Terrain is everything - Vent Tower pt 2. EUREKA!

A lot of brain power has been employed over the last few weeks trying to solve the problem of the roof of the 'Vent Tower'. Surprisingly the solution was to stick to the initial sketch. Of course the problem with that was that I'd made the floor plate only just big enough to fit four figures and there would be no room for walls as foamcard thickness of 5mm (x4 all the way round) was sufficient to stop the miniatures fitting up top.

Additionally, going without walls looked a bit stupid, like that scene from Family Guy Blue Harvest. Sure, in the 41st Millenium, Health & Safety isn't big on the Imperium's agenda but seriously your not going to put a guard rail at the top of the building?... aah-hah! A guard rail BING!

So I went back to the sketch and thought to use granny grating as a barrier, thin enough to not take up too much room and transparent enough tto still retain the lines of the building and still provide some measure of architectural reality in stopping folks falling off the top.

So, here we have the floor plate with four pieces of flower decorators wire bent and shaped to add support to the corner pieces. The floor plate has notches cut into it, but not the last bit of card that the corner pieces can also be supported by and glued to. The last picture of the 3 shows the pieces dry fit into their position.

Typically the next set of pics seem to have missed out quite a bit but as you can see I've put in place the granny grating guard rail and removed sections of it to make it even less obstructive. I went for a chest height but having played around in Photoshop in the third picture, I think a waist height would be better and less intrusive to the design and easier to position figures. As you can see four figures fit quite nicely and the fifth would shoot from the firing position of the door. Can't imagine four Termagant up here though, but then again the Imperium does haven't to abide by diversity laws and accommodate for Xenos!

Here's a shot of the roof so I can try and break down what went on between the first three shots and the second set. Black mounting card was positioned in the two corners butting up to the corner spires. The spires were glued in place. I cut granny grating for the floor and removed a base sized circle in the corner with the spire that has a bit of wall to protect those coming out of the hatch. A slotta-base was glued in place and a hatch from an old model American Wild West Locomotive was poly-cemented as the hatch. I'm sure a simple disc of card would suffice here, I'll have to add one into the STC when I get round to it but as you can see this bit's going to be a right pain to describe. Railings where glued in place, I've still to use sandwich bag wires to tie them in place, but that'll happen after the PVA dries.

Now, afterall the worries about retaining the lines of the building I've actually bulked out the roof silhouette. The vertical stripes on the building had to have some sort of ledge above them. If the ledge was too thin it would have looked odd. Fortunately I had some bits of black mounting card that had been doubled up. These were stepped at the corners with the wire support and cut diagonally to butt up at the spire corners and amazingly it's made a pretty damn good fit.

Lastly another Photoshop edit to confirm whether chest height or waist height for the gurad rail would be best and I think the answer is self evident. Oh, and lastly a reminder of what the sketch was and it's pretty close.

But wait, didn't I say I was going to put Heavy Bolter sponsons on this? Well yes I did, but I couldn't get it to work properly, however this roof comes with a piece of square foamcard the exact size of the interior hole of the tower walls attached underneath to hold it in place. This roof will be removable and I'm looking to add an alternative roof section with a similar 'plug fit' that covers at least another two floors, possibly more. In which case there'll definitely not be enough room for four up top so it will support two and I will look to fit the sponsons and fire ports on the additional floors. I wonder how tall I can make this?

Epic Space Marines part 10. - Ultramarines part 6. The whole shebang!

It's been a while and I know you missed them but here's the last of my Epic Ultramarine photos, though couriously I didn't take one with them all in one shot, still there's plenty to drool over if your and Epic fanboy.

   

Assault squad on the left, loving the white shoulder pads on the tac squad in the second row.

Termies, Chaplain and Medic hold the centre [no doubt backed up by the big guns of the Vindicators].

Robots and Whirlwinds support the right flank.

Robots, Predators, Bikes and Mole Mortars support the left flank.

Cheers for sticking with it. Still some unpainted titans left to come when I get round to photgraphing them.

Terrain is everything - Honoured Imperium pt2.

Progress has been pretty swift with this set, not that you'll notice because these updates will be spread out over the next few weeks. Anyway, what a difference 'knowing how to do something' makes to a project. My Red Planet basing is making this a doddle and not only that an appealing prospect, something my non-starter of a Dark Angels project illustrates.

So far everything has had it's Red Oxide primer put on. The Hycote spray is really good, my Simoniz conked out within about one second so it was a good job I picked some up. It's coverage is really good a flatter finish than the Hycote, even more Satin than Matt. Each part has then been dry-brushed with copious amounts of Vermilion Art Acrylic.

Here you can see how the statue was kept separate so I could undercoat the Marine Matt Black [yes that famous one]. As you can see the drybrushing has caught the shoes. The funny thing is all of these models are kind of being painted in the opposite to the suggested GW tutorials, they work on the model then paint the ground. However, as I know the ground is going to require a fair bit of dry-brushing I didn't want to paint the 'item' then mess it up as evidenced below. Of course any dry-brushing later on may well mess up my RedPlanet FX, but we'll have to wait and see on that score...

WFB - Empire Halflings

There was a recent post on BoLS regarding 'power gaming' and the various types of power gamer. I know I'm one but the sort that looks at the best stats and says I'll have one [or many] of them. When it came to archers in my Empire army there was only one choice Hobbits Halflings! Somehow I managed to source 10 of these fellas. I'm certain of the history of some but the remainder I've just no idea where they came from.

I'm also totally unsure of my colour scheme blue and pink?! What was I thinking, but they are kind of pretty. Anyway here's the line up...

Much like the Flagellants/militia they all have a bit of character. First up is some chap stuffing his face with a rather orange chicken drumstick. The next three are Hobbits, they're from the original Citadel Miniatures Fellowship of the Ring box set, which I had. So here we have Merry, Frodo and Pippin. Sam has gone missing along with Gandalf, Legolas, Boromir, Aragorn and Gimli. Bill the pony however is in my bits box. Last of the five is the low-level hero of the unit. This is my favorite Halfling, he looks so cool in his little chainmail outfit and shield on his back.

This five are less impressive, just a bunch of halflings, however the second from left is one of my earliest miniatures. You may notice he's quite tall for such a little gue, that's because he actually came with his own base. You can see the gravel is quite a mound due to the lead base that actually says halfling on it underneath. This guy came in a two pack with another halfling, balding, in a cooks apron and a little dagger though I'm not sure where he ended up.

The only other thing missing from this bunch is my Champion - an Elector , Elder of the Moot! This was a Blood Bowl Halfling put into a sitting position with a lance and mounted on a Giant Scorpion! I'll fish it out for his day in the sun at some point but I think it's missing a few legs and only ever got undercoated.

UPDATE - since found 'Proud Foot', the Halfling with the integral base second from the left and a number of his bretheren here:

http://www.solegends.com/citc/c11halflings.htm

"bin Trago's"

"A'right me'luvver, I'll be with you dreckly!" As I mentioned the other day I attended a funeral the other week. This is a bit of an odd post, so please bare with me. It's historical indulgence, a eulogy, and a tenuous hobby treat.

The funeral was for my both my sons Godfather. When I was at University [93-97] I stayed with three families throughout my time in Cornwall [one of the families I stayed with was during work placement in London]. The second family I stayed with the longest and as they had a son who was around my age I eventually became more than just a lodger during my stay. Sadly he was killed in a car accident in 1996 and the memories invested in the house his parents lived in was too much so they moved and I ended up looking after myself for the first time in my four years studying.

Anyway I never forgot their kindness and generosity in welcoming me into their home and when my wife became pregnant we asked them both to be Godparents for the 'nipper' and when we were expecting the second child they became Godparents again for the 'nu-nipper'. In all that time they've travelled the 350 miles from Cornwall to Lancashire a few times and we've been down on holiday a couple. Sadly the boys Godfather became ill recently and despite having a heart defibrillator fitted complications set in and he passed away on the 16th of Feb. So we endeavoured to attend the funeral and it was decided that I'd go down on the coach just like I did when I was going backwards and forwards to uni.

It's a 10 hour journey from Liverpool to Falmouth and there's now two coaches a day instead of one but I was feeling many emotions as I travelled to my second home. Not least the sadness of the occasion but also the reminiscing of the journey. The times we've been down since we've driven, so it was a very different feeling. I travelled all day Sunday and the funeral was on the Monday. My sons Godfather had specifically requested no black and although it was terribly sad the colour on show did lift spirits. Beforehand I'd chosen to walk along the beach to collect my thoughts, instead of staring at the walls in my B&B. The weather was glorious, a marked change since the previous week and when he was laid to rest two Air Force jets flew past on a training run.

Afterwards we went back to a nearby hotel for refreshments and I met up with the landlord and landlady of the first family I stayed with, who were close friends of my kids Godparents and then I had a chat with the undertaker and his wife, who were also close friends of my kids Godparents and also the landlord and landlady of the flat I rented in my final year. It sounds odd but it was nice, all things considered, and full of memories of happier times.

As I had a couple of days in Cornwall I had some time on my hands and the choice of staring at the walls or a town steeped in memories and a University open for ex-students to wander up and down hoping to bump into current students and harp on about 'the good old days' was any easy decision. Thankfully I didn't harass any students, I had a nip round the ornamental gardens and took my usual route over to town and the first shop on my way - Trago Mills. It's been between 7 and 14 years since I've been in this treasure trove of craft goods, household supplies, furniture, DIY and gardening and I was desperate to see if anything has changed. I've mentioned Tragos before and I love it, I can't believe it's not spread further than Devon and Cornwall. I could see it doing well all over the country. Anyway, I couldn't help but check to see if they had any of that car body repair mesh and although it wasn't quite the bargain I'd got before, it was practically in the same place and 1 sheet for 99p seemed like a fair price. The Matt Black and Red Oxide spray primers for £2.49 were a bargain! So I had to get some. Thankfully it was the right decision as when I got back home and started the Honoured Imperium scenery I ran out of both att Black and Red Oxide spray primers. "Proper job!"

Old Skool Dark Angel Scouts

I promised photo's of this guy way back when. Finally he's got his day in the sunshine, or underneath an angle-poise lamp if you'll excuse the photography.

So this is one of the Advance Space Crusade scouts. I think the rules turned up in a White Dwarf and the were relatively cheap and they got pretty much all the usual upgrades so I wanted to give them Power Shields. Back then there were multiple saving throws, for armour cover and force fields. So if this guy was in hard cover he'd get pretty much three saves [I think] I added thte power shield for even more safety.

To do this I chopped off the combat blade, got a standard WFB shield. This was painted blue inside. Then I got circular bits of aluminium car body repair mesh and bent it round the shield with a suitable 'force' looking orange to yellow paint job. This was stuck to the hand with a las-gun barrel as the shield handle and some suitable electronic circuitry painted on the back.

As conversions go I think this is awful, I have fond memories of it but it's pants, lets be honest. Still I wouldn't change a thing and it's rubbishness can at least be shared.

Terrain is everything - Honoured Imperium pt1.

It was my Birthday the other day but it was a very mixed event as I had to travel away from home for a funeral, I'll touch on that in another post. But I did end up with three birthdays. On the Friday before my birthday I got home and the house was decorated and I got to open my presents. Then on the Saturday my mate Pete came round and we had a bit of a celebration too and then when I returned from Cornwall there was yet more presents. This time I got Dawn of War 2 and my Sister-in-Law did the right thing and looked on my Amazon wish list and got me Honoured Imperium and one of the Dark Angel Heresy books. Quite a nerd haul!

Anyway I was really excited about the Honoured Imperium set so I took some pictures, at night so thats why the colours are a bit flakey. Here's the box...

Here's the three pieces, although it's really two and a half. Saying that the statue and the broken Aquila are quite impressive in size!

The Aquila is the biggest piece with that centre triangle of the body as a separate piece you have to glue into place. This is a real solid piece of plastic with support ridges underneath. I'm pretty sure it'd support my weight if I stood on it [or maybe not...]. They will obviously be Red Planet based but I'm looking to pick out the Aquila with a sandstone [bleached bone] colour. It should help tie in the 'nids and Deathwing nicely.

Next up the star attraction. This guy is awesome and the spcific reason I wanted the Honored Imperium scenery set. I'll be trying to emulate b.smoove at a Gentleman's Ones awesome Verdigris tutorial. It was seeing that green and imagining it on my Red Planet that got me all kinds of excited. The body is all glued together at theis point except for attaching it to the feet. The base will be primed with Red Oxide and the statue will be Matt Black.

Lastly, the extra bit, because lets be honest this looks a bit pathetic to the other pieces. Sad though because it's actually a pretty cool piece in situ, partiuclarly when you've got Marines shooting through the round window. I could imagine that if you had a box of similar ruined pieces these would make a nice set. Of course you could probably make the same sort of pieces from the building kit this is based on but if that was the case then why make this piece anyway? Surely GW could have come up with another small sprue filler that would better honour the Imperium? Anyway I think I'll just stick to Red Planet FX on this, maybe bick out some details, not sure. To deviate too much from the rest of my scenery would be a mistake I think.

PS I also got given a Dremmel-like multi-tool from Aldi that will help with some of my modelling, though quite what I have planned yet I don't know...



Your gaming crew.

It's my mate Chris's birthday today. He was my oldest friend from childhood and he lived round the corner. Most of my gaming experiences were with Chris, so maybe another self-indulgent trip down memory lane...

6th Form at school looked pretty much like this:

These were most of the people who were defining my existence at that point. A group of friends, many of them who were gamers of one sort or another. The guy in the top right doing a fantastic impression of Bruce Dickinson was the guy my brother first played his Ninja role-playing with. The guy immediately below him in the Carcass T-shirt is my mate  Liam, he of the scratch built Warhound and Warlord. The guy at the back in the blue Jumper is Jay, he was the one with the Egg Shell blue Ultramarines and my mate Chris [who looks a little bit sloshed], who's birthday today is, is to the right of Jay and looks like he's got the hand of the guy in double denim growing out of his head.

Chris and I started with Blood Bowl, via Big Pete. Chris had Talisman and a number of it's expansions. When we moved into 40K he had a Genestealer army because he'd bought Space Hulk as well. I think he may have also dabbled in Imperial Guard because those guys were the 'cheap option' in 40K , when GW used to have cheap options! His Epic Army was Eldar and I have so many vivid memories of wargames in his bedroom on the offset diagonally cut gaming table we all shared that was regularly transported between Chris and Liam's house down the street. There was alsways snacks and music on the go [something I may cover in another post] and more bizarrely Chris got into Incense Sticks and Cones, so there were sights sounds, tastes and smells to assault the senses and bring back memories now.

Sadly photography wasn't big on the scene then so I have very few pictures, this being a great one of us as a gang but I know Chris had one of us on our first ever Live-Roleplaying jaunt to North Wales were we camped over-night and donned costumes made from a selection of curtains took to the hills to fight all manner of beasties under the eyes of the GM 'Yoz'! Occasionally we fell out, over rules, my constant losing and other trivialities. It didn't help that I had a Saturday job that allowed me to get whatever GW figures I wanted and I wanted a lot, so that became a point of ridicule some times. Regardless we always had a great time.

The discovery of alcohol and the ability to get into Rock Clubs at 16 impacted on the gaming to a certain degree. Tabletop battles gave way to more social role-playing - Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, Dark Conspiracy and a few others. We had a laugh, great times with great people. We may have drifted apart over the years, I haven't seen Chris in about 2 years since he's moved away, and I only get to speak to Liam via Facebook since he found the interwebz recently, but we'll have those memories for a long time to come. So cherish your gaming crew memories whilst you still can.

WFB - Empire swordsmen

When the Empire army came out for 4th Edition [I've done some research and it was 4th Edition our gaming group purchased] it was all about the Halberdiers. Honestly they were the poster boys for the whole Empire and if not them it was the Greatswords with their ever so great swords they only went and called them 'great'. What there didn't seem to be a lot of love for were the common-or-garden Swordsmen because lets face it there wasn't anything special about them... WRONG! Now having never actually played a game I could be totally wrong and they just don't perform but on paper they were exactly the same as their other Empire brethren except for the small fact they had Weapon Skill 4!

They didn't have the two-handed drawback of Greatswords and Halberdiers which I recall [but may be wrong] meant they struck last or some other disadvantage but it definitely meant they could use their shields which made them also more durable. Anyway I wanted them in my army so I struck up a plan to get some, cheap.

First up however is not a Swordsman, not a true one anyway. Here's another Marauder Miniature. One from a set of Heroes of the Empire. These guys are massive, super human whirling dervishes of the Emperor Karl Franz's elite foot knights. This fella is clearly running some magical greatsword but we'll gloss over that, he was the low level champion added to a quite small squad of Swordsmen.

And here they are [minus number VII], do you recognize them? 2nd Edition Blood Bowl humans. I bought a fair few of these guys and as you can see the early GW plastic moulding which made these oversized Fantasy Football folk actually scale quite well with my Hero. The only issue was the base which wouldn't fit a standard 20mm square base so I had to upgrade them to 25mm square. It was a simple conversion, I had all the High Elves from 4th Edition so I removed a load of their spear heads up to the spear shaft, the spear blade was then cut from the cone shaped connector to the shaft. The blade was glued to the front of the hand and the cone on the back as the pommel of the sword. The left arm was snapped above the elbow and glued twisted downwards. The High Elf shields were then glued on the hand and due to their size and gaps in the snapped arm were hidden from view. That's it, simple, effective and cheap, CHEAP, CHEAP!

'nids part 17 and 'List maker'

'

OK here's another army list from a while back. Some of it has changed but some is still relevant. First up I have to admit it isn't legal, there are 7 troops, but that's because the Alice 40k Warhammer club listmaker treats the Tervigon as a unit upgrade to the Termagant squad, not as a HQ that can now be taken as a troop. I think I later got round this by making the Ripper Swarms flying instead of tunnelling which would have achieved the same Deep Strike 'annoyatoit' antics that I see them as

HQ - Tyranid Prime with Pair of Boneswords, Synapse Creature

HQ - Hive Tyrant with Lash Whip and Bonesword, Heavy Venom Cannon, Synapse Creature, Psychic Scream, Leech Essence

ELITE - The Doom of Malan'tai 90

  Mycetic Spore with Barbed Strangler

Troops - Tervigon with Catalyst

Troops - 10x Termagants with Devourer

Troops - 16x Hormaguants with Toxin Sacs

Troops - 3x Tyranid Warriors with Barbed Strangler, Deathspitter

Troops - Broodlord Squad Member with 7x Genestealers

Troops - 8x Genestealers

Troops - 3x Ripper Swarms with Tunnel Swarm

Fast Attack - 10x Gargoyles

Heavy Support - Trygon

Heavy Support - 1x Biovore

1504pts

Prism Break

My son got an Eldar Fire Prism for his birthday the other month [and another 4 pack of Guardians]. I've tried to approach this with him doing even more - I gave him the clippers to remove the Guardians from the sprue which immediatley he responded with 'I can't do that!' I said 'well I'm certainly not' so he went at it and I cleaned any extraneous bits and mould lines with scalpel.

Now I did do some of the removal for the Fire Prism as he was busy gluing the Guardians so by the time he'd finished some of the Fire Prism was ready to construct which prompted a bit of shock on his part because he thought there was too much to glue and he only wanted to do the 'little things'. I said tough, he'd decided he wanted the tank and he'd be putting it together. Now I know this sounds a little harsh but heck I could make this thing all by myself and we'd be right back in the same situaiton as the 'nids. So if he complains then he's doing it and meanwhile I can still help out unobtrusively, like trimming the parts out while he was busy, and he still feels it's his project.

Now this isn't helped by GW, the Fire Prism sucks. Not in a major way mind, as you can see below we haven't made much of it but already I've had to make compromises. You get these extra bits to go in those engines if you want to represent Star Engine upgrades. I asked my son if he wanted them, allowing his decision making alone, he said yes, I go to put them in and there too big. There seemed two ways you could mont them inside the engine cowling, the diagram wasn't very clear. Both ways spread the cowling apart so there was a 1-2mm gap between top and bottom. So I had to deny his choice of adding the Star Engines. That's not my fault but it still feels like I've said 'what do you want? OK that's nice. We won't be doing that!'

As you can see in these two pictures elastic bands are a useful tool here. GW's moulding once again lets us down. The hinge cup that holds the back door is not big enough to house the door rods that go in it. This puts pressure on the join to the back of the Fire Prism and effectively rips it off the chassis. You can see above the poly-cement 'welding' I had to employ in the corners to join these suckers together.

On top of all this the hinge mechanism and the weight of the back door means this thing won't stay shut. There's all sorts of little nubbins on the thing that you'd think would hold it in place, but no, if flaps open like someone was 'born in a barn'. So we may well just glue the thing shut, it's not like it has transport anyway. A shame though as having something open and shut is just that little more interesting for a nine year old. Even bigger shame are the compromises made so early in it's construction, ruddy wraithbone!

Terrain is everything - mo' fences

Here's an update on the fences - as you can see below my two test subjects are all growed up, the glue has dried with no warping of the cardboard base [yay!]. I think perhaps the grating provided some sort of tensioning effect that prefented this, that's my pseudo-science explanation there. The grating is a bit too chunky for my taste but I'll live with it seeing as it's esay to work with and I've a ready supply. I'm sure it'lll look better painted.

One minor concern is that I rushed a little too much and they don't meet neatly at the corner. Hopefully with a dozen or more of these there'll be some that fit others better but for gaming purposes we can live with this.

The last shot was after I undercoated the fences black. I thought this would stick to the granny grating a little better but I think it uses far to much spray to fully cover the sand and the rockcrete posts still come out as plastic so I'll be adding a coating of black art paint, PVA for adhesion and some plaster [my usual base]. This will probably be thinned on the fencing because it's chunky enough as it is. 

Before I do any more painting I'll be prepping a fair few more fences and some broken ones. I'm confident this test has served it's purpose so there's no stopping me from doing the rest.

Joining a blogging movement - Old Stuff Day

On Valentines Day Rob™ at Warhammer 39,999 suggested we all start a blogging movement to show a little love (♥) for some of our old posts.

So here's one of my posts that I think deserves a little more love via the filthy art of 'thread-o-mancy' my free wound markers [with an update]...

If you've got plenty of high wound characters, or if like my son you are running Tyranids then sooner or later you're going to have to deal with recording wounds. There's a number of options, put a dice down [preferrably a small one], buy wound markes or note it down on a piece of paper. The first two cost money, or are annoying if you're using all your lucky dice just to keep track and the last one's also a pain in the hive mind.

Alternatively you can make your own, so I did. All you need to do is print them out, attach to mounting card, cover in sellotape for pseudo one sided lamination and then cut them out, voila!

You can use the blue markers for your Doom of Malantai, thanks to his Spirit Leech having a maximum of 10 wounds! There's also a few 3-5 wound markers for you Tervigon, enjoy.

Of course you can also use these for your Dark Eldar pain tokes [that's the update].

On top of that I thought I'd resurrect some of these other blogs 'old' articles that deserve a dusting off and a little bit of love  (♥)

http://40kmaunderings.blogspot.com/2008/02/b2b-flamers-part-1.html

http://yearoffrugalgaming.blogspot.com/2009/03/blood-bowl-pitch.html

http://www.battlebarge.com/guides/terrain-guides/