Where I hide my Naughty Space Pixies …

‘Conan!  What is best in life?’

‘To crush your enemies; see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.’

‘Conan! That’s great but you need to get your chores done first…’

Ah yes, there are things we all enjoy, but unfortunately we have to get the boring stuff out of the way first.  For the last few weeks, I have been in the library of Frugal Towers; researching, writing and getting rather stressed as I put the finishing touches to an academic project I’ve been working on.  However, the work has now been sent off and I’m free to paint, game, generally geek out and then write about it in a mildly amusing, but ultimately badly planned way.

Old School Raider with an old school finger attached

 The main news of the past few weeks is that I have finally completed my Dark Eldar.  I bought my Dark Eldar (or as I like to call them ‘Naughty Space Pixies’) a couple of years ago and left the box gathering dust on a shelf.  When the new Naughty Space Pixies Codex was released last year, I got them out of the box, assembled them, painted a couple and then put them back on the shelf to gather dust.  Eventually I had to paint them all so went for a quick scheme of basecoat, wash and highlight, with minimal detail.  So now I have approximately 1000pts of NSPs on the shelf gathering dust. 

The (semi) interesting fact about these NSPs is my storage technique. I ordered some 25mm self adhesive magnetic discs from Hasslefree Miniatures, at £10 for 100 though smaller packs are available.  Like a lot of gamers out there I’ve experimented with a few different methods of storing my Pixies, Gnomes and Galactic Knights, but I think that these magnets are the way ahead.  The discs only take a second to apply, and once in place are pretty robust.

Once the figures are stickered, it’s simply a case of finding a suitable receptacle to keep them in.  I’ve gone for a metal tool box that I got from a carboot sale for a couple of pounds, but for another unit I’ve used a boxfile with self adhesive steel paper in it.

Even the smell of ginger hair cannot dislodge the magnets.

For me, one of the main benefits of magnetic bases is the ease that the figures can be put away, no messing about shoving the figures into foam holes, just stand them up in the box and they hold themselves in place, winner!

As I rarely travel too far for gaming I think these are a good (Frugal) option for storage.  Anyone who regularly flies or takes trains to tournaments may want to consider something more robust, but then if you’re the sort of gamer who flies to tournaments then you’re probably not the type to worry too much about Frugal Gaming.

So, I’m back, I’ve completed an army and I’ve adopted a new way of storing figures, what more could you possibly ask for?

If you're interested in magnets, you may like to check out my Blood Bowl article.

Losing with my army and then against it...

Hello all,

It's been a busy week!  If you've been following me on twitter (you really should, I'm remarkably interesting), you'll have seen that I played some 40k (played twice, lost twice) and I've been working on completing my snotling pump wagons.

The 40k was against my regular gaming chum Lawrence; he had kindly agreed to lend me his Tau army so that I could play against my n00b gaming friend who would be using my Dark Eldar.  It was a rather good game; I really enjoy using the Dark Eldar, but they can be a bit fragile and susceptible to being shot at (aren't we all?) although the wyches and grotesques are amazing in close combat.  As I say, I lost the game, but I learned a lot from it.  I'm being far too cautious with my force.  I keep hiding them and trying to blast the enemy from a distance, what I really need to start doing is throwing them forward and getting them into combat as soon as possible, even if it means taking a few casualties on the way in.  Next time I imagine I'll have a good haul of slaves and a satisfying victory at the end of the game.  You heard it here first.

So Lawrence left and his Tau remained behind for me to use the following evening.  This was the first time 'The n00b' had played 40k and to cut a long story short, he won and loved it (I wonder if the two are connected?), he keen to try it again so expect more n00b 40k updates.  I'm glad he enjoyed it, but I was really hoping he'd get into Necromunda which we played last week.  There's been some talk at the club of setting up a Necro campaign, so I may have to get involved in that instead...

So yeah, a good week, with plenty of projects on the go as well.  Hopefully the snotling pumpwagons will be complete in the next week or so; when they're done I'll post a full 'how to' guide on their construction. I've also got another conversion project for my orcs and goblins in the planning stages, based on a Heresy miniatures kit, are there any guesses?

Happy Gaming!

Building a Talos in a Week - Day Six

At last it's done!  The last lick of paint has gone on, the static grass has been added and even the talons are nice and neatly varnished.  Yes, after six busy evenings of work, I have scratchbuilt and painted a Talos Pain Engine for my Dark Eldar army in Warhammer 40k.  Tomorrow I'll be taking my Dark Eldar down to the club to join forces with Shiny and his Tau to take on some Space Marines.  I hope it does well!  I'll collect all the photos together in the next few days and put up a full step by step guide on what I did.  Until now, feast your eyes on my poorly painted beast of terror!

 

Building a Talos in a Week - Day Five

Only one more day to go!  The model has got to be finished tomorrow, ready to go the gaming club on Thursday evening.  I've shaded and highlighted, so all I need to do now is finish the detail and the base.  I'd also like to do a bit more shading as well, but I'll have to see how much time I have tomorrow evening.  Here's where I've got to this evening, come back tomorrow to see what the finished article looks like...

Building a Talos in a Week - Day Four

Most of the time when I start a project, I struggle to get it finished.  I know that the professional image that this blog puts across may make it look that I'm a perfectionist, but sometimes things don't go entirely to plan.  However, the last few days seem to have provided a minor miracle.  The Talos I'm building for my Dark Eldar 40k army is progressing well and I may well get it finished on time!  Here I am at the end of day three, the model is now primed, mainly basecoated and has also had a blue wash applied.  Enjoy, and look forward to another update tomorrow!

Building a Talos in a Week - Day Three

Okay, it's not perfect, but time is pressing!  Here's my Talos at the end of Day Three.  I'm planning to paint the greenstuff on the head and back as beaten bronze (to cover my terrible sculpting skills).

Tomorrow will be priming and basecoating.  And perhaps a bit of panic re-sculpting...

Building a Talos in a Week - Day Two

More basic building today.  I've made a start on the detail as well.   My plan is to finish the detail tomorrow so that I can prime and basecoat it on Monday.  I hope.  Anyway, here's where I've got to today:

See you again tomorrow!

Building a Talos in a Week

Hi all, a bit of a strange one this week.  Last night while at the local gaming club, I was having a game of 40k with Shiny.  After we'd finished (I got beaten.  Twice) we were asked if either of us fancied a game next week, as it turned out we decided to team up.  To cut a long story short, we now both need to bring our 1000pt forces up to 1250pts.  To go some of the way towards this I decided to knock up a Talos for use in the game.  Of course, this means that I now only have a week to build and paint a Talos from scratch (as well as the usual hectic mix of, you know, real life and stuff).  Agh!

Here's my progress at the end of day one.  It's a mix of chaos spawn, giant parts, odd Dark Eldar pieces and bits from a 1:35 WW2 German Sturmtiger kit:

There's plenty more to do, I'll update again tomorrow.

Happy Gaming!

Colour Management part 2 - The Good, the Bad and the Bland

The Bad, the Bland and the Good.

As regular readers know, I’m not perfect, aside from spelling errors and horrendous formatting, I’m also a bit rubbish at giving any kind of advice.  You may remember that in 2009 I lectured you all on selecting colours to ensure that your army looked its best.  I then illustrated this point by adding a picture of what I thought were good choices.

The old individual colours; nice in small numbers, but horrible in large groups.

With the release of the new Dark Codex, I decided to finally get round to finishing off my Dark Eldar army (and by ‘finishing off’ I actually mean ‘assembling and painting’).  Anyway, I realised that my exisiting paint schemes looked terrible and I needed something better.  Since getting back into gaming a few years ago, I had primarily focussed on skirmish games (such as Necromunda and Mordheim) where I could focus on each miniature and make them individual.  As I took up Warhammer, I realised that I needed to make an army more uniform, so that it looked better when assembled on the tabletop. 

Casting the individuality of my Dark Eldar aside I stripped off the paint  and began painting them in a bone colour (as shown at the top of the page) to give uniformity and to avoid the generic purple Dark Eldar army look.  Unfortunately, as nice as this colour was, it was quite dull and didn’t show up very well against my grey gaming board.  Dammit.

So after a bit more paint stripping (my flat really is starting to smell like an old people’s home now), I decided to go for something brighter.  Ice blue seemed appropriate.  So here they are, bright blue, easy to spot on the battlefield, and most importantly of all, not purple.

Not the most amazing colour scheme, but not purple.

Happy gaming

To all the Ultramarines Fanboys...

If you got a haircut and it turned out looking terrible, would you go back for more?  Would you think,’He's a rubbish barber, I’ll go back so he can get some more practice?’.  If you went to a restaurant got terrible food, in small portions and they overcharged you, would you think ‘They must need my money to improve service so I’ll go again’? 

I hope the answer to all these questions is ‘No’.  If you get overcharged for poor service, you don’t go back for more and you certainly don’t go around shouting down anyone who says differently.  Which brings me onto the subject of the ‘Ultramarines’ movie, which is overpriced shit.  I think internet etiquette requires me to put ‘IMHO’ or something, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and state this as a fact, rather than an opinion.  It. Is. Overpriced. Shit.  Anyway, I’m not angry with the film or the various individuals involved, what I’m angry about is the chumps out there praising the film that they’ve just paid the best part of £30 to watch.

Don’t think that by buying it you’ll encourage GW to make ‘more and better’ films, you won’t.  I’m going to say this once more, then go off and kick the cat; IF YOU BUY A POOR QUALITY OVERPRICED PRODUCT, THE COMPANY WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE POOR QUALITY OVERPRICED PRODUCTS.

Thank you for your time.

Von's Frugal Year: Months The Tenth and Eleventh

Whoops.

I don't know what happened there.  I fell off the wagon a little bit over the last few weeks; in fact, I've fallen off several wagons, and you may take your pick as to which one I'm most embarrassed about.  There's the 'updating the blogs, ever' wagon, the 'take photos of stuff you've Been Painting so you can infect the Internet with those instead of writing real content' wagon and the 'you're supposed to be spending less as well as gaming more' wagon.

A review, then, of sorts:

I bought a Skorne starter box back in October.  It was not a particularly considered decision - well, it was and it wasn't.  It was, in that I'd been agonising over which Hordes faction I wanted to play for ages, and it wasn't, in that I bought them at the end of a tournament that I hadn't done too well in and which left me in bad need of a change of pace.

The Skorne bug has bitten me hard: I've played a lot of games over at Dice and Decks in Ross-on-Wye (lovely little club, very friendly people, and we've got them playing Warmachine now, he he!), and I even won a little battlebox tournament a couple of weeks ago.  I'm trying to pace the Skorne expansion so I don't end up with more stuff than I have the money to buy or the time to paint, and so far it's working.

I have been rather less satisfied with the Tyranid project, which I bought into when I started running a school club and have yet to play an actual, proper game with.  Perhaps I should have waited for a week to see how much stuff the kids were bringing in and how much time we had to play before I bought a thousand point army.  Perhaps I should also have considered how many mould lines I'd have to clean in between the fun parts of doing a new, mostly plastic army.

The point is that I've dropped £150 on new models in the last eight weeks, and that's a bit out of sync with this Mission that I'm supposed to be on.  I'm also having slight storage trouble with the new models - everything fits in the display cabinet just fine, but if I move house again, we'll have an... interesting time of it.

By the way, I'll probably be moving house again quite soon.

It might be time to declare a purchasing freeze and think about liquidating some assets, if you'll permit me to drop into Kennedy-esque business-speak for a moment.  In the meantime, I have some Tyranids to file the mould lines off...

Hive Fleet Níðhöggr - Why Nids Aren't Orks

Remember, these aren't models.  They're parts.  Just because the box says three doesn't mean you can't build six...

Basically, in the midst of my epic plan, I did a bit of analysis and worked out a) that the Orks would be time-consuming to paint and b) they'd have too many kits that cost a lot of money for not many in-game points.

£20 for a 40 point Trukk is not a good investment.  I tend to rate kits based on how much of a game-worthy army they constitute, and transport vehicles tend to come off very badly when viewed in those terms.  About the only one I have any respect for is the Land Raider: it may set you back £35, but it's also a two-hundred-plus point behemoth of a kit that constitutes a good chunk of army for the investment and actually does things in games that aren't just 'ferry infantry around the board'.

The Ork Battlewagon's in a similar bracket, I suppose, although less imposing on all counts... which is sort of the problem, really.  I could have built a smashing looking army, but it would have a lot of fiddly little kits that didn't eat enough points in it, and I'd also have had to buy almost everything in one go in order to have all the parts that I needed for it.  Not terribly economical and would have resulted in a huge, demoralising pile of plastic to work through.

Wanting to avoid the whole tangled issue of over-priced, under-valued transport vehicles entirely, I hit on the idea of either doing Daemons (who'd pull double duty as a second WFB army, but not offer me that many modelling opportunities - and that was the point of this 40K project, if you recall) or Tyranids (who would be committed to 40K and 40K alone but also have some excellent plastic kits and some big scary monsters which don't have proper models, therefore demanding some modelling).

I sat down at the computer, poked around some good netlists (remember, there's no shame in it), looked at a few conversions to give me ideas, and then it hit me - I could easily build a Tyranid army in smaller, self-contained, self-managing units, without needing this kit to give me spare arms for that kit which would mean I could use those third-party minis to free up bodies for t'other conversion.  It seems far more sensible than the alternative, anyway.

For the first chunk of the army - the first thousand points - I'll be needing two Tyranid battleforces, recommended retail price £60 each.  First way to save money - buy from Maelstrom and revel in their 10% discount.  First obstacle - they don't have any in stock, and I could do with having this project ready to go by Wednesday.  M'colleague and I have also discussed how to set an example to the kids we're running our club for, and he reckons that encouraging them into the hobby centre to play games and socialise is important, so actually visiting said hobby centre might be a good idea.  I'm not convinced, myself, but the fact of the matter is, they have the miniatures ready to go and I have a deadline here.

Second way to save money - look at building expensive things out of cheap things.

This is a Hive Guard.  They're quite good.  They're also £12 each.  Tyranid Warriors, meanwhile, are £6 and small change each, similar sized, and look similar enough to get away with.  Loads of people have done the conversions already, and I'm not one to avoid jumping on a bandwagon if it'll get me some half price elite choices, so I'll be using the two Warriors with Venom Cannons that I get from my Battleforces to build a couple of these lads.  A third will be providing a stop-gap HQ choice (hello Tyranid Prime, later to be one of a second Tyranid Warrior unit) and the rest will be ordinary Tyranid Warriors.  Four Force Organisation slots from six minatures.  Not bad going.  I have similar plans for the second stage; two Carnifex kits (£54) will be building me something like four hundred points' worth of monster meat, again inspired by some of the conversions I've seen around the Net (although I'll be adding my own unique stamp to the Tervigon I've designs on), and potentially giving me a second HQ choice to mess about with.

The third way, of course, is the time-honoured 'buy a bargain and sell what you don't want' method.  Those two Battleforces will furnish me with rather a lot of Tyranids, including eight Genestealers and twelve Hormagaunts that I'm not sure I have a tactical purpose for.  They might find themselves converted up as alternative weapon options for other units, or they might find themselves going on eBay, unassembled, to try and recoup some start-up costs.

On a final note: while I've been looking at plastic sprues to jazz up this post, I've also seen a picture of the Stealer sprue and discovered its lack of enough tentacly heads to suit my purposes.  I'd need four, not two, boxes of Genestealers to build eight Ymgarl 'Stealers - not very economical at all.  I'll either have to sculpt my own or pick up some resin alternatives from Chapterhouse: either way, let this be a lesson about the importance of research, finding out what parts you actually get in a kit before you buy it, and seeing kits as parts rather than as foregone conclusions, models already built.

Isn't this where we came in?

Three Points and One Rule

Purgatus of Yes The Truth Hurts (apparently it is supposed to be missing that crucial comma) has recently given forth some helpful advice on hobby project management for those of us who find ourselves committing to too much at once.

As a man with half-painted Dark Elves (Been Painting: Cauldron of Blood crew), half-painted Skorne (Been Painting: Cyclops and Titan) and, VERY SOON NOW, half-painted Tyranids* (About To Be Buying: Cheap Nids), and limited time to work on any of it, this sort of thing is highly beneficial.

The first stage of Purgatus' three point plan involves finding a little time every week to do something.  My times, at the moment, are Wednesday night (I'll be running a school club as of next week, and so have a couple of designated hours to work on models while refereeing for the kids - we'll see how well THAT turns out after this Wednesday) and a good chunk of Saturday (early afternoon's working quite well, that seems to be when the new living room gets the sun), and I try to have a couple of models on the go during those times so I can work on one while another's drying.  I painted the first two beasts for my Skorne army and the Cauldron crew over the course of last weekend, and while I now have red fatigue, they look pretty good (pictures when I can get to a decent camera).  This week I'll probably be building/priming Tyranids and painting another Cyclops.

Second stage: don't get judgy about unpainted models, as long as progress is being made.  A few years of living in the Real WorldTM  has more or less cured me of any painting snobbery, but there's still the ghost of a hang-up in there.  As long as a project is making progress, as long as slightly more stuff is painted this week than last, it's okay: hence devoting some time to the Dark Elves last week, since they'd been neglected since I left Plymouth.

Third and most crucial stage: don't neglect playing.  Playing games is important because it gives the painting a purpose (unless you buy to paint, in which case you probably don't have the obligation, the need to learn to love the grey), gives you some motivation, gets you all excited about your Dark Elves (which reminds me, I've a game report I still haven't written) again and willing to put a lick of paint on them.  There's a similar, inverse effect from knowing that you have a game coming up and you want to paint something for it; witness my actually bothering to base the rest of my Cryx army because I knew there was a tourney in the offing.

There you have it.  How to stop worrying and love the grey.  I think it's important to have a Frugal brake on the proceedings, and mine is the Rule of One: one army per game played, which is holding up fairly well (if you consider Hordes and Warmachine as one gaming system, I'm cheating a bit, but I think the dynamics are different enough to get away with it, and having a small Hordes army does have the effect of reminding me how the Hordes rules work, thus improving my game).  I've been in Purgatus' shoes, where I've had seven or so armies on the go but haven't actually been able to pay the rent, and I don't want to go back there again.


* - yes, I did say it was going to be Orks, didn't I?  My next post will be on the various reasons why I changed my mind, as well as the plan for keeping the project moderately Frugal.  There's no lying about it - it's definitely a breach of protocol, but it's for professional reasons (school club a-go-go!) and the original plan to manage expenditure should hold up for them better than it did for the Orks.

Special 101st Blog Post Extravaganza!

Hooray!  This blog passed a couple of milestones in the last week or so; the last post was this blog's 100th (which helps any mathletes out there calculate my percentage of posts) I've also passed the 100 followers mark (106 as I write this) so I'd like to say a heartfelt 'thank you' to you all, and as a token of thanks, here's a photograph of me feeling suitably happy:

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I've created a remarkable frugal gaming quiz based on previous posts on this blog.  There are no prizes, simply look at the 10 questions, think about your answer and then click on it (no hovering!), use the return button on your browser to return to the fun!  If you're right, you'll see; if you're wrong you'll get a Boom!

Question 1: What is the Frugal gaming motto?

• Spend less, game more.
• Paying less, painting more.
• I'm loving it.
• To infinity and beyond!

 Question 2: Pete gave some tips on creating the perfect games night, what did he suggest?

• Popcorn
• A 'McGuffin'
• A box of staples
• All of the above

Question 3: With a small amount of wood, a polystyrene sheet and a hand made 'x' template you can make.

• Lots of friends
• A Blood bowl pitch
• A 2000pt Tournament legal Necron Army
• An elaborate, though mostly ineffective trap

Question 4: What method did Arabian Knight use to paint his Heroquest miniatures? 

• Basecoat and dip.
• Felt tip pens.
• White undercoat and colour washes.
• Dozens of layers, wet blended to perfection. 

Question 5: Which four of the following items have been made on this blog over the last two years?

• A post office
• Metal ladders
• A stone watchtower
• Tank traps
• Trees

Question 6: Is this a cycling blog? 

• Yes
• No

Question 7: What did Von say that his Warhammer army needed to have '...in order to destroy you!'

• Space Marines
• A Hefty Dose of Luck
• A Cauldron of Blood
• All of the Above

Question 8: What is best used to strip paint from miniatures?

• Domestos
• Dettol
• TCP
• TNT

Question 9: Can I save money and use Christmas as an excuse to get some more painting done?

• Oh no!
• Oh yes!

Question 10:Which three of the following offer fantastic free gaming resources?

• Bell of Lost Souls Minidexes
• Games Workshop Specialist Games
• Frugal Dave's Ultimate Awesome Free Gaming Website
• Dream Weaved Worlds

Special Bonus Ultra Question!
The 75 minute long, straight to DVD extravaganza Ultramarines 'movie' is now available for advance order.  What price are we expected to pay for this visual feast?

• A Bargain £5.99
• A Reasonable £9.99
• A Rather-pricey-but-still-justifiable £15.99
• An eye-wateringly-idiotic £25.99

I hope you enjoyed that.  Let know how you got on and I'll see you next time.

Happy gaming!

In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future there is only Disappointment

'Dude.  I need to pee...'

This isn't a movie review blog (or a cycling blog) but I ocassionally come across things I want to share outside the realm of gaming.  For the past few weeks I've been watching the Blade TV series currently showing on 'Five USA' here in the UK.  The thing that surprised me most was how good it is; I expected very little of a TV series based on films that deteriorated into farce over time.  However, as I say, it's pretty good and it's earned my recommendation.

Talking of things that I expect to disappoint brings me onto the subject of this post, the Ultramarines Movie. 

Building on a Budget: Part One

This man is not enjoying his game of 40K.

G'day all.

While still mired in that 'paint what you have and build what you need' place where I'm actually doing things instead of blogging about them (and, incidentally, doing this blog has been pretty damn good for making sure that I stay boring and actually paint things I buy and build things I scrounge for) I must confess that I've bought some test models for a longer-term project that I want to muck about with next year (or whenever I have a proper job again).

I'll get to what the project actually is later, but for now I want to share something about the way I've planned it.

See, starting a new army has some implicit risks in it. When you're young and foolish and new to a game, you rush into your Local Nerd Emporium and pick up whatever looks coolest and, if you're feeling particularly devil-may-care, you jam together a legal-if-you-squint army list and try to play some proper games with it.

When you're older and marginally less foolish, on the other hand, when your beard is ever creeping neckwards and you justify your toy soldiers to yourself by taking them semi-seriously and writing long, involved blog entries about them, you actually start planning army lists and thinking about how you're going to play the game and what your priorities are.

For me, one of those priorities is competing. I don't feel an urgent need to crush all who stand in my way or anything, but I don't enjoy spending whole games doing little more than remove casualties either.  These days, I'm increasingly reluctant to spend money and time on buying, building and painting things that are frankly not up to snuff on the tabletop.  Avoiding this is more of an art than a science, and we all have a few clunkers in the cupboard (mine are those six Revenant Crew that I'm never, if we're honest, going to use), but there is one way to do it: use someone else's army.

I don't mean go round their house and steal their miniatures or anything, that would be foolish.  What I mean is to keep your weather eye on the tables, the blogs and the forums.  Look at what people are using, what they're winning with and against what, in what conditions.  You have to take this information critically, of course.  Someone boasting a 98% win record but never posting a battle report is probably reluctant to admit that all their opponents are twelve and fielding two Battleforces, a special character and the biggest tank in the range against their well-honed, target-saturating, mechanised-death Space Wolf netlist, whereas someone who's putting up detailed reports of their games and showing you how they use their army to overcome a similarly able opponent, presenting you with the opponent's list and point of view so you can see how they thought the game went, how they saw through or were completely foxed by the list you're interested in liberating.  If you've a competent local who runs a good list and doesn't mind lending you their stuff, rejoice - you get to let the beast out and see if you can ride it.

Sometimes a list that does well in someone else's hands isn't for you; all the reading up on the dominance of Empire gunlines is meaningless if what you really enjoy is mobile short-ranged-to-melee armies.  Borrowing people's armies to find your style isn't a sin.  Proxying isn't a sin either, but if you're anything like me it's confusing; I couldn't look at my Dark Elves and think "these are Dwarfs today".  I'd be trying to play them like what they look like and failing with them.  Borrowing's more my style.

Eventually, you should find something that has proven its competitive worth and is close to something you want to field.  Maybe you want to make a few changes - and provided you understand what the essentials of the build are, that's okay, just don't close off tactical options or take out essential capabilities in the name of some illusive and elusive 'uniqueness' or 'originality'.  At the very least, ask, test and understand the principles behind successful lists - when you come to build your own, you'll understand the opportunites that are available, the capabilities you need and the weaknesses you need to either cover for or accept.

There's no shame in netlisting.  If you're going to drop time, money and effort into a project, you really ought to be eliminating the risk that it'll be a total clunker - which is why I've been looking at Ork armies on blogs all week.

Grimskul is sad.  Four Boys is not a very big WAAAAGH.

There are certainly better choices for the ultra-competitive gamer, but that's not my only priority.  I quite enjoy conversions, even if mine aren't a patch on Dave's or Shiny's, and there's nothing quite like Orks for doing a lot of those.  I also have some ideas for wringing maximum efficiency out of all the spare bits on the Ork sprues, and some coloured spray paints that should speed up the process of getting them on the board nicely.  It also makes more sense, to me, to look into a third system rather than owning two armies for one that I already play.


This is definitely a hobby project.  Doesn't mean I don't want to put up a fight on the table, though, so I've also been watching the recent run of tournament logs on Strictly Average, 3+ Save and Yes The Truth Hurts, working out which of the decent-looking lists I'd most like to build, or which can be adapted to something I want to build without losing out on what they need to make them good.

I shan't bend anyone's ear about the tactical aspects of that process over here, but I will at some point be putting up a post about the list I'm interested in doing, and the way I plan on building it whilst getting full mileage out of my purchases.

Building a Ruined Defensive Wall - Part 2

A couple of weeks ago I started explaining how to build a ruined wall terrain piece, in this post I’ll carry on with my method; sculpting and texturing the base, and painting the finished piece.  Details of the tools and materials I used are included in the first half of this post.

Sculpting the base and finishing the walls
To landscape the areas between the walls and the base, I use expanded polystyrene, sourced from old packing material.  I cut the polystyrene roughly to shape using a hot wire cutter, this was then glued in place using wood glue (PVA works just as well) and plaster was used to fill any gaps.

The next step is to finish off the walls.  As I used blocks to create my wall, there were small gaps between some of the blocks which show up when the model is painted and can ruin the overall effect.  To fill these gaps I mixed some plaster with a lot of water to get a really runny consistency and paint this liberally all over the model.  It runs into the gaps, filling them nicely; a little bit of detail is lost, but overall the look of the wall is significantly improved.

When all the plaster has dried, it’s time to texture the base.  This is really easy (and pretty fun); mix up some plaster along with PVA glue, sand and fine gravel then paint it all over the base up to where the ground meets the walls.  I also painted a bit of this mix onto the floors to represent rubble and dirt from the collapsed walls.

Painting
I primed using grey spray primer, the main reason I use this is that it can be picked up for £1 a can, though it also gives good coverage and I prefer painting over grey than a black primer.

For the main painting, I went for cheap emulsion paints (remember this is a Frugal Gaming blog!) for the base and walls, with cheap acrylic used for drybrushing and painting the floors.  I gave the finished model a quick dusting of light brown with my airbrush to age it a little and bring all the colours together before adding the vegetation.

As this was a big build, I used a couple of different types of flock in patches and even added some long grass in various locations to break up the long walls.  This really added to the final look of the model and was well worth the couple of pounds I spent on different grasses (hey, I saved money on the paints, okay?).

To finish off the model I gave it a good couple of coats of satin varnish to protect the paintwork, seal the flock in place and ‘flatten’ the colours.  Giving a terrain piece like this a coat of dull varnish also stops any cheap paints that were used from shining.


Results
I'm very happy with the finished model; it looks good, it can be played on, it’s hardwearing and most importantly it didn’t cost much to build.

As this is a simple model, you can add as much extra detail as you like depending on your own personal taste, I decided to leave it relatively plain to allow it to be used for fantasy or sci-fi games, plus theres fewer pieces to get knocked off when moving it about!

Once again, thanks to Doctor Merkury for the inspiration and letting me steal his idea.

Go go Goblins!

The last couple of weeks I've gone Warhammer crazy! Well, not quite, but I have splashed out. After playing WFB with Matt a couple of weeks ago, I've really got the bug for the game and the idea of collecting a Goblin Army started whirling in my head. I put up a half decent resistance (a week or so) then, while passing Games Workshop, picked up a plastic Giant kit and the Orcs and Goblins Army book.

Although I'm a committed Frugal Gamer (this year), I've always said that this means I'm prepared to pay a little bit more to get a quality product (link to previous post). I know I've criticised GW in the past, but the giant kit is absolutely fantastic (and ripe for conversion) and the Orc and Goblin Army Book provides a huge range of options to play greenskins. I was a little worried that by choosing to take the all-goblin route I'd be limiting myself, but there are myriad options for armies comprised entirely of the little guys. And one very big guy...

As often happens, the buying didn't stop there; I came across the GAME OVER blog run by Von (hello Von!), also based in Plymouth. It's a really nice blog, currently focusing on non-GW games, such as Warmachine and World of Warcraft, so if you play them go and check it out, in fact go and check it out anyway.

On a recent post, Von mentioned that he had a load of plastic goblins to get rid of (and a few metal ones), so *sigh* I had to get in touch and take them off his hands... This now means I have nearly 100 goblins to paint (1 big tin of green paint and 1 big brush?), I can't see them getting done until next year, but I'm really looking forward to it and looking forward to getting some games played!

My next painting priority is my 40k force, I'm still planning to have my Dark Eldar all painted by January of next year, this way I'll be able to enter into PAW 2010, with a fully painted force (and go for the painting prize!).

All this planned gaming leads me to start thinking about gaming surfaces. At present I play Necromunda on home made terrain tiles, but if I get into 40k and Fantasy more, will I need a new gaming surface? I've currently got a fold out cloth gaming surface that I put over the table and that seems to suffice, but I suppose a full size textured and modelled gaming table would come in useful...

Make sure you come and visit the site next week when I'll have big big news, it affects you all and will herald a whole new year of Frugal Gaming!

By the way, the blog currently has 49 followers, who's going to make it 50?