Recalcitrant Daze - Having a clear out

Not a particulary interesting update I am afraid.

I am having something of a clear out, I have a load of Marine bits clogging up one of my bits boxes and also a few other models knocking around which can clear some room.

So to begin with there are three auctions on eBay if anyone is interested in picking up something cheap:

Sigvald the Magnificent - unbuilt Sigvald linky
Ezekiel - unpainted Ezekiel linky
Grot Mega Tank - unbuilt though missing Grot commander Mega Tank linky

All 99p starting bids.

Next week I will start listing all of the Marine bits that need to be cleared - I just can't face doing all of those auctions tonight.

Battlefleet Gothic 14

Well the ships I have are just about finished now (I may go back and touch up a few of the early ones). Untill I pick up the Marine ships at Games Day I won't be doing any more on the fleet. The transports will also be put off till after GD.

The fleet mustering, crap photo but I couldn't find anything else big enough and black to fit them all on.

The latest two additions to the roster, first up the second Daemon Ship, this one has a mouth...

The second ship is the Despoiler Battleship:

And now all painted up...

So the revised roster fleet list now looks like this:

Now that BFG is being put to bed for a while I can crack on with the War Altar of Nurgle...joy.

Minefields

It'll be tomorrow I think when I am able to do a post on the Nurgle Fleet so untill then I thought I would slip in a quick post on another set of terrain.

I came up with an idea for doing quick and easy minefields by casting up some mines, both anti tank and anti personel ones, then basing them on finnboard. A full set would be two 12x4" panels and two 6x6" panels. The difference in size allows me to field the 36" of minefields allowed in either one long strip, two 18" strips or three 12" strips.

First up the cast mines:

Anti tank on left, anti personel on right

The anti tank mines were based on a piece from a 1/35 kit (a spare road wheel I think). In size they are roughly in line with the Forge World mines. The anti personel mines were some random bit I found which I stuck some styrene detail on. The cast quality was good enough for the job in hand.

The finnboard bases were cut to size and some cat litter was added to give it some variety along with a small selection of resin rocks which I cast using spare resin I had mixed up - basically I had some moulds I did for bases and any spare resin I had was poured into the rock area of the moulds. On one panel I added some small craters and another one got a bit of barbed wire. These were followed by a smattering of the mines and then sand was added. The mines were done so that some were more buried than others. Some just peaked out while others had been almost completely uncovered. I cut down the cast pieces to allow the variety os positions/looks.

(note in some of the pics the glue hadn't quite dried with the sand, hence the patchy look)



I was tempted to add the empty boot...
but lost it before I had chance to make my mind up.

They all got paint jobs to match the Realm of Battle board (which I painted only a few days before doing these).

And a shot of one of the minefield panels sitting on the RoB board:

Quite happy how they turned out. I was a quick and simple job and with the moulds I have knocking around I can quickly do more if I need to.

Stowage Tutorial - Bangalores

I have been asked by SC over on The Spring Offensive to post up a tutorial I knocked up way back in Jan 2008 for some stowage - namely Bangalores.

I based my bangalores on the ones I got from Forge World in their Storm Sword kit:

The original bit of stowage from Forge World.

And a couple of example of ones I built:

Command Chimera - doesn't show the piece
that well unfortunately.

From my Hellhound.

As you can see on my Bangalores I have kept the recessed ends. It would of been much easier to simply have the ends flush but I wanted to keep the look of the original piece.

I went about making them like this:

Not a great diagram. Sorry.

A - A 3.2 diameter tube is cut to length (whatever suits the tank). Now the walls look to thick as such.

B - Using a pin vice the hole is opened up to 2mm in diameter, to about 5mm in depth.

C - Some 2mm diameter rod is cut, approx 3-4mm in length and one of these is pushed into the hole at each end of the 3.2 tube just past the end.

D - A second tube is done the same way and glued side by side to the first one.

E - Next up is the mounting brackets, use soem styrene strip, in the example a 1x2mm strip was used. It is cut into pieces as long as the two tubes are wide (so approx 6.5mm long). One piece is glued to each end of the tube, the position is whatever looks good and will depend on the length of the tubes used. A third one in the centre might be worthwhile if they are particularly long (though making them too long may not long right).

F - Straps. I used .25mm styrene cut to match the bracket width (2mm in this case). Cut long enough to wrap round the tubes from one bracket side to the other and a bit extra. Brush some poly cement over the tubes & brackets and bend the strap over. The strap shouldn't be flush with the brackets yet.

G - Finsihing off. Trim the strap ends and then cut from a styrene rod (.75mm rod with a 1mm thick bracket) some rivets and glue in place.

Hopefully that is all clear enough. If I get chance I may do an improved diagram.

Battlefleet Gothic 13

The first Battleship is now done.

Next up will be to build the second one.

However with the second battleship I got some of the plastic weapon sprues, it means I can probably rebuilt the two cruisers I have left from the ebay auction buy. Almost certainly one of them will be another Deamon ship.

Enginseers Chimera

Another blast from the past post tonight.

I built this quite some time ago now (five years or so I think, I can't be bothered going through my old Warseer log to find out).

At the time I was still thinking of doing an Imperial Guard army and I wanted a ride for my Enginseer.

The crane comes from a 1/35 scale kit as do the rear support pieces (though a different kit) as do some of the stowage. You can probably spot the Cities of Death pieces added to the top. It was a nightmare sanding that large AdMech symbol down to fit on top.

Overall I was never that happy with it. I liked the rebuilt hull (inspired by the Trojan shape) but the side skirts didn't look right and the servitor in the back panel didn't work as well as I hoped. I did like the dozer though.

A few detail shots:

Top detail and insert the AdMech symbol I knocked up for the rear door.

Rear minus the servitor.

And the finished undercoated pics, these were taken when I stuck the vehicle on eBay...

Most of the pieces remained removable for ease
of (someone else's) painting.

I do hope to make another one one day, but a lot better than this one. There a lot of things I would do different which would result in a much better final result. However finding the time to do it will be a problem.

Battlefleet Gothic 12

Been a bit quiet recently but progress has been made.

The last of the Chaos escorts are now done, along with the Cobra escorts for the renegade Navy contingent.

Not that happy with the Cobras. Mainly the prows, could do with some touching up or maybe redoing completely.

The battleship is now rebuilt. The new one arrived from GW in the week and I was pleasantly surprised to find it comes with two command bridge variants, one of these replaced the missing one on the first battleship saving me a lot of hassle. So in addition to the new command bridge I used a couple of lance turrets I removed from the escorts to replace the missing turrets on the battleship. I had to cut them down slightly but otherwise they fit in well. Story being the ship had two turrets which needed replacing and the facility they used only had an alternative design.

So the full fleet as it stands now looks like this...

So in the next week the first battleship will get painted and the second one will get built and painted.

Tomorrow I am out all day so it'll be Monday before any more work gets done on the last two ships (before the Marine ships get picked up at GD anyway).

Battlefleet Gothic 11

First up the two renegade Imperial Cruisers are finished up:

Here is the current fleet roster. As you can see it is now just over 4,000 points. However I am not fussed about getting a nice round number as rarely will it be fielded as anything other than a smaller force (say 2k), the full force gives me plenty of options for games as well as being able to do the occasional large game.

Bottom left shows what has been painted thus far and what is left to do. I have already ordered the second Battleship and the last Chaos Escorts, should be here tomorrow I think.

A bit more work has been done on the first battleship but not worth pictures yet.

And a quick pic of the fleet thus far...