Imperial Knight - in manufactorum pt 6

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.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |

40kaddict Towers - 3 months on

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!

We've got a European Ticket to Ride

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.

A new 'Wayne' enterprise!

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.

Poll test

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:

Which is the best Print & Play STC Template skin?

1 2

3 4

Poll Maker

40kaddict Terrain Competition Update

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:

1. UK - 17
2. USA - 3
3. Austria - 2 [but only 81 page views]
4. 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.

Terrain is everything - Hail the Omnissiah new FREE Print & Play building template

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.]:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B97Rk-BalgZbWTlldVNha1c1cHM

Meanwhile all the other Print & Play and standard terrain templates are available here:
http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/terrain-is-everything-hail-omnissiah.html    

P.S. let me know if there are any problems with the download, it's a bit difficult for me to check