Family Photo

Here are my marines so far (less two tac marines that have seemingly gone AWOL), representing their chapter, the Stormwatch. I've plans to swell their ranks in the coming year, and possibly even add a scratchbuilt Imperial Knight...

Stormhawk Interceptor

I wanted to add a flyer to my Space Marines, and I liked the sound of the Stormhawk Interceptor. I started with a kit from Daemonscape, which was originally sold in the 90s by GZG. You can find it here as 'VTOL Gunship A' for £9.99. It was a reasonably close match for size and shape to the proper model. The kit comes with two main hill parts which stick together, top onto bottom, with a flat join. I cut a piece of 3mm plasticard to be neatly sandwiched between the halves, adding wings and fins to bring it closer to the GW kit and give it some size.

The weaponry on the Stormhawk consists of a lascannon type thing, assault cannon and missile launcher. Luckily these are probably the easiest weapons to scratchbuild recognisably. I used pen lids, plastic cake-pop sticks and a piece of Lego to make those. I'm quite pleased with it- let's see how quickly it gets shot off the table!

Hill Helpers™

Having made a set of nice flat hills exactly 25mm tall with flat tops, to minimise the risk of miniatures falling out of a sloping movement tray, or having the tray itself skiing downhill, I still had to deal with the problem of deploying a unit half on and half off a hill.

The answer is Hill Helpers™! Needless to say, that's not really a trademark, and I'm not selling them- they're just wooden blocks: little blocks of wood the right size to support the dangling edge of a precariously deployed unit. 

I started off with 25mm cubes of pine, bought fairly cheaply on eBay. I bought them here.

With PVA I glued three together, and another pair, and along with a single cube, I sanded them all down to give smooth rounded edges and corners that were comfortable to hold, and then oiled them very lightly with olive oil.

The three Hill Helpers together fit very nicely into a spare compartment of the box I use for dice and counters etc. for Kings of War.

I could have made them look more like terrain, but I chose to keep them looking like this because I worry that I'll absent midedly leave them on the battlefield and treat them like terrain if they look like hills. Also, they should last years and years like this with very little upkeep, and I rather like the way they look, and they're pleasing to hold.

Hill Helpers in action:

A Retro Warband for Dragon Rampant

As I pressed on with the KoW 'Middle Earth Good Guys' army I realised I would soon have enough painted stuff to put together a full 24 point warband for Osprey's brilliant Dragon Rampant game.

I already had plenty of Beornings. I chose six of the unarmed ones to represent two units of 'lesser warbeasts'. Dragon Rampant does include rules to make a unit into 'werebeasts', which I will probably do in the future, if I make some 'man-mode' Beornings to compliment these figures.

I added a unit of Rohan warriors with mail, sword and shield. I use 12 to represent a full regiment in Kings of War, and that's also the recommended number for a foot unit in Dragon Rampant. The Leader with the plumed helmet can lead the warband.

Next I added some Riders of Rohan- lightly armoured with bows. I'll use 5 for a troop in KoW, but adding just one more gives me the recommended strength for a cavalry unit in DR.

Lastly I wanted an Ent. I don't have an original Minifigs Ent, and anyway, they're really a bit too small, so I made this chap from Milliput very quickly ast night. With the right paint job I think he fits in quite well. He counts as a Greater Warbeast in DR, and will be part of an elf ally contingent in my KoW army I think.

The finished Warband! Now for some baddies...

paper dungeon - simple doors

I bashed out these doors for D&D using an Amazon book mailer and a 1.2mm Staedtler pigment liner- one of my favourite pens! Combined with the stand bases, they work great and couldn't be much cheaper.

first bits of a cereal packet dungeon

There are lots of ways to make dungeons for D&D, from gorgeous but expensive Dwarven Forge stuff to ones that cost effectively nothing. Here are some 'proof of concept' bits for a dungeon, made from everyone's first craft material: a corn flakes box. There's a bit of white-tack on the back for weight and friction. They took a few minutes with a pen and some scissors and I quite like the way they look.

The other thing that white-tack is good for is quickly knocking up some stalagmites or boulders. I like the fact that this method of creating the dungeon is just a couple of removes from a basic diagram- it's clear and simple and cheep and cheerful- all my favourite boxes ticked!

10mm Kings of War- board and scenery

Kings of War is probably my favourite wargame- it's certainly the one I play the most. I and a few friends are going to experiment with an idea lots of people have had over the years- converting KoW to a smaller scale. There are lots of reasons to do this: portability; cost; ease of doing really BIG battles. As KoW is element based, it's eminently suited to the idea.

We're going to scale everything down by a division of 2.54, which sounds arbitrary, but it means that inches become centimetres, and movement and range stats stay as they are with no mental arithmetic- you just have to remember to look at the other side of the tape measure!

I've ordered some miniatures (more of which when they arrive) but in the meantime I've knocked up a little set of terrain and scenery, and a board to put them on. The board is the scaled down equivalent of a standard 6'x4' table, so it's 72x48cm. I used 18mm MDF. The hills are 12mm MDF, which means a 'height 1' hill is near-as-dammit the same height as 'height 1' infantry. All were painted with a single £1.49 tester pot of Homebase 'Village Green' emulsion. Very happy with the shade.

I've gone for a clean and simple look- clarity is paramount at such a small scale, and it's a look I like.

The trees are scrunched paper towels, soaked in dilute PVA and stuck to 8mm dowels, mounted on pennies. The 'forest' floor is Efco green felt sheet. The river and lake are also Efco felt sheet- it's thick, lies flat and has an agreeably mottled colour.

The tower was made from an empty salt pot, part of a broken toy mirror and part of a biro lid. You can see I've sanded the salt pot prior to painting.

All in all a satisfactory set with minimal outlay of time, money or effort.

Now I just need an army...

Creatures and Warbands for Frostgrave.

I've been playing a little Frostgrave lately, and I've been using it as an excuse to paint a lot of models from the 1970s in a very clean bright and shiny 'toy soldier' look that I think looks good and suits the era of the miniatures. I've also created a few larger scratch built creatures, painted in the same style.

Here's my Giant Spider, made from dressmakers' pins, bamboo skewers and Milliput.

...and here's my Giant Worm, made from Milliput again, and a child's coat hanger! The orc-for-scale here is an old Prince August one.

Lastly, here's some sort of slime monster composed entirely of bamboo skewers and hot glue. The other figure is a golem, probably by Minifigs.

I hope you can see the kind of look I'm going for with the paintjobs. It polarises opinion a bit I think, but I really like it, and it's QUICK! A huge plus. Here are two of my Frostgrave warbands which also sometimes see action in Song of Blades and Heroes and Open Combat as well as dungeon crawls and whatnot. I'm hoping to expand both into opposing good and evil armies for Dragon Rampant.

THE GOODIES

The Fellowship of the Red Wyrm

THE BADDIES

The Thrall of Kronos

These two warbands are mostly composed of old Minifigs, Ral Partha, Prine August and Minot stuff. The giant mushroom is a 'proof of concept' for a fungal forest I'm hoping to finish later.