The Half Arsed Gamer

Hey folks, a short (ish) post today. Whilst waiting for UCM's finest, fleet TARP led by Admiral MacBar, to arrive I have been knocking some custom 3D sector tokens together for fleet on fleet action. After seeing the lovely Hawk Wargames 3D Sector kits available in the Dropfleet Commander kickstarter I thought "damn I want me some of them." So I came up with the following, they aren't going to win any style awards but as far as tokens go they look ace on the board.

Some key things I wanted when making these was firstly to be very simple and quick to make. I didn't want to spend weeks building 30 of these guys, something I could knock out fast was going to be top priority.

Secondly, paint jobs. I just wanted to quickly cover them, tart them up with 3 highlights and give them a wash.

So I started looking at the lovely Dropfleet Space Stations sprue that I had lying around after last years Dropzone tournament and it got me thinking. Before I put the space stations together I should probably make a press mould of the surface details, it would work really well as city, industrial, military scape. So I did and here was the result.

The images show the first set I did, they came out pretty well. I had a few sprues from other systems leftover so I started chopping up some bits that resembled buildings or silos. 

They came together pretty well and most importantly they are very fast and cheap to make. 

Then once they had set I used some very fine grain sand and flocked the edges, this aided with the transition and made it less harsh. Here's what they looked like after sanding.

As you can see they look pretty rough still, not to worry. The detail in the dropfleet sprues is awesome. I gave them all a base coat and did a quick pass. Took no more than 20 minutes to do the five above with a simple black coat in areas, drybrush metallics, blue, red, green, black wash then highlight with white. Simple's.

Finally I tidied up the base edges with the colours recommended in the book for each token and I was done! 

There we have it, cheap (if you have a detailed dropfleet sprue to push mold) 3D sector tokens for Dropfleet Commander. Enjoy.

I have recently picked up both Sylvaneth and Deathrattle starter boxes from Games Workshop. Never thought I would be saying that! However they are great value for money and I am optimistic about the narrative direction the game has shifted in, but that is another story.

After cracking open the Deathrattle boxed set I noticed the Black Knights sprue only had enough horses for either 5 Black Knights or 5 Hexwraiths. Well that seemed a bit of a shame. The only thing missing was the two part horses. I searched on some GW bits sites to find that plastic horses were going for £2.50 per item! Wow, almost as expensive as buying another box of these guys!

Not to back down from a challenge I started experimenting with ways I could maximise the number of models I could get out of the sprues. It turns out the armour on the Black Knights horses wouldn't need much to make them appear like they are floating, in fact someone has done just that. However I wanted both Black Knights and Hexwraiths so I delved into the fluff. Turns out the Hexwraiths are ethereal, ghost-like and would be more suitable to be seen flying on... Nothing.

So I built the Black Knights and Hexwraiths then fitted a flight stand into the bottom of the Wraiths. I then sculpted a few extra flames on the back of the seat to soften the transition and gave him a quick paint job. For those interested, Hawk Turqoise thinned with medium over a white basecoat is a great start then just work your way up 20%/40%/60% white with Hawk Turqoise.

Finally, the mist. I played around with several ideas. Sculpting, clear resin, floss strips. They all sucked. So I went back to old faithful. Cotton wool. You just can't get that effect unless you have a micro smoke machine. Pull it and tear it into shape and you get the effect that these guys are drifting into battle on a creepy mist. OK so it's not a horse but it means you can get 10 whole mounted units out of a single box. I then hit the wool with some matt varnish spray and it's pretty tough, no longer shifts out of shape. Glued the guy to the top of the stand and job is a good one.

Hope this helps a few of us "poorhammer" players out and saves you a few pounds.

** Update - Finished off the Boys!

Finally got through some of my queue and finished them off for the wife.

Cheap as Chips Hexwraiths

I am back again and this time with my homebrew Kingdom Death: Monster Standing and Fallen Pillars Terrain set. This is my attempt to pimp out my Kingdom Death game and I am really enjoying the outcome of this project so far. The last article showed my efforts at making modular tall grass whilst the previous one saw me bust out my sculpting skills (of which I have none) for the stone faces terrain.

So before we head off into homebrew terrain land you are going to need to get a hold of some pillars. Well I went cake shopping at windsorcakecraft.co.uk and came away without the cake! I ordered a number of cake pillars used for holding up wedding cakes and they fit just great. I grabbed two of the larger 5 inch pillars and 6 of the smaller 3.5 inch pillars which gives enough to cover al the core set game terrain. Below are the links to all the pillars I used but they have many more to choose from and you can most definitely find other companies that do them too!

5" Grecian Pillar

3.5" Hexagonal Pillar

3.5" Round White Pillar

3.5" Square Pillar

3.5" Grecian Pillar

I also had some Lava Rocks left lying around for the boulders from another project I did too, it turns out they also make great asteroids!

With all the above purchased I set about cutting 8 sheets of foamcore to match the card terrain pieces for the columns and fallen pillars. Once completed I used the faces stamp that I have used on all the Kingdom Death Pieces so far and green stuff to add texture to each base and finally stick the pillars onto the bases along with the boulders. I used some quick setting strong adhesive for this as the lava rocks are pretty heavy. As you can see I also added some damage to a lot of the pillars by using a hobby knife (remember be safe) and cutting V shaped cuts into the pillars, scratching them (like claws) and using my jewellers saw to cut a few in half. Make sure you stuff the ends with green stuff (or a cheaper option, go buy some no more nails and fill the ends).

Once you have them in this state it's time to undercoat them. I gave them a coating of el'cheapo grey spray paint from the local pound store which worked well enough. Once finished I washed them with a heavy black wash and once dried I dry-brushed from grey through to white-grey (90% white) to bring out the detail.

On a few pieces I had stuck leftover lanterns that I had available and used the same technique as the stone faces to create a harsh lighting effect. So there we have it, very quick pillars to use for your Kingdom Death Terrain. Now onto my next piece, the dreaded tree!

After my last article went down well showing how I made the stone faces terrain for Kingdom Death: Monster I decided to move on to the tall grass terrain. The main issue with the grass terrain is that they need to be able to support monsters and survivors moving onto the terrain. Any grass based terrain is not going to be very strong so after thinking of a few ways to achieve this I thought the best way was to make the grass modular rather than a single 2x2 piece. This way I could remove the squares that a monster occuppies effectively "flattening" the terrain as it walks across it. Thematically this works well and I was happy with the result.

I first ordered a very cheap pack of synthetic painting brushes from Amazon. I cut 16 foamcore pieces to the size of a single square on the Kingdom Death game board and used my base stamp of faces and some green stuff to add some texture to the base. I then glued some sand into the empty areas on the base to add a bit more variety.

Once set I base coated and dry brushed the bases from black through to gray/white. I then cracked open the cheap brushes I had bought and washed them in a mixture of thinned brown through to yellow/brown paint. This made them clump together and become more rigid which was exactly what I wanted.

Then came the messy bit. I bought a very cheap and nasty hot glue gun from Amazon, I think for a total of £3.20. Well I won't be using it again but it did the trick. I cut all the bristles from the brushes and hot glue gunned a bunch at a time. It must have took about 2 hours to go through all 16 bases but the end result was great and they are pretty solid pieces.

So there we have it. Terrain piece number two down for Kingdom Death and I'm onto the standing pillars now. Wish me luck!

I recently have been looking to pimp out my Kingdom Death: Monster game with some custom terrain pieces. I have already worked up quite a strong ("painterly" as someone else put it) abstract lighting theme with my miniatures which I think works really well for the artwork in this game and helps with the immersion.

I saw a few people start to make custom terrain and thought I would have a go myself.

To start with I ordered some Soft Clay so I could get my sculpt on. Keep in mind I have never sculpted from scratch before so if I can do it you can too! I also had some cheap modelling tools I usually use for green stuffing.

So step one was to draw the schematic, I sketched this onto a large A3 sheet of paper directly from the Kingdom Death card tokens they give you.

Once sketched out I proceeded to fill the design with soft clay, I took a reference photo to match up too. I tried to get the proportions in line with a normal face guessing my way at this point.

Next up I started to fill out the features whilst keeping to the original drawing I had made. I was really just feeling my way around, a true sculptor would probably have fell about laughing at me but I just did what felt right.

Now I started to really play with the material and tools I had. Blending all the joins, getting my fingers in there and just playing around until I felt it looked right. I did this for each major feature then moved on to the next.

Once I got this far I decided to start to add some weathering to the model so I just started hacking away, creating some deep cracks and other small scratches all along the face of the model. The final results was something like this.

Then it was just a case of popping it in the oven at 110 degrees for 30 minutes and hey presto! Now just to do it all again for the second one! Once I had them both finished I cut two pieces of foamcore I had lying around to match the Kingdom Death stone faces card token. After green stuffing the surface I used my base stamp to stamp the faces. I made the stamp a reverse cast of the survivor bases they give you in the core box. Once ready I glued the faces onto the foam core and even added some more decoration in the form of some chopped up cork.

I then primed both pieces and painted the base a charcoal near black then washed with a heavy black wash. The rest was just a case of dry brushing through grey to white to bring out the detail.

Finally I added some strong OSL on the one piece that has the small lantern next to the face. To start with I made passes with pure white away from the lamp only catching the areas that the light would hit. Then I used my preferred yellow using the same technique over the white areas and beyond. Finally using pure white to blend where it was closest to the light source. This has a way of creating very abstract light sources which suit this game really well.

And there we have it. My first outing into sculpting, it was very enjoyable and I look forward to tackling more sculpts for my terrain projects. Next up is the Kingdom Death Pillars! Stay tuned for more.

Last week I set up an X-Wing epic style game for our gaming group. I wanted to make this a really awesome experience for some first timers and vets alike so I had a go at making some 3D asteroids. These really add to the wow factor of a board and if you are like us, non-competitive, non-meta toting fan boys then these are great. There are many posts about them "getting in the way" we didn't find this at all, and with 50 ships on the table I think that proves a point.

Anyway I first started by ordering these replica lava rocks from Amazon at £5 they aren't bank breaking and you have enough in here to make perhaps 30 to 40 asteroids! I first started with an undercoat of black (sorry no work in progress shots) once dried I highlighted the asteroids from one side with a spray of white paint. No airbrush in sight, just plain old rattle can. This gives you a nice highlighting effect and to be honest at this point you can call it quits and be done with it. I went a little further however and took out my shades and inks.

For this I used Green Shade, Blue Shade, Druuchi Violet, Red Shade, Sepia Shade and Yellow Ink. Just go crazy, use a single brush and lay on a mixture of shades leaving the yellow ink to last. You will get some magical bleeding between the inks that really make the asteroids take on a life of their own. I can't really guide you with this, just experiment. Do however make sure you have enough of a white highlight to apply this to, the shades and inks won't do anything over a black undercoat so you are relying on that white to apply the shades to.

Finally after drying I took a hand drill and made some holes to fit a pack of 25 flight stands for 40k I found on ebay for £2.50. All in all I came out with 12 asteroids that really set the table on fire and made for a great evening. Hope that helps you.

Just a short post today, I got fed up of having to move multiple boxes around for Marvel Legendary Legendary, so with some leftover foam board I knocked together a quick divider system. It works like a charm and has plenty of room for more expansions as the pictures show it fitting the core game plus the Dark City expansion for a total of 850 cards. The bonus is you can still fit the board and the rule book on top so it condenses down to one box.