Expanding Scenarios in 6th ed 40k

  So Brent (from BOLS) has challenged us to write articles about possibilities for expanding the 40k scenario options under 6th edition.  My personal preference for this is to simply expand the current 3x3 scenario table into a massive 6x6 scenario table.  I'm going to take a few pages from the 8th ed Fantasy scenarios to come up with three new deployment schemes and three new objective schemes.

Deployment

1 - Battle for the Pass
  Each player chooses a short board edge.  Deployment zones are 12" from the center (so that the armies begin 24" apart).  Units that aren't jump infantry cannot outflank because the long board edges are cliff faces.

2 - Meeting Engagement
  The players choose opposite corners.  Deployment zones are 6" from the center line (between the two unchosen corners).  Before each player deploys, they must roll 1d6 for each character and unit, on a roll of 1 the unit is not deployed and may move onto the board from the long board edge on the first turn of the game (Because the long board edge is 'the players board edge' for all purposes).

3 - Dawn Attack
  Each player chooses a long board edge.  The deployment zones are 12" from the center and each deployment zone is broken into three sections by the following chart.  Units are deployed one at a time by rolling on the chart below and placing the unit completely within the indicated section of the deployment zone.
    1: Left Flank - 18" from the left edge of the board.
    2: Right Flank - 18" from the right edge of the board.
    3-5: Center - the remaining portion of the deployment zone.
    6: Anywhere - anywhere in the deployment zone.
In addition, the first turn of this battle uses the night fighting rules.

Mission

1 - Bloodbath
  Place a single objective in the center of the board.  The player who controls the objective at the end of the game gets +3 kill points.  The player with the most kill points is the winner.

2 - Extraction
  Each player places an objective in their deployment zone.  The first player to move the objective that began the game in their opponent's deployment zone into their deployment zone wins.  If a unit controls their objective at the beginning of their controller's turn, the objective may 'join' the unit.  Once an objective has 'joined' a unit, the unit loses any movement special rules and can only move and assault 6" each turn (and can still run).  The game ends when one objective has been moved into its controller's deployment zone or by random game length.  If the game ends by random game length, the distance between each objective and its controller's board edge is measured, the player with the shortest distance is the victor.  (If this explanation didn't make much sense, it's basically capture the flag.  Hopefully that helps.)

3 - Assassination
  When an army contains no HQ choices, the army breaks and is defeated.  If neither army is out of HQ choices at the end of the game, the result is a draw.

  So these are just some of my ideas for expanding the scenarios.  With a 6x6 table, there would be a total of 36 different combinations, making for a lot of fresh and interesting 40k.  If anybody tries out any of these, let me know.  I'll probably try some out next weekend, if I've got anything interesting to report about it, I'll add an addendum.

Mycetic Spore Tutorial

  This is the story of how I made a Mycetic Spore.  I know there are about a million Mycetic Spore articles out there, but I thought I'd contribute mine because I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it was dirt cheap and dead simple to make.

  The materials you will need to make this are

    1) One 6"ish styrofoam egg from your local craft store.

    2) One block of Sculpey or Sculpey equivalent.

    3) Some plasticard

    4) One of those little Squamous Bits from Battle for MaCragge or the Genestealer kit (not absolutely necessary, but I think it is a nice touch.)

    5) Mat Gel Base (apparently this is made by Vallejo, it's a gel substance meant to be mixed with paint to give texture or with collagey stuff)

  The first thing you'll need to do is cover your styrofoam egg with Mat Gel Base.  The purpose of this is to tone down the styrofoam texture and to protect the foam from the primer.  This will probably take a couple coats which can be scraped on with a butterknife or similar implement  Each coat will take a while to dry, so let it (otherwise it'll get all fingerprinty).

  After the Gel Base is on and dry, let's make the tentacles.  To make the tentacles, you'll need to roll out tentacle shapes from Sculpey.  My 'pile-o-tentacles' used exactly one block of Sculpey.  Make a ring from Sculpey large enough to set the egg on and attach the tentacles to said ring, then flop the tentacles all over eachother in a big old tentacley mess.  Squish the egg into the center of the pile of tentacles so that after the Sculpey gets baked the egg will fit nicely.  Remove the egg and bake the tentacles as per the directions on the Sculpey.

  Once the Sculpey has been baked, you can glue the Squamous Bit to the egg and the egg to the tentacles. Then cut out a base from plasticard, glue the tentacles to the plasticard, and you're done!

  I painted the egg like I would the shell on my bugs, and the tentacles like flesh.  The end result is about the size of a drop pod, large enough to hide a Carnifex behind, and looks pretty good (if I do say so myself). Mine of course looks something like an eldritch coconut, but that's just the way things go.

  If anybody asks you to justify this design, I like to tell them that it's an egg full of biomass and instructions for assembling a unit, it births out gaunts or zoanthropes or whatever through it's little Squamous Bit.

Lash Whip and Bone Swords 2

So I'm mostly finished with my Tyranid Prime.  I've still got to base him and do the final Bleached Bone highlights on the shell bits on the arms (swords, etc.).  Also, the deathspitter isn't ready at all yet.  But here are some pics of him!  I'm still not sure how to highlight the bone-swords, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.

  

And yes, those are totally ancient orks in the background.

How to Lash whip and Bone sword

  Disclaimer: This post is about bone swords, so practically everything I say is something she could have said (that's what she said!), please bear with me.

A blast from the past!

  So after playing a few games using an old Broodlord model as a Tyranid Prime, I decided scything talons and rending claws were just not cutting it.  So I decided it was time to make an actual prime and to make it have some bone swords (3+ armour was just ruining my prime's effectiveness).  So first I'm gonna tell you how I made my bone swords and lash whip (I'm making all the arms magnetic so as to have more options).

  First thing I did was draw a to scale sketch (by tracing a spinefist onto an index card) of what I wanted my bone sword to look like.  Then I cut the sketch out and used it as a template for cutting two bone swords out of plasticard.
  After I had cut out my bone swords, I whittled down the hard edges (but cutting along the edge very lightly at a 45 degree angle to the flat surfaces), and I used a file to sharpen the 'blades' of the swords.
  The arms are spinefists.  I cut off the front of the fist (everything past where the dangly tubes meet the hand) and glued an armour plate from the gaunt kit to the front.  Finally, I cut a groove into the top of the fist and fitted my bone sword into the groove.  Then you're done!  Now for the lash whip.

  So here's the lash whip, I've since done some green stuff work on it, but the principle is very much the same as for the bone sword.  I've got the same arm setup (so it matches) and I've glued a green stuff whip shape to it instead of a bone sword.  I recommend rolling out the lash whip on your work bench or whatever and letting it dry, then fitting it onto the arm.

  So the other thing I've done worth talking about here is that I've magnetized all of these arms so I can have basically every option worth bothering with.  In doing so, I've discovered some stuff about magnetizing limbs that I will pass on.

Posing on the model was very important for the deathspitter

As you can see, this guy's arm is at a funny angle

  I started of course by drilling out sockets on the body for each of my magnets.  Once I'd glued the magnets in (CHECK POLARITY BEFORE GLUING!!) I stuck a magnet to each of the freshly magnetized sockets.   I feel like the posing of the arms for this guy worked out way better than it has in the past (a Carnifex and a Warjack).  The reason is that I cut out a big chunk of the shoulder of each arm, then glued it in the pose I wanted to the magnet stuck to the torso.  This occasionally results in your arm being glued to the torso or the magnets becoming glued together, don't worry too much about this, just let it dry and then cut it apart with your hobby knife once it's all set.  After gluing the arms to the magnets, I pulled them off and green stuffed new shoulders on.  With some armies I'm sure this would be more difficult, but it's kind of a breeze with Tyranids.

On to part 2!

A Hello to Arms

Lamenters

 Today I'm just posting some pictures of my lamenters.  I may at some point go into some painting details about them.

 It's a Rhino

 Sanguinary Guard

 Tactical Squad

 Captain

Death Company

 Another captain (I'm gonna repaint that power weapon, if anybody's got any suggestions for how, let me know).

I told you I'd tell you how I made a deff rolla

Unfortunately I didn't get any 'before' pics of the deff rolla because my wife had her camera (the nerve). But here's a pic of it finished and attached.

And I'll explain how that was made. You can use any cylinder of the appropriate size (I used two empty citade wash pots glued together). I wrapped some plasticard (in my case harvested from a hard card protector) around the cylinder after scoring and folding it so it would have those hard corners. The spikes are made by cutting a chunk of empty sprue into a squat pyramid. I cut a ton of said pyramids, glued them onto the rolla, and then glued a bit of sand around each one. The mounting for the rolla was made by cutting some more plasticard into the appropriate shape. I also glued some ancient rhino hatches on the sides to give it some depth. Overall, pretty easy.

I used a lot of plasticard in making this piece, but I'm too poor to afford plasticard at the moment and I improvised a lot. Here's a list of places from which to harvest plasticard:

Used gift cards/membership cards/credit card offers

Hard card protectors

Empty milk cartons

Medicine containers

Over-packaged toys

Also, cardboard will work for a lot of the same things as plasticard. The core of my battlewagon is thin corrugated cardboard. Here's some more pics of my mostly finished battlewagon cuz that's how I roll.

Battlewagon

So I got busy with school and forgot to post last week, but here's what I've been working on lately.

So what I've done here is take the current Ork Battlewagon kit and place it on top of a land raider chassis. The Land Raider had already been modified by its previous owner (and was in pretty bad condition, the spots where you can see plastic on the land raider are mostly covered in glue or carved up pretty badly... but it was free, so). The Land Raider chassis is not actually wide enough to house a Battlewagon, so I ripped the treads apart from the hull and made a new hull by cutting out a rectangle of cardboard to the correct width to support the battlewagon and wrapping it around the places where the hull would have been.

To cover the areas that were sick with glue or carved up, I spread some superglue thinly across the afflicted areas and then stuck some sand to them (as you'll see later).

You can see where that streak of superglue was dribbled down the side, now it's grime and grit!

Ah, and since I'm here anyways, I thought I'd talk about the new weathering pattern I tried on this tank. What I did was use an old frayed paintbrush to apply chaos black in a ragged pattern along the worn edges of the vehicle, and then used to same to a lesser extent to put on boltgun metal and or mithril silver.

I also want to show off my magnetized big shootas (so I can change the weaponry later if need be) but my wife apparently has her camera today, so I'll do that next week. Also, I'll show at some point how I'm making the deff-rolla for this thing.

Weathering Orks

So I started an Orks army. It's been coming together nicely so far. I just wanted to talk for a minute about weathering. I've tried a couple of different weathering techniques with these guys so far and I'll tell you which one I like best.

First:

For this one, I made some battle damage on the front plate with a modelling knife, then basecoated with scab red. Then I brought all of the non damaged parts up with blood red leaving scab red around the bullet holes. Then I just painted the bullet holes with boltgun metal. The mud on the front was done by super gluing sand all over the front of the buggy.

Second:

This time, after painting the whole tank with mechrite followed by blood red, I applied chaos black to the hard edges using a torn up piece of blister foam. Then I applied boltgun metal via the same method. I like this method better than the first and it is reeeally easy to do, but I think it looks a bit sloppy, so while it's not a bad method, I don't think I'll be using it again (although maybe I'll decide otherwise).

Third:

This time, after painting the wheel well with fancy flames, I simply painted on some chipped looking boltgun metal. This doesn't look very good at first, but after washing the model (I use devlan mud or gryphon sepia, I like to change it up from model to model) the boltgun metal kind of pops and looks nice. I like this method of weathering best of the ones I've tried so far. I've been using it on boyz shoulderpads, here's a nob I used it on.

Anyhow, the third method is pretty easy and I think looks pretty good, just make sure to give the model the wash as it improves the look greatly.

Erasing Paint

I though I'd explain something I have found to be exceptionally useful. Since I've been painting a lot of bright colors lately, I've stumbled upon a way to erase painting mistakes.

Step 1: Make a mistake when painting. This is really a problem when you get black on your yellow for example.

Step 2: Quickly rinse your brush and leave it a little bit wet.

Step 3: Apply water to the spot where you want the paint gone. The principle here is that you're going to water down the paint in that spot and then suck it up with a dry brush.

Step 4: Dry your brush (or grab a dry brush) and use it to mop up the painty water.

Step 5: If you've done this all quickly and carefully, you should no longer have paint in the affected area!

Tyranids

Hey folks,

First post for my blog here. I'm mostly going to be discussing modelling and painting war-games miniatures. I do a lot with Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, but have been known to occasionally dabble in other games (painting if not necessarily playing) Malifaux, WarMachine, etc. Who knows what I might do in the future.

Here are pictures of my Tyranid army. I've been playing tyranids for several years now when I returned to the hive mind after finally accepting that the new codex was here to stay, I decided to update my color scheme. As you can see, the hormagaunt in the back is painted using Dark Angels Green, Snot Green, and Scorpion Green for the flesh with Scorched Brown, Bestial Brown, and Bleached Bone for the carapace. My new color scheme (front) is Scorpion Green followed by Thraka Green wash for the flesh, and Bleached Bone followed by Gryphon Sepia for the carapace.

One thing I noticed when beginning work with my new scheme was that the carapace was a bit too light with only Gryphon Sepia on the carapace and the bleached bone details on the carapace didn't stand out enough. To rectify this I ended up using Devlan Mud first on the carapace in the deep recesses between armour plates on the back and head. Then

The eyes (not that they are visible) are yellow with black stripes down the middle (cat-like). And as a highlight color for the flesh I use Rotting Flesh. This is mainly for the vents on the arms and any sinuous muscle (like the jaws), but I also used it for the cords on the devourers and will surely use it for other highlights in the future.I did two washes of Sepia to get it darker so that the Bleached Bone streaks stand out better against the dark carapace.

Here are some pictures of my whole army, they're not very good though, so I'll probably try to get some better ones later.