Category Archives: Miniatures Gaming

Finally painted something again…

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My Space Marine Dreadnought and Terminator captain converted from plastic bits. Unfortunately, I ran out of Vallejo Matt Varnish at some point during the last couple of years, and somehow never got around to ordering more from The Warstore. So they’re still in their protective Future glosscoat for now. 😛
Venerated Legionary Brutus, Centurion Lucius Crassus
The important thing, though, is that I actually painted something!
I wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous, so the paint jobs are simple and basic, no fancy techniques used whatsoever. I liked the idea of having a bright ceremonial dress and a subdued campaign dress, so I painted them in the subdued campaign scheme of Vallejo Game Color Yellow Olive with the bling in the delightfully redundantly named Vallejo Game Color Gunmetal Metal. Centurion Crassus’s left arm heraldry plate retains the deep red ceremonial armor color, which I used Vallejo Game Color Gory Red for. In the ceremonial scheme, the bling is gold and the cloth bits would be linen white.
If I were still playing Warhammer 40,000, I’d probably never have gotten around to painting anything because the sheer quantities of stuff you have to paint makes me want 3 aspirins and a lay-down. Guncrawl isn’t enough to motivate me either because I wrote the thing, so playing it still feels like I’m working…and when I take a day off, the last thing I want is to be anywhere near work stuff. So, my stuff just kind of sat in the closet doing nothing for a pretty long while.
I discovered Flying Lead by Ganesha Games last week, and it awakened my inner gamer big time. I really like the system–it’s the first one in a very long time that actually excites me enough to grab some figures and start playing. It’s also what drove me to start painting my figures again, because you DON’T need a lot of stuff to play, just a squad for each side. Matter of fact, you don’t even need that much, you can play with fewer figures if that’s all you have on hand. That’s a much more attainable threshold for me than having to buy and paint 40-50 figures per army, not to mention a heck of a lot more affordable. 
I’m gonna paint 3 more Terminators with storm bolters and powerfists to round out my little Flying Lead squad. After that comes the even easier stuff–mostly Tyranids of various flavors.
-Mel

UPDATE: I still have nearly full bottles of Vallejo Satin Varnish and Gloss Varnish. The Satin Varnish worked great for knocking down the Future hardcoat’s gloss to a nearly matte finish, and doesn’t overly dull the metallic bits like the Flat does.

Tau Battlesuit Conversions

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Some of my favorite conversions are really simple ones that barely even qualify as conversions, but they’re still a little different from the Official Way Of Doing Things.

Last year, I bought a Rapid Insertion Force boxed set that came with 9 Crisis suits, 18 gun drones, and 6 XV25 stealthsuits. A lot of the Crisis suits had some pretty bad molding issues like sinkholes and gaps between parts. Several of them I managed to address by filling them in with Squadron modeling putty or ProCreate sculpting putty and then smoothing/sanding them down, but a few of the molding issues just weren’t as straightforward to fix. I could have returned the boxed set or exchanged it, but I was in the mood for a challenge.

In the case of the jump packs, there was a fitting issue where the pack halves were significantly offset. The solution to that was to make sure both of the shoulder hardpoints were occupied, so I chose a missile pod and the shield generator pieces to occupy those slots. The shield generator is just cosmetic, it isn’t literally meant to be an usable wargear item. It just looks cool, like some sort of advanced sensor system.
I also cut off the antenna on one of the leftover pieces and glued it to the top center of the pack to represent unit leaders. You can see that mod on the suit at the lower right in the above image. They’re equipped with plasma rifles, missile pods, and flamers because they were intended to be used in my “Tauship Troopers” scenario, and I wanted a loadout reminiscent of the powered suits in the Heinlein novel. The bugs are supposed to be represented by various Tyranids, and I put the project on hold because I was having difficulty finding an affordable way to create a lot of Tyranid Warriors without ranged weapons. I would have had to buy the old Gaunt box set, use the Hormagaunt arms, which would have left me with a lot of useless Hormagaunt/Termagant bodies, and since I don’t like Termagants, I didn’t want a whole bunch of useless bodies sitting around in my bitz box doing nothing. I’m getting off tangent here, so we’ll get back to that in a minute.

The other not-quite-a-conversion thing I like to do is mount the weapons upside down so that their ammo/power supply is facing down, which looks better to me. The unit shown below illustrates that with their fusion blasters.

The unit above is supposed to be a vehicle wrecking special team, but I’m seriously considering popping off the fusion blasters and giving them the same plasma rifle/flamer loadout as the other 6 suits. Either that or buying 3 more suits…I haven’t decided yet.

Okay, back to the Tauship Troopers thing. What got me to dust off this project once again is the fact that Games Workshop is going to release separate box sets for Hormagaunts/Termagants in January. Not only that, but they’re releasing plastic Raveners, Gargoyles, and a Trygon too! The Raveners are even better than Warriors because they’re not carrying meatguns, and I can finally buy Hormagaunts without wasting money on Termagants that I don’t want. I need to figure out something for the Gargoyles, though, since they  apparently come with meatguns and no melee weapon options. I might end up just filling in the arm holes or giving them spinefists.

Painting The Lazy Way 2: Zuzzy Terra-Flex Mat

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Introduction

Several months ago, I purchased a 3×3-foot Ruined Lands terrain mat from Zuzzy Miniatures. I also posted an out-of-the-box review, but didn’t get around to actually painting the mat until yesterday. So, this post is a continuation of the review as well as an opportunity to add another painting article to Chez Ebbles.

Photos

First, a couple of photos. (Click ’em to see the full size versions.)



I only used four colors, and the mat’s surface detail does most of the work.

Paints Used

  • Vallejo Game Color Charred Brown
  • Vallejo Game Color Earth
  • Vallejo Game Color Black
  • Vallejo Game Color Cold Grey

Painting Overview

  1. The entire mat was painted with a 1:1 mix of Charred Brown and water, using a large flat paintbrush. I used a whole bottle of Charred Brown in a disposable cup.
  2. Next, the mat was drybrushed gently with a 1:1 mix of Earth and water.
  3. Another drybrushing pass, with a bit more pressure, on random areas of the mat.
  4. A final heavy drybrushing pass on random areas of the mat, with special attention paid to the rocks and areas of dried/cracked soil.
  5. The burnt tree limbs and areas of charred undergrowth were painted with thinned-down Black.
  6. The burnt tree limbs and areas of charred undergrowth were drybrushed with a 1:1 mix of Black and Cold Grey.

The most important thing to remember: thin your paint! The 1:1 paint-to-water mix goes a much longer way than unthinned paint, and because acrylic paint is transparent to varying degrees, colors blend better when really thinned out. So, that first layer of Charred Brown and water serves to tint the dark gray latex of the mat to a deep, rich soily-brown color, and the first drybrushing pass brings out the surface relief nicely. The subsequent drybrushing passes serve to give the surface a nice, uneven variation in soil color.

The mat took me about 7-8 hours to do, but it was a fairly easy and undemanding task. I used one entire bottle of Charred Brown, less than a third of a bottle of Earth, and about the same amount of Black and Cold Grey as if I were painting a couple of 28mm figures.

Conclusion

Unpainted, the Zuzzy mat looks nice enough. Painted, even by a lazy painter like me, a Zuzzy mat completely blows every other gaming landscape solution out of the water. I can’t go back to fighting battles on Planet Green Cloth now, so you could say that I’ve been absolutely spoiled by the Zuzzy mat. Painting one is an easy task, but requires a fair amount of time, so a large Zuzzy mat would be a fun group project, even for unskilled painters. Draft some family members or invite some gaming buddies over, give each of ’em a nice big tank brush, assign them an individual area of responsibility, and you’ll have a finished mat in no time flat.

Colonial Marine Conversions #5: PIG

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Introduction

Initially, I was going to build the missile teams as-is. When I got around to working on them, I was a little ambivalent because with all the other conversions done so far, the standard IG missile launcher just isn’t zorty enough, and not converting them in some fashion would feel like a cop-out. So, I put the missile teams on the back burner until last night.

I was watching Aliens again, and there’s a scene where Hudson is being obnoxious, and the phrase “phased plasma gun” piqued my interest. I immediately went to consult Professor Google on the subject, and after several different search queries, I finally chanced upon some online excerpts and scanned images from the Colonial Marines Technical Manual for something called a M78 PIG. This Plasma Infantry Gun, it turns out, looks exactly like a conventional shoulder-fired missile launcher with a separate power pack. Now that’s something we can do with the leftover bits in the Cadian boxed sets!


Anatomy of a PIG

According to what I’ve read, the PIG is basically the BFG 9000 of the Aliens setting. When this particular pig oinks, something explodes spectacularly. So, it’s definitely something we want to add to our little arsenal for antimateriel punch.

I didn’t want to just run a cable from the normal missile launcher to some converted power pack because, well, it’d look like a normal missile launcher attached to a power pack. This is fine for cinema, but not for miniature wargaming. People acquainted with Warhammer 40,000 generally already know what an Imperial Guard missile launcher looks like, and if we left the missile launcher as-is, people would automatically think “missile launcher” when they look at it. So, we want to change the way it looks a bit.

I decided I wanted to make it look a little bit more like a gun than a missile launcher, while still retaining the overall form factor of a tube-shaped shoulder-fired weapon. Looking through the leftover bitz, I found that the autocannon and lascannon remnants would do a nice job of changing the silhouette of the weapon, and the leftover voxcaster halves from the Sentry Gun conversions would make great power packs with a little work.

Required Parts

The photo below illustrates the parts needed for this conversion. When only a small portion of a part is required, the important piece is highlighted in red. (Save the leftover pieces! They’ll come in handy later.)


Configuration

The photos below show how all the parts listed above go together to assemble a PIG.


Plasma Gun Assembly

  1. Slice off the front section of the missile launcher right in front of where it meets the sight. The “ring” that the sight is attached to and the handgrip assembly both form a nice guiding line all around the tube to use as a cutting guide.
  2. Slice off the rear section of the missile launcher, from the very back of the shoulder rest.
  3. Carefully slice the longest barrel section off the autocannon barrel segment, leaving only the “ring” and two short tubes. Be careful doing this, as you need both pieces in usable condition.
  4. Clean up and trim the 2-tube segment of the autocannon barrel so that each tube is about 3mm long. Glue that to the front of the missile launcher body.
  5. Slice off the tube-like cap on the front of the missile launcher blast shield. Make sure the back of the cap is nice and even.
  6. Glue the blast shield cap to the front of the autocannon barrel segment attached to the missile launcher body.
  7. Slice the muzzle off the lascannon barrel. Remove the angled segment so that the muzzle is flat on both ends.
  8. Glue the lascannon muzzle segment to the back of the missile launcher body, with the grooves facing up.
  9. Glue the finished PIG to the normal missile launcher arm and set it aside to dry.

Power Pack Assembly

  1. Remove the remaining aerials from the voxcaster pack, and slice off the speaker assembly on its right side. This will leave a roughly 45 degree bevel along the upper right side of the pack, so clean and shave that area until it looks natural. Essentially, you want to make sure the bevel is nice and even along the whole edge. This forms the upper half of the power pack.
  2. Slice off the little box on the left side of the voxcaster pack, and shave the side down flat.
  3. Align the longer autocannon barrel segment with the bottom of the voxcaster pack, then trim and shave it so that it is the same width as the voxcaster pack. This will form the bottom half of the power pack.
  4. Glue the trimmed barrel segment to the bottom of the voxcaster pack, and test the power pack’s fit on a loose Cadian torso to make sure it seats properly.

Power Cable Assembly (Optional)

  1. Take 2 lengths of soft metal craft wire, one of a thinner diameter than the other. Hold them together side by side, then twist the thinner wire tightly around the thicker wire. Continue twisting until you have approximately 26mm of ribbed cable. (Note: this process is very quick if you have a pin vise handy. Simply insert both wires into the chuck, tighten it, then twist the pin vise while holding the thin wire perpendicular to the thick wire.)
  2. Snip the cable out, leaving approximately 3mm of the core wire protruding from each end.
  3. Using a drill bit of equivalent thickness to the core wire, drill one hole in the back of the PIG’s shoulder rest and another hole on the bottom right of the power pack.

Figure Assembly

  1. Assemble the figure’s base, legs, and torso only.
  2. You will need to shave off the boxlike protrusion on the back of the figure’s helmet.
  3. Glue the power pack to the figure’s back, then glue the head into place.
  4. Glue the right arm to the figure. Note that the right arm may need to be gooshed around just a little bit, as the missile launcher wasn’t designed to be used with a backpack.
  5. Glue the left arm to the figure, making sure you add a little dab of glue to the underside of the left hand’s fingers. (This will be attached to the sighting unit.)
  6. After the glue has set, bend and twist the power cable so that it fits on the PIG and its power pack nicely.
  7. Apply a dab of superglue gel (cyanoacrylate adhesive) to each hole, then insert the power cable permanently.

Consult the photos below for clarification on where to drill the holes for the power cable, and how to install it so that it sags nicely:



You’re done! Repeat this one more time, and you’ll have a pair of PIGs.

Colonial Marine Conversions #4: Autoloading Mortar

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Introduction

This conversion actually has nothing to do with Aliens, but it uses several leftover bits from the Aliens-themed conversions, and follows the “waste as little as possible” philosophy. We’re going to use up most of the leftover autocannon bits to make a pair of autoloading mortars.


Anatomy of a Thumper

The mortar we’re going to make is called a “Thumper” because that’s the name that immediately popped into my head when I saw the finished product. Because the rear half of an Imperial Guard autocannon (left over from the last few conversions) looks too cool to waste, I decided to see what I could turn it into. Initially, I was simply going to do a snub-nosed autocannon, but because I don’t have anything to mount a snub-nosed autocannon on, that wasn’t an useful option. When I looked at the heavy weapon sprues again, I noticed the mortar parts and everything clicked.

Tube mortars seem so ghetto compared to the conversion work we’ve already done so far, so an autoloading mortar is exactly the kind of thing that goes well with the nature of the other conversions, and it’s also a nice companion to the sentry gun and missile launchers.

The two smartgun conversions use up one and a half of the heavy weapon bipods–one bipod yields two barrels and two waldo attachment points, so the only thing that comes off the second bipod is the cradle that you glue the targeter to. That leaves two usable sets of bipod legs, albeit without the cradle/yoke doohickey on top. Those cut-down bipod legs happen to be exactly the right height for this application. The grenade launcher barrels left over from the sentry gun conversion are also used in this conversion.

Required Parts

The photo below illustrates the parts needed for this conversion. When only a small portion of a part is required, the important piece is highlighted in red. (Save the leftover pieces! They’ll come in handy later.)


Configuration

The photos below show how all the parts listed above go together to assemble a Thumper.



Assembly

  1. Slice the baseplate off the mortar half where the ball socket meets the tube. Follow the angle of the ball-and-socket connection when cutting, as you will need that angle to properly seat the new mortar.
  2. Slice off the little nub near the business end of the mortar. Make sure it’s nice and even at the back.
  3. The upper back of the autocannon body has a box-shaped overhang–cut that off so that the back of the autocannon is completely flat.
  4. Slice off the little pin on the yoke that normally fits into the hole on the tripod.
  5. Glue the ammo drum to the autocannon body.
  6. Glue the grenade launcher barrel to the front of the autocannon body.
  7. After the glue sets on the parts you just attached in Steps 4-5, glue the mortar baseplate to the back of the autocannon. You want to position the baseplate so that the bottom rear of the autocannon body is sitting directly on the front “petal” of the baseplate, about half a millimeter in.
  8. After the glue on the baseplate sets, glue the whole thing to a 25mm slottabase, positioning the baseplate so that it hangs over the edge of the slottabase by a millimeter or so.
  9. Immediately apply some glue to the feet of the bipod and position it so that the bottom rear of the yoke is resting on the “pins” of the bipod legs, and the top of the bipod is aligned neatly with the yoke.
  10. Run a bead of glue across the joint where the top of the bipod and the yoke meet.
  11. Glue the mortar bipod nub to the top of the bipod, upside down, so that the 45 degree slope on the nub is as close to the autocannon yoke as possible.

You’re done! Repeat this one more time, and you’ll have a pair of Thumpers.

In the next article, we’ll build a pair of piggy-wiggies.