MJ;-) Project Log: New Objective Markers

image from Privateer Press

Having just posted some hopes and dreams for 2011, the first thing I do is something NOT on that list. Go figure. . .

I've been using some relatively flat objective markers during the lifespan of v5 40k. Poker chips, poker chips with some emblems on them, but in the end, flat and kind of boring.

I've wanted to do something more 3-D, just never really got struck fancy by anything in particular. The DEAD MARINES Games Workshop put out are OK looking, but really seem to go with a power armor force of some kind or another.

Finally, while playing some Warmachine/Hordes, I was struck by the models for SHIFTING STONES for the Hordes faction Circle Orboros. The picture at the top of this post is from the Privateer Press website's Circle Orboros gallery.

Very cool looking. The best part was that they aren't thematically pegged to one particular 40k army. They could just as easily be Chaotic, Eldar, Power Armored, or even simple "Imperial."

Perfect.

They are typically $12 for a blister of three, but your standard internet discount brings a package down to the $9 range. So for under $20, I had 6 of these bad boys.

The shifting stones come with 30mm bases. Although not a written rule per se, most of the 40k world seems to agree that 40mm is a good size for an objective marker. So I fished out some spare 40mm Privateer Press bases I had. I like them better than the GW ones simply because of the rounded edge and the indented surface (which makes for better flocking/basing). After mounting them to their bases with some cheap TWO-PART PLUMBING EPOXY PUTTY, I set to work on them.

The stones are not all that large, so I didn't bother with spray priming them. I simply started in with my initial basecoat. I painted them in my typical stone fashion - basecoat dark gray, heavy dry brush of medium gray, and light dry brush of light gray.



I wanted them to have a splash of color to them, but didn't want to replicate the glowing green effect shown on the Privateer Press site (see pic at top). So I simply washed them with six different colors (badab black, gryphone sepia, baal red, thraka green, leviathan purple, and asurmen blue). I didn't worry about being all careful with the wash, I just slapped it into the four sides of the bottom section and top section for the six markers.




Time-wise, all six took me about 2 hours. Although I did have to split it up over two nights because after the three colors and the wash (night 1, 1.5 hrs), I had to let the wash dry before going back with a light dry brush of light gray (night 2, 0.5 hrs).

Not bad IMO. I like them, and can't wait to get them out on the tabletop for some bloody fighting over. Hopefully they'll bring me some good luck!

And if you're wondering, when I was snapping a few pics of the markers, my son and his monster truck wanted in on the action. So here you go. . .

Scenery Review: Temple of Skulls, Arcane Ruins, and Urban Barricades

Boy, it sure has been a while since I've posted here. Lot's of medical issues, plus a couple of secret projects that I'm not ready to make public yet. Big thanks to MJ for keeping the home fires burning!

For some reason I got it in my mind recently to spend some money on the scenery that GW has been putting out recently. I'm a HUGE fan of the Moonscape and a firm believer that every single 40k player should own at least one set. (I have two!) The Planetscape-specific version fell a little flat due to the weird decision to use vac-forming instead of injection molding like the Moonscape, but the original is still available and awesome.

So, thanks to a gift certificate to The War Store, I got my hands on The Temple of Skulls. It is really, really cool.

It is marketed as a Fantasy Battle terrain piece, which doesn't make much sense to me. Yes, it has more skulls and less guns, but it is pretty impractical in a game of Fantasy Battle. Only skirmishers, monsters, and individual characters have any chance of making it onto the thing without falling over. The slope on the side is very steep.


It comes in a large box around the size of a starter army set. The base is one single piece and it comes with a great "skull and column" sprue for the three upright skulls and the two columns. I've painted mine in a rough limestone style that I can't keep myself from using. (I think I'll be painting the opposite side of my three 2'x4' table toppers in a similar fashion so they all match.)

The most impressive thing about the Temple is how sturdy it is. Years ago this would have been so flimsy that you wouldn't have been able to put a dragon or Land Raider on the top of it without risking permanent damage. Now, you could safely stand on it. See the following picture of the underside.

It obviously was made as a proof of concept for the design process which made the Realm of Battle boards a possibility. I'm fairly certain if the RoB had kept its rumored $200 price point that a great many more would have sold. If I could have received the internet's normal discount I'm pretty sure that I would have one by now. Having two would have made my in-house Apocalypse game setup much easier, but there's no way I'm dropping that much on it.

I was so pleased with the Temple of Skulls that I picked up the Arcane Ruins set as well. This is another set that will be very difficult to use in a game of Fantasy Battle, in which case it will probably just be impassible to any ranked unit. See below for the 'assembled' version.

Of course, it is a ruin by name and looks even better knocked over.

I've been planning to make a skull-themed table for a while, inspired by the recent battlefields featured in a few recent White Dwarf reports. The Isle of Blood was particularly nasty looking. One of the great and unmentioned things about the Arcane Ruins is that it comes with way more skulls than you could ever use on the piece itself. Below is what I had left over, perfect to be used on my project to tie everything together. That's a lot of skulls!

Even more delighted, I decided to spring for the Urban Barricades set. As you can see below, you get six barricades in the set. I have the unfortunately-discontinued Sandbags set which came pre-painted (looks like a single coat and drybrush) and flocked. I think it is some sort of light resin. This set is also resin, but unpainted. It has a much higher level of detail, though, including a crashed Space Marine bike. Unlike pretty much everything else mentioned in this review, these really need painted before use, especially the one with the bike. There are a wide variety of textures and they don't look very good in the default grey resin.

I painted the bike in a non-descript color, added some metallics and rust here and there, and now they look great.

So, to cut to the rankings: (With a Moonscape at a 10/10.)

• Temple of Skulls: 8. Less useful as a Fantasy Battle terrain piece, but very, very sturdy and nicely detailed.
• Arcane Ruins: 7. Not as nicely detailed as the Temple, but the abundance of extra skull bits helps a lot.
• Urban Barricades: 7. Nice off-the-shelf, impressive if painted.

For the money, the Moonscape is still the best bet. Every player needs a set, and the price is low enough that everyone should have one. If you are thinking about a second Bastion, I'd recommend the Temple of Skulls instead. It might make a good, albeit small Landing Platform (if protected by chaos magics, that is).

Next time, notes about joining in the Biggest Apocalypse Game in the World!

Lets Get Ready To Rumble! Glue vs. Weld

VS.
























The first of my new 12-step program...

Its fall. The weather here in the Southeast U.S. is gorgeous. So how do I spend my time in this epic portion of the year? Simple. I stay indoors and build models.

Huh?

Not really, I get outside a lot during this time of year.

But the truth is, I spend many of my fall (and spring) evenings building stuff for 40k, and priming it during the nicer days. Around these parts, its too cold in the winter and too hot/humid in the summer to get good priming done. So I tend to mass build and prime during the nice weather - effectively building myself a stock of stuff to paint during the not-so-pretty months of the year.

So it occurred to me the other evening, as I was building my latest Nurgle Sorcerer/Lord in Terminator Armor (post forthcoming sooner than later), that I wonder how many folks are tuned into the awesomeness that is Plastic Weld.

You've never heard of it? Man, have you been missing out.

At the top of this post, you see two images, one of the tried and true-blue model cement (glue), and one of some weird bottle of "Pro Weld." WTF is that, you are probably saying to yourself.

Simple. Model glues, like the Testors product shown above, are simple adhesive products. They take Part A and Part B and put a bonding agent between them, so they stick together.

But Plastic Weld, like the Ambroid product (that I use) pictured above, is different. Plastic welders dissolve and liquefy the surface of the plastic items, which you stick together, and then when it dries (very quickly, I might add), the two parts are not so much bonded together, but they are literally fused together into a single object.

Let me pretend to do some math and show you what a "built equation" might look like. A and B are the two parts to be put together.

Plastic Cement. A + Glue + B = AglueB
Plastic Weld. A + Weld + B = AB

Not only do I use weld to bond separate pieces together, but I have also used it in a few other ways on plastic models.

Gap Filler. If you're putting two pieces together, and there is a tiny gap between the two, you can simply fill it with weld liquid, and the gap will fill itself up. Granted, the gap cannot be to large. But I noticed this application of the product when I was putting together a bunch of Cities of Death buildings. A few of the CoD building panels I had shaved the mold lines off a little too aggressively, so when put together, there was a thin gap along some portions of the panels. I spread a little more weld along these sections - the water-like consistency of the weld means it will wick into any space - and voila, the gaps disappeared.

Surface Smoother. In a few of my projects, I've had to scrape away some detail. A good example was having to remove all the Blood Angels icons (blood drops and chalices) from the Space Hulk Terminators I purchased for my Wolfwing Project. Although I did a decent job of doing this, in some instances, the surface I left behind showed some angles or rounded areas that exhibited flat facets. I found out that putting a thin coat of weld on the surface, waiting a moment or two, and then putting a thicker drop on it did a good job of smoothing-out those noticeable imperfections to make them smoother, if not "perfectly smooth."



Before you start to think that I *LOVE* Plastic Weld, and I want to marry plastic weld (oops, too late), let me caution you with some things that plastic weld WILL NOT do.

It doesn't work on metal.

It doesn't work on resin.

Super-glue is still the product to accomplish bonding these types of materials (or these types of materials to plastics).

It doesn't fill large gaps.

Green stuff (kneadatite), milliput, or some other modeling/sculpting product are your best answers for accomplishing larger gap filling.


In conclusion, plastic weld isn't the end-all, be-all of the model adhesive world. BUT, it IS the bee's knees when it comes to bonding plastic-on-plastic. There simply is no reason to use "plastic glue" as long as companies like Ambroid continue to produce and sell plastic welders. If anything, the worst problem for plastic welds is that your average hobby/game store doesn't carry it. You may have to seek out specialty shops, like model train stores; or you may have to go ONLINE AND ORDER IT. The product lasts a VERY long time. I've built entire armies, several at that, and am currently on my third bottle of Ambroid Pro Weld - having been using the stuff since 2006. That's three bottles over the course of 4 1/2 years!