Hut-date!

Here's my last update of 2009. The huts will get some more detail with bits, but they'll be primed and painted soon. My desk is a mess.



Here are two small aquarium plants from the pet store that I'm working on; they chop up in to a good amount of bits for jungle foilage.

Terrain: Huts

Let me show you what I've been working on. (I decided this post was better without the How-To banter. The photos explain things pretty well).

Here's what I imagine my Lizardmen's village looks like at sunset:

No wait...



Here is a peak at how I'm finishing up the huts. More to come...

Bases for an Empire

I chose Empire because I wanted to field a bunch of goofy looking peasants. My battalion arrived on Thursday, a full two weeks after the first skinks stole onto the scene and I cracked it open today for the first time — only to be reminded that I had not settled on a way to base them. I flip-flopped on standard dirt-and-grass versus cobblestone (some part of me wants to keep the bases the same across all models and the idea of horses on cobblestone is silly to me) and finally settled on the latter.

To create the stones, I used a pair of scissors to cut small, irregularly shaped circles out of a cereal box (Total, if you must know) and glued them onto the 20mm base. The cracks are filled with standard Citadel flocking sand. I was a little worried about the bond between the base and the compressed cardboard, and the cardboard and the model, but it seemed sturdy even before a coat of primer.

Quickly Made Movement Trays

I wanted to make some basic movement trays to start playing. I'm eventually going to construct some magnetized trays without borders, but for now:

Materials: Cereal box cardboard, coffee stirrer sticks, black spraypaint.

It's pretty straightforward to measure things out with the bases you intend to use them for. I used a straight edge to make some marks in pencil, eyeballed most of the cutting. The Saurus fit so perfectly it makes me wonder where I went wrong with the Skinks, they are a little loose.

Hommes-Lézards

There are a shit-ton of armies to chose from in Warhammer.

I quickly narrowed my choices to Dwarfs, Lizardmen, Ogre Kingdoms, Orcs & Goblins, and Tomb Kings based on aesthetics, basic fluff, and D&D. It came down to the playstyle I believed that I saw in the LM list.

So I began...


After a little shopping, and a very generous donation from a friend who never finished putting together his Lézards, I have a lot to work with. Two Saurus Warrior Regiments, two Skink Regiments, 32 Skinks with bows from an older edition, eight Cold One Cavalry (that need a lot of work/glue removal), and a metal Saurus Oldblood/Scar-Veteran with his shield arm missing.

My early stages of construction. I am very happy with the kits; plenty of variety, plenty of extra bits. There was an immediate downside to my choice of Lizardmen: mold lines. All miniatures have em, metal and plastic. LM are VERY spiky and scaly however, and this means lots of crevasses. I don't know if I'd let mold lines/smooth surfaces (or lack thereof) determine my army choice, but it might for my next.

I'm going to do all of my shields separately to make life easier on myself (painting Space Marine bolters still makes me angry).

I knew right away I wanted removable standards and musician instruments so I could use the Saurus without upgrades. Here is what I came up with:

The support for the standard is a little bit of cork (Chris' great suggestion). I cut off a bit I liked the look of and drilled a hole with a pin vise, and widened that with a cylindrical file. When the standard pole fit (without the cork breaking) I super glued that to the base of the already assembled mini. The hole provides you with a guide for drilling through the base; you can widen that with a file too, and then the pole should fit all the way through and have enough support to stand. When primed and painted the cork should look like a nice rock or two that the Saurus planted the standard in.

I really like the idea I had for the musician's drum:

The red string is a placeholder as I work out a thinner, broad strap that looks right. Doesn't he look happy? It's cos he can put the damn thing down once in a while.

I chopped off the bulky Saurus arm that was hugging the drum and then shaved off the sides till it smoothed out. I was either going to use the shoulder or the bracelet as a way to hold a strap I'm working on, but the wrist/bracelet doesn't survive the process as intact as the shoulder. I also wanted to ensure however I chose to attach a strap could easily be redone with thread in the future after painting.

To date I have assembled one of the Saurus kits, one of the newer Skinks, the 32 Skink archers (cos they just needed to be put in to a base :P), and ol' one arm (Saurus Oldblood/Scar-Vet), and that's just about what I need to field my first 500 pt. army.

Looking over my past works with 40k (my Dark Angels, Eldar, Necrons, Tyranids) I'm really trying to step up my effort; removing all mold lines, using as little glue on each bit as possible, going over each step a few times in my mind, and reading up on other peoples' work/tips. I have a lot of unassembled 'Nids and I'm going to use them to practice my painting.

Altar & Walls

I'll try to post in the order I've worked on things. I was first inspired to create terrain:

So this is a forgotten altar of some kind with two sections of wall (statue courtesy of D&D Minis).

The altar is a piece of cardboard, coffee can lid dais, wine cork pillars. The brickwork was an idea I had to carve patterns right in to the card and then paint over that; I think I'll really be able to use this technique as I get better at crafting things. This also taught me that working with cork is awesome.

The walls are filled down LEGO bricks. I think this was a good idea, but not time-efficient at all. The bricks are very hard plastic, and filling them down for both walls took the better part of a day. Since then I've found several articles that suggest using large pieces of flock or fish tank rocks glued to a wall of card. This method looks better on the effort and result. Maybe a little moss/vines on the tops will improve them.

I'm still happy with my first new creations. Chris and I are planning to make large 2x2' sections of themed terrain eventually, but till we get that together terrain pieces will get us in to the game.

The Onset of War

So, this kid Chris and I decided to play wargames again... it's Warhammer once more for us, but this time it's not in the grim darkness of the future.

We went back and forth considering some other games but things like having to divide by 2.5 every time you wanted to do something, rules systems being put out in other languages then translated into English, the fact that Games Workshop probably isn't going anywhere for awhile (unlike other companies, sadly), and also the fact that we didn't see many other minis games being played around NYC, made us go with Warhammer. The Fantasy choice over 40k was heavily influenced by wanting more minis for D&D, and hope that it would be a less shooty game.

So here's what I've been working on since the end of November...