Nurgle Warband plans

In case you are wondering, I'm building opposition for my Inquisitor(s) first. Nurgle is the first of my Opfors, and I'm feeling really creative for them. My Nurgle won't be full of boils, tears and holes in them, I prefer them much more muted, worn and used, pale and sickly with just the occasional boil. Lot's of rusted and worn equipment.

I intend to build the following:

• Leader, ogre sized
• 2nd in Command
• Priest
• Cultists
• Fast Assault aka Nurgle drones x3
• Heavy Support aka Doomwheels x4
• Real size Nurgle Space Marines 1-2x
• Servoskulls aka mini Blight Drones x5

And just cause we like visuals, for the leader something like this:

2nd in command must be this:

...but with a Chaos plasma pistol instead of a mace.

Priest....undecided. I have a not Chaos Dwarf one that I really like from a company who's name I forgot that is slated for a Mordheim Chaos Warband, but could be drafted in here. Also very nice would be this guy:

(the chap on the left)...and a tad more expensive!

Cultists will be the standard plastic Chaos cultists with a suitable paintjob. Cannonfodder anyway. And I have 60 of them spare from a previous buy.

Drones and Doomwheels you know, for real size Marines just google the term. I've got loads of marine parts in trades so I can build a few for fun, though I will just do 1 or 2 as they will be quite overpowered and only for special occasions :) Mini Blight Drones are also mentioned in the previous posts.

Oh, and chainswords/chainaxes/chainfists will future heavily....for some reason I feel this is a perfect Nurgle weapon, ripping and rending foes apart, creating nasty if not deadly wounds. You can see the theme in the model selection :)

I'll get more ideas as this goes along, but these are the bits I want to be working on for the next few months.

Doomwheel, part 3

It has been a extremely good week sofar for the Doomwheels. Today, a letter arrived from Australia with 4 round half bits in em, enough for one Doomwheel. Thx Mr. Zeidler! Yesterday, a bits box arrived that I had won on Ebay.de a few weeks back but had been slow coming as for some reason the seller didn't send his bank details, but only wanted a bank transfer. A few emails later.....

...a GW Batallion box ends up on my doorstep. In it almost 700 grams of Space Marine, Chaos Space Marine and vehicle bits, plus a few assorted Bretonnina bits that will be handy for Mordheim and a few nice Eldar weapon bits that will be handy for my Kroot conversions. I had made a bid on the box cause I saw at least 7 bits that would be useful for the Doomwheel, and figured the rest would make good trade fodder. Boy, was I in for a surprise! In it were 22 bits that I need for the Doomwheels, half round bits, ring mounts, weapon mounts, plates, the works. And 3 Terminator Assault Cannons, which sell for more or less what I paid for the box in the first place. Also, a set of small multiple missile launchers from a Terminator were in the box, so in theory, if I found enough parts to make a 5th, a missile version could be made. Or I could equip them with magnets (all or just a few) so I could magnetswap the weapons around....meaning I would be able to do a heavy bolter or twin linked bolter versions as well. Or whatever weapons would tickle my fancy really. I'll put some more thought into that this week

Also in the box was a set of 4 exhausts from the bottom of a drop pod....which come in handy for Epic sized Blight Drones as built here > epic-blight-drones-tutorial I'll make moulds of the 4 engines so I can cast them quicker, and get a few servoskull sized lasgun or similar weapon only Nurgle nasties to field alongside my big boys. Parts for these I have already, got a bag of painted and unpainted Tyranid Rippers from a lot of Nids I once picked up for BFG conversions that are just perfect for this.

So, more Nurgle nasties for the Inquisitor team to fight :)

Also, payday is coming up, and I will set aside funds to buy bits for the other 2 Plague Drones....should be about 20 euros in parts (with free shipping) and 7-8 euro plus 4 euros shipping for the engines. I'm aiming to limit my spending to 50 euros for May, if I want to spend more I'll have to sell more, simple as that. There is 12,50 Pounds left in my Paypal account that I want to save for the AK-47 purchase, Also, I will be visiting the new GW store for some painting advice and chats on friday with nothing but 1 euro cash on me for a can of soda....that way there will be no impulse buying of any sorts. And after that I will visit my storage space to look for my Mordheim rulebook and more stuff to sell.

Oh, and I have 4 basic Doomwheels finished now. They build so easily :)

Doomwheel, part 2

I've sidetracked the drone for now. I know I want 2 or 3 more, but simply cannot afford the expense atm of an additional 30 euros in shipping and parts for 2 more, and buying a box of them is way out of my league (46 euros).

I received several envelopes with bits sofar, either paid for the shipping or got them for free, for which I thank my benefactors. My mate Sander even sent me a box full of Imperial Guard en Space Marine bits for nothing, bless him. Anyway, we had a brainstormsession tonight with a few mates to see how we want to arm them. Options were assault cannons, lascannons, twin bolters, heavy bolter, (heavy) flamer, CCW, meltaguns, plasmaguns, next to the twin linked bolter that is already on it (the gargoyle faces). It had to be within budget for 2 more models, so a total of 4, for a max of 10 euros of additional bits. Nothing beats a brainstormsession while kneedeep in bits, and with a budget looming!

In the end, we settled for a twin Assault cannon version using the Dreadnaught assault cannon so it can double as a grenade launcher, twin autocannons using the old Ork Biker ones, twin (heavy) flamer one using the Sentinels flamers and a CCW version using lots of left over spikes and pointy bits, plus 2 CCW off the Sentinel (that nobody ever uses). Thx to my mates Sander's giftbox we managed to find all of the weapons in one go! I've got enough parts to make 2 more basic wheels (just tanktracks and 5x 40mm 2mm thick round bases glued together) and I'm edging towards using biker bases for these, 50x25mm pill shaped ones. 12 of them in 2mm MDF will set me back 1.20 Pounds but then the postage hits. Hmmm. I've got a big bag of plastic 25x50mm bases....not a hard choice, I will just round off the edges and save me the expense. Jay, 10 euros saved!

Now off to actually build 2 more.

AK-47 (Objectives)

Another project I want to tackle this year is AK-47. In 15mm. I've even found 2 mates interested in it, enough that they will actually paint up stuff. I realise it is just as expensive in 20mm, so I will be extremely selective for this one and focus 75% on second hand purchases, if I can find peoples unused or barely painted starter armies.. The other 25% will be Peter Pig directly and Ebay.

I've already made a deal with someone to buy his unuesed start army, but I'm having trouble aquiring enough funds...sales are slow, very slow. And I really want to fund this with sales only. So it will have to wait for a bit before I collect the nescessary 55 Pounds.

The to be aquired army is 90% technicals, and a single tank. The troops are mostly militia and regular army miniatures. Some weapons are mixed in, mostly for mounting on the Technicals.

I already have the rules, and will be focussing on a Dictatorship army (though none of the units will be specific, I'm keeping them as generic as possible) simply cause I have a Matakashi statue!

28mm miniature repurposed as a 20mm and now a 15mm statue. And if he is ever deposed, then....

Sorted!

I've got practically nothing 15mm scale left, other then my painted sci-fi vehicles and cause I used WW2 vehicles for them, they won't look half bad really. And some buildings I gave away for free to Piers, those will be returned to me.

I pulled from my aircraft kit collection a 1/100 Mi-4 and a Mil-24, sorting out air mobile and anti tank/ground support, and I'm in the middle of trading some 1/72 kits for  1/100 propliners for the national airport I want to build. I do think I might need to make some smaller flight stands for these, but I'm stumped where to get the ones I have, but smaller, but still have a bendable end. Better call on the powers of the various fora I think for that one.

Which leads me to posting a long list of possible objectives to build :)

• Baoab tree
• Goldmine
• Oilwell
• Sacred rock
• Monument (sorted)
• Train station
• Bridge (rail)
• Bridge (road)
• Arms shipment
• Aid convoy/shipment
• Crashed Blackhawk
• Crashed Aircraft (Aid/Drugs)
• Hospital
• Church
• UN Compound/School/Distribution Centre/Orphanage
• School
• Presidential Palace
• Plantation
• Factory
• Airport

 Stay tuned for more, like the Quest for a Leader or What's in a Name? and other interesting stuff.

Oh, and you can blame Jim for this. I've been following his Blog for years now, and his exploits have been my shining example: Jims Wargames Workbench

Imperial Roadway Shrines, Part 1

One of my ideas to get back into 28mm is to make small bits of scenery like I do in 20mm. I can do a million things, but I thought a nice, and small but expandable project would be fun to get my head around. I always look for everyday items to put on a table, so I chose something I see several times a day, road shrines / chapels. I made a topic about it on the LAF I imagine you can find those on all Imperial worlds, from Hive to Agri world, and dedicated to Saints, loved ones or simply the Imperial version of a roadsign we locally call a paddestoel.

A what? A paddestoel. Or in English: a mushroom shaped roadsign, low to the ground, meant for people cycling on paths outside of the city.

Anyway, I've been doodling a bit and came up with these 3 for starters.

1 is a little more complex then I want to tackle right now, 3 is a pole with a light (a certain Saint shining  a light on a path) which will be very easy to do, but for now I will focus on the middle one, as I have plenty parts for it casted up and I feel I can duplicate this one easily, I'll just need to make the cables thin enough for my liking.

I see the middle one like a icon dispensing Imperial creed guidance to those passing by, there will be a grill on the back for a speaker/cooling vent of sorts, with cables going down into the base plate, on a 20-25mm base

Greenstuff moulds seem to work 3 times out of 4, though the ones that aren't perfect are not bad either, and most likely reworked into bases and stuff. These 2 bits are all I need now for the top part, I'm looking for a bit to base the pole on right now. Left is a vent from the structures boxes GW make, the right one is from the Dark Angels Landspeeder I think? I've casted quite a few of those, a very useful bit I think.

Press moulding at ungodly hours

What do you do when it is 4 o'clock in the morning and you just can't sleep? Right, you go press moudling things. Right. I did. Got some nasty looks from the cat though :)

36 little press moulds later....I didn't bother with the press this time, I just made sure they were really hot and pressed them on. I made most on parts of a 2nd hand Administratum (I think) building I got in a lot a while back, lot's of usefull trim like rosette's, light fixtures, vents and what not. Also copied some mechanical bits off a dreadnaught I have lying around in parts....some items look like usefull mechanical gubbins, some even looked like a sort of landmines, always usefull.

Since I still couldn't sleep I filled in some of the moulds and then went to bed anyway around 5 ......

Here's what I did earlier plus some of the stuff from this morning:

From left to right.
The vent only has detail on the top half, but I made about 6 moulds of them so I'll be bound to get a few good copies. The small shrines and skull came out perfectly. The skulls on a stick, only 1 has a teeny airbubble but otherwise fine. Bannertop, fine too. Bit from a building, the skull has no detail, but the mould does so most likely my inexperience. Skull shrine bit, did that one first and managed to mould it twice, both not perfect but very useful for what I have planned. Top row had a Cadian skull and helmet, slightly distorted, but if I cut off the offending bit should work fine on a base. Sewer hatches are good enough.

Now to fill in another dozen moulds and then pick up my family for Easter festivities.

Happy Easter everyone!

Oyumaru plastic clay used for miniature moulding

Last year I picked up a few packs of the stuff with the intention to make casts of stuff. Together with a box of second hand legos these ended up in storage cabinet. Cause I had a free all I can do as I want pass tonight (both the wife and kids are out) I could take over the kitchen table with a box of Legos, a ton of bitz, Oyumaru and hot boiling water. Ain't that everymans dream? :D

A quick refresher course on Youtube later I was heating up moulds and I had built a Lego casting chamber (by lack of a better word):

To keep things going, and I only have small parts to copy anywway, I made one with 3 chambers. I think I have enough blocks to add a 4th next time, but for tonight this was enough. I picked some small bits from my bits box that I want to use for my idea to make a couple of 40K roadshrines but only have 1 of, plus an nice looking Cadian skull and a sewer hatch from the OOP Forgeworld set I picked up recently. Making the press moulds is indeed really easy, though I managed to push a bit too hard at times and cracked the mould box, but this is easily repaired and the Oyumaru is easily reheated in a cup of water off the boil. I also made a few way too thick, kept 1 just to see how casting will go and recycled the rest again. Dropping the mould box in the freezer for 10 minutes was enough to set them hard and to clear the box for new moulds.I've got 7 moulds now, 3 of them will be redone at some point as they are just too thick, but the other ones flesx just fine. Stuffed them full of greenstuff and they are drying now, will have a look in the morning how well they pop out.

I used the leftover GS to make even more cables, this time from the smallest size, twisted it up a bit and left em to dry like that for use in the GS bitz box.

An evening well spent, I say!

PS Oyumaru goes by many names and is sold in many colours but transparant ones make it easier to see if there are air bubbles trapped in your mould when you press the GS in. Simple tip!

Green Stuff World Roll Maker, first trials

Well, in the end I settled for the Green Stuff World roll (tentacle) maker, cause it was by far the cheapest. The only one I could afford!

My first results sofar:

As advised, I let the greenstuff set for a couple of minutes before rolling it into a long line, watered the plates and gently rolled back and forth without the side plate, just to see what the result would be. Well, I became a master pretty quickly in worms and rat tails as they all tended to become flattend on one end. No problem though, I made some nice worms/alien snakes to use in Necromunda/Mordheim or Inquisitor from them before I just rerolled the rest into a ball and tried again. And again. And again. It took me a few tries to get the hang of it, but it is really not that hard to use. Sure, transparant ones would have been a bit easier to see how thick it would become. but this works fine too.

Just to try it out, I made a few looped cables that are drying now, in various shapes, that I can cut up later and sculpt them into the Drone or various bases of models.. When I'm further along I will probably sculpt and mould these at the scame time so I can loop them fitting to the model. I will need to do that for the cables running to the engines. So yeah, nice one.

If you'd like one too, you can get them off Ebay or from their website, Green Stuff World

Plague Drone conversion, part 1

I'm a fan of Father Nurgle. I like to see rusted and decayed things. I like most of the artwork. And I really like the Forgeworld Blight Drone. However, I do not have the funds to buy one for Inquisitor (or Killteam) and to be honest, it is a bit big! But according to the fluff Blight Drones come in various shapes, so I assume they come in various sizes too :)

I spent some time online to see if people made look a like conversions before (they did) and if I liked them (up to a point). People use the more affordable Plague Drones for this, and I picked out 2 conversions that I liked the most.

This one:

What I like:

• It's a tutorial video. Someone has taken time to make one so other can make it. I call that cool :)
• The idea for the eye

What I don't like:

• Weedy engines, and much too clean
•  The tail
• For some reason the inverted pose makes it feel like a slow and lumbering bumblebee. 
• Why hide all of the details of the abdomen!

But there is also this, The tale of Spunky

What I like:

• Big engines!
• Pose, if a bit hunched
• Guns like the original

What I don't like:

• I like the idea, but it is missing something. It doesn't feel complete to me.

So, what did I do? Well, make up my mind first. I liked the first one better for some reason but it needed bigger engines, so I ordered the Robogear vehicle that has them (only 3.50 euro for the entire kit) and some Plague Drone bits like the body and a set of legs from a bits supplier for 8 euros. The carapache I already had. These other bits arrived 2 days ago and tonight I finally have the time to sit down and play with the bits.

But it didn't do anything for me. Drat. Now what? I wanted one cause it looked cool, I spent money on parts and it just doesn't click. So back to looking at pics of the Blight Drone and playing around with the parts that I got. I had already opened up the abdomen and inserted some srpue bits, so I turned the entire thing around, in the original Plague Drone position.

I then got the Space Marine turret hatch bit (mine is the Chaos one) and reversed that so it now had top cover for the eye. Now the armour plates are mostly ok, I will just need to sculpt a new cover one for part of the SM Turret hatch bit. Since the number of Nurgle is 3, why not give it 3 eyes, but not 3 infront, but 1 in front and 2 on the sides (or maybe even more?). I fillled in the sprue bits with superglue and maizena and set it aside to dry in the upright position, so I could now dryfit the engine parts till I found that the slightly tilted forward and exhausts tilted outward, away from the sides works best for me.

And then I dropped 1 of the bloody engines on the floor right in between a pile of boxes underneath my cluttered desk. Cue swearing and sweating while I bend underneath a table in the hot exhaust of my pc with a little handheld light, searching for the damned thing. After 15 minutes Kim came up to see what I was doing, and she asked if she could help. I gladly accepted and 5 minutes later she fishes the thing out of a box in the pile that I'm sure I searched twice. Shows what I can do.

After thanking her she started asking questions about what it is I'm making. After a short Chaos gods in 40K course I came to the shortest , apt, description I could find. A big mechanised fly that shoots back when you try to swat it. There. Apt enough?

Anyway, I stuck the engines on with bluetack and took some shots of how it stands now.

As it stands now, more upright, and the head bit angled downwards towards normal sized miniatures, I feel it looks a lot more menacing then the other conversions.

What I need to do now is:

• Let the idea fester in my head :P
• Resculpt the top armour a bit so it covers the head bit partially, leaving most of the cabling exposed.
• Add 3 or 4 gun(barrels) underneath the head, not too much, I don't want to overpower it.
• Add cabling from the engines to the top and bottom hole
• Add leggs to the first 2 holes in the body (this means ordering more legs)
• Greenstuff up the engines so the look more organically armoured and suitably Nurgle, Also, add spike coming from the center angled downwards.
• If I'm ordering up more bits, why not add the parts for another one? I'm quite enjoying this :) (meaning no I can't cause I don't have any money right now, unless I sell more stuff. But not needing a Carnifex carapache does bring the costs down a bit.)

Quite chuffed now, I am :)