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!

Dark Eldar Progress

Hello blog fans, a bit of a short post this time as I'm taking Mrs Frugal up to sunny Scotland for the weekend.  For any American readers out there; Scotland is a small island to to the North of Britain, where all the food is filled with deadly bacteria which can only be killed by deep frying any meals.  Scotland (also known as 'Wales' or 'Ireland'), has lots of castles where the population live, only venturing forth to go looking for 'Freedom' which can only be achieved by beating the British team at a game of Soccer.  In 5000 years of Scotlandish history, this has never happened. 

While I'm away I'll leave you all to wonder at the fantistically mediocre paint jobs that I've applied to my old school Dark Eldar.  Remember that these are still works in progress and will look much worse when finished.

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

Frugalnomics Lesson 1 - False Economy

It’s nice to have the position of power that I do.  But as Spiderman famously said ‘With great power, comes great responsibility’, so as part of my ongoing mission to educate the masses, I’m launching an intermittent series of articles on Frugal Gaming basics.  I’m calling it ‘Frugalnomics’

Basically it’s like Scientology, except that it’s free and there’s no big secret at the end.  By the way, if you’re wondering, the big secret at the end of Scientology is that Bruce Willis is a ghost.

The first lesson is ‘False Economy’.  False Economy is (according to Wikipedia)

...an action which saves money at the beginning but which, over a longer period of time, results in more money being wasted than being saved.

So how does false economy relate to gaming?  Well, perhaps you bought some cheap miniatures on a whim, only to realise the quality was rubbish and they never got used.  Not only did you spend money unnecessarily; you now have to spend the money all over again to buy better miniatures that will get used.  Or how about this; you buy a cheap set of tools, they’re difficult to use and break after a few months of use; you need to buy them again.  As the old saying goes ‘Buy cheap, buy twice’.

So how do you prevent falling into the false economy trap?  The main way I’ve found is to have a look at how much alternative products cost.  If you find a particular product from one retailer, have a look around and see what other companies are producing it. 

The tricky bit is trying to decide which offers the best value for money; so not necessarily the cheapest or the most expensive, but the one that offers the balance of quality and price.  A recent example from my own frugal existence is superglue.  I’ve been using pound shop superglue for years and it’s always produced terrible results, breaking easily and requiring me to buy more.  After the last bottle ran out I decided to go for a more expensive brand and dished out £3.20 for some thick, slower setting superglue.  Since then, it’s been a pleasure to use and has been much more effective.  I only have to glue once and it stays stuck.

 Have you had a false economy situation?  Let me know via email, or post it below. 

Class dismissed.

A New Year of Frugal Gaming

Hello all and welcome to a new year of Frugal Gaming.  For those of you new to this blog, the aim is to reduce your spending on gaming products while simultaneously playing more games and improving the quality of games played.  I (and my small but select team of Frugal contributors) aim to help you achieve this by giving you hints and tips on money saving projects, reviewing products to make sure you’re getting the best value for your gaming money and generally giving you something else to read on the internet to prevent you straying onto ebay when bored at work.

This site has been running for two years now and we’re still growing so have a look around using the search box  on the right hand side of the page, the tag cloud at the bottom of the page or the tabs at the top of the page. and remember you can always get in touch with me by sending me an email.

Last year was a pretty good year for me and this year I want to do more of the same, my ideas for the forthcoming twelve months are as follows:

More Painting: I’ve got a lot of unpainted figures at the moment. My Orc and Goblin army for Warhammer is nearing completion and I’ve just started painting all the Dark Eldar for 40k that I’ve had stuck in boxes for ages.  In addition, I’ve also got a lot of undead to paint up, but more about that next week.  I plan to not buy any more for these armies until the units I already have are fully painted.  No more unpainted models on the table!

More Organising:  At the moment my painting desk looks like a refugee camp with a large number of unconnected projects on the go, I’d like to focus more on each project and finish one before I begin another, perhaps only having two models or units in the go at once, rather than the ten or so that I have at the moment.  If anyone has any tips on setting up a painting rota, I’d love to hear it.

More Gaming: I’ve been playing a lot over the past year, but I’d like to get more gaming done!  I’m considering going along to some of the local gaming gaming clubs, (work and my hectic social life permitting) to get the best out of my newly painted figures.

More Learning: As I say I’ve been playing a lot, but I’d like to get better, I’m planning to get a  notebook to keep a brief run down of each of the games that I play so I can learn from my mistakes and understand how a battle can turn on a few key moves.

Less Spending: I’m not quite sure how much I spent on gaming last year, but this year I’m going to set a budget and stick to it. I think £20 a month would be a reasonable figure, and I can always bring in more from selling my old bits and pieces on ebay if I have a big purchase I’d like to make.  I’m not sure how it’ll go but it’s worth a try!

So those are my aims for the year.  What have you got planned?  Drop me a line and let me know, all the best for the new year.

Happy gaming

Dave

It's drawing to an end...

This week I've been working on some gaming related presents for friends and family, so I can't post any photos of them here, in case they're watching! I'll post some photos up after Christmas so you can all see what I've been up to. Instead, here's my workbench (complete with homemade painting station) with the articles in question removed...
Meeting the Pope
Yesterday my old mucker Jackson Pope, head of Reiver Games (you'll remember him from this interview) was visiting Clifton Road Games in Exeter to demo some of his boardgames. It was good to see Jack again and we played a couple of his excellent games and had a bit of a catch up. I was very impressed with Clifton Road games, it's a little bit out of the city centre and was a little tricky to find, but I was amazed when I got in there. The staff were very friendly, the range of games and miniatures was huge and the store had a huge room at the back with loads of tables for gaming. They run games nights during the week, so I may have to see if it's feasible for me to travel up there for an evening during the week. I'll certainly pop in there for miniatures in the future, the postage on my last order from an online retailer would have covered the cost of a train ticket for me to travel to the shop and pick it up. If you're in the area, I'd recommend checking it out.

Jack has recently posted on his blog, Creation and Play, about the cost of manufacturing boardgmes, it's a really interesting article and makes good reading for anyone who is thinking of making and selling games as a business.

Making and doing and selling...
The past couple of weeks, I've been putting my modelling skills to the test by sculpting and painting Christmas decorations. I finally put a load on sale at a local craft fair and they sold quite well. I also managed to make a few trades with other stall holders. Remember, if you fancy buying any of my zombie or rockabilly related Christmas decorations, click the links on the right of the page, I promise to spend any money made on gaming or modelling equipment, thanks! If you fancy some decorations but are being Frugal with your money, I'm always up for trades, email me (through the FAQ) and we'll see what we can arrange.
In addition I've been putting a load of old bits and pieces up for sale on ebay, a few copies of White Dwarf, a couple of Judge Dredd Comics and a few other books as well, go and have a look by clicking on the 'ebay' link on the right.

Mac Army Builder Required
As well as making decorations and gifts, I've also been keeping an eye on painting more of my Dark Eldar. Unfortunately, my inspiration is leaving me and I need to sit down and write an Army list. I'm currently building my own spreasdheet on excel to keep track as I own a Mac so Army Builder won't work. Does anyone have any recommendations? Are there are any other Mac owning DE players that have an electronic list that I could get a copy of? As per usual, email me if you can help out.

And Finally...
Alas my year of Frugal Gaming only has a month left to run; of course, the site will continue with my occasional thoughts and ramblings, and you're all allowed to join in (see this post). Over the next few weeks, I'll be looking back over my past year in gaming and seeing how I managed to get on against the Frugal Gaming goals I set myself at the beginning of the year. If you have any specific questions relating to my experiences over the year, drop me a line and I'll try to answer them in my posts!

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?

Colour Management

One of the problems I've come across when painting my Dark Eldar is choice of colour for the army. Generally Dark Eldar are painted in blues and purples to produce a cohesive uniform colour scheme. This has never really interested me as I think that the 'fluff' associated with the Dark Eldar (a piratical raiding party, formed over time) would not give them a uniform colour scheme. I decided that to reinforce the idea that the army had formed over time from individuals and small groups gathering together I would paint them all different colours. Unfortunately this means that I have to think up approximately 40 different colour schemes. My solution to this was to turn to a book I own called 'Colour Management' which is a guide for graphic designers on the use of colour.

It's a fantastic resource, simply open the book at any page, choose a poster or logo design and pick out the main colours. These kind on books can be picked up relatively cheaply from discount book stores, they don't have to be specifically graphic design books, any book of modern art, posters or corporate logos will be useful.


I've started three miniatures so far this way and I'm pretty happy with the results. Right, better get them finished and get on with the rest...

Happy gaming!

I'm back!

That's right, after moving into a new flat I have finally had some time to game, then sit down and write about it!

My gaming buddy Matt has returned from a long spell away with work, so we were both keen to catch up and throw some dice. We settled for a game of Blood Bowl as we now both have fully painted teams. We've been looking at starting a Blood Bowl league, but I hadn't had chance to get a team roster worked out so we just played a normal game. It was a good job really, as my Dwarfs got resoundingly spanked by Matt's Dark Elves, 4-1! Ah well, it's not the winning, it's the taking part. To be fair, it's not as though I'm a bad player, it's all the dice's fault, all I needed was for them to keep giving me 5's and 6's but they wouldn't cooperate!

I'm hoping to get back into painting soon as well, I need to get my Dark Eldar painted (or at least assembled) so I can get some 40k played. Matt, Kenny and I are looking at starting a small 40k campaign which should be good, and I also want to enter into the 40k championships at the Plymouth Association of Wargamers annual show in Feb, which seems like plenty of time, but it'll soon pass.

And of course in the last week it was announced that Space Hulk is being re-released, (woo hoo!) so I'm expecting a few games of that. Busy busy busy....

Battle for Skull Pass

After a very busy couple of weeks, I have returned! Last weekend I was in the glorious metropolis that is Blackpool. Of all the places in the world that I'd like to visit for a weekend, Blackpool has never been particularly high on my list. However, it was my Brother's Stag Night so I couldn't refuse. Anyway between traveling there and back, drinking lots of horrible watered down beer, and throwing my bro's pants (as in underpants, not trousers) onto the roof of a bar I didn't have much chance for blogging.

However, I have been busy during the past couple of weeks with painting. I say painting, but it's mainly just been cutting, filing and gluing. My Dark Eldar force has now been mainly put together and I've thrown a few colours onto them to get some idea of how they're going to look. I'm going with the idea that they're a raiding force that's grown over time with new recruits from all areas, giving a mix of uniforms and colours. I'm still not sure, but we'll see how they turn out...
This week I've got my 11 year old son staying with me. He's quite keen on gaming so I took the opportunity today to go into Games Workshop and pick up a copy of the Warhammer boxed game. We've since spent the afternoon clipping plastic and rolling dice, he seemed to really enjoy it and I must admit I think I did too!

Of course I need to get into another gaming system like I need a hole in the head. Well, I suppose one more wouldn't hurt...