You still building this bloody thing!!!?

Ok, last post for the tabletop build. The rest of the build can be seen here in part 2 & part 1.

The next item I had to work on was the burnt out forest. This was achieved by procuring some gardening gone wrong old tree branches that were dried out. I just broke them off and drilled a hole up their guts so that I could pin them to the board. I then scattered a whole bunch of chinese tea leaves over the ground around them and sealed them in place with a few coats of watered down PVA. Once dry I black bombed the entire area and then selectively hit it with white highlights. It took age to find good images of burnt out forests. Coming from Australia I've seen my fair share of them up close, but terrain is not real life. In my search online for a burnt out forest I only came across one....on the entire internets I could only find ONE decent picture! Unreal huh? Anyway, it turned out great I think.

I also added some lichen shrubs around the board too. These were a necessary inclusion as there were quite a few wide open spaces that would have a) made the board a little boring, but more importantly they would have b) limited the strategic opportunities during play. Making mad dashes across no- mans-land (real or in imaginary games) almost always ends in death. I think the board looks a whole lot better for it anyway.

Once I received the doors in the mail I could set about finishing it off. These were from Brian Roes' "Trash Bash Bits" line and they worked a treat. I also had some miscasts that were generously donated to me by my mate Curtis from Ramshackle Games....a few jerry cans and doors. Once all these items were in place and seamlessly integrated into the board, ala more poo paper, I could begin painting the board up to its final stage.

I applied various washes and highlights to the ground area's and then spent an inordinate amount of time painting in all the details on the buildings and other terrain features. I felt like it made the board come alive. Kinda like when you paint a miniature, where the mini doesn't really look right until you've dotted the eyes. But in this case it had like a gazillion eyes!

After all the real work had been done to the board then came a bit of cosmetic work that would make a big difference to the overall appearance. And that was covering up the cardboard edging. I was wondering for quite a while how I was going to tackle this issue. Some of the ones that I briefly entertained were to just paint it black, or apply plastic sheets or kitchen laminate to it, or even line it with thin wood slats.....and a few others that I can't quite remember. But with all if these, bar paint, I would have ended up with sharp edges on the corners, something that I wanted to avoid. I ended up stumbling upon a better idea while out shopping with my wife. She was looking at material for knitting and making a tablecloth in a wholesale market. That's where I spied some heavy duty, almost denim like, fabric. I took a punt and bought a couple of metres of the stuff. It ticked all the boxes; cheap, black, durable, no sharp edges......and did I mention that it was cheap as well?

I made the pretend smoke coming out of the defence laser by first inserting a basic scaffold of plastic coat hangers into the building. I then hot glued fine steel wool onto it and gave it a similar treatment as I did to the burnt out forest. It looks a little too much like Don King IMO, but it'll do.

I made the "Papa's Place" sign as per Rob Hawkins great tutorial. Actually, if you look at his tutorial carefully and compare it against mine you can see that I cut a lot of corners. I used copper wire for mine and painted it all once I had it fully assembled. I'm pretty happy with how it came out all the same :)

One of the unexpected jobs that I created for myself when I built this thing was the storage issue. At first I was going to build a frame above the stairwell to store it, but then I realised that I'd almost definitely damage it at some stage whilst bringing it to & from to my sons' room. So I made a leaning shelf out of an old bookshelf from work. I then fixed that to the top of my sons bookshelf. Job's a good'n.

I've only taken a couple all encompassing shots of the table, as I think it'll probably be more interesting, and more fun, to see close up shots of the different elements of the table in action. All beit BS posed shots :p

My son approves :)

So, I can now call this project done. Onto the next board.......like fuck!!!

I'm glad I've now got a real board to play my pretend battles on. It's been a long time coming and I've learnt quite a few lessons along the way that will help inform how I construct the next board I make when I eventually move back home.

Cheers :)

Orktober by accident.

Wasn't planning on doing anything for Orktober this year, just happened to be the next project I pulled off from the shelf. Decided to change up the pose a little from the norm as well. Hopefully I've managed to make it look like he's ambling along towards the enemy more than like he's just tripped over. I'll leave that for you guys to decide ;)

I left off the back banner too as I'm not much of a fan of them, they're more reminiscent of the red era, and red era IMHO = poo.

Also added an RTB-01 arm to the base and wrote "lucky" on his pauldron, just to rub insult to injury. I'm a believer in adding graffiti to as many RT projects as possible, I'll cram that shit on anywhere I can find a bit of empty space. To me it it's the simplest way to distinguishes my miniatures from the various other sci-fi settings that have populated the market over the years. That's my take on it anyway.....I'm happy in my delusion, leave me be.

The colour scheme was a nod to a favourite illustration I saw as a kid. I think it was on the front cover of a WD IIRC.  Again, an RT aesthetic, there were no set colour schemes for Orks back then.

So there you go, another project completed, and by complete accident I've managed to make it in time for Orktober :D

Cheers all :)

Skully Mc Skull Skull.

Well here we are again folks. I'm sitting here in a hospital, bored out of my brain, so I thought I'd bang out a quick post to kill the time. Don't worry, I'm fine, just a mild case of the dreaded HAEMORRHOIDS again....aaaarrrggghhhhh!!!!!

I bought this FW mini, on the cheap, solely because I liked his pose. All the fluff & pageantry they slather on these modern sculpts does nothing for me. So I set to work carving it all off and figuring out what to do with the remains.

De-skulled and de-blinged.

A bunch of bits added.

 Used up the last of my GS to hide my "skills".

 And then painted the bastard.

 So he can blend in on the beach.

So, that's that. Another miscreant for the tabletop. Thought I'd try this collage thing out too, not sure if it looks ok as I'm mashing this post together my phone. Let me know if it looks arse in the comments.

Cheers all :)

Dumbarse with a gun.

Howdy all,

Today I'm going to show you the second, and final, RT Troll conversion that I made. But before I begin I thought I'd talk a little bit about the reasons for selecting these two particular Trolls to convert up.

Firstly, I had to decide which range to select the minis from. I chose the Marauder range as I reckon they're probably some of the best Trolls that GW have ever produced. And seeing as they're from the same era as RT I thought they'd fit right in with the aesthetic as well. Also, I'd never owned any of these minis before, so it was a bloody good excuse. grab a couple :)

How I went about choosing the ones from that range was pretty straight forward. I just looked at the one's that could be made to look like they were holding a firearm in either hand. The top two on the right were an easy choice really. Honestly, I wanted the dude on the bottom right, but I couldn't nab one at a reasonable price. Looking back now I didn't need to be so fussy as I could have made any one of them work.

There's so much RT potential left in these minis.....I better not :)

So, here's the next candidate,

He looked like he could hold a large cannon in his hand.

After removing his club I started to play around with weapons.

I initially made this skirt/kilt thing for him.

But decided that it looked a bit naff.

2nd attempt saw me reuse the skirt as a shoulder pad.

And gave him some pants instead.

Gave him an ammo belt.

And a few trophies that only a Troll could appreciate.

And then I gave him some some colour:

Keeping guard on the beach. There's a rip out there apparently.

Added the ubiquitous RT scribble to his weapon.

Bloodied up his jewelry a bit.

Nothing in particular to see in this shot.

Added some scratches top his hand cannon.

And a whole lot of weathering too.

In practical terms this guy has about enough ammo to get one good zing out of it before he's spent. If I was to give him enough ammo to be able to realistically use the weapon to its full potential then the whole bloody base would be covered in it. But this is a pretend game, reality can go jump.

In game terms these guys are about as useful as tits on a bull. Couple BS 2 with stupidity and you get a whole lot of wandering around the battlefield, if they decide too, and missing everything they shoot at. The first thing that comes to mind whenever I see a Troll in a game......

But they are fun to have on the tabletop nonetheless. Big monsters with guns rock....period!


Ok, enough waffle from me. Have a grand old time with your lead toys guys.

Cheers :)