of course the flooded path did provide me with ample opportunity to play with my new Christmas toy from my brother - an Orvibo WiFi enabled plug socket. Using the WiWo app on my phone I'm able to switch the heater on/off, countdown or set timed use. So I can pre-heat the shed before I go or just turn it on off and to keep the cold at bay. Prior to this I'd put it on early one day and by the time I went in in the evening it was about 27° C in there. Not only did I have to take off my jumper I was contemplating stripping off my T-shirt too!
I also picked up a pair of Dunlop wellies, my Dad used to make these in Liverpool until they closed the factory. He spent a lot of time dismantling the injection moulding machines which were then shipped out to Portugal where these particular wellies were manufactured. Should the garden be flooded again I'm at least going to be able to get to the shed instead of playing hopscotch across some old roof tiles I spread out on the path while trying to avoid ending up on Fail Army [remember when that used to be You've Been Framed]
But the really big news about the man cave is that before Christmas I was devastated to discover I'd got mould inside. Just at the point where the right hand side of the computer desk and the other metal painting desk meet. There was also some mould at the back behind that little green storage box just visible on the floor. Now I'm pretty sure this has not come from outside, with hindsight I'm regretting using the old rug on the floor and when the computer desk was in the back room it was prone to mould there so I'm pretty sure I've brought the spores into the shed. In fact I've looked underneath the very bottom far right shelf and there is mould underneath it so I'm convinced I imported the issue
This discovery was deeply unsettling and I've since been battling an outbreak of mould every few weeks, luckily only in the same places. It's definitely prompted me to think about storage and access to those areas prone to outbreaks - corners and where the skirting boards would usually be. So I'll be looking to move stuff around when the weather gets better. I've also picked up some clear anti-mould paint. I will remove most of the large furniture, scrub it down with anti-mould spray and then coat them in the anti-mould paint. I'll also paint the bottom foot or so of the shed with the paint to further deter outbreaks. Lastly I'm looking to get an electric dehumidifier to help combat moisture in the air, currently I've got one of those moisture traps, which'll do for a couple of months.
The wife is quoting house-improvement guru Sarah Beeney and how it's ventilation that's the key, which is true but there are still drafts in the shed door and when I open it to go in/out that's also a lot of air circulation so I'm convinced if I can clear the majority of what's present and then put in place coatings to prevent regrowth then I may return to a sense of peace, otherwise me and Papa Nurgle are going to have some serious issues!
Father Christmas was very keen to reward my first born son with a board game and he wisely chose Ticket to Ride: Europe. We had opportunity to give it a go as a family, on first glance the rules seemed quite complicated and decided my wife and youngest would team up, which in hindsight was a mistake as the rules are actually quite simple. In truth I think it's potentially the easiest game we've got - compared to Pandemic and Catan. It's really easy to setup and essentially amounts to a card game with some board mechanics with a train theme. This was me [yellow] trailing early on to the wife [black] and the boy [green].
Of course things change by the end of the game and thanks to comnpleting all my tickets, creating the longest train and not using any stations I steamed ahead by the end. There was actually a few more points to add taking me well over 100 points
We had another game a few nigths later and the boy managed to whoop all of our collective cabooses making nearly 120-130points! I highly recommend it and if you need anymore convincing why not check out the awesome Wil Wheaton in his Tabletop episodes of the original and Europe version, it's why I advised good old St. Nick that it was a gift worth receiving.
Christmas came and went and I took a little break over that period so some of these will be catch-up posts. One of these isn't actually my post, as such, this is about my eldest son. Having visited the new hobby shop Wargames in Southport he'd been really excited [well I assume so, it's difficult to tell with a 13 year old] about the Batman Miniatures game. He pretty much earmarked his Christmas money in advance. So as soon as the festive holidays were over we went into Southport so he could sweatily part with his cash. He came away with the core rule book, which is really nice drawing on much of the exisiting comic book art, the Scarecrow and Militia crew starter box, Hush, the Arkham Knight and his favorite 'super hero' - Deathstroke [in the next picture].
To help support his new venture I got the Joker box, I liked the idea od painting the prison fatigues and these guys all seemed a little odd which was, although I rather dislike the super tall stupid hat guy in the back left. I must admit that putting them together was a reminder of just how much I came to loathe metal miniatures and love plastic ones. Even just cover up the slot on the base was a chore with an evenings worth of Milliput effort :( That said I am communicating extensively with my son about where my involvement begins and ends. He is definitely painting his miniatures I'm presuming I will be doing mine. He's certainly more amenable to the process now which is refreshing. Next step is to create some terrain and a skirmish mat to use. My Print & Play buildings will suffice for structures and I've created a quick and dirty mat already which if I can get Illustrator to render the effects correctly might look OK but RAM is in short supply thanks to stupid Windows 7 32bit that we're saddled with.
While I was at Wargame I bumped into Chris from Lost Boys [now the Merseyside Mammoths] not sure I've seen him since we had our battle [although he may have been at GW for last years Armies on Parade]. He's now jumped to Batman and had some interesting advice about expanding our force. I also picked up a 100mm thick pick and pluck Battlfoam for my Cerastus. Although I still need another to fully enclose the Knight and it's actually bigger than my GW or my Tabletop Tyrant Squire case it does fit perfectly inside the Powerplay Pro Metal Carry Case I got from Home Bargain. I mean the dimensions are 100% correct so if you picked one up then Battlefoam is definitely something to look at. As you can see I also took another couple of pictures of the store so you can get a sense of scale, it really is cool amd the wife was perfectly happy there, although she advises some non-hobby magazines might be nice for hobby widows ;)
The display cabinets are also rocking some seriously cool models too.
And at the risk of going overboard here's their own 'tour of the store'. Chris had mentioned to them my previous post, which they'd been grateful for but when someone starts a small business, whatever it may be they deserve as much help and support as they can get. High street retail is hugely difficult and especially something as niche as wargames and hobby supplies so fingers crossed Wargames will be here to stay.
In preparation for the 40kaddict terrain competition here's a little poll test based on my existing Print & Play templates. Should anyone wish to attempt try multiple votes please let me know in the comments so I can check and see how the security works. Although I suppose you could still 'employ' a load of facebook friends to spoof votes it'll be interesting to see what mechanisms the poll has to prevent this, so please click away below:
As December comes to a close I get to check how the competition fund is growing and a further £10 has been added in just one month! So I'd definitely advise looking at any plans you may have to enter the competition sooner rather than later as the fund is nearly half way to maturity!
Not sure what else to say about this, the metrics look very interesting again with some clicks worth 90p alone but a few adverts worth 60p got a number of clicks so that racked up about £3 in just one day! It really is quite staggering, despite these being only a few pence here and there it all seems to add up. Not only that but I'm somehow just earning a penny or two without any click-thru, don't know how that works but it's interesting to see it's possible.
Over the last 30 days clicks have come from:
UK - 17
USA - 3
Austria - 2 [but only 81 page views]
Australia - 2
So thanks for your support of the prize fund, although Canada generated 19p without a single click! Germany brought in 3p and Sweden, Spain, New Zealand and France all contributed a penny each. Sadly no sign of Syria this time around but I did get the odd visit from Laos, Monaco, Gibraltar, India, Oman, Iceland and Kazakhstan. I love to see this sort of thing, welcome one and all. Anyway, we'll reconvene at the end of January to see where the totaliser is at, thanks again.
I know Christmas and New Year has been and gone but there are still presents to be
had and the 40kaddict thinks you've all been very good this year so
please accept this gift as 2016 begins...
In truth the bulk of this design was created over 2 years ago. When I first started designing Print & Play terrain I developed all four texture maps one after another, basically just jamming with the layout and seeing what ways I could make it different. The inspiration falls squarely on this old 1st Edition Epic Space Marine building, I think it's the Generatorium but there's so little info from these days [although i do have the rulebook at home somewhere, wait... yep just found a .pdf on my hard disc and it is indeed a Generatorium, which as we all know is:
A city or industrial complex requires vast quantities of energy, and power supplies are a favourite target for attacking forces. The nature of a generator will vary from world to world. Fertile planets often use organic or fossil fuels, while fusion grids and plasma reactors are common on industrialised worlds. Solar generators and geothermal energy are also used where local conditions permit. These power sources, and the secrets of their operation, are jealously guarded by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Of course my misremembered stab at it no way matches the majesty of the original but the concrete texture came out really well. Now you can obviously just print these out, stick them to foamboard [printing on sticky labels will further facilitate this] and build but I would heartily recommend an alternative. Should you have access to the printer and materials then print one set onto clear acetate and then print another set onto paper/labels. Now you may have to print another set and apply to the foamboard as well. Then cut the windows out on the foamboard, apply the acetate sheet for transparent windows. Then apply the label set to some cereal box or mounting card, cut out the windows again and glue over the top for a composite detailed building.
Now that may be a little more effort than Print & Play but it's next level detail and only a little effort for a lot more gain. Over the next few days I may consider putting this one together myself as it looks like I'll need some city blocks for a new interesting hobby adventure, more to follow.
Oh, and just a reminder that the Google AdSense competition will include the Print & Play terrain. If you can get a decent photograph or photo-manipulated shot of one of these, maybe with practical smoke effects even you could still be in with a chance to win an Imperial Knight [or equivalent] as and when the AdSense funds mature [update to follow].
To access the full STC please point your Cogitators here, be fair warned it is 4MB in size [I
make no apologies for this, I could probably render it as a .jpg or
spend hours trying to reduce the file size, I tweaked it a little bit and got it down so hopefully it's less of an issue now.]:
It doesn't look like I ever rewarded this model with a post of it's own, it just got lumped in with other projects I was working on simultaneously. Well with the Knight at a 'save point' it was time to overcome the inertia on this project. Stumbling blocks were fundamentally magnets. It's always problematic but so worth it. There are tutorial online of course to help [often I still find it hard], the one I first printed out was from the eternal wargamer but Michael Corr has an equally detailed one over at St Andrews Wargaming and obviously I put my own spin on in it. Really my method was just fill it with Milliput and drill out holes at me leisure. I did the underwing mounts and the nose cannon that way. Putting the milliput into whatever holes, then gluing the wepon mounts in place, which squashed the putty. Then using the weapons, pre-dipped in water and squashing them gently - providing a perfect surface to drill into for my magnets when the Milliput cures. I'm still not sure about the targeter/heavy bolter mounts either side of the nose. Mike said they're too hard to swap so it's a blocker to overcome.
The top of the jetfighter, I just glued in some sprue and attached a magnet.
I then filled the two tops with Milliput and pressed it into place until I got an impression of the magnet. This means I can easily align it perfectly to fit the one in the fuselage.
I also prepared the Rift Cannon extension that will allow the magnet to butt up against the Milliput in the nose.
So magnets go in next and I just have to decide what to do about the targeter/heavy bolter mounts either side of the nose and whether to magnetise the hover jets/ammo covers. When I first got this I never expected to make the Dark Talon, the Jetfigther was a better prospect but magnetising for variety is so worthwhile. Now the Dark Talon is considerably better but I'm not 100% wedded to representing all things through magnets I just need to decide which options I can live with glued in place, what would you do?
Merry
X-Mas from Professor Egon Seuss and the rest of the Magos on Ferron
Proxima. Additional felicitations from the guys and gals at the Vulcan
Institute of Techno-Archaeology. May all your X-mas wishes be plastic [or
resin, but not Finecast].
In case you're not X-mas orientated please accept the following good wishes:
I will be posting up a holiday gift lift later in the week, y'know when people have time to look at the blog instead of being sat stuffed on turkey, sprouts, Christmas pudding and Quality Street so see you all then, then!
With a concerted pushI managed to get the Knight through to undercoat stage. Mostly dry fit in places - carapace, shoulders and obviously the weapon mounts. Ultimately this is the stage I watned to get to so I can happily move onto prep work on other porjects. As there are still hurdles to overcome here - magnettising the missile launcher, some pistons on the weapons it seems a safe place to pause, hopefully coming back wiht a fresh view to move past the obstacles.
Hopefully you can also make out the hatch and the fact it won't shut properly. I drilled out the hinge and actually put a pin throughto make it open/close. Unfortunately it's positioned such that it won't close properly and the hinges will potentially break with continued use but to get this level of accessibilty was quite a challenge so I'll live with it.
Having undercoated the pieces separately I was able to use a piece of card to mask the areas around the feet and use Red Oxide Primer on the base. I could have used Vermilion over the black but I'm always more confident that the car spray will form a better base to paint on.
As this Knight will be green and have a similar theme to the Gerantius scheme I will need to plan how I'm going to achieve that. As I typed this I had a vision of yellow and black chevrons to tie it in with the Cerastus but this guy is not connected with House Raven so I really shouldn't do that. Checkered pattern though, now that would fit with his origins and create a whole lot of work I'd not planned on - thanks imagination!
Either way next step is Red Planet BASE! and then to stipple any of my acrylic paints from the same make as my Vermilion onto the armour plates to create a texture I can riff off further down the line. It was so effective on the Cerastus and if I can repeat the effect in green I can replicate it across all my armour and definitely my Ravenwing too [as I already showed it was possible in the black areas of my knight].
A while back I came across a Kickstarter campaign by a guy wanting to open a new gaming centre/shop. If I'm honest I didn't really follow what was going in the campaign but I kept on seeing bits and bobs about it and as things progressed it looked set to become a reality. I'm not sure at which point I suddenly realised this new venue would be opening in Southport, a 15 minute drive from where I live but as progress in the shop was being shared I got a little bit excited. The other week Wargames officially opened and the weekend after, having just watched Star Wars, I decided to take the kids to have a look. I'd noticed there hadn't been any pictures of the shop online since it had been opened and the impresison I got beforehand was that it was pretty big and I was not wrong. The pictures don't really convey the size sadly but there is about 5 or 6 tables set up with room for another 8 or so... downstairs! And there is going to be three floors, with purely gaming on the upper two. There's a mix of products available and my eldest was particularly interested in the Batman Skirkish game, he's already planning on spending Christmas money on it!
Nothing was priced up yet but friends have confirmed it is indeed offering saving on standard GW products, what that will do to the Southport GW time will tell. The problem for them is they're set up primarily as a hobby space which has allowed parents to leave their kids, go shopping and come back. Whereas Wargames has a cafe, comfy seating, presumably a toilet and in the new year they'll even have an alcohol licence for the upper floors! Add in the fact it has more than just GW product, and room to game [which I believe will be pay-to-play as I recall that was some part of the Kickstarter campaign where you got a membership option for cheaper games], this shop could be the go-to place for hobbyists. I spoke to the owner and he was really cool, so I hope it's a success for him, I just hope the town can sustain both shops. Not that we get into Souhtport as often as we'd like but as Wargames will stay open until 11:30 it's possible we could attend for a few games and there are plans for tournaments too, and you know we like a tournament. Oh, and they've got battlemats too, as you can see below. I know you can get these online but there's nothing like seeing one in the flesh.
There are also various display cabinets with a number of store armies on display. I was particularly taken by this wee beasty. It really is beginning to grow on me as a model, despite it's convoluted rules. I just can't decide if I'd want it or rather go the Trygon/Tervigon kitbash route that looks so effective for a fraction of the cost.
Anyway, just thought I'd share my thoughts, give heads up to what looks like a really good proposition and although they have stuck to the tried and tested 'red and black and white' of your average boys bedroom ;) it's definitely more in keeping with my idea of an open and airy place to venture into, rather than avoid. Good luck to 'em.
Having organised what projects I have going forward I've structured a plan of action, specific short term goals so I can keep a lot of plates spinning before the 'focus' hits. Getting the knight fully magnetised, based and undercoated is that first goal, before I move onto something else then hopefully cycle back around to basecoats etc. So I went back to Alex's magnetising a Knight tutorial
as I figured he'd already looked at siph-horridus on weemen's and the Codex Imperialis guide and potentially improved the process and in turn I could put my spin on things. The great thing was that in the midst of doing it you can immediately see what's going to work for you and what's not. I decided the battle cannon melta swap would be through packing out the barrels with Milliput. I was in the process of doing the ammo feed swap but realised I really didn't care enough about it, and just glued the hopper on, giving me the melta fuel tanks as a separate bit I can use on a base or something. Should I ever get another Knight I'll do the opposite for variety.
And for the most part that's the only magnetising I needed to do as I suddenly figured out a swap method for the arms. Alex had already evolved the waist joint from siph's process, he cut notches either side so his sprue attachment could slot in like lock and key. So I just expanded that to all my arm weaponry. The two shoulder mounts had their connecting rims all trimmed back to form two ridges and all the weapons had two notches taken out. Now it can be fiddly fitting them in as I did the notches left to right, meaning the weapons are rotated 90 degrees to fit them in and the length of the barrels is a little awkward, although even if it was front to back I think there'd be the same problem... however, because the torso is detachable it's not impossible to weaponise it while separated and then combine the top and bottom. The resulting join is not as flush as magnets, the weapons all have bits that prevent it looking as neast as I'd prefer [Alex trims those off in this guide] but, because this is essentially a 'friction' fit I'm not about to remove parts that make the arms stay in place. Better to have an imperfect posable model than a perfect model whose pose keeps slipping.
I've still to sort out the stubber, ion shield and melta and there are a number of pistons that need to be added which will lock in some weapon poses but not sufficient that I feel that I've lost some posability. You can definitely see though that the alignment of the torso with my subtle change in the legs makes this look far more dynamic than it usually does.
Having done all of that I also based the knight, I didn't take any pictures, its only sand and glue afterall. I'd later discover that the very fine sand in my mix is making the base look quite odd - the sand sets in a solid mass, obscuring the medium sized pieces I spent a long time sifting out of my big bag of sand. It also creates little dimples where some of the PVA dries quicker and the surface tension leaves a little 'mole hole'. It did the smae on the Cerastus and I was going to put things growing out of them but thought better of it.
Anyway, having seen the result I added another layer of PVA over the suspect areas and re-applied the medium sized sand, which seem to have solved the problem. But even the first application was sufficient to make me feel a thrill of success. Every time I ran it through my head that I'd actually based the model, the perceived obstacle for it being sat on the shelf for 5 months, I literally felt like Sheldon in the Big Bang [below].
Now if that's not signs of addiction I don't know what is and as mentioned in some of my recent comments it's both amazing and just a little scary that it's happening but also that just by thinking about it I can feel that same sense of satisfaction at will! It's like having a little endorphin tap. But that's possibly just me as that door swings both ways and there are plenty of things that nag at me relentlessly that can suck all the life out of my hobby vibe. Still, I'm feeling good about all this so best not look a gift-horse in the mouth :)
PeteB's moved on a bit from his space pixies, I don;t believe he's sold them but he's been corrupted by the chaos Gods and fallen for the Daemonkin Codex. It was in February at my 40k @ 40 bash that he and Liam spent a good deal of time debating the dirty options the Codex could throw up and it's nice to see the results and how much fun he's getting out of this wildly different army compared to the Eldar.
Typically PeteB has speed painted most of his force so far, but not sacrificing quality in the process. I'm pretty envious of how good these look in such a short time, I sometimes wish I could achieve this ratio of effort to result.
This Maulerfiend is really effective, such a great model.
His Chaos Lord biker who zips about the battlefield taking heads.
His Chaos Rhino is pretty cool too, even with all those garden railings on the top ;) He got a load of fantasy chaos hounds to use as Fleshhounds, a considerably cheaper alternative and its great to see him exploring a different faction [says the guy whose stuck with nids for so long] and enjoying the different play style too.
No doubt there'll be more to come as his Soul Grinder, Daemon Prince and hounds get completed. There are also some Chaos Marines and Berzerkers that are pretty much done too.
It was April when I last put some concerted effort into my Azrael conversion from the Dark Vengeance Captain Balthasar model and this horrific close-up picture might explain why. Essentially I'd painted his face a number of times, been happy and then cocked up the eyes, then tried again and failed. The teeth too, went all kinds of wrong so he got parked and I've not looked at him since, well not in a kind way that motivated me to paint him but often in disgust and dread that I had to fix him eventually. But really theres just the face, the sword, the name on the banner and a few tweaks here and there and this guy is done - a nights work at the very least and he's on my To Do List too!
And so I did! I spent the night fixing his face, the eyes and teeth being the main thing but also doing his sword.
I'd managed to get some quite subtle blends on the black blade of the sword then put some striations on it similar to those on my Tyranid Boneswords [I've just realised my Boneswords ARE black and I did Old One Eye's skeleton black too, I knew I was right doing that]. I hadn't planned to do them similar and they've created a bit of a pattern that I never intended - too many Xs in my opinion but overall I'm happy, nearly done.
All I need to do now is the name on the banner. But while I was doing it I also decided to push on with my Assault on Black Reach commander who was ironically supposed to be the 4th Company Master who is Balthasar, which is the Dark Vengeance commander! Anyway, he only needed to tweak the banner and as there was no way to fit Balthasar on that scroll I decided it was a Vraks cmapign banner, still struggled to fit the lettering in, not my best freehand and the legion numbers well ropey, but at least changing the scroll to black was an improvement. Now all I need to decide is whether to add a little red stripe on the bottom of the cloak to tie him in with Azrael above...
