LVII: Resin Prince

Over on PapaNurgle they were talking about how trench style bases are a natural fit for Death Guard, and I gotta agree. I'm going for the Siege of Vraks theme, so I had to recommended Secret Weapon's Trench Works resin bases.

Snapping this WIP shot of my DP reminded me of how long it has been since I touched my plague marines. I need to get to work on that.

Shame on Ron

"If this scene sucks; it's because YOU suck"

This is a poster by Xamie Hernandez, and it was pertaining to the music scene in SoCal, but the sentiment is just as true for your local gaming scene. Ron posted this post about how he's not going to get into Fantasy because nobody in his area paints their armies.



If Ron read the fluff for the armies, and looked at the models & said to himself "that's not for me", well then fine; I have no problem with that. To not start an army that you want to build however, and then blame it on the local scene .... is weak. I'm not trying to pick on Ron here (just the opposite), the man is in a very visible position in this hobby, and he has done a lot to stimulate creativity in this scene through fantastic painting and modeling tutorials and by providing access to a vast network of blogs for literally hundreds of hobbyists; so this post just seemed unnecessarily negative and uncharacteristically disparaging. Ron says he is jealous of the war-gaming scene here in Vancouver, but I say Ron can make his own scene as good as he wants for himself.

The job isn't painting models; it's getting excited about painting your models.

Ron frequently posts about his "Old-Timers league" and how they just mostly get together and chat about the hobby more than play games. I suggest he maybe throw the idea of an Warband Expansion rules (as suggested by John of Santa Cruz Warhammer in the comments) out there to those guys (to start), maybe get the local shop involved. A similar thought is maybe a "Tale of 4 Gamers" type project.

How we do it here is: set the bar at a 3 colour, table-top quality minimum pretty much across the board. Inevitably, people start to see more fully painted/detailed armies & the standard naturally raises itself.

All I'm saying is, everybody has the power to improve their gaming scene, and with all the thousands of eyeballs out there reading his blog, Ron has more influence on that than maybe he realizes. He says "I would love to see a fully painted Fantasy army outside of pictures on the internet or at Games Day", but I would argue the The Storm Wardens project should have taught us all that pictures on the internet CAN lead to painted armies in real life.

I'm not trying to bully anybody into starting a new army, my intention is to hopefully just empower people who might be on the fence. You aren't alone, there IS hope.

LVI: Someday my Prince will come (continued)

A few of you may remember this post from back in Febuary... progress has been glacial (at best). Now that his wings are finally assembled, my Prince is nearly ready to lead my army to the tabletop.

I apologize for the lack of posts; I've been distracted by Fantasy lately. I'm, at long last, on the cusp of finishing my 1500 point 40K army... and what do I do? I start a Lizardmen army. I'm sure some of you can relate. I've never played Warhammer Fantasy before, but I'm pretty excited about 8th edition... I've even started a new blog about it: Son of Slann (stop on by & say hello).

LV: Muddy Basses

I just got my Instant Scenery Kit: Mud & Water from Secret Weapon in the mail, and the picture above is my first attempt (after drying overnight). I have to say... it looks better on camera than in real life right now. I will eventually base my whole army with this stuff (I'm going for a Siege of Vraks theme) but I'm gonna hafta do a couple more tests to get the hang of mixing all the ingredients (to get the results/ colours I want). It's probably easier if you mix more material at once, but I was just doing a small test batch and getting the texture to be "like cake frosting" was a bit of a struggle the 1st time out.

They have a great two part tutorial up on their blog. I only did the 1st part on this base.

It'll get easier with practice, I'm sure; It's a great kit. Two quick (obvious) things I would advise though: use a stick to mix, and whatever brush you use to apply this stuff... will not survive, so use a brush you don't mind parting with.

LIV: Champion Bolter

I took some pictures of this bolter conversion & put together super-quick & easy mini tutorial.

Step 1.) Gather the bits


Step 2.) Chop the bits


Step 3.) Clean the bits


Step 4.) Glue the bits


And now we have ourselves a bolter fit for a champion of chaos! Here is the finished arm in it's new home, getting ready to lead a squad of Chosen into battle.

Green vs Plastic

As I mentioned in a couple of earlier posts, I had GREAT success with Simple Green to strip/clean metal models. Emboldened by this easy victory, I decided to put it to the test on plastic.

I had heard some negative reviews on-line, but I wasn't too keen on the harsh chemical alternatives. My conclusion is that Simple Green works just fine on plastics, IF YOU HAVE A GOOD STIFF BRUSH. I tried scrubbing with a ratty old toothbrush, and it didn't work very well. I switched to scrubbing with a new toothbrush & it made my life soooo much easier; but still I wanted for something with stiffer bristles. I've heard that some people use brushes with metal bristles, but having never tried them myself, I'm a little nervous they may be too harsh and damage my minis. Has anybody tried this with a metal brush? Does anybody know of some sort of middle-ground? What kinda brush would Goldilocks use?

The results you see above are going to work well enough for Nurgle, but I have a friend with some Tau he'd like to repaint, so I still want to improve my plastic mini stripping technique.

Spearhead: Super Heavy

I like the idea of bringing Apoc sized Super Heavies into the regular 40K game. With Nurgle (as far as I know) the options are: Plaguereaper, Contagion & the Plague Tower.



As much as I fancy making a big ol' tanky Plague Tower (and I will one day, I've done sketches)... I'm intrigued by the possibilities of scratch-building a proper 40K looking Contagion (maybe using the Skaven Screaming Bell/ Bretonnian Field Trebuchet kits as a guides for scale).

But... what are the rules for this thing?