Display Board

I'm playing in a Warhammer 40K tournament at Maelstrom Games this weekend, where I'll be using by Chaos Space Marines. As part of the tournie, there is a "Best Painted Army" contest, which is being done in a beauty pagent style on Saturday lunch time. I really don't expect to win that, but to give myself the best chance of doing so, I needed to make a display board.

My main aim was to keep it cheap, so basically it was built with stuff I already had lying around. It's not fancy, it's not got anything cool like magnet to hold miniatures, and it's really too heavy to be lugging around to transport miniatures on, but it'll do the job for the painting contest.


It's been made to keep in with the ash waste/moonscape style basing I decide to use on both my CSMs and Witch Hunters.

To give you an idea of size and how it fits with the basing style, here's it with some minis on it:




I did a dry run at the weekend with my CSMs, but I'm not going to show you that as I'm sure some of the guys who will be playing at the weekend will be reading this and I don't want to reveal my list yet (mind you I don't think it'll help me much ;).

Construction of the board was done using stuff I found lying around the house.

-Base of MDF left over from when we had a new kitchen last year
-Bit of broken cork sheet (about 5mm think) I found in the loft
-2" foam offcuts left over from a club terrain project
-Cork bark hills (the previous owner of my house had a model railway in the loft and he left some bits behind)
-Lots of filler (the kind of stuff you use for filling in holes in walls eg Polyfilla), sand, gravel

Construction and painting was probably a couple of hours in total, though spread over several days.

Step 1: Cut two 2" foam triangles to go into the corners, PVA them on to the board. Hot wire cutters are ideal for cutting foam, but I didn't have any so I used a box saw. Use a sanding block to smooth off any rough patches.
Step 2: Glue cork bark to the front of the foam
Step 3: Glue bit of broken up cork sheet to the base to create an uneven surface
Step 4: Mix filler with sand and gravel, spread liberally over the base. Hands work to do the spreading, but I found a lolly stick to be better.
Step 5: Use filler mix to blend cork bark into the foam hills
Step 6: Leave this to dry for several days
Step 7: Mix PVA with a bit of water and paint liberally. I gave it a couple of coats to ensure all the sand and gravel is well stuck down. Make sure you cover the foam well with this mix if you're going to spray prime it.
Step 8: Prime it black
Step 9: Paint it black with household emulsion. I bought a couple of black tester pots for this which I finally found in Homebase. Black doesn't seem to be that popular for household walls...
Step 10: Drybrush dark grey using household emulsion (this was from B&Q and is called Soft Black).
Step 11: Mix some white emulsion with the grey, keep drybrushing until you are happy.

Obviously my intention was to create an ash waste theme, but the same technique can be applied to any surface. For example:

-Churned mud: Build in the same way, painting using dark brown with lighter drybrushes. You could use gloss varnish or water effects to create pool of water.
-Grass: Leave off the broken cork sheet, and leave out the gravel from the filler mix. Paint light brown and flock to taste.
-Snow: Depending on what effect you were after, you could do it as churned mud and add snow effects after. Alternatively, you go less rough like the grass method, paint the board pale grey with white highlights and then add you're preffered snow effects.

Cheap and easy wet palette

For my Ogre Tyrant, I made the first use of my wet palette. I'd had the stuff on my desk for a couple of months, but to be honest I haven't painted much since mid-September. I'm really glad I did though as it definitely helped me layer paint much smoother, and I could use the paint for several days without wasting it.

Here's what I made mine from:


-Sponge cloths for washing up with (99p for 6)
-Plastic box with lid (I bought 5 for 99p)
-Baking Parchment (found in the kitchen)

To make the palette:
-Cut the sponge to fit into the base of the plastic box
-Cut a piece of parchment to fit into the box, it'll need to be small enough to go flat onto the sponge
-Wet the sponge. From my messing about it need to be fairly wet, not dripping, but pretty wet.
-Wet the parchment and slap it on top of the sponge, making sure it's flat to the sponge

...and that's it.

The paint will stay workable for days. Looking at mine now, there's paint on there which I put on it three days ago and it's still wet and workable.

Total cost, probably £2 which will give you enough material to build 5 completely seperate palettes.

Ogre Tyrant

I've just put the finishing touches on my Ogre Tyrant/Bruiser this afternoon:




I'm well pleased with this one. The green stuff fur I scuplted has painted up pretty well (work in progress here). The purple gut plate is to represent a Gut Maw, where his gut plate eats enemy characters and sends them straight to the Great Maw.

Something that really helped with painting this miniatures, and why I didn't do it earlier I don't know, was using a wet palette. It helped alot with layering the cloak, the flesh and the metal. I'll probably post something on how I made the palette in a few days.

First Dark Heresy campaign draws to a close

I'm just coming to the end of my first Dark Heresy campaign which I played in via a forum (looking back it's coming towards 4 months since we started), and I've very much enjoyed it. The game was GM'ed by Brother Aaron (check out his site, the Mystical Throne) and it all went very well.

Play by forum isn't easy, and as you can probably imagine, it's fairly slow paced. The GM wisely abandoned posting order when not in combat which helped the game flow on more quickly, but you definitely need a group who are going to checking the forum regualrly for it to work. By regularly, I mean every day. That said we still lost two players from our starting six, so we drafted in a replacement and shared the other character between us.

The adventure was "Maggots in the Meat" from the GM's kit which was a fairly straightforward mission which I think worked pretty well for play by forum as there didn't seem to be too much investigation work to get stuck on. The final combat was pretty tough though. Our party was fairly combat heavy: 2 guardsmen, 1 assassin, 1 cleric, 1 techpriest and 1 scum (me). If you're interested you can download a read full transcript of the game here.

My character, Sham, is now rank 2, so he's taken +5 Fel, Inquiry, Peer (Underworld) and Common Lore (Underworld) to keep in with his hive scum theme. He was pretty handy in combat, but can't take much damage. We acquired some armour in the last game which helped, and I've also changed his main weapon from a shotgun to an autogun. The shotgun only has a two round clip, and takes two full turns to reload, whereas a Full Auto burst from an autogun is pretty nasty.

His next mission is already a foot and should be starting in the next week or two. Our next campaign is entitled "The Lost", and we'll be keeping 3 of the current team together.

In similar news, I'll also be playing in a play by forum Death Watch campaign using the free download intro rules which should be interesting. I'm playing Brother Gregor of the Storm Wardens chapter.

Completed Obliterators

I had a marvellous time at Warhammer World last week, but the I still haven't got the pictures off my camera yet so I'll post them up when I can.

In the meantime, I finished my Obliterators the night before I went (I was up until a ridiculous time finishing them off):


I really didn't want to go to WHW without a fully painted army, so I blew threw these oblitz pretty quickly. I might redo the yellow pustule on the guy on the right, it depends on whether I have time or not.

I did also pick up some of the Forgeworld weathering powders (and some other FW stuff as well) which I've played about with on a rhino, but I'm still experimenting so I'll post something once I'm happier with the results.

Just packing my stuff...

I'm just in the process of getting my minis sorted, my rulebook, dice and so on together. Why? I'm going to Warhammer World tomorrow! It'll be the first time I've been down there so I'm looking forward to it immensly.

I'll be sure to post up some pictures when I get back.

Re-basing

I hit a bit of a problem with a two current Daemon Prince models. One of them is a scratch build and the other is a conversion of the Necron Nightbringer. When I put them together, I put them both on 40mm bases, as the old metal undivided Daemon Prince was on a 40mm base. Since then of course, GW have bought out the new plastic Daemon Prince, who is on a 60mm dreadnought size base (as was the old metal Nurgle DP in fact). For the tournament I'm playing in, I hadn't really thought too much about it, but I double checked with the TO and he ruled that any model must be on the same base size as the current GW model meaning a 60mm base for Daemon Princes. Probably if I'd just turned up with them on 40mm bases, I don't think anyone would have complained, but I don't want any accusations of cheese or cheating.

This gave me a problem. The two models were very solidly pinned, glued and green stuffed to the current bases and getting them off those bases would probably have damaged the models so I needed a solution. I was looking on ebay for new 60mm bases when I came across these:

These are 60mm plywood discs, and I got 24 of them for £3 or so (bearing in mind a GW base of the same size if £2.50 for one) courtesy of Fenris Games. The good part about these is that they are only 1.5mm thick.

Because the plywood bases a quite thin, I was able to mount the models on top of them without removing them from the current bases. Once they were stuck on there, I built up the rest of the base with milliput, sand, stones etc and painted them:


This saved me a whole load of hassle, money and potential damage to the models.

Completed Chaos Rhino

As I've been drawing up my 1750 point list for the tournament, it's clear I was short of one thing: transports. In fun games, I'm not all that bothered if a couple of units of Plague Marines have to walk but for the tournament they need to punch in a bit more and get to where I need them more quickly. Being skint the first thing I did was get on ebay to track down a rhino as cheaply as possible. I managed to pick up a mark one Rhino for £2.70 which was good, but it needed some work doing (it was missing side doors for example). No problem for me, I was going to Nurgle the thing anyway:



I actually think the top part (which was metal) in from an old vindicator or something as it doesn't have the two hatches the old rhino used to have. Taking the chassis, it was a case of just raiding the bitz box and repairing the thing. I've got so many bitz from Chaos vehicles it was fairly easy. The spikes on the front are from the Vampire Counts corpse cart, as it the body on a rope on the side.

Painting was my usual Catachan Green, washes (green, then brown and purple on the rotting parts), then drybrushing to add the highlighting.

One drawback of the mark one is that it is slightly smaller than the current rhino. This sort of cuts two ways. On the plus side it's slightly easier to hide it, but on the downside, it's harder to hide troops behind it.

Gun Servitors

These guys have been sat on the "To Do" shelf for months now (looking back the WIP was posted in March), so I slapped some paint on them for a break from green stuffing obliterators.


This one was a fairly quick paint job, but it'll do. I'm pleased with how the face has come out on the guy on the right. The scuplt really gives him that mindless servitor look.

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines Vs Blood Angels

I got my first game against the new Blood Angels Codex (I know it's been out for a while, but I've mostly been playing Fantasy) on Wednesday night. The games was at 1350 points, annhiliation with the spearhead deployment.

The BA army was something similar to:
-Mephiston
-5 Sanguinary Guard, with +1 Attack banner
-5 Assault troops with jump packs, power fist, infernus pistol
-5 Death Company with jump packs, power fist
-10 Tactical Marines in a Rhino, melta gun, missile launcher
-5 Scouts
-5 Devastators with 4 heavy weapons

I was playing a couple of different options with my list. I took Wind of Chaos on my Daemon Prince instead of my usual Warptime, took 2 squads of 2 Obliterators, and a small unit of Lesser Daemons. I was trying some stuff out to crystalize what I'm planning for a forthcoming tournament.

I had some decent luck right at the start. I got to pick the table quarter, and chose one with some high buildings for my Oblitz to go in. I also opted to go second and then stole the initiative.

It was a good game and I emerged the winner with 6 kill points Vs 3 kill points. Mephiston was pretty scary, but his lack of an Inv save hurts him. He lost 1 wound to a perils of the warp, one to a power fist, one to a melta and the final one to a bolt pistol (!). He'd chewed up a whole squad of Plague Marines before this, and was just out of range to chew up my Daemon Prince, though the Sanguinary Guard managed to do that anyway.

With regard to my list tweaks, Wind of Chaos I only got to use once and I really could have got more use out of Warptime. With Warptime I'm pretty sure my Daemon Prince could have annhilated the Sanguinary Guard in combat and then taken on Mephiston, so I'm going to take that in future.

Oblitz are definitely in. They're excellently flexible, and took out a rhino, 3 devastators and 4 Death Company before they ran out of targets.

Summoned Lesser Daemons I've used before and like them alot. They're useful to bolster your lines where they're needed, in this game that was to support the Plague Marine squad who were taking out the tactical marines, and they're the cheapest thing I've got to hold objectives.

I just need to get a few games in with the list at 1750 points before November now.

Nurgle Obliterators WIP

I've got a 1750 point tournament coming up in November, so I've been putting some work in on my Chaos Space Marines. The heavy support choices that I currently have I didn't really fit in with what I wanted to do. One Defiler is pretty much toast, so I initially thought of going with 3 of them but financially I just didn't want to do it. In the end I decided to go with some Obliterators, four in fact.

I really don't like the official model that much. It's expensive, and not that nice, plus I hear they are a pain to build. What I decided to do was get some AoBR and convert them.


A terminator is slightly smaller than an obliterator, I've tried to bulk them up a bit so they're now more of less the same size. The rest of the conversion was bitz and green stuff. These ones will be next on the painting table.

Back in the saddle again

A month seems to have gone by since my last post, which is pretty lax of me. It's not that I haven't been doing anything, quite the contrary, plus I've been really busy at work and at home.

I'll be posting up some stuff I'm doing and have completed these past couple of weeks over the next few days. I've got a 40K tournament coming up at the end of November, so alot of my focus has been around getting my Chaos Space Marines into shape for that.

One pretty cool thing I got to was last Thursday. I was down in London with work, and it just so happened there was a Black Library event on at Forbidden Planet in London. There was a good collection of authors there: James Swallow, Sandy Mitchell. Nick Kyme, Graham McNeill, Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett.

I managed to get Titanicus signed by Mr Abnett himself:

Ogre Ironguts

I've got my next unit finished now in my Ogre army: a unit of Ironguts.











The faces were harder to paint on these ones, due to the more restricted poses of the miniatures (the arms in front of the face, the helmets etc). The banner was done in much the same way as the banner on the Ogre Bulls I completed a couple of weeks ago.

I've resolved to push myself a little bit more with each paint job, to try something new each time, maybe some freehand, or wet blending, so that's going to be my resolution for future units. I was going to freehand a bit more on the banner, but I didn't get chance.

Next up: build my giant (I built 6 more Bulls last week as well), then I've got a couple of 40K projects I need to get done soon, namely 6 Obliterator conversions from AoBR terminators, and a new Rhino. I managed to pick up a classic Mark I Rhino on ebay which needs a bit of attention but I should be able to turn it into a suitably Nurgle vehicle.

Touched by the hand of celebrity (sort of)

I was skimming through my FaceBook feed this morning, when I see a post from the day before yesterday on the My Battalion page:

http://mybattalion.com/content/artic...-by-tigerstyle

That looks familiar, I thought...

The admins at My Battalion had picked out my Ogres to feature on the hobby page! I was quite excited, sad but true.

And it was picked on my birthday as well :D

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines Vs Imperial Guard

I had been planning on playing 8th Edition Fantasy at club night last week, but I couldn't find anyone with a small army so I ended up playing 40K instead. I haven't played 40K for a while so it was a nice change.

I was playing an Imperial Guard player, who's army had more heavy weapons than I've ever seen in one army. He must have had about 20 or so heavy weapons teams, plus 3 Leman Russ (one ordinary, one exterminator and one punisher), plus some veterans. There were so many gun teams in fact, I'm not wholly sure how he?d managed to get them all in, but then again, I don?t know the IG codex that well. Anyway, it was Annhilation with Dawn of War deployment.

In my list, it was more or less my usual 1500 point list, except that I dropped the Defiler and Vindicator in favour of 2 squads of 2 Obliterators. This was one of the driving forces for me for the game, as I've got a tournament coming up in November so I thought I give them a try and see what the fuss was about.

My plan was fairly simple: get close and kill IG in assault. This is exactly what I did. My units suffered a bit on the way over there, but once I got there I was able to tear units apart. IG have nothing really against a unit of Plague Marines up close, even two of the Leman Russ were of limit use. The Punisher cannon was pretty useless against T5, FnP Plague Marines. Even my Rhino got in on the act and tank shocked 3 heavy bolter teams off the table. So the end result was a win for me by tabling him in turn 6.

The obliterators worked fairly well, while they didn't kill much they felt pretty threatening throughout the whole game. I had lost three of them by the end, but not one had died to enemy fire. No, my dreadnought had gone into a fire frenzy twice and killed three of them. The game helped me with some thoughts around what will we be in my tournament list (Obliterators) and what won't be (Dreadnoughts, of which I had thought about taking three).