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10th November 2024: Liking It I Ain't, When I Have To Lay Down Some Paint

My paint range expanded again recently when I saw some Humbrol acrylics in a local hobby shop and picked some up on the spur of the moment. When I got home, and read some reviews, I was a little more comfortable with my purchase.

However, when I got around to using them a few weeks later, I had a very different experience to the other users online.

The two greenish paints are somewhat usable, but are very thin so will always need two coats to get nice coverage, and probably won't be ever used to drybrush. Still, I needed a military green style paint, so that one might get the most use out of these.

However, the two metallics are useless. The light silver has moderate coverage, but its consistency makes it horrible to try and paint with. It's similar to the gel paints I got from Vallejo a while back, in that it's really goopy, and not very smooth at all.

But the dark silver is a straight up waste of money. Even after shaking for ages, all I can get out of it is some very very thin liquid with barely any pigment, plus a load of bubbles.

What I would like to try is to pop the lid and give it a damn good stir, but the top section of the bottle is made out of some really flexible plastic, so I can't pry it open. What a stupid design.

Time to paint things

Time to paint things

More bubbles than a bottle of champagne

More bubbles than a bottle of champagne

Let me in damn it!

Let me in damn it!


As is usual for me, I didn't do any painting all the way through the summer months.

But finally, over the last couple of months, I've been back with some sporadic attempts.

As the Evil Sunz still aren't finished, I've been painting some more of those little dudes. I shouldn't make any targets, as I don't keep them, but ideally I'd like to have them done by Christmas. That would be my largest Ork clan out of the way, with some much smaller and easier ones left to paint.

I've also randomly decided to work on some Blood Bowl star players, just to break up the constant red. I've painted my first Lizardman player in Hemlock, and am now onto the hulking brute that is Ramtut III.

Some Sunz and a star skink

Some Sunz and a star skink

Some more Sunz and a star mummy

Some more Sunz and a star mummy

12th October 2024: Can't See The Good For The Trees

It was a long time ago now that I decided to push ahead with the huge task of creating a new set of wargaming terrain, but as of yet only the "He-Man cave" and some 6mm scale ruins have been completed.

This is just not good enough, especially as I failed to complete my new boards earlier this year.

As I still don't have the time, or the massive amount of space, required to finish the boards, I have instead started to work on a different little project.

It's been nearly twenty years since I last created an entire selection of gaming terrain. Over this time, I realised each and every piece failed to meet even my low standards, and as such very few of them even exist any more. They've either been stuffed into long-forgotten boxes, updated and re-painted, or in the majority of cases, just binned outright for being so bad.

The next part of my new terrain build is intended to replace one of the few survivors: the trees.

While those old forest sections I made back in the day have continued to see use, they've always annoyed me for how bad they look and how awkward they have been to store.

It's definitely well overdue that a major upgrade be attempted.

Assembling the supplies

Assembling the supplies

Removing the old plastic trees

Removing the old plastic trees

These things weren't even painted properly

These things weren't even painted properly

Starting the drybrushing

Starting the drybrushing

These trees deserve some actual paint at last

These trees deserve some actual paint at last

First up, the GW plastic trees were removed from the old cardboard bases I'd used. I was horrified when I looked underneath the leaves and saw that they were never even painted properly.

I soon fixed this with a grey undercoat, a drybrush with pale green, and my first ever use of contrast paints. I used my brown first on the trunks, but the paint was so thick (or so naff), that no contrast was created at all. So I've had to drybrush the wood back up with some khaki.
So to avoid a similar issue on the leaves, I used green wash with a tiny bit of green contrast paint mixed in, to at least get some definition.

Since that point, I've spent a long time creating a total of sixty new bases that I'm going to put trees on. As I'd got loads of shredded toilet paper that I was originally going to use on my boards, I have used some of that to create modelling compound for these bases. This has created some thickness that I will later be able to drill down into so I can glue the trees in.

After that, there's been lots of painting and gluing of grout, sand and flocks to build up a wide array of different looking bases.
When all of the different grasses, moss and trees are glued on as well, we will have a huge selection of crazy forest bases that we will be able to use to create woodland areas for our games.

Starting the bases

Starting the bases

Base-coatin' time

Base-coatin' time

Slapping on some grout

Slapping on some grout

That's a lot of biscuits I'm baking

That's a lot of biscuits I'm baking

Flocking 'em up good

Flocking 'em up good

I could move straight on with adding the trees, but I've decided to pause for now. This is because a big box was recently delivered, and if I delve into its contents, and figure out the mystical possibilities contained within, I may be able to create an even wider variety of trees for my wild and wacky new forests.

It's about time you showed up

It's about time you showed up

15th June 2024: I'm Getting Very Board

Despite all of the wargaming terrain I've made over the years, I've never actually made my own proper gaming table. In fact, for well over 20 years, I've used 4 boards of completely different thicknesses, all with a badly glued down GW static grass sheet on top.
This has always bothered me, as it's always so obvious where the boards meet.

I thought it was about time I did something about this, and resolved myself to actually constructing a decent gaming space.

Unfortunately, the project has been hampered by a complete lack of experience, a multitude of decision changes, an enormous underestimation of how long this would take, and the complete and total lack of space required in order to accomplish such a mission.

This is how things have gone so far...

I first picked up some pretty cheap and naff wood to act as a base. I picked up 3 sheets of 2' by 4', and cut one longways down the middle. This wood is the same thickness as one of my existing boards, so the plan is to eventually retrofit the old board so that it will fit in with the new ones.
This will give me a multitude of different board combinations to use, with 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 foot wide tables available.

As the edges of the wood were very rough, I decided to rub some filler in there and give it a basic sand, so that it was easier to handle, and would look a lot nicer when painted. This has so far been about the only thing that has gone well.

As I look back, the most foolish decision I made was the very first one. I'd got some 6mm and 9mm polystyrene sheets from other projects in the past. The initial idea was to glue this to the wood in different areas to have 2 slightly different heights forming the basic tabletop.
However, as this was polystyrene, I knew I'd need some fancy method to keep it protected from damage.

I really should have just used some thin wood all over. What an idiot I am.

As I'd watched some Youtube terrain videos, and thought myself just as good as those guys, my first idea was to make up some home made modelling compound and completely cover all of the boards in this, to make them very hard wearing.

This would need shredding up a lot of toilet paper, and would require a lot of casting powder. Now, as shown a little while back, the casting powder I received was delivered by a wonderful Amazon driver, and the tub was split straight down the side. I managed to dispense this into an empty cement tub I'd luckily got in the shed.

As I started to glue the polystyrene to the wood, I thought that I needed to have some method of protecting the edges. To this end, I left a little gap, not taking the polystyrene to the edges. I figured I'd fill it in with modelling compound to firm it all up later. When a couple of days had gone by, I wondered what the hell my brain was doing, and realised I should have just trimmed the boards with thin wood. This meant I had to cut back and remove a little polystyrene. Luckily, the glue I'd bought wasn't super strong and I was able to peel and scrape it away.

Gotta smooth those edges out

Gotta smooth those edges out

What's the crack?

What's the crack?

Polystyrene all glued down

Polystyrene all glued down

Blending some bog roll

Blending some bog roll

Glued polystyrene getting removed

Glued polystyrene getting removed

I mixed up the modelling compound and started to add it to the joins between the different types of polystyrene, trying to smooth these out. This is when I learned that the modelling compound technique takes forever. The damn stuff sets so fast that you simply can't mix a big load and slap it all on, or it will be set before you can push it and smooth it into the correct positions.

I struggled on through the poly joins, mixing tiny little amounts of compound at a time, but my mind was already made up that this stuff was not going all over.

So I had a different idea. I chose a test area of one of the boards, and using a sieve, I gently scattered casting powder over it. Then I sprayed it down with a misting of water, before laying sheets of toilet paper on top. Then I scattered some more casting powder on top, and sprayed it down again. Then, when it started to set, I wet my fingers and smoothed it out as best I could.

This worked to a degree. Yet though it was a lot faster, it still took a long time, particularly the smoothing out part. The final nail in the coffin of this idea, is that the area did not set flat, even after all my efforts with the smoothing. There were all these lumps and ridges that just did not look natural at all.

Though I wasn't happy with that technique for the large flat areas of land, it did look like it might work for the river section, especially if I painted it right. Therefore I went ahead and covered the river bed using this method.

By this point, I was rapidly running out of time, and wouldn't have the space for much longer before the boards would need to be moved. One morning I randomly woke up at 3:15 AM and panicked so much that I jumped out of bed and started painting the boards green. Just to do something.

For some reason, it took me over 3 hours just to paint the tops of the boards. With just a few days left, this was the point I realised I'd made a massive tactical error thinking I could possibly pull this off. I really should never have bothered. I just saw people on Youtube making awesome looking boards and had the absolute gall to believe I could do something similar in the time I had available.

Still, I needed to get as much done as possible now that I was neck deep in it.

Now that the boards were green, I could see a lot of dips and divets that were not as obvious before. I used the last of my tube of wood filler to smooth these out as best I could, and then finished these areas in green also.

I then bought some heavy duty varnish and slapped this on top. I was hoping that, along with the glue and flock that would come later, it would be enough to protect the polystyrene from some wear. But after the varnish, it all still felt really fragile somehow. I knew I needed something else.

Yet more Youtube vids were scoured, and I saw a lot of people use tile grout to make very hard, and somewhat natural looking, ground for their game boards. So off I went to the local DIY store, and grabbed some grout and some soil to mix it with. Firstly, the soil had to be baked and sieved so that it went into a very clean and dry powder.

I picked one of the smaller boards, and glued the grout and soil mix down on top. Then, as instructed, I wet the surface with some isopropyl alcohol, before dousing it with sealer.

A day later, I was assuming I would have a very hard, and pretty cool looking surface. Instead, I ended up with a really odd coloured ground, that flakes off pretty easily if you so much as tickle it with your fingers, with several larger chunks breaking up and falling off.

Sigh.

Boards all trimmed with wood

Boards all trimmed with wood

The lumpy bumpy test area

The lumpy bumpy test area

Painting and filling

Painting and filling

Trying to get all grouty

Trying to get all grouty

A section flakes off

A section flakes off

Things have simply not gone well during this entire venture. And with the space I was using no longer available, the boards are stuck up the corner again until I can find somewhere (and somehow) to try and finish them off.

28th May 2024: 40K-S Returns

Over the past couple of years, we've played a few games of some new Epic rules I've been working on for a while. Throughout this time, we had wondered whether these rules could be modified for use in 40K.

Well, as there was only one way to find out, I finally managed to get a rough ruleset written out, with some basic rules for Orks, Space Marines and Tyranids. I'm classing this ruleset as a 2nd version of 40K-S, which was a game Scoob and I tried to create about a decade ago.

A little while back, Scoob and I took these rules to the tabletop, controlling the Orks and Tyranids respectively, and played a couple of games.

The first game saw us play with 3 detachments of 700pts each, and the 2nd game saw us step it up a bit with 3 detachments of 1000pts each.

Unsurprisingly from my perspective, both games ended similarly with comfortable wins for the Orks.

The first game was an absolute spanking, with a score of 1643 to 330, while the other game was at least a bit closer with 1324 to 952.

Not that these scores really mean anything, as we have no idea if the points values are anywhere near correct. In addition, there are still a bunch of things missing from the game, like psychic powers, which really didn't help the 'Nidz.

Hive Fleet Odium face off against the Ass Kickin' Orks

Hive Fleet Odium face off against the Ass Kickin' Orks

The Meganobz tear through the Hormagaunts

The Meganobz tear through the Hormagaunts

Boyz and Warriors close in on each other

Boyz and Warriors close in on each other

All hell breaks loose in the middle of the battlefield

All hell breaks loose in the middle of the battlefield

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