What's On.... I mean, It's my Table: 5/26/2016

I haven't been working on models much lately. The weather is good, and there is lots to do. I still try to get games in, but my hobby progress is somewhat diminished. So today, I decided I was going to do something hobby related, while still enjoying some sun. Enter the resurfacing of my game board! Used several cans of spray paint to give it a new finish. I'm working on finishing up a couple of my old-style ruins to spice it up.

(Still using my old method: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and Finishing Touches)

A lot of my old ruins got thrown away in the many moves I have made over the years. They were too cheap to justify keeping in a limited space arrangement! Now I am making new ones, bigger and better!

I really need to crank out more of these puppies. They fill up the board well and look good while doing it.

Anyway, that's what I have been up to. I will try to get a few in-game pics at tomorrow's game, we'll see if I can remember that or not!

Void Shield Generator of Khorne: The Bloody Orb (How To!)

So here's the story... I was beating my head against a wall all week long on the list I was going to take to a local tournament this weekend. I wanted it to be the most brutal, cut-throat, take-no-prisoners kind of Khorne Daemonkin list I could cobble together. I figured, for that, I would need a Khorne Void Shield generator (to take the punch out of 1st Turn shooting). I decided this exactly 1 day before the tournament was supposed to take place. So how to churn out an appropriately Khorney Void Shield Generator based on what I had available?

Lucky for you, I documented my slapped-together process:

I took stock of my materials. I had:

• a printer and some paper
• a chunk of MDF wood (about 5"x5")
• A 4" styrofoam ball from the craft aisle of my local Walmart
• Hot glue
• PVA glue (aka Elmer's, or in my case, Roseart)
• Plaster of Paris
• Cardboard (cereal box variety)
• Basing material (aka dirt and sand from my driveway)
• Cheap paints from the craft aisle
• Cheap black spraypaint
• A wood stick, longer than a toothpick but about as thick. In my case it was the burnt end of an incense stick.
• A variety of crafting tools (scissors, hobby knife, etc)

So first thing I did was find a Khorne symbol, and printed it out about 4"x4". After doing so, I traced it out four times onto my cardboard. To save time and make it more sturdy, I did two pieces joined together at a time, like that pictured below-

Having completed that, I put the main structure together on the MDF wood base, using the hot glue to stick it together. I wasn't particularly careful with the hot glue. It's all going to be covered up anyway, and it added a bit of a 3-dimensional quality to the surface. Once I was done with that, I took it outside and sealed it up with a coat of black enamel spraypaint. I was sure to use a flat black so it wouldn't be too glossy.

As you can see, while I was waiting for it to dry, I started mixing up my coating. I used PVA glue, Plaster, a little bit of water, and some basing material to make a kind of thin paste that I applied onto the entire structure. If you want some kind of exact formula, I have bad news for you. I just kind of fiddled with adding water and PVA glue to a cup or two of plaster until it was the consistency I wanted, thin enough to spread easily but thick enough to cling. Really pile it into the middle, get a decent amount there to build up the center and give the orb something to stay up on.

Setting that aside to dry (it took an hour or two, even when left in front of my heater), I started on the orb itself. Mixing PVA glue and craft paint in approximately a 1:1 ratio, I created a very dark base color using "Cherry Red." In hindsight, I should have done this after the next step. But I applied this to the entire foam ball, sticking the wood rod in the bottom and propping it in a soda can to catch drips. I really doused the thing... it's important to do so to seal up the styrofoam.

At this point, I had to wait for everything to dry. So I took a break for an hour or two. When I came back, everything was hard as rock, exactly as I wanted. I decided that rather than just painting on rings and swirls onto my orb, however, I wanted them etched into it. So I took the cap to a spray paint can, and etched curved lines into the visible parts of the orb with it. This is why I was saying that in hindsight, I'd have painted and sealed the thing AFTER doing this bit. It still turned out ok, but it would have made it easier.

Taking my longest-bristled brush I had, I used very thinned-down red paint (about 5 parts water to 1 part bright-red paint) and started filling in the lines. This worked ok, but I discovered that an eye-dropper worked better eventually. By applying the runny paint to the top of the curve, it would follow the line down beautifully. 

The plaster was too light upon drying for my taste, so I applied some very thinned-down black paint. Very liquid, it was approximately 15 parts water to 1 part black craft paint. I had a lot left over, so on a whim, I used it on the raised portions of my orb and decided it looked pretty bad-ass. Leaving the rod in the bottom of the orb, it propped itself up rather nicely in the center.

To finish it up, I drybrushed the structure. I started with a dark grey, then did a light grey, then a white/light grey mix (approximately 1:1) on only the top down. For extra Khorne cred, I applied some wicked blood effects around the base of the thing. My secret for the spatter? Taking a short but stiff bristled brush (an old toothbrush also works for this), I liberally juiced the brush up with paint, and used my finger to pull the bristles back and whip or flick paint onto the model. I did this twice: once with my dark red cherry color, and once again with my bright red. In hindsight, I should have mixed the bright red directly with some GW 'ardcoat and really gone the extra mile! I only slapped some hardcoat on over some of the splatter with a brush to give it a wet effect.

And there you have it! Finished Blood Orb for the Blood God. Providing a cheap and effective way to protect me from the alpha-strike on my first turn.

Sadly, I didn't get to test it, as I had to refrain from entering the tournament due to family commitments. Maybe one of you out there can build one and give it a go for me? Otherwise, it'll have to wait until my buddies and I can give it a go.

Hope this How-To inspired you, looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!

-Teun135

Making the Behring Strait, Part 1

I have an upcoming supplement for Pirates: CSG, but first, you'll need some Arctic terrain features. Today we are going to get started on our Islands and Icebergs.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
Scissors
Hobby Knife
Hot Glue Gun
Paints (mostly earth tones, blue, and white)
PVA glue (I use Mod Podge Matte)
Wood Glue (AKA Yellow Glue)
Old DVD cases
Cork Tile
Sand, Rock, etc.

You should already have most of the stuff on this list, if you are into modeling. If you don't have them, they're easy enough to acquire.

MODELING THE ISLANDS-

STEP 1:
Cut out irregular shapes that are slightly smaller than a playing card from the large flat front part of your DVD case. I try to open it up and cut up the spine to avoid the thick, reinforced edges. This plastic is sometimes difficult to cut if you don't use heavy duty craft scissors! Coat this initial base with the Elmer's Wood Glue (or your substitute). This glue holds on strong once set, so it makes a good base.

STEP 2:
Using your rocks and sand, cover your island. I place the big rocks by hand first, then dip the entire island into a rock/sand mixture container and give it a shake.

STEP 3:
Set them aside to dry. The wood glue takes a while to really dry, at least a few hours. That means we'll finish them in Part 2 of this tutorial. However, to clue you in, the next step will be to give it a second coat of fill material (sand, ballast, etc).

MODELING THE ICEBERGS-

STEP 1:
Tear off a small chunk of cork from your tile.

STEP 2:
Break up that chunk into smaller, irregularly shaped chunks. Each of these chunks is roughly spherical or cubicle.

STEP 3:
Mix together some blue and white craft paint, or use a very light blue. Totally coat the cork with this paint. Note that your fingers will get coated unless you wear gloves.

STEP 4:
From your DVD case, cut an irregular shape about the same size of your Islands from the transparent cover.


STEP 5:
Using the hot-glue gun, attach these pieces of cork to the transparent plastic. When finished, drybrush the cork pieces with white paint.


STEP 6:
Use the white PVA glue and a brush to build up some glue around the bottom of the cork. That's it! Let this dry for a while, and you have Iceberg floes!

In part two, we'll finish up the islands with a special arctic theme, and we'll work on my special new terrain type!

Until then,
--FP135

Temple of Skulls finally painted

Just a quick pic for you all... here's the Temple of Skulls prize I had won for my army being Best in Show at a local tournament a week or two back. I finally got around to painting it up the other day. Enjoy!

Expanding the Painting Points system

Ok, so the last time I came up with Quint-M, (Modified Motivational Method of something or other) it didn't catch on quite so well... Ok maybe keeping track of how much stuff you assembled in a month isn't so impressive.

In this post, I'm tackling a smaller problem... how do you account for all those non-miniature items you spend time painting? Such as the Temple of Skulls scenery, or all the new stuff GW puts out? I think if you spent 2 days painting a bastion/blastscape/aegis line then you should get credit for it. Here's my proposal for painting points, as adjusted by the cost of the scenery kit (because bigger is usually more expensive)-

For every 10 dollars the scenery piece is worth (MSRP), +5 painting points?

This way, stuff you make on your own can also factor in. Just estimating the cost of materials should get you a decent enough figure to determine painting points from.

Anybody see value in this, or am I barking up the wrong Citadel Trees?

Terrain Piece: Tank Trap Barricades

Today I want to share how I made a lot of easy and decent-looking tank obstacles, using fairly cheap and widely-available items.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: (Costs are approximate)

(Pictured) Ice Cube Tray: I found a nice one made for RVs that had a more square shape to the cubes rather than the elongated rectangles used in most trays. Cost: 1.50 USD for 2 trays.

Foamcore Board: This will be used as the base. You can use a different material if you desire, but I use it because it is cheap and looks good. Cost: 3.00 USD per 2'x2' section.

Low Temp Hot Glue Gun: Used to adhere the finished cubes to the board. Cost: 5 USD (including glue sticks)

Plaster: I used plaster of paris made for modeling and sculptors. Cost: 4.00 USD for a bunch, plenty left over.

Potting Soil: Some of you may know this as my preferred medium for basing, making an organic texture when applied liberally with glue and paint. Cost: Free, if your significant other or your mom has potted plants!

Cheap Craft Paints: Black and white as a minimum. You really don't want to use up your expensive paints on a terrain piece. If you have it on hand, gray is useful so you don't have to mix your own. That helps keep consistency between pieces. Cost: 2.50 USD per color for a 8 oz container.

PVA Glue (AKA Elmer's): Buy the off-brand if you can, such as Rose-Art, because you are going to use a lot of it. Cost: .5 USD per 4 oz container.



STEP 1:
When mixing the plaster, use the directions on the back. Pour the mixture into the ice cube tray, making sure to fill each cube as equally as possible. I found it useful to use a scraper to scrape off the excess. Scrape the excess onto a piece of newspaper or a paper plate and we can use that later. Once your tray is filled, tap it a few times to let all the air out. After about an hour or two, they should be ready to be popped out of the tray. They need to be popped out to dry properly. Let them harden overnight.

STEP 2:
Cut out the foamcore bases. You will need either a sharp knife, or you will need to peel the paper backing off and use a hot-wire foam cutter. Make them big enough to accommodate at least 3 cubes with gaps in between. That is all you can do for one day, you'll have to wait for the cubes to be totally dry.

STEP 3:
Mix your potting soil with a copious amount of PVA glue and black craft paint. Just make sure you use more glue than paint. Plug in your low-temp glue gun to get it warming up. Be careful! It does get hot, and it is likely to drip hot glue if you leave it alone too long. Make sure nothing flammable is around it. Our paper plate / newspaper with the excess should be dry now, so take that large piece and smash it up, mixing the pieces into your goop.

STEP 4:
Glue the cubes to the bases, using the hot glue gun, being sure to leave gaps in between. By the time you are finished with the last one, the one you did first should be cool enough. (Pictured) Use your old brush to glop mixture onto the piece, starting with the gaps. Use the brush to coat the entire piece, but leave the most debris in the gaps between the tank traps. This step will take another night to harden overnight.

STEP 5:
You should have something similar to the 3rd picture above. Now you can come back with a gray, and dry-brush it over the whole piece. Pay special attention to the tank traps themselves. For the final dry-brush, use a very light gray or a white. Finish up with a sealant of your choice, I still use Modge-Podge matte that is slightly watered-down. You're done! See the finished product in the 4th picture above.

This should at least stimulate some ideas about making tank traps. It may not exactly be fast, but it is easy, in my opinion. You should get 7 or 8 barricades, depending on the cubes that your tray produces. What are some of the ways you guys make tank trap barricades?

The Portable Game Board

I have often found myself lacking space to store all my gaming-related things. Due to my family growing exponentially over the last few years, room is quickly becoming a valuable commodity in the FoxPhoenix house. Anything I can do to save room, without sacrificing good looking terrain and models, is definitely worth looking into.

Most of my games are played on ruined city boards. These kinds of boards are easy to make, being entirely flat and 2-dimensional, but make for some decent looking battlefields. The addition of a few craters and ruins and I can get a few decent shots for the battle report.

The battle for space, though, means that I have no permanent game board. Since everything has to be easily storable, this used to mean that I had a piece of black felt that I would simply drape over the kitchen table. Now, however, even this surface is off limits, because I can't tie up the only table where my children can eat at. Thus, I was inspired to make a folding game board, that I could attach the felt to. I didn't want to mess around with trying to drape the felt over a table anymore. So, I gathered the following supplies:
A 4'x4' sized board (the standard board size at most competitions I have attended)
3 Hinges and fasteners for them
My 6'x6' felt piece, black with white spraypaint dusting
A heavy-duty staple gun with 1/4" staples
2 sawhorses (aluminum and collapsible, about 15 USD ea. at a hardware store)

Using the pictured method, I made myself a much more convenient board! There are many other ways I could have gone about this, but I like my method as it is most convenient to my lifestyle. I store the sawhorses in the bottom of the closet, and this board fits perfectly under the bench on the front patio. Out of sight, and out of mind, keeps the missus happy!

It is late, but tomorrow I will set up the terrain on it for its first photo shoot!

Continuing the Foamcore Project- Extra Credit

When you get up the next morning, your building will look like the first picture up there. For some people, that is good enough. I, however, am not one of those people, and I suspect you are not either. So, it's time for some extra homework to get extra kudos!

If you have the time and the paint, then it's time to go to work. First off, I like to coat the building with a black wash made from watered down black acrylic. Any black paint will do, and in fact, the cheaper the better. I got a pot for 50 cents from Wal-Mart. Add a big ol' glob and a dash of water to thin it out, then paint the wash over the entire piece. This watered-down solution should run into all the cracks and bring out the depth of the texture.

Next, using your large brush, drybrush a dark gray over the entire piece. Pay special attention to the edges, because concrete is lighter on the inside when cracked open. Drybrush, for those new to the hobby, is a painting technique where you get paint on your brush, then dab some of it off onto something you don't mind getting paint on, before lightly brushing over the area you wish to paint. This causes only the raised texture to catch the pigment on your brush.

After this coat dries, add some white paint to your grey, and mix it up good. Using the same drybrushing technique, apply this lighter grey over the entire piece again, really emphasizing the edges. You can add a third coat, this one pure white, but I usually think that's a little over the top.

After the second coat, the piece is table-top ready. You can add a clearcoat if you wish, but I find that the glue we used in the mixture is usually sufficient by itself. Later, I will share some of my tips to make the terrain piece worthy of sharing the table with your best painted miniatures!

Foamcore Ruins, Part 3

Finally, the last part. Spreading the stuff on is not really an art, but it does help to have a technique.

First off, make sure you are doing this on a surface that can get a bit of gunk on it and it won't matter. I use a piece of unused foamboard that I also use for painting miniatures on. You don't want this stuff getting on your nice kitchen table (I speak from experience)....

Using your large brush, spread on the first coat evenly. It is perfectly okay to put a thick coat on, because with all the glue in the mixture it will be nice and solid when it dries. Due to the black paint you put in, your mixture should be a dark gray color. This makes it easy to see the spots you missed, and serves as a good base-coat. All the white powder and glue lightened up the black, so if you want a totally black basecoat you will have to paint it when it dries. I will cover painting it in the next part.

When you are applying the coat of stuff, pay special attention to the corners and the edges. The plaster helps define the edges and make them look more like ruined rubble. Adding successive layers can help build up more rubble in the corners.

In order for it to harden properly, you should let it dry for at least 10 hours. Or overnight, whichever you prefer. I tend to make this my last project for the day, because I hate to wait for anything. Make sure it is out of reach of kids and pets. Also, the temperature and humidity has an effect on the drying time. I am basing my drying times on 68 F, really dry conditions. Your results may vary.

Next up, Painting the Foamcore Ruins!

Foamcore Ruins, Part 2

The Next Step:

Now that our basic design is complete and taped together, now its time to mix up a little compound to give the model texture and give it strength. This is not an exact science, and I do not use precise amounts of the ingredients. It helps lend individuality to each piece. If you want pieces to conform with each other, then it is best to make multiple pieces at the same time.

Start with your patching plaster powder (hereafter referred to as 'p3'), and add a little into a mixing container you don't plan on eating out of any time soon. On top of this, I sneak a pinch of potting soil out of my wife's plants. This is to add texture to the wall that the plaster alone does not achieve. The potting soil is optional, however, as it does not much else.

To this dry mixture, I add some black paint, and a huge gob of PVA glue. The glue and the paint are the only liquids added to the dry mixture, and this combination makes for a solid product once dry. If you find the consistency too dry and crumbly, then just add more paint or glue until you get a consistency of a thick paste. Think thin mayonnaise, but without the side-effects that incurs such as vomiting and nausea. If the potting soil makes it more like crunchy peanut-butter, then you are on the right track, just add more glue and paint.

Alternatively, if you find that your mixture is runny like thick milk, add some more plaster and soil to dry it up a bit. You want a creamy paste as your end result, such as pictured above.

In the Third Step, we'll cover the application of this gooey concoction.

Foamcore Ruins, Part 1

Alas, I finally got around to making a tutorial on my foamcore ruins. This is a fairly well-known method, but I have got enough questions about my previous pieces that I thought I would share my 'secrets' with you all.

First off, the supplies you will need:
-PVA Glue (Elmers, or white glue, for those who don't know what PVA is)
-Cheap black paint
-Powdered Patching Plaster (The kind used for repairing drywall and the like)
-A larger paint brush
-Foamcore (It is a kind of posterboard made from a piece of thin styrofoam sandwiched between 2 layers of paper, found in most department stores)
-Masking tape (That off-yellow tape people use to cover up stuff they don't want to get paint on)
-Sharp hobby knife or utility blade to cut the foam core
-A suitable place that you can cut stuff on or get real messy and not get in trouble with the wife (or for some of you, the mom! Hey, I don't judge.)

Step 1: Creating your basic shape.

When I am making ruins, I tend to make a small single corner. That way, if I want larger buildings, all I need to do is line up four corners to look like they were a single building at one point. With this in mind, I set about making the corner. One long wall usually serves as the focal point of my structure. I then match up one smaller wall at the corner. Adding in a small second floor, cut to match the degradation of the building, helps add a third dimension of playability to the ruin. A doorway ensures that it is not an impregnable fortress. A simple base to keep it all together, and we have all the basic elements of a structure.

After you have your basic shapes, put them all together with the masking tape. Make sure every edge is masked, as seen in the pictures. This will help make the piece more durable, so pieces aren't coming off of it.

The next step is preparing the mix....

Staged Shots

After I got those done, I started in on some decals and washes, and I started figuring out that not all paints were created equal. My crappy "Applebarrel" paints were sucking immensely, so I started picking up some GW paints, just in time for the new AoBR set to arrive! I knew that I wanted red with gold highlights, but I was going for a dirtier, grungier look. I wanted the models to look like wartorn veterans, not some ninnies with spit and polished armor, so I used the Badab wash liberally to achieve that end.

I took some shots of the tactical squad with some of the foamcore buildings I had made. Foamcore buildings look great, and are cheap to build, but they are time consuming. I will post a tutorial later.