Fifty Ways To Leave Your Gaming Company

Okay, not fifty, but I'm sure Paul and I can manage a few.

Imagine, for a moment, that you're a gamer.  Shouldn't be too hard; you're reading this.  Now imagine that you buy most of your gaming gear from one company, and that that company isn't necessarily offering the value for money you'd expect.  Hopefully, you don't want to indicate support for their decisions by continuing to spend money on their products (we've already discussed how that works) but you still want to play their games.  I have a few suggestions in that line.

1. Know what you want.  What's your actual problem with the company?  Can you continue to play their games in good conscience, or is your seething righteous fury at the injustice they perpetrate too much?  What is it about their games that makes you want to keep playing them?  Is it story, scale, mechanics, funky miniatures, funky gamers, gamer funk or simple habit and ignorance of the alternatives?  You need to know why you're doing or not doing things before you can make an informed decision about whether or not to keep doing them.  If you like sword and sorcery skirmish games, do you really need that huge army of flying space tanks?
2. Stop and take stock.  What do you own?  What is built and ready to go; what has been sitting in a box since New Hot Sexy Release Day and never looked at since; what can work with what at a pinch and what's mutually exclusive?  Work out what you've got, what you can do with it, and how much work and expense it would take to do something with it if you need to make an investment.  I tend to find the people with the biggest dead lead piles and collections of mouldering, dusty sourcebooks are the people who only buy from one company but have lots of projects going on within that - who buy Company X's complete new release every time but never really get very far with it before picking up the next one.  The downside here is that all those projects require ongoing investment, and if you're suddenly unable or unwilling to continue making that investment, you have a pewter mountain on your hands that, in many cases, would embarrass the European Union.
3. Diversify.  Once you know what you're most likely to continue using, sell the rest.  Go on.  Get rid of it.  Use those resources to explore new games and new environments, to boldly go where no nerd has gone before... or at least where you've not gone before.  You're not going to dissassociate yourself from the company if you have no idea what the competition has to offer.
4. Use the secondary market, Luke.  Unless your name's not Luke (metaphorically speaking, that means 'unless you have some pressing need for as-new material', like a wargamer who likes to kitbash and thus won't be as keen on assembled and painted kits), the secondary market is your friend; it enables you to complete and extend projects without directly supporting the company with your own money.  This is, of course, psychological double-talk to an extent - that eBay bargain has, at some point, been purchased from the company who made it, and the money you spend on it will like as not find its way back to them, so this isn't one for the ideologues who've decided that the company is run by Satan and all his little wizards.  If your problem is simply "man, I can't afford the new Cyber-Knights, they are too spendy at umpty-seven pounds for two, but I still really like Star Pogrom and what it's about", you'll probably be more comfortable with this.
5. Avoid prescriptive environments.  Many companies have officially designated spaces in which they control what can and cannot be used there, whether it's "Dungeon Bash 8.4 is the only edition that's on sale at the event, therefore the only edition that can be used here, and official dice, character sheets, measuring implements, status tokens, floorplans and pencil shavings are a requirement" or "you must use branded Nerd Emporium paints, brushes, glues, pins, chewing gum and wishful thinking to build your Cyber-Knights in the Nerd Emporium".  Fie on this nonsense, says I.  Fie on it!  Such policies are nearly always designed to burden the consumer with expensive and unwanted purchases - get out of the environments that force those on you and find or create an environment where you're allowed to do things your own way, substituting in cheaper equivalent miniatures, homebrewed rather than supplemental rules, and materials that don't cost the Earth.
6. Disengage from what you've left.  Try not to get excited about Sexy Hot New Release Day for a game you don't play any more.  Don't let yourself be seduced back in.  Remind yourself why you quit - it doesn't matter how pretty that new book/miniature/dice block/paint-pot/staff member is if it doesn't fix what drove you away in the first place.  Likewise, fight the urge to get into Internet arguments (or, goddess forbid, actual arguments) about how rubbish Dungeon Bash is compared to Castle Brawl, or how Nerd Emporium is secretly controlled by the New World Order.  You're still thinking about something you were supposed to be getting away from, and that's the sort of behaviour that will see you sucked right back in.

Yes, she's lovely, but that doesn't mean she isn't trying to sell you devil droppings in a blister pack.

 For those of you who are still reading and haven't slavishly followed the above link, it might be worth you pointing your browser toward this week's Gaming on a Budget, which has some excellent advice on avoiding hobby burnout and, possibly, avoiding the kind of conditions that lead to you needing this sort of advice in the first place.

Making Rivets (and a Snotling Pumpwagon)

If you’re a regular reader (or even an irregular one) you’ll have seem some of my progress on building snotling pumpwagons for my Warhammer Orcs and Goblins army.  They are now complete, fully painted and have seen admirable service on the gaming table.

These models are remarkable simply to make, but just take time completing the detailing to make them look good.  I would have liked to have added more detail to mine, but I was keen to get them onto the table to start smashing the enemy!

I made two pumpwagons, one armoured and one flying, but I’ll focus on the armoured one to show off my method of making rivets…

Equipment
You will need…

• Pin vice, with 1mm drill bit
• Sharp knife
• Selection of files
• Razor saw (or junior hacksaw)
• Side cutters

Materials

• Plasticard
• Model train kit
• 1mm round styrene rod (all from your local model shop)
• 12mm Plastic Pipe – (from local DIY shop) you only need a very small amount so you could always just roll up some plasticard to make a small tube.
• Spare bits and bobs and the odd snotling
• Superglue
• Polystyrene cement (plastic glue)

As with any project like this, be careful when using tools and glues; running around the house looking for a first aid kit can seriously eat into your hobby time.

Making the Basic Shape
To save time and to ensure that I had a suitable basic shape for the pumpwagon I used a plastic locomotive kit.  My regular gaming buddy Lawrence gave me the idea after he’d used the same kit to make some horrendous warmachines for his Skaven army.  I promptly stole his idea and bought a kit from my local hobby shop for a reasonable £6 (~$10). 

I used the chassis of the kit to make the base of my armoured pumpwagon, the boiler was used for my flying pumpwagon.

The chassis was built up into a box shape using plasticard.  This was then adorned with additional panels, and various bits and bobs from my bits box to give it a much more ramshackle appearance.  I added a small length of 12mm pipe to the top to make a turret and fixed a blunderbuss onto that to strike fear into the heart of the enemy.  It works, so make sure you add one yourself.

Making Rivets
Once the basic shape was complete I added the rivets, this is a great way to improve the look of any model with a metal element.  There are a few methods on the market, including etched brass strips and individual stick on rivets, but I prefer the method I developed to use on some tank traps and then on my goblin rock lobber.

The method is simple (the photos are from making the roller, but as you'll see later the methods are the same);

1.    Mark on your plasticard where you want the rivets to go, roughly 3mm apart is good.
2.    Drill into the plastic using a 1mm drill bit in a pin vice, making holes wherever you marked.  When these are done, give the surface of the plastic a quick sand down to remove and rough bits of plastic.  

3.    Take your styrene rod, put a little polystytrene cement on the end and insert it into one of the holes you drilled.  Using a pair of side cutters, cut the plastic rod off, leaving about 5-6mm showing above the surface (don’t worry, you’ll remove the rest later).  Carry on around the rest of the model until all the holes have plastic sticking out of them.

4.    Leave this to set thoroughly.  Go and have a cup of tea or some cake.  Or both.
5.    Using your side cutters and a file, go round the model and cut and file all the rivets down until they are only 0.5 to 1mm long.  Experiment with different lengths of rivet until you find one which you like

I used the same method to make the spiky roller as well, adding styrene rod to a length of 12mm plastic pipe, but leaving the rod a little bit longer than the rivets.  The ends of the rod were covered in plasticard and the roller was then glued to the front using strips of plasticard

The snotlings were then stuck on using polystyrene cement (for the plastic figure) and superglue (for the metal figure).  At this point your shiny new pumpwagon is complete and ready for painting!

Painting
I would suggest painting the figure before adding it to a base (guess which way round I did it), as this makes it much easier.  I primed the model, then gave it a basecoat of GW Boltgun Metal, I then washed it with brown and black washes and picked out the various details and crew.  I found that the model benefitted from more and more washes and detail being added, but I eventually ran out of time and had to get it ready to hit the table!

I stuck the model to 40mm square base (the correct base size is a chariot base), in a suitably dramatic pose, added some sand and gravel and then painted it before adding some static grass to finish it off.

This was a relatively simple model to build.  The main thing to remember is to get a solid basic shape to which more detail can be added.  I hope you have a go at building your own pumpwagons, and if you do, let me know how you get on.

Happy Gaming
 

Frugal Terrain for a Frugal Game – Necromunda Experiments

Excuse me for a minute while I ramble on a bit, to introduce a new project...

My second frugal year is going extremely well so far, as I’ve managed to squeeze in a few games of Necromunda recently. Part of that is helped by (finally) being able to drive across the country to visit family, and be able to catch up with old gaming friends. Technically, the petrol is expensive (oh boy, is it expensive) but it’s a cost I’d be shouldering anyway. As a bonus, I could play against my wife while our first gamer-in-training was being watched by his aunt. For my goals so far this year – I am a couple of hours behind on my painting, but that should be sorted later this week thanks to the Royal Wedding. The gaming budget has been used up till June, because I am a complete sucker for a Dawn of War game, and used up five months on it near the beginning of the year.

All this Necromunda has re-inspired me to work on some scenery for the game. It might just be what I’m used to (my original opponent had two box sets, two Outlanders sets, and the Imperial Bastion, Bunker and Firebase card scenery), but it just doesn’t feel right playing on a flat table with a single level of scenery. I much prefer thinking in three dimensions, trying to get up and down very specific points (the house rules are quite unforgiving about ladders and their usage) to get good covering positions. With only a Gorkamorka fort and ‘blocking’ terrain (hills, rocks, crashed spaceships), it’s not quite the same at all.

This is one thing that makes Necromunda – a free-rules game with a limited model requirement – less than frugal, for my preference. Don’t take this as a frugal game review, however – the game is far and away (if you consider Gorkamorka to be ‘merely’ an awesome variant, as I do) the best and most frugal wargame I’ve found. The problem is that the game improves amazingly with more scenery, to the point that reducing that scenery rankles slightly.

We’ve made do in a pinch with Lego terrain – multiple levels, ramps, and infinitely configurable, but the nightmare industrial Underhive will always look exactly like Toy Town. This never really bothers me any more than unpainted models or scenery bother me, but it’s still something I would rather correct.

Alongside the Lego, I’ve tried some of the Hexagon and Platformer sets – as many people have discovered, this is almost perfect for Necromunda. It’s even in a nice dark grey plastic that doesn’t necessarily need to be painted, so it can be disassembled for storage or reconfiguration. This, however, is hardly frugal at all. If I recall correctly (it’s been a while since I got them), the sets cost around £13 each and each make a single medium-to-large structure (as tall as the original card buildings but not as big a base area) with spare parts. To reproduce the original box sets cardboard scenery would cost at least £50 – incidentally, looking at the prices of the original terrain on eBay aren’t far off.

Next, I took the advice of every beginners terrain article through the years and got some expanded polystyrene – rather, I convinced the wife not to throw away the cupboard full of polystyrene that was delivered with our white goods. I cannot say for other modelling projects (they probably make good bases for hills, block buildings or other solid terrain) but this was a bad idea. We had perfect shapes in the polystyrene to create a ruined building with exposed elevator shaft, around six storeys tall. However, to make the polystyrene stable it couldn’t be cut thinner (it was almost two inches thick), so each floor of the building was nearly five inches high – an original Necromunda bulkhead was three inches high, and the cardboard floor is of negligible thickness. I compared the half-finished scenery to the original stuff, and placed it on the table to think about how we’d play it. It didn’t look good, since it obstructed so much line of sight both from within and without – effectively cutting the table in two. Even shortening the piece wouldn’t work, since it had all solid walls. That’s something very different to the cardboard scenery, which is quite open.

I’ve tried things that looked wrong, felt wrong, or cost too much. The kits were quick and beautiful, but small for their cost. The Lego was similarly quick and cheap (I’ve got buckets of Lego older than I am) – but would never look right. The expanded polystyrene was cheap (it’s rubbish), but would take a lot of time to produce something that didn’t work well enough.

Making all these comparisons to the original scenery has given me my next experiment. I’m no great designer, but I am great at criticising. Criticism, turned around, is constructive as a list of requirements. To make new scenery in the spirit of the old, it needs to have:

• Large-ish flat surfaces for plenty of movement
• Open walls
• Minimum of vertical usage
• Ability to attach walkways and connecting pieces
• Cheap

As I said, I’m not a great designer, so I have a scan of the original cardboard stuff and I’m going to copy it. I even believe I can improve on it for a small outlay of time and money – by building it out of plasticard, it will be more durable than the original scenery (good for someone like myself who throws all the scenery into a box and stuffs it in a corner). It will also let me model with it slightly better – I wisely lost a bottle roll early into a long multiplayer game on Saturday, and spent the rest of it examining the terrain for tips and ideas. There are some great touches added to the graphics, like exposed panels, thin pipes/hoses and vents, that could be modelled without making it too difficult to stand on.

The difficulty comes in that, as Von has discussed before we must watch the temporal investment of the hobby. I’ve saved a lot of time over the years by not painting models, but now I’m trying to correct that. It’s also a time when my time is more in demand – as a student, I thought/pretended I was busy, but as a full-time employee and father, I would slap that younger self for being such an utter nit. There is, however, a solution for this. As I come back to being in credit (see above, regarding Dawn of War) with my gaming budget, I can afford some of the more exotic plasticard I need (L-shaped angle lengths, thinner for decoration, etc) to make it look like a quality reconstruction and not just a thick cardboard knock-off. I technically come back into budget in the middle of June, but I might take an advance on that as I’ll be near a hobby shop before then getting supplies for ‘macro-modelling’ (aka DIY), and just accept that winter will be devoid of any new modelling goodies.

Writing this, I’ve also noticed that it’s something I can write about similar to the completely unrelated (except it also has the word Necromunda in it) ‘teach myself unit testing’ experiment at my own shameless plug blog (warning: I am a programmer in another life, this is not about gaming).

Next month, I’ll try and describe how I think I’ll solve the problems that reproducing the terrain in plasticard sheets will cause...

Frugalist, Know Thyself

It happens to us all, at some time or another.

Sometimes we realise that our project has aspects that become a chore (working on lots of models that all look the same is a HUGE barrier for me, which is why my armies don't tend to wear uniforms or spam the same unit/model type), sometimes we come up against a strange quirk of game design that means our COOL PLAN can't work out, and sometimes it just turns out we've made sub-optimal choices early on and end up stuck between trying to use pieces that we either don't enjoy or that don't work (usually both), or selling them on at a loss shortly after purchase.


This makes starting new projects hard, as it's unlikely that a small, economically-manageable starter collection will include a wide range of tactical capabilities, and equally unlikely that you'll be equipped to make wise choices straight off the bat if you're coming into something that's new to you.

At this point in most blogs, the author would start listing resources that you can use to make wise choices. I'm not going to do that - I'm driving towards something a bit beyond recommending intelligent websites here. Y'see, most advice posts/blogs/sites tend to concentrate on the tactical opportunities and costs involved in selecting a force, and take a few important aspects of the choice as read. What I want to do today is to look at the questions that I think gamers should ask themselves before they even start thinking about collections, lists and tactics.

The first question to ask yourself when selecting a new force is the hardest one to answer: why do I want this?

Image taken from http://bluegroovecrafts.com

Allow me to illustrate with an example. I play Cryx in Warmachine. I like them, but the game designers made Choices when they created the faction, Choices with results including "it's not very tough" and "it needs to do tricksy things to be good". The net effect here is that whatever I do with this collection of figures, it will always operate within these limitations, which means I occasionally want a change. The fundamental nature of the faction, while certainly to my liking, occasionally frustrates other people: Cryx are tricksy and popular, and that tends to create a little tension when five or six Cryx players turn up to an event and proceed to debuff, deny and generally annoy their way through the proceedings.


I bought into Skorne as a second faction because the Skorne are very tough and tend to be more direct in their approach, hitting the enemy very hard and basically 'playing fair' in a way the Cryx simply don't. They are also very uniform, whereas my Cryx are more anarchic and colourful, and so I thought they'd provide aesthetic variety. Finally, they're a Hordes faction, and so they provide an alternative means of exploring the game's rules, which I wouldn't get if I picked up a second Warmachine faction.


Once you know why you want your new toys, you have another question to answer: why won't I want this in six months' time?

Image taken from http://sandalsandsocks.typepad.com

This is where self-knowledge comes in handy. If you know how you like to do something, you can try a spot of clairvoyance and ask yourself whether you'll be able to approach this project in a manner of your choosing.

For instance, I don't like painting the same models for any sort of extended period of time. Half a dozen of the same colour scheme and I'm bored - less, if it's at all intricate or complex.

My Cryx are fully painted primarily because I don't give a damn about making a 'uniform' army where everything looks the same, and have opted instead to paint each unit type in a different scheme, relying on bases to tie the whole lot together.

Skorne are very uniform - lacquered armour, metal trims and big shiny weapons. This is proving to be something of a deterrent; the Arcuarii have been used a lot, but I've been shying away from painting them because there's eight models there and they're not substantially different from the last models I painted, to whit the Skorne battle box. What else is on the hobby table at the moment? Warriors of Chaos - so that's more armour with trim details and big shiny weapons.

See where I've gone wrong here? I know I have a problem with painting the same thing for too long, and I've set myself up with nothing to paint but similar models across two projects. Regardless of how valid my reasons for choosing the two armies may have been, I've erected a barrier between myself and having fun.  Small wonder I've been making terrain and (re)painting Cryx instead.

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.

Building a Catapult... Sorry, Trebuchet.

Hello my fellow geeks.  You may remember last week I mentioned I'd been busy gaming, painting and building models.  This time I thought I'd show you one of the tasty fruits of my labour, namely a goblin catapult...

Sorry, it's a trebuchet*.

Being a tight arsed frugal gaming type, I didn't want to shell out for the Games Workshop Rocklobber for my Goblin Army, so I decided to make my own from balsa wood.  As usual I started off with a few sketches, which I then promptly ignored.

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.

The Circus of Rome?

It's been quite a while since I've had something Frugal worthy to post, so until a couple of other bubbling posts come to full boil I thought I'd best at least make a quick post.

Last week the local Primary School had a summer fair which I was duty bound to attend. One upside was that in the small car boot sale type market I found a wooden circus, which I scooped up for a bargain 50p. Coincidence has it that I have a few of Roman Gladiators sitting on the painting table waiting for some colour as I hoped to take advantage of ArabianSquire reading the "Gladiator Boy" series to spark an interest in playing Two Hour Game's "Red Sand Blue Sky". A small area would be just the thing to set that off nicely.

One key factor it this project was that it had to be quick. I've a Warmachine Battle box needing to be painted and if this stalled I knew it would sit half fininshed for a while. Also I don't play RSBS that often so it is a bit of a luxury piece. So detail level is accordingly set to "background".

The arena is open down one side. I'd prefer a completely enclosed area but there you go. Access to the figures would be easier are a result - no disaster. The actual battle floor is eliptical and 18" x 13" at the widest point. Smaller that the recommended 2"x 2" area in the ruleset, but it 1-on-1 battles (ie the vast majority of the time) it shouldn't make much difference. You can see two 28mm Foundry Gladiators in the bare arena here.

First job was to remove the stickers. The audience face stickers came off easily but the stickers on the backs of the stands wouldn't, so I decided to cover them with printed textures from World Works "arena works" which I've had sitting on the computer for years hoping to get round to making an arena. The inside terracing has been under coated black and dry brushed with a couple of shades of grey to make them stone like. For speed the floor is Bird cage liner glued down.

I'm going to leave the gaps and holes in the piece for flexibility. The gaps will potentially give other accesses to the arena. Also I will still be able to use the big top tent, which may be a bit high, but will give access and flavour if/when I ever get my hands on some killer clown mini's for a bit of "Faith and Fear" gaming. I might look out some paper figures to add a crowd as the seats do look a bit bare.

Looking at the finished piece I'm quite happy. I've accidentally ended up with quite a flexible piece of scenery. I now have a place for my RPG pit fighter/judicial champion to fight as well as a focus city area for fantasy gaming. Toss in a couple of burnt out cars, boxes, junk etc and it'll fit into a post apocalyptic/modern setting or a few wire fences and it's a makeshift detention area.

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.

Building a Ruined Defensive Wall - Part 1

A couple a months ago I saw an incredible terrain piece by Doctor Merkury on his pulp gaming blog; Doctor Merkury’s Lab, a gaming blog I can highly recommend to anyone with an interest in well made terrain, excellent writing or giant robots, so that’s pretty much all of us then... 

The piece in question was a ruined wall section (imagine a heavily damaged and neglected section of the great wall of China) that was in three parts, I was instantly inspired to created my own piece as a gift for my son.  (Remember my previous thoughts on making Frugal presents?)
 
I’m quite happy with how the final piece turned out so I thought I’d show you all my method for construction, there’s a lot of information, hopefully useful, so I’ll split this post into two parts and put the second up in a week or so.  Anyway, let’s begin...

Materials
The materials I used to make the wall are as follows:

• 5mm Plywood (you can use any thin wood, but I opted for thicker plywood as I wanted it to be hardwearing, see below)
• Crystacast casting powder (any casting plaster or Plaster of Paris will do, but Crystacast is very hardwearing)
• Polystyrene Foam (any old insulating foam or packaging will do)
• Sand and Gravel of various sizes
• Lots of paints (cheap acrylics or emulsions are fine)
• Matt/satin spray varnish
• Flock/Static grass
• PVA or Wood Glue
• Strong Epoxy glue (you can get good quality two-part epoxies cheaply from £1 shops)

Variations
I made my wall using plaster blocks cast from a mould, but you can also get excellent results cutting the walls from dense foam, then covering them with a fine sand and glue mix.

Tools

• Scroll Saw
• Sandpaper
• Hirst Arts Fieldstone block mould - see my review of Hirts Arts moulds here
• Hot wire cutter for polystyrene
• Sharp knife
• Strong pliers for breaking blocks
• Fine saw for cutting balsa wood
• Paintbrushes

Don’t worry if you don’t have a scroll saw or hot wire cutter, hand tools such as saws and sharp knives will also provide good results.

As always, be careful using any tools, paints or glues.  I don’t want to hear about any horrific injuries and I don’t want to lose any followers!

Getting Started
I always start a project like this with a few sketches, it helps to fix the idea in my head and give me something to work from.  I’ve made a few projects without a sketch, but I invariably get halfway through the project and forget some of the bits I was going to do!

At this point it worth thinking about how your terrain piece will be used.  Will it be a piece that is only used infrequently or only put on display, or will it be used all the time and knocked about by carrying it from game to game?  My own terrain piece was to be a present for my 12 year old son and as such it had to be remarkably hard wearing.  This meant a thick plywood base, solid wall construction and minimal details (so no flagpoles, delicate wooden doors, fences etc), all these decisions will influence your decisions on specific materials to use, though the overall types of material and method of construction will be the same.

An important aspect of making a terrain piece like this is the overall size.  You’ll need to consider how big your gaming table is and how much storage space you have available.  After making my initial sketches I cut out a couple of possible base shapes and sizes out of card to make sure the overall ‘footprint’ of the piece would be right.  I made the base in three parts; a centre fortress section and two walls.  This would allow ease of storage and mean that the pieces could be used individually or all together.  When I was happy with my shapes, I drew around them onto my plywood and started cutting.

Earlier this year I had wisely invested some of my money in a scroll saw, this is a very fast moving saw that can cut twisting and curing shapes through a variety of materials.  This was perfect for cutting the curving shapes of my base and it went through my plywood with ease.  When the pieces had been cut I checked that they fitted together correctly and sanded down any rough edges.

 
Making the Walls
When the base pieces had been cut, I went back to my sketches to check where my walls would be on the base and then drew the outline of where I wanted them to go.  The next stage was the most time consuming, casting all the plaster blocks that I needed, fortunately, most of the time is taken up by waiting for the plaster to set, so I could get on with other things.
To make the walls, I laid blocks out over the top of the marks I had drawn on the bases to make sure the size and shape were correct and then glued them together with PVA or wood glue.  DO NOT glue them to the base at this stage, just to each other.  I made my wall sections upside down, I started with the layer of blocks that would form the walkway on top of the wall and then added rows, finishing with the row that would be glued to the base, the reason for doing this is that it allows you to miss out blocks on the bottom row so that the wall will be at an angle when it is attached to the base, enhancing the ruined look.

When these blocks had set, I attached them to the base using two-part epoxy, sanding the bottom of the wall down first to ensure that it would fit smoothly to the plywood and provide a good area for the glue.

I left this overnight to ensure the epoxy had fully set and then used some more blocks to add crenelations (the wavy bits bits that archers hide behind) to the top of the wall.  At this point, I would recommend having one of your gaming figures to hand to make sure that can see over your walls on the walkway, you don’t want to spend all this time creating a defensive position that the defenders can’t see out from!

When all the extra blocks and crenelations have been added your wall should look as good as new, so it’s time to do a bit of battle damage.  I took a pair of old cutters I had around the house and used them to break chunks out of the plaster, focusing the worst (or best) of the damage on the ends of the walls.  This is great fun and will give you a good effect, don’t be shy with the damage either, the badder the better.

Making the Floors
At this point you can make the floors for the top of the walkway of the wall.  I often use planks to cover floors on terrain pieces, but time I wanted to try something a little easier and more fitting the subject.  I read a post on The Miniatures Page about using textured wallpaper to represent floor tiles so I thought I’d give it a go.  Rather than rushing out and buying a whole roll, I found a website selling embossed wallpaper who offer free sample sheets (A4 size) to potential customers, I ordered a couple of styles that I thought may be suitable and got them through the post a couple of days later.  If you have a local DIY or home improvement shop, they’ll probably be happy to give you some samples, you could be really cheeky and take in a miniature with you to make sure that the scale is correct!

Rather than sticking this straight onto the top of the wall, I glued it onto some thin balsa wood cut to size to provide a bit more strength and prevent any of the stone effect on the top of the blocks used for the wall showing through.  I then gave this a bit of a trim and glued it onto the top of the wall using two part epoxy to form a strong bond.

I think that's enough for you all to be getting on with for the time being, I’ll continue my build next time, happy gaming!

EDIT: Part 2 can be found here.

Dark Elf Plan

If I’m going to get anywhere with my resolution to have all my Dark Elves painted by the end of the year, I’ll have to have a plan ready before I lose too much time.

Having ransacked the shelves and boxes that house my collection, I’ve taken stock of the unfinished models. When I say ‘ancient’ below, I’m referring to the (mostly, if not exclusively) Marauder miniatures that Games Workshop sold in the mid-1990’s. I expect most of those models are also made of lead, and were carved by hand using flint tools.

Paint needs removing

• 1 Dark Pegasus, without rider
• 1 Manticore with partial rider
• 1 badly damaged Hydra that has been glued, puttied, pinned, and soldered and still won’t stay together. I really don’t know what to do with this one, except corrosively strip the various layers of adhesive and paint off, and maybe try something new (like magnets). It’d be nice to get it back together, but I have a bad feeling I’ve ruined it.

These models will need some extensive work on them. I got the Dark Pegasus and Manticore in an eBay sale, and they don’t have (complete) riders. I’m planning to put a Crone Hellebron conversion on the Manticore eventually, but I’ve not started looking at parts to complete that yet. I don’t want to rush them just to fit within the year’s resolution, so I may treat these models as 'bonuses’, if I have the time to do them.

• 19 ancient plastic swordsmen
• 1 ancient Corsair that needs some repairs (weapons missing!)
• 4 ancient Corsairs

Unassembled / modelling required 

• 2 modern Cold One Knights
• 4 modern Black Ark Corsairs
• 3 ancient plastic swordsmen that need a weapon swap.
• 2 Gamezone harpies

Undercoating required

• 1 modern Hydra needs a nice base added (bits of enemies, etc) before undercoating.
• 20 ancient Corsairs
• 2 ancient bolt throwers and 1 modern one, all with their matching crew. I may delay the ancient bolt throwers to try and give them a bit more sex appeal, since they are rather... blocky.
• 7 ancient Cold One Knights
• 10 Dark Riders to undercoat (horses already undercoated).
• 12 ancient Witch Elves
• 6 ancient Crossbowmen
• 12 ancient Black Guard
• 1 ancient command group
• 2 ancient assassins
• An ancient male sorcerer
• An ancient Morathi model (with clothes on!)
• 1 Chariot crew
• 1 modern Hydra Beastmaster team
• 1 modern Sorceress on foot and 1 mounted on Cold One
• 1 modern Master on foot and 1 mounted on Cold One
• 1 modern Assassin
• 3 modern Cold One Knights
• 1 Malekith on Black Dragon
• 1 Lokhir Fellheart

I do have an additional Cold One knight, left over as I got four ancient Cold Ones without riders as an eBay win and inherited a rider without a steed from a friend of a friend’s old bits box. But I’m unsure yet whether or not to make a Black Chariot with four Cold Ones pulling it, or two regular chariots, or have a Black Chariot with three creatures and use the spare to bolster the Cold One Knights. Having three chariots would be fairly nice... Although I often face cannons (boo).

Unpainted

• 10 Dark Steeds
• 12 modern Crossbowmen
• 4 modern Witch Elves
• 1 ‘middle-child’ Beastmaster team for the (damaged) Hydra
• 6 Mengil Manhide’s Manflayers

So my first task will be to assemble the remaining Cold One Knights and Black Ark Corsairs, and perform any repairs on the existing models. Then I can devote a bit of time to painting each week before the good weather comes and I can undercoat the bulk of the models, which will give me a lot more to work on! I figure I can probably get about 2 hours a week, spread across evenings and the weekend, to chip away at this mound of metal. I’d rather hoped that there would be more models ready to paint, so if I got the time before undercoating weather came along I’d be able to get ahead on things. No matter, I like a challenge!

It's time to get started...

Hi everyone, and welcome to a new Year of Frugal Gaming, I hope you're enjoying the posts from Pete and Von, I'm really pleased to have them on board and I'm interested to see how their Frugal Years unfold. If you fancy spending less and gaming more, then take up your own Year of Frugal Gaming. All you need to do is commit to watching your spending on gaming items by concentrating on good quality essentials that you know will get used, combine this with a dedication to playing more games and you're on your way. Hey, you only need to keep it up for 12 months, how hard can it be? If you're really keen, post a comment on the site or send me an email (to thefrugalgamer(at)gmail.com), I'm always looking for more contributors so drop me a line and I can give you posting rights on the blog if you fancy!

Anyway, back to reality, I'm afraid that my own year is not off to the best of starts. On the plus side, I haven't spent any money on gaming products so far, though this has to be balanced against the fact that I've not actually done any gaming this year, yikes! I think I need to get off my bum and arrange some gaming evenings, this might inspire me to get the paints out as well and get a bit of gaming momentum.

Speaking of which; this week I went to visit Von and drop him off some flock for his game board (see previous post) and picked up a boar chariot from him to go with my (yet to be started) Goblin army project. I'm got plenty of night goblins, a giant and various other units, I've even got the Army book, but I've still to get it all sorted out. Let's not even mention my Dark Eldar force for 4ok, though I did manage to pick up lovely metal tool box to keep it in (a mere £2!), my plan is to add magnets to the bases of the figs so that I can carry them around without them falling all over the place (or paying a fortune for a GW case).
As a gaming related aside, I've even started looking forward to this Christmas. One of my intentions this year is to make all the Christmas presents I'm giving, the first one I want to get started on is a piece of gaming scenery for my son (don't worry, he doesn't read this blog!) I've seen an awesome bit of terrain I intend to take inspiration from over at Doctor Merkury's Lab, a fantastic site which is well worth checking out. I hope he doesn't mind me stealing his photo!
And finally... I've now added a search box to the blog so you don't have to trawl through all the articles to find what you want. I've also added Facebook and Twitter functions so that you can post the latest blog entry to your Facebook page. Try it out, spread the word and let me know how you get on!

Happy Gaming

Making Wire Trees

Hello all! It's been a busy couple of weeks so the blog has had to take a break (It has been gaming related though, so expect a treat next week!). I managed to get both a game of Necromunda and Warhammer Fantasy played yesterday against Matt. I won Necro and Matt won WFB so all was good, however, it was Matt's first game of WFB so it probably counts double!

This week I thought I'd show you all how I make trees. This is a very common method and you can find lots of variations of it on the internet, but here's how I do it:

Materials Required
150cm of Thin Wire (I use florist's wire, but any wire slightly less than 1mm thin will do)
Two part modeling putty (I use Milliput, you can use greenstuff, but you use a lot so it can work out a bit expensive)
Sand or Gravel
Flock or other vegetation for detailing
Thin Plywood (2mm) or plasticard

Tools
Glue gun (or strong thick glue; superglue and PVA are not suitable).
Wire Cutters
Sharp knife/Saw
Sculpting tool

Method

Step 1 Cut and Bend wire
Cut the wire into six or seven equal length strips. Bend each length in half and twist it around itself, leaving a loop at the bottom and two small, separate branches at the top.

Step 2 Form the Trunk
Taking your twisted wires, twist them around each other to form a trunk for the tree with the branches coming out of the top. Make sure that the loops at the end of each twisted wire are at the bottom of the tree as these will be stuck to the base and covered when finished. Bend the branches out at the top of the tree to make the desired shape.

Step 3 Attach to the base
Cut out a small base from the plywood or plasticard and attach your tree using hot glue or epoxy resin. You need a strong, thick glue at this stage, so superglue or PVA is not suitable.

Step 4 Texture the Tree
Add Milliput or plaster over the whole of the tree and base. Smear it on, then create some rough lines with the edge of a knife or sculpting tool down the trunk to represent the bark. At this stage you can also roughly texture the base as well.

[EDIT: Jimborex from The Miniatures Page suggested using Caulking or Mastic to cover the wire. This is more flexible than Milliput so will not break off as easily if damaged. It may not take the detail as well, but hey, all engineering's a compromise]



Step 5 Basing
When the putty or plaster has fully dried, add gravel or any basing materials you wish and leave to dry.

Step 6 Painting
Spray with the primer of your choice then paint brown (or grey for a desolate look). All that's then needed is a light drybrush to bring out the texture.

Step 7 Finishing touches
If you wish you can add leaves to the tree (many specialist flocks are available) or just leave bare. Flock the base as desired.

So there you go, one easy to make tree. This is a very simple design and has much room for improvement or experimentation. You can make these as large or small as you like, in small batches or large forests. Have a play, experiment and let me know how you get on. As always, photos are welcomed and I'll even post them on the site if you fancy! Happy Gaming.

Putting those skills to good use...

All this modeling, gaming, painting and saving money may be fun for a Frugal Gamer, but there are other uses for the skills that you may have picked up over the years. A couple of weeks ago I looked at some ideas for gaming related gifts for friends. This week I've been using my gaming and modelling acquired skills for non-gaming purposes.

This has all come about as I decided to use the plaster casting skills I picked up from making terrain to make Christmas decorations for my friends and family. I decided to make some 'alternative' Christmas decorations (nonreligious, funny, or just plain weird) and set to work making sketches. I used exactly the same method as for making wargaming terrain (i.e. make a master, cast a mould and then cast some plaster pieces) these then have hooks added, they're painted and then varnished. I'm quite happy with the results and I've got plenty of ideas for more. Here's what I've done so far, a man-eating snowman and the grave of Santa:
You can find my Etsy shop here, and an occasional blog dedicated to the making of the decorations here.

Happy Gaming (and crafting)!

Necromunda / 40K Terrain

It's been another quiet week for gaming, plus I've got an exam looming which I'm revising for so the painting has taken a bit of a back seat. Fortunately, this gives me the chance to show you a model I finished a few weeks ago.

I was given an old cardboard tub from a friend (you know you're a serious gamer when your friends save bits and pieces for you!) and decided that it would make an excellent pair of storage tanks. I also had an old broken desk lamp that I needed to use in a project so I decided to put it all together...

I added a few plastic pipes to add to the industrial theme, and some of my plaster mouldings to provide cover.

The tops of the tanks were plastic mesh (used for cross-stitch and available from craft shops). I made the ladders using a technique from a previous post, and the other pieces are all from my bits box.

The base was textured using amis of sand, PVA glue, black paint and plaster. This was then painted onto the base with a thick brush. Various bits of broken plaster, stones and pipes were pressed into the mix while still wet.

The whole thing was then spraypainted black...
Then it was painted with an airbrush...

Final bits of detail and flock were added and It's ready to go! Hooray!

This was quite a quick project, but it was fun to make and I really like the final results. Just because a terrain project is large, it doesn't have to be remarkably complex. Give it a go and let me know how you get on!


Happy Gaming!