Based On... What?

One of the biggest issues I’ve been dealing with lately is rebasing. The move from Warhammer Fantasy to Age of Sigmar meant all those figures had to be moved over to round bases (although my Empire and Undead armies have decided to stay on their square bases... because sweet Jeebus that’s a lot of figs). In the workd of 40K, we’ve seen Space Marines of all types and flavors move over to these new 32mm bases, finally gaining a sense of the size and mass they’ve always supposedly had.

For most of us, this is a huge project.  I have four major Marine armies—Relictors, Alpha Legion, Thousand Sons, and Death Guard (plus a few others...).  On a rough guess... that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 models that need to end up on larger bases.  And they’re all connected to their current bases in a variety of ways.

Some of you may be in the same boat.  Here's a few options I came up with.  You may have poked at some or all of them...

Well, my first option came to me from WarGamma, a fun after-market site I’ve bought stuff from before.  He’s a sculptor who’s done some wonderful items for “heroic scale” gaming, and he jumped on the rebasing issue less than a month after the introduction of the 32mm base.  Check these out—base expanders.  Just drop your model in, add superglue, and done.  They work out to .70 cents each. 

At first I’d planned to split them between my Relictors and my Alpha Legion, just dropping them on (or under) HQ units, squad leaders, and other key figures.  Then I realized their best use was metal figs on slottabases. Which is only a few Relictors and Alpha Legion guys, but a lot of my Death Guard and Thousand Sons.  And Necrons.  So the priorities shifted a bit there.

As an added bonus, these adaptors make a minifig about a milimeter or two taller.  On a regular base, I think it’d be one even, but the raised area in the middle means slottabases sit a little higher. In these days of size-creep... that’s not a bad thing.

Helpful Hint—These adaptors are great, but they’re ever-so-slightly too high on the edges, even for the slottabase models..  I ended up sanding them down just a bit—maybe a millimeter or two—so they’d be flush with the GW bases.  It took maybe six back-and-forth swipes across

the sandpaper.

Now, rebasing option two’s the classic one. Cut the model off the old base, remount it on the new base.  Straightforward, and only costs you the new bases.  I think you can buy a bag of 32mm bases from GW for about .40 cents per base, but that’s if you buy a hundred of them.  For a ten-pack, they’re .50 each  You might be able to do slightly lower than those prices if you dig around on eBay stores for dealers like Blackdagger or Hobby Titan.

The catch here is that it means wrecking any basing/scenery you might’ve previously added.  Plus... well, I don’t know about you. but the knife’s slipped a few times for me or slid off path and suddenly a marine’s missing part of their heel or toes. It’s a minor thing, but it grates at me.  I did maybe a dozen Relictors like this a few weeks back, carefully cutting off one foot at a time.  Only one lost a bit of his heel.

And this led me to option three.

At one point that past weekend, I got a bit frustrated and just took the clippers to the base of a hapless Alpha Legionnaire and cut off the edges of the base.  I worked from underneath, so the top stayed the same. I filed down what was left and ended up with a figure standing on a flat, decorated disk. And I glued the whole thing to a 32mm base.

End result—all my basing and scenery transferred over.  There’s never any risk to the figure itself, so it’s faster and easier.  Plus, the model ends up being about 2-3 mm taller because the old base and basing transfer over and stack on the new base. I was going at a nice, leisurely pace and rebased about twenty Death Guard marines this way in a little over an hour.

You can even do this with plastic slottabase figs.  I picked out some of my Relictors with missile launchers from the Battle for Macragge/ Black Reach sets.  It takes a little more work to clip the slottabase off, but it works exactly the same.  Clip, file, glue, done.  Faster, safer, a little taller.

And there you go.  Three quick, easy, and relatively cheap way to make your old models new and even a little bigger.

Got to stand up to those Primaris somehow...

Knight Missile Pod

So, a few years back you may remember I spent ages working on a Paperhammer Knight.  It’s a fantastic model from Newobmij, and I’m still very proud of how mine turned out.

That said, a while back you may remebember GW put out their Renegade box set, with Imperial Knights vs Traitor Knights.  Big shock—I loved the idea of Knights that had fallen to Chaos.  Plus, it meant I could now do fantastic giant robot battles with Marcus.  One of the online bitz sellers I deal with frequently bought a bunch of Renegade sets and put a lot of Knights up for sale at about half off. Just bare-bones Knights—not the expansion/ Warden sprue—but still really cheap. Almost half-off.

I may have made some poor choices.

Anyway, so... now I had some Traitor Knights. A few careful bids on eBay got me some weapon options without costing me too much (it’s more about patience than anything else).  A small traitor household began to come together.

The one part that kept eluding me, though, was the missile pod. People were willing to pay big bucks for one.  I’d see them routinely go for $28 or $30. And I told myself I wouldn’t pay more than a third of that.  After losing a dozen or so auctions, I turned to my bitz jars.

And here’s what I came up with. 

These two boxes will be the base of our rocket pod.  They’re from the classic Rhino set (normally they’d go on the back slope of the treads).  I glued the open faces together to give me a solid box.  If you don’t have these exact pieces—no worries.  There are enough random boxes and blocks kicking through the various lines that will work. You could even just scratch-build a box from scrap plastic.

Next, I very, very carefully found the center point on one of the narrow sides and drilled a hole there. My post is the bottom half of a Lizardma—sorry, Seraphon standard pole.

Helpful Hint—whenever I need to do a hole, I start small.  I use a thinner drill bit than I need, because it’ll be easier to place the hole, or to clean it up if you’re a bit off.  Then I can expand up to the larger size, using the initial hole as a guide.

I checked that post from every angle. It’s very important that it be as straight as possible—perpendicular to the surface of the box.  I checked it multiple times from every angle.

Okay, so, while that whole thing was drying, I built two Havoc Launchers from the Chaos vehicle sprues.  These were just straightforward, standard builds.  The only thing worth noting is that I didn’t use the bracket that normally holds them—just the bare launcher. I also cleaned the heck out of them as far as mold lines and sprue marks. By nature of being a weapon and a conversion, I knew this piece was going to get a lot of attention.

Once they were relatively dry, I glued them onto either side of the box.  This took a little bit of work and patience.  I wanted them to be flat across the top, but they also needed to have a lot of surface area touching the boxes for the glue.  It required some wiggling.

Helpful Hint—once I had them more or less in place, I flipped the whole thing over, letting it stand on its head to dry.  That way the top of the piece would dry flat, even if things slipped or settled.

Now, the next part was tricky.  I had a post that fit in the top socket of the Knight, but I needed a bracket to hold the pod upright and stable.  I dug through some random scraps and found some plastic tubing that was just about the right size to fit in the ring around the socket.  A little work on the edges with a file and it fit perfectly!  I could cut a short section and set it around the post, so the two elements would each lock into place.

But... it needed to be perfectly centered.  Even a little bit off and nothing would fit.  I’d have to cut it off and try again.  I mulled on this for a few minutes and then realized the answer was right in front of me.  The ring and socket on the knight were already there. I just needed to fit the tube section and pod into place and they’d center themselves.  The only worry was being cautious with the glue so I didn’t accidentally attach the whole thing right now.

So, I set the pipe section into the ring, carefully applied a thin coat of glue to the top, and then slid the pod’s post through it into the socket. The whole thing settled snugly into place, and I waited about ten minutes before checking to see if I’d messed something up somehow.

And look at that.  A perfect little bracket for mounting on top of the Traitor Knight.  Exactly lined up and centered. It keeps its place so well I can take it on and off with no problem at all. it's solid when it's in place, but pops right off for transport.

Anyway... at this point the missile pod was more or less done, but I wanted to add just a few details to make it look more solid, more like the original pod and even more Chaos-y.  So I dug up another one of those vehicle sprues and clipped off a few more things...

The big Horus eye plaque for the Land Raider fit almost exactly across the top of the missile pod. That helped to tie it all together so it looked a little less cobbled together. I also added in a strip of plastic here to fill a small gap.  Next, the regular missile launcher has a sort of antenna/sensor array that wraps around one side.  I wanted to imply that, and found out that one of the curved spiky bits (usually used to line hatches and turrets) worked like a dream for this.

For a few final details... a spare lens from the bitz bins (I think it might be from the basing kit) helped fill up some space in that center section. 

And there you have it.  A $30 missile pod for... well, one afternoon of rooting through my bits.

Pathetic Fill In Post

As you may have noticed, there’s been little forward motion on the Destroyer.  Not from lack of interest.  Just trying to juggle a few dozen things, like the edits I’ve mentioned (they’re extensive) and SDCC plans (I’m doing a few things down there this year, too) and my other blog and some doctor stuff (boring). 

And, yeah, in all fairness, building a few other, non-paperhammery things.  My lovely lady and I have really been enjoying Age of Sigmar, so I’ve been putting together some more bits-bin-Skaven for her and a big horde of zombies for me (also collected, for the most part, from random bitz bins parts).  I don’t get to play that often, so this kind of gets my focus at times.

(I may also do a post in the near future about a really simple Ogre Tyrant conversion I did)

I’m going to try to get some more work done on the Destroyer before I head down to SDCC—and get it posted.  I just wanted to let you know it hasn’t been forgotten.

Cultists and Marauders

Hey, I haven’t had a chance to get back to the Leman Russ/ Destroyer (got a pile of edits that needed my attention) but I wanted to share something else I’ve been working on. Sort of an ongoing background project.

As I’ve mentioned here once or thrice, my biggest 40K army is the Alpha Legion.  I was a fan and follower of the 20th Legion since back when they were just the Napoleons of Chaos, long before THQ and  Dan Abnett made it cool to like them.  And as such, I’ve always had a place for cultists in my army. 

Alas, for years, the only cultist models were half a dozen or so metal ones, half of which were leaders or special weapons.  That’s not a lot of options.  Plus, they were metal, so they could cost three or four dollars apiece!  Can you imagine that?  Paying four dollars for a single GW figure?  What craziness.  Thank goodness for Finecast, am I right...?

Anyway...

Like most folks, I solved the problem by mashing things together. A good mix of Catachan parts and Fantasy Marauders gave me a nice group of post-apocalyptic looking cultists.  Mix in a few Kroot accessories and they looked great.  And these guys worked fine for many years.  Then Dark Vengeanceshowed up and there were real cultist models. Not too posable, but lots of variety. Also space to add on the odd bit of individual detail here and there. Plus, through the miracle of eBay, I was able to get a bunch of them for less than two dollars each...

But this still left me with all my old, homemade cultists in their horned helmets and headbands.  They just don’t mesh well with the new ones.  Sooooo... what to do with about forty figures?  And then it struck me that, in Age of Sigmar, it’s possible to field just one or two units and play like that. So what if I just turned the mostly-Marauder ones back into regular Chaos Marauders?

I went through all of the old cultists and sorted them into mostly Catachan and mostly Marauder.  In a few cases, I found complementary pairs where I could swap legs and they’d make a more-complete figure.  Then, I began to disassemble them.

Helpful Hint—The idea of cutting up figs like this might seem intimidating.  Just make sure you’ve got a really sharp, clean blade, a good cutting surface, and plenty of light (the seams can vanish in shadows, and I want to be cutting between components, not through components).

It took about an hour to separate them all and scrape off any of the white “soft spots” left from the glue.  Then I dug up all the leftover Marauder parts and made a good-sized squad of fifteen armed with axes and shields.

I also discovered I had enough bits sitting around to make one more figure, and after a bit I decided I might make someone I could use as a Darkoath Chieftain, using the Age of Sigmar rules that GW put up to go with some of the Silver Tower figures.  More on that later, depending on how it turns out...

And as for the leftover, mostly-Catachan models...  Well, as it happens a while back I also ended up with a bunch of the hooded Adeptus Mechanicus heads.  A few head swaps, a few details from the Marauders and the Kroot, and now these figs will blend in much better with the newer Alpha Legion cultists.

So don’t be afraid to cut up old figs and repurpose them. It can save you a couple bucks and turn units you don’t use into units you do. Heck, it might even give you something to play a new game with.

And I'm just adding this one last guy with the flagellant body and a flamer because I really liked how he turned out...

Gaming on the Cheap

It’s the new year, so I thought I’d post a few quick thoughts about this geeky blog and... well, what I feel like I’m doing here.

Yeah, I know.  I don’t do much here.  Very funny.

Anyway, on one level, this page is pretty straightforward.  Miniature wargaming can be an expensive hobby.  Bare-bones entry level can be over a hundred dollars, and that’s not even talking glue, paint, or time. A few years back I hit a long stretch of poverty—not imagined-poverty or slight-belt-tightening, but actual how-do-we-pay-rent-this-month poverty?  It was a really bleak time, made more so because my absolute favorite hobby went from a big part of my life to completely unaffordable in about a month.

Then I found Paperhammer.  It’s like finding the light of the Emperor, just... cheaper.  I’d worked in the film industry for a bunch of years as a prop guy, so I had some passable art/craft skills.  I dug around online (using the internet at the library) and found templates for Rhinos, Land Raiders, Baneblades, Monoliths... even Titans.  And there are some great templates out there.  Almost identical to the company models once they’re painted.  Suddenly 40K was affordable again!  The big expense was white glue and paper for the printer.

Alas, while I’ve managed to claw my way back into the middle class, I know there are still some folks who haven’t.  Worse yet, Games Workshop’s prices have skyrocketed over the past few years.  Thirty dollars per figure?  Fifty dollars for bare-basic tanks?  I remember when $150 would pretty much get you a solid army—and that wasn’t so long ago.  Now it’s a lucky thing if that same $150 can round out your Heavy Support choices. 

So being able to build a lot of these models on the cheap means keeping the game open and available to a lot more folks.  That’s a good thing.  And I’m glad to share my tips and experience with you.  Read another way, I’ve screwed up so you don’t have to.

On another level, though... The hobby part of this game doesn’t just mean buying the boxed set, putting it together with company glue, and painting it with company paints. In fact, there was a time when said company encouraged creativity and offered tips to players who couldn’t afford to drop a lot of money.  Making terrain out of cardboard and styrofoam used to be a regular feature in White Dwarf  articles.  Black Gobbo ran a great piece (remember Black Gobbo?) showing how to mix parts from a Basilisk and a Leman Russ to create  a very passable Salamander and Destroyer.  Heck, I remember when the Ogre line was first introduced for Fantasy, White Dwarf ran a whole article about how to convert Hero characters from basic ogres (just in case you couldn’t afford the big metal models.

(I’ll touch on this again in a few weeks)

Thing is, I like making my own models and scenery pieces.  I enjoy it.  I’m proud of the fact that I turned three Tony’s Pizza boxes into a very solid Imperial Knight and some bargain-store Halloween decorations into multi-use scenery.  I like being able to turn some random pieces I dug out of my local gaming store’s bitz bins into a unique and impressive Captain for my Relictors or a character for an Age of Sigmar game.

So, that’s that this is all about.  For me, anyway.  Making the game accessible to a lot more people and giving those people a chance to do something a lot more personal and unique with the units in their army.

If any of that interests you... thanks for being here. 

I’ll try to be semi-interesting.

Halloween 40,000

Wanted to do a quick post today to help make up for the long absence.

So, if you bought a Games Workshop demon set it usually comes with multiple bases. Round ones for 40K, square for Fantasy.  I ended up with a large base this way, and there were a few more that I found in the bits bins.  And one day an idea for a scenery piece started tickling the back of my mind.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a fair-sized army of Plague Zombies (almost 140 of them).  The zombie sprue comes with a tombstone you can use for... well, anything. I’ve picked some out of the bitz bins, too, so I have a lot of them.  I also have a fair number of the plastic tombstones from the old skeleton set.  And even a handful of metal ones I picked up at Games Day many years ago, back when GW would bring the “wall of bitz” with them.  And when they had Games Day.

So... large bases.  Tombstones.  Halloween.  Anyone see where I’m going with this?  Even in the grim darkness of the future, bodies get buried somewhere.

I spaced out the tombstones so they were wide enough to fit a 25mm base between them side to side.  A 40mm base can fit between them front to back.  This gives me a lot of flexibility as far as where models can be placed on the scenery piece.  I took some old, flat Epic bases, cut and shaved them down a bit, and put them in front of some of the stones . These are going to be my fresh graves that haven’t settled yet.

Helpful Hint—I used different tombstones to sell the idea of an older, public graveyard.  By the same token, using all the same tombstone would really sell this as a military graveyard, like the Cadian one Dan Abnett wrote about in his Eisenhorn books.

I did two bases “horizontally” and one “vertically.”  I can now use them as sides to mark out a larger area as a “graveyard” for purposes of special rules, area effects, and so on.  I’m hoping to find another big base somewhere for another vertical piece, just so I can make a solid square (or rectangle, as the case may be).

Helpful Hint—If you happen to be an Age of Sigmar player (especially a cheap one like me), three or four of these bases and a simple statue are a fine “counts as” for a Garden of Morr.  Instant big scenery piece with free special rules. Can’t beat that. 

I glued some dirt to the fresh graves. Just enough to give them a different texture from the rest of the piece.  And at this point they’re ready to be primed and painted.  Quick graveyard scenery from leftover bases and bits.

Happy Halloween.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Very sorry for the delay.  Unexpected copyedits showed up in my inbox last week.  Well, I mean, I was expecting them, just not right at that moment.

Anyway, I wanted to give you all a little heads up, as I have once or twice in the past.  We’re approaching Halloween, and we all know what that means.  Cheap decorations!  For the next few weeks, discount stores will be filled with little bones, skulls, coffins—I’ve seen all sorts of things.  You’ve probably seen some great stuff, too.  They make fantastic detail bits, or sometimes even whole scenery pieces, for either 40K or Age of Sigmar, depending on which way your tabletop swings.  I mean, have you ever really seen too many skulls in the grim darkness of the future...?

And, best of all, they’re all usually for a dollar or less.

Actually, looking at that photo, it just struck me that I could make a really cool fallen giant/ skeleton scenery piece, all overgrown  with vines and grass.  Or maybe even a Bone Giant, if I felt really ambitious...

Hmmmm...

Age of Sigmar

Hey, there.  I’m still getting caught up on things after two back to back conventions, so I haven’t made any real progress on the Gargant.  Probably won’t this week, either, because edits are due on Friday.

However... it’s a pretty standard tradition for my friends and I to have a few (read: several) drinks the night before San Diego Comic-Con and play a game or two.  And this year, we decided to take Warhammer: Age of Sigmar for a spin.

Now, I’m not going to talk too much about the actual gameplay.  Marc’s posted a simple battle report and some thoughts over on Atomic Warlords.  But I did want to mention a few things, more from the hobby/modeling point of view.

First, Age of Sigmar was a lot of fun and very easy to pick up.  If you have any familiarity with tabletop games, you can sit down and be playing in about fifteen minutes absolute tops.  Probably much less.

Second, it’s a very cheap game.  The rules are free. The war scrolls are free.  If you were a Warhammer player before, you already have a ton of models (and the rules are extremely thorough—they cover pretty much everything).  Even if you’ve only played Warhammer 40,000 before (like me), you’ve probably got a few models kicking around that you have for conversions.  There’s also a lot of folks online selling older models or pieces from the old Island of Blood starter set. And past that, there’s probably going to be some folks rage-quitting and dropping their models in the bits bins or putting them up on eBay.  Which brings us to... 

Third, or maybe second-point-five... you don’t need a lot of models to play.  Because there’s no force organization chart or points minimum, it’s possible to play Age of Sigmar with as little as one model.  It has lots of single-model battle scrolls.  A knight on horseback.  An Ork.  A witchhunter. A Skaven warlord.  A wight king.  That’s all you need to play.  If you happen to have a small squad or unit of some sort, that’s even better.  I spent a day digging around through my random bits and discovered I had almost fifty viable units, spread over nine different races/ factions, some assembled, some in parts.  Get three or four units (or even just models) for the same army and that’s the basis of a solid game.

Fourth, (or three, depending on how you read the last one) there is paperhammer scenery for Fantasy settings.  Lots of it.  Warhammer and Mordheim both have a collection of useful templates, ranging from a burned out farmhouse to an elaborate inn.  Plus I’ve talked before about other cheap scenery ideas that would work in a Fantasy setting.  I’m thinking I might have to try a few simple ideas for a graveyard, a simple building or two, and maybe even some ancient ruins.

Now, I can see where the rules could be frustrating to an established player, especially a competitive one.  As a new player, though, without any preconceptions of how Fantasy should be played, I think it’s a great little game. And it means I’m going to get to build and play with a lot of things I’ve had kicking around for ages for one reason or another.

I’m sticking Age of Sigmar in the win column for now.  Your thoughts may vary...

Bargain Basement Harlequins

Yeah, they don't look like much right now, but use green stuff to resculpt the faces, cut the limbs to repose them, add some leftover weapons from your Dark Eldar or the bits bins, base them, prime them, add some checkerboard patterns on the legs and arms...

No, forget it.  Just forget I even suggested this...

Necron Deathmarks

I wanted to show off another cheap and semi-cutting edge idea I had for the Necrons.  It’s an idea many people have probably had.  Although, granted, part of that cheapness does depend on already having some things.

The Deathmarks are the flipside of the Immortals. You can build one or the other with the box set.  When I found a few heavily discounted boxes, I went with Immortals. This meant I had a lot of Deathmark heads, arms, weapons, and the backs of their torsos.

Now, I found uses for some of these parts, with my cheap Crypteks and the Heavy Destroyer.  But I still had a lot left, and I wondered if there was some way to use them.  Preferably a way that wouldn’t cost me just as much as buying them outright.

As it turns out, you can usually find the legs and torsos for basic Necron Warriors for about twelve dollars if you dig around online.  Even cheaper if you can find them in your local store’s bits bins.  That’s a whole box’s worth—a dozen bodies—for less than a dollar each.  You’ll usually spend that much for half as many Deathmark/Immortal legs.  Just the legs.

So, now I’ve got heads, arms, legs, torsos, and weapons.  That all adds up to models.

I glued the legs to bases and the torsos went together as normal.  The real trick was going to be putting the arms on.  They’re made for a slightly wider torso, and they also have a very wide grip on the synaptic disruptors.  It doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room.  But it leaves some.

 

I tried gluing the first two.  I struggled at first because I kept trying to put the “ball” of the shoulders all the way into the torso socket.  That just won’t work, and it led to much fumbling.  But they sit very nice about 1/3 out, and once the glue dries the shoulders are nice and solid.

Helpful Hint—If you go this route, I found (on the second one) that it helped a lot to glue the left arm to the disruptor first.  It cuts down on a lot of fumbling.

However, doing this got me thinking...  What if I used green stuff to fill in a bit of that socket, effectively widening the torso?  I made a tiny ball of green stuff—about the same size as the shoulder ball itself—and fitted that into the shoulder socket.  Then I assembled the arms around that and trimmed away any excess green stuff.

Helpful Hint—You’ve probably heard this before, but be very conservative when you’re mixing green stuff.  You don’t want to end up with a lot of extra sitting around.  In this case, you don’t want a lot of it sitting around drying and getting less sticky.  Mixing tiny amounts will be a bit more time-consuming, but you’ll get much better results

Once I had the weapons on the torsos, it all went quick.  I added the extra conduit to the disruptors, put the torsos on the legs, and then added the heads.  And that was it.  Even switching my build-method halfway through, it took a little over three hours, and half of that was just drying time on some of the bigger parts (arms to torsos, torsos to legs).

Now, using the Warrior bodies does mean I don’t get that “hood” the Deathmarks have, but I’m okay with that.  I think if we made a list of distinctive features of a Necron Deathmark, the hood would probably be number four or five on that list, and this model has all the elements before that.  It also means my Deathmarks are a little smaller than the GW model, but this doesn’t really bother me, either.  One of the jarring elements of the Deathmarks, for me, anyway, is that they’re a stealth/sniper unit and they’re some of the largest infantry models in the army.  Seriously, it’s like asking Jamal Duff to hide behind a coat rack...

However, there’s a dozen Deathmarks for about fifteen dollars, if I count green stuff.  Much better than the ten for $66 they cost normally.  About... 82% off retail, I think, if I’m doing my math right. Heck, even if you bought all the parts for this as bits, you could make ten of these Deathmarks for twenty bucks and a few dollars for shipping.

That's pretty cheap.

Necron Obelisk

Look at that.  The Imperial Knight’s finally done and now I’m being super-cutting edge for the first time in... well, almost a year.  And, well, almost cutting edge. 

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a long time Necron fan.  I had a Necron army that went with the old Chapter Approved army list, when all the models were metal and damn near indestructible.  In all ways.

But I wanted to talk about new stuff.

The Necron Tesseract Vault.  Even before the new rules (which, arguably, just made it better) the Tesseract was popular with Necron players.  Past that, the next best part of this kit would be the Transcendant C’Tan.  Some folks might argue it’s actually first choice and the vault is second.

Why do I bring this up?  Well, since everyone wants either the C’Tan or the Vault (which is the entire kit) the non-C’Tan parts tend to be very cheap.  And all those parts add up to the Necron Obelisk.

As it happens, I found all those parts online for around $45—about 60% the price of the kit.  And that’s a bargain for any super-heavy vehicle.

Now, granted, there’s a strong argument to be made that the Obelisk... well, sucks.  Overpriced,  underpowered, and poorly armored.  But you know what? 

Change the rules. 

Talk to your gaming group about making the Obelisk cheaper or better armored.  If the people you play with on a regular basis have any interest in a fun game, they’re not going to let a cool model sit on the sidelines.  With the new corporate guideline of no models=no rules, most of us probably have a few Apocalypse-level items that have been left in the dust.  Make up some new rules that you can all agree on and forge the narrative, dammit!!

All that being said... here’s a few quick tips on how to put your super-cheap Obelisk together.

The Obelisk is kind of unique as a Games Workshop kit in that it really is put together with leftovers.  Because of this, a few things don’t go together... well, like they normally would.  For example, once the core’s together, you actually need to cut one of the tube/hose sections apart to get the pieces that stabilize the support arms.  Which means buying those component just to cut off a half inch piece.

Or... I cut some scrap plastic down to 3/16” and it worked fine.  They aren’t perfect rods, but the braced the support arms and made them solid inside the core.  And all of this is going to be hidden inside the Obelisk, anyway.

That’s the weirdest part of assembling this model.  The only other unusual thing is how a lot of pieces interlace rather than butt up against each other or fit into simple grooves.  It’s not a completely alien mechanic, but it’s kind of new for GW (I’ve never seen it before, anyway) and it’s probably worth dry-fitting a lot of the components together once or thrice—especially the top and the big side panels--to get a sense of them. 

I assembled the four sides individually and then the top.  I made a corner of two sides, building it right onto the support arm.  Then I added the top into that corner.  Once that was all solid I added a third side, making sure everything lined up, and then the fourth and final side went on.

Helpful Hint—The side panels on this thing are a pain to put together.  As I mentioned above, even the slightest bit of warping means some really bad joins.  I wrestled with it for almost an hour before I realized I could use my big clamps and stretch them diagonally across the entire Obelisk rather than side to side.  It meant I could only work on one seam at a time, but it let me get those seams rock solid.

After this was just final details.  The four arches/ prongs went on top.  Some of the “particle” pieces went on the bottom, all angled to hint at a bit of movement.  The tomb spider heads and claws.  And finally the gauss arrays.

There you have it.  The Obelisk.  A Necron super-heavy for under fifty dollars.  And, yeah, I got the flying stand with that, too, I just hadn’t assembed it when I took the picture.

Also, shameless plug, check out Corrupts Absolutely?-- the new anthology there on the right.  It’s tales of superheroes and superpowers gone bad, and I’m proud to say I have one in there called “Bedtime Story,” about parents trying to explain the new world order to their young son.  Plus there’s cool stories by authors like Joe McKinney, Cat Rambo, Tim Marquitz, and many more.

Flayed Ones, Part II

Papa Nurgle’s been kicking my ass.  And to think... I’m one of his more devoted followers...

So, I’d used some scrap warriors from the bins and a lot of leftover blades to make some passable Flayed Ones.  But they still needed a bit more to really sell it.  Not much, but a few touches.

I’d used some of the blades and old Dark Eldar helmet crests to make spikes along the spines of these guys, but I also wanted the trophies that show up in all the art.  At first I was just going to put some extra skulls on their shoulders, but then I happened to stumble across a few of the skulls-on-spikes that are on the new Dark Eldar Raider.  They worked perfectly, so I scattered about half a dozen of them through the squad.  One guy ended up with two, just to make him stand out as an unofficial sergeant/ champion of the squad.

I also added a few skulls and bones to the base.  I’d found a bunch of Dire Wolf ribs in the bits bins, and they looked nice and creepy.  The Kroot sprue is great for stuff like this, too, and the bins always have tons of Kroot accessories.  There’s severed thigh, part of a ribcage with meat on it, and a cloak lined with bones which makes a great bit of flayed flesh and meat. 

I also used some of these pieces on the base here and there to reinforce and support some of my patched-together feet. 

Then came the big part.  Long pieces of flesh.  I knew the model needed these, but I wanted this to be a simple green stuff project.  Because I know my limits.

I just went for simple strips.  I’d make a very small ball of green stuff (maybe half the size of a pea), roll it into a snake, and then carefully flatten it and stretch it.  I needed this to be thin so it looked like skin and/or hides, but nor so thin it would fall apart if something brushed against it.

For most of the figures I just draped a long piece over the shoulders.  I’d let it hang over an arm on some, and on others it would just sit like a scarf.  On three or four of them, I tried to make loops to help hide some of the scratch-built arms.  They didn’t turn out horrible, but not all that great, either.  Overall, I’m happy with the results.

Helpful Hint—Keep your fingers damp.  Not full-on wet, but damp.  The more complicated the work you’re doing is, the more important it is to keep your fingers damp.  The moment they get dry the green stuff will cling, and when it’s this thin it’ll just tear apart when you try to peel it away (he said from experience).

A few of the dangling bits looked a little too... well, round.  They looked more blobby and melted than sliced and skinned.  So I went back with my clippers and cut a few of the ends to sharper points, and added splits in a few.  It’s a little thing, but I think it helped a lot.

As I’ve said before, I’m not the greatest painter, but here’s what worked for me.  I primed them black and then hit them with an aluminum chrome spray paint I’ve used on all my Necrons.  A drybrush of Leadbelcher actually knocks it down a bit, and then some Abaddon Black on the thighs, upper arms, and spine.  Granted, this means all of my Flayed ones came from the same dynasty, but I like having that bit of unity on the tabletop (maybe I’ll dab in other colors to hint at other dynasties).  I did a few of the thighs in Khorne Red to give the sense of lots and lots of blood that’s dripped down and dried.

Then I did the flesh in different... well, flesh tones, but drybrushed all of them with rotting flesh. Then I splashed on some blood red and red ink (yes, I still have some red ink).  I made a point of painting the hands red, and also the mouths.  The models in the codex just looked a little too neat and clean to me.  The whole idea of the flayer curse is these things are eating their victims, even if they can’t digest them.

And there you have it.  I got the bodies from the bitz bins, so I think this whole project cost me maybe ten bucks total, but it’d be a cheap conversion even if I had to buy a box of Warriors to start with.  In retrospect, I would’ve liked to add in one or two Deathmark heads, just to show some of the different Necrons who’ve fallen to the curse.  Ahhh, well.  Maybe if I find some more bits.  I may even paint up a Necron Lord in gore-colors to be Varghul of the Bone Kingdoms of Drazakh.

Flayed Ones

I have to admit, the original Flayed Ones never did it for me.  They felt like a unit that was missing something, both in their rules and their backstory.  I still think their rules are a little off (they’re a bit pricey, I think, and Rage or Furious Charge would’ve given them more flavor) but I think their fluff is fantastic now.  They’re essentially mechanical zombies, mindless eating machines that get nothing from what they eat.

And zombies have a special appeal to me.

Alas, nine dollars per model is a bit too steep for my taste, especially for the points cost.  Considering you need to use at least ten Flayed Ones to make a decent unit, they’re just too expensive.  And, I have to admit, it does grate on me a bit that Games Workshop theoretically created Finecast as a money-saving move, then refused to pass those savings on to the customers.

So... cheap Flayed Ones.

 

Some of you may remember from a while back, I’d lucked out and found a bunch of Necron Warriors in my local gaming store’s bits bins.  A lot of them were broken or poorly assembled.  Some had thick, gloppy paint jobs.  A few were missing arms or heads.  But I realized they’d make a good base to start from.  Heck, even if I had to buy a box of brand new Warriors for this project, it’d still make them less than half the price of the same number of Flayed Ones models.

First step was to cut off the weapons (assuming they hadn’t been broken off already).  I tried to save as much of the hand as possible, but didn’t worry about it too much if the arms ended at the wrist.  This gave me a basic Necron figure.

Some of these guys needed feet, too.  I think the thin ankles are tough for some younger Overlords to work with.  Since the Flayed Ones are supposed to be a bit deformed, I just built new feet from a few pieces of card and some small bits of sprue.  I added in some plastic rod in places where the break made them too short.

Helpful Hint – The easiest thing to do was just cut a pair of triangle This gave me a foot that looked a bit like a mechanical claw, and that works great for Flayed Ones.

Next was repositioning.  By nature of holding a rifle, all the Warriors are in more or less the same stance.  I cut some arms in the center of the upper arm and rotated them a bit.  This gave them wider and more dynamic poses.  I also cut a few Warriors across the thin part of the back, filed them a bit, and then re-attached them to give the figures a bit more of a hunch.  This helped with some of the models that had been assembled looking up at the sky.

Helpful Hint – Don’t worry too much about things lining up when you reposition them.  You want it to be solid, yes, but any odd seams can either be written off as part of the Flayed Ones mutated forms or it’ll get hidden by folds of skin (as explained in a bit).

A few of them needed arms, too.  I had a few spares that I’d picked up here and there, and in one or two places I found arms from Lychguard or Immortals that fit fine (if they looked a little oversized or distorted... all the better).  Some are Fantasy skeleton arms.  I even made one set from a zombie scythe handle and another from a skeleton spear.  I know they look really crude like this, but they’re going to be fine by the end of this.

The hands were the next part.  They are kind of the defining feature of a Flayed One.  On the old models they had very Freddy Kruger-ish fingers, but these new ones are a bit more random.  It fits their twisted, mutated nature and it makes for easy scratch-builds.  

Two or three of these guys have elaborate hands made out of blades.  Some just have a scissors-like arrangement.  A few just have one big cutting blade, set up either like a sword or a scythe.  I tried to space these out between models so the different arrangements felt a bit random.

Helpful Hint – There are tons of knives and blades kicking about the GW lines.  Tons.  Space Marines of all flavors and allegiances, new and old, come with knives.  Kroot come with extra rifles that are covered with blades.  Dark Eldar have some nice ones.  Heck, if you saved any old Dark Eldar figures, there were blades on everything (even their pistols and helmets).  This doesn’t even count the number of things you can find in the Fantasy line--swords, daggers, spears--all sorts of nastiness.

I also really like the art in the new codex that shows a Flayed One with a small forest of spikes or blades growing out of its back.  I used a few more blades for those.  These helped reinforce the spine where I’d cut it, too.

Next week I’ll add some details to the base, some skin to the spikes, and some paint to the whole model.