Recalcitrant Daze - This Isn't a Review of the Year Post.

..it just happens to fall on New Years Eve.

Due to the holiday festivities not a huge amount on the hobby front has been done lately.

What I did have was a couple of days of gaming, it broke down to a day of Dreadball and a day of 40K.

Dreadball...

For Dreadball I had to knock up some bases for my Robot team. Basically Dreadball team members can be either Strikers, Guards or Jacks (i.e. Jack of all trades). Robot teams though all start as Jacks and then have the ability to change roles during the game. So to keep track of all these changes I modified a Dreadball Hex base and then cast up a shed load of them. Adding a washer into the base and a magnet to the players I could colour code the bases...

Blue for Jacks, Red for Guards and White for Strikers.

The bases worked perfectly - except for the blue on the Jacks being a bit too dark to see easily in the light. As such I'll change that to a lighter colour, probably green.

I also had to knock up some counters, while I had bought everything else I needed to play the game I didn't buy the handful of counters you need. Simple enough job to do.

As for the games themselves all three finished 3-0 which was a bit weird. I won two and lost one (but so very nearly one that one with the last play of the game).

Hopefully I'll start putting the team itself together soon so expect some updates in the near future.

40K...

The Daemons had a run out...nothing to really see here except for the first time in the new house I got to set up the full gaming board in the living room, I say 'full board' but I mean a full 6x4 gaming board...not all the RoB panels I've got as that would be something of a squeeze.

Gaming in Comfort

The two games ended up a win each, with some of the dice rolling I had I'm surprised I didn't lose both heavily.

In case we played ZM I also cast up some more pallets...

In the end I didn't need them, but i'll get on with adding the stowage and tarps now so they should be ready for the next 'Gaming Meet Up'.

Talking of terrain I don't usually get hobby related stuff as presents but this year I did get Stronghold Assault. Nice book though would of been so much better if they had put the effort in to do non-Imperial themed fortifications. However as I do love a Siege expect at some point more terrain in the shape of bunkers etc appearing on RD. You have been warned.


And Finally...

As I've not done one of these general rambling type of posts here are a couple of new Blogs I am now following...

Seismic Miniature Painting Studio

40k Hobby Blog

Scatter Terrain 16

Well after six straight posts on the Junka I thought it would be good to have a post which is completely different.

I've been doing some casting recently due to getting some new equipment (I'll cover that in another post on it's own later) and I decided to return to a project I last looked at way back in July 2012 - I can't believe it has been that long...- namely some pallets for scatter terrain, especially for games of Zone Mortalis.

Due to it being so long it is probably best if I start from the beginning.

I did some 3D models...

You can make out in the pics that one hole was skull shaped, just for fun.

Each pallet was in two parts, namely a base and a top. These were then 3D printed, and after cleaning up (the ID plates didn't come out at all) and a coat of grey spray they looked like this:

So going with the large pallet I decided to finally get some moulds done and pieces cast.

The base went off without a hitch and I've now got seven cast up, I say without a hitch I made a cock up with two of them and amazingly managed to not put enough resin in, but I just carved a bit of battle damage into the one corner and it'll be fine.

 

When I opened up the mould for the top I hit a problem. I can without worry of being contradicted say that this it the worse mould I have done. Due to me rushing it and trying to recycle old rubber I found there was a number of air bubbles (more than a dozen), but those can be worked round easy enough - it just means more clean up of the casts will be required. However the worst thing is that a small area of rubber had 'lifted away' (I can't think of a better way to describe it) from the master. It's not an air bubble as the 'lifted' area has the detail moulded in it...

 

Weird.

So I am in split mind as to what to do, I could do a new mould but that would take a couple of days and even recycling the old mould would still cause some waste and I need what unused rubber I have left for other things. I think I can get away with it. It's in an area where stores can always cover it, plus I will be adding tarps to most of the finished pieces so I think I can always cover up what isn't covered by stores. Certainly for now I am going to use this mould to knock out some pallets.

Once cleaned up the assembled pallet looks like this:

And with some quicky cast barrels...

As mentioned above the plan will eventually have tarps over these things, as shown in my earlier experiments...

So that's that for now, I will knock out some more pallets and start getting stores on them and tarps added. I'm not sure if I want to do the small pallet, I think it is a bit redundant to be honest. But I may come back to it in the future.

Mekboy Junka 17

As promised I grabbed some shots of the Junka in better light (i.e. in the short period where the sun appeared to be actually somewhere in the sky above).

And some close ups:

And of the finished SAG (though I spotted in the pictures I need to do a bit of gap filling where the new cables where added).

And to finish a breakdown of the components of the Junka:

And of all three vehicles:

Actually missed the Boom Gun top left is also magnetised.

All three are now packed (bar the SAG as I need to do that bit of GS first) ready to be posted after Xmas.

Mekboy Junka 16b

Following the last post I added a couple more cables to the SAG.

I also went round adding a few little things you won't notice (like doing the bases on the twin exhausts).

I waited till today to do the update as I thought I'd be able to get better quality pictures in daylight, in the end it was so miserable outside it didn't make any difference - as such the pics below aren't great...

And how the vehicle looks with the SAG option:

In the hope that this may be the final post on the Junka I took some pictures of all three together...I may now get some more pictures when the sun decides to make an appearance.

You can still see how much bigger the Junka is compared to the two Looted Wagons.

Mekboy Junka 16

I had to take a break from the Junka for most of this week, mainly due to starting the SAG earlier in the week and just not quite thinking it was right in some way. I thought the best ide was to take a break and come back to it refreshed.

I have stuck with the design, tweaked it a bit here and there.

My opinion has improved but i'm still not 100% happy with it.

I don't like finecast. First time I have actually done anything with the stuff.

So I think I will be sticking with this design.

I will go over the Junka tidying up and catching anything I may have missed then get some shots of everything in place. And then that should be that.

Mekboy Junka 15

As mentioned in the last update here are some shots showing an overall picture of the Junka as it currently is.

So using the Zzap Cannon, Kustom Mega Blasta and Big Shoota set up...

I did a few details, but nothing that will stand out in the pics.

I'll get back to the Junka in a day or two with the SAG the next thing on the list.