"Heretical" Billboards from TTCombat

I know I've been a bit lazy lately about posting to the blog, but there's an explanation for that... which is that I've been a bit lazy about painting :-(

Conscript Greg, on the other hand, has been on a tear lately with his Thousand Sons and Space Wolves he's been working on from the "Burning of Prospero" box set. Now, this little project can't compete with that at all, but I like to think I'm contributing to the Heresy in a small way.

Awhile back I got some 28mm billboards from TTCombat - a firm out of the UK that makes no end of interesting laser-cut MDF buildings and terrain items. I assembled and primed them one afternoon about 4 months ago... and they sat...

Then one day this week I was consumed by a mania to just get the damn things painted already. They had previously been primed black and dusted with grey spraypaint so all that was needed was weathering... and some actual billboard imagery, of course. So in keeping with the current Heresy rage I came up with a couple of suitable images from the Web. The "Horus for Warmaster" image is from redbubble.com, a custom t-shirt vendor.

The image above was grabbed from Google Images with a couple of our clever hashtags added - "#MIGA" of course stands for "Make [the] Imperium Great Again" :-)

Lots of weathering on these structures - basically an uneven wash of Agrax Earthshade followed by sponge chipping and random streaks of Abaddon Black/Rhinox Hide cut with Agrax (like I said, "lazy")

Now here is where the cleverness really shines. I figured that I might want to swap out the billboard images from time to time - the structures themselves are pretty generic and would fit in anywhere from the 1960s to the 41st millennium. My initial thought was to use neo-dymium/rare earth magnets stuck on the back of the structure, but the ones I had on hand turned out not to be strong enough. So I used some old steel bases I had laying around instead.

The billboard images were simply printed off on a colour printer and...

...attached to some adhesive sheet magnet material from Michael's. (This is the stuff they sell to make fridge magnets).

Et voila... slick billboards for 28mm gaming with swappable images.

Sometimes laziness can be a virtue!

Trenchworx 28mm Renault FT-17 Tanks

Awhile back I participated in a Kickstarter (sorry Greg) run by a company called Trenchworx. I've heard nightmare stories about Kickstarter campaigns before but I have to say that the Trenchworx KS was run professionally and efficiently. Communication was great and the product was high quality!

I blogged a few months ago about the British MKIV tank I'd painted as a German "beute" panzer. The other vehicles I got were a troop of three Renault FT-17s, which I built and painted a few weeks ago.

The kits included both a 37mm gun and a machinegun for the turret, and optional trench rails as well. The vehicles were a snap to assemble, and even included magnets for the turret and weapons.

Here it is with the 37mm gun mounted. I painted the tanks in a standard camo scheme with markings for the third section of the second company. There's a handy guide here on the Landships site.

And here's the turret machinegun.

Here it is in pieces. The holes for the magnets are beautifully countersunk into the parts and the magnets fit perfectly. Just make sure you get the polarities correct! ;-)

All in all these are great kits and will look superb on our Great War battlefields. They'll also spur me on to build up my late-war French. I've just finished some work on a group of Foundry models that were painted by our late friend Glenn, and I intend to add to those with more Foundry stuff, including some 75mm guns and crews.

DOE - D'oh!

The DOE Gunship from Khurasan - frustration awaits...

As the Green Bay Packers rightfully hammered the pretenders in Houston tonight I thought, since I was busy clearing the decks on 15mm sci-fi, that I would try and complete an acquisition that had been hotly anticipated for some time - the 15mm DOE Gunship from Khurasan's sic-fi near future Nova Respublik faction.

This model had been hotly anticipated, and the seemingly endless amount of time it took to arrive from computer drawing to actual model available for sale makes it "exhibit A" in my case to figure retailers that showing greens/renderings on a "coming soon" basis is actually a means to create frustration more than sales...

All that aside, who doesn't want a "Space Hind"?  The Soviet Hind attack helicopters are iconic pieces of kit.  A sci-fi version for the cool Nova Respublik? Sign me up!!!  When they were FINALLY available for sale I ordered right away...too bad, because I should have thought this through...

First of all, the model is a blizzard of parts.  This is not a simple or intuitive kit to put together.

And for all of the detail, there is NOTHING about the model designed to accommodate any sort of flying base in any way.  I find this oversight to be quite bizarre - this is, after all, meant to be a gaming miniature, used on a gaming table. It will need a flight base, so it can "fly" over the troops on the table.  As a VTOL craft, preferably some kind of base it can detach from - but failing that, some kind of flying base.

But this model was designed with none of that in mind.  I find this baffling, and very surprising coming from a solid outfit like Khurasan. You can build it with the landing gear down if you like (which you can see in the pictures through the link), but other than making the model useful as terrain or an objective, this is not useful for gaming.  I want this thing cutting across the table lighting tanks and troops with rockets, not sitting in a revetment waiting for the rebels to get it...why this was not more thought out, I don't understand.

Some might say "well, you can just use tools to rig it up yourself".  That is true, but I don't WANT to have to bother with drills and tools and other silliness just to put a 15mm wargaming model on the table.  Companies that assume you should just do that as a matter of course make me nuts. How is it that every rocket launcher, gun pod and sensor was so thought out, and the flying aspect of basing the model was not?

I drilled a little magnetic bit into the bottom of the craft.

To try and find a way around this I drilled out a hole for one of those round magnetic pieces I have seen the guys use on "Wings of War" planes.  I am trying to find a way to mount the counter-magnet into one of the GW flying bases.  I have not figured it out yet.  On the plus side, I have developed a number of new swear-word combinations today.

This is how I generally feel when trying to work with magnets, drills and other silliness

But at least I have a start on the magnet thing.  I figured I would at least get the model finished and painted, and then sort out the flight stand.  WRONG.

As I said, this model is a blizzard of parts.  The DOE is a twin-tailed VTOL gunship, with a fin/wing at the back between the tails. The picture up at the top, replicated again below, shows where this fin should go, and also shows how it does not fit - not even CLOSE.  This isn't a matter of green stuff - this is a part that is not even close...and it is a key part.

The tail wing bit is not EVEN CLOSE to fitting where it should - it should join to each tail fin, but there is an ample gap on each side.  And yes...I use my thumb nail as a paint palette...

I thought perhaps I had not mounted the tail pieces snugly enough to the body, but this still does not cover the distance. So suffice to say, this DOE is going nowhere for now.  D'oh!  This "breakdown" appeared on the third step of assembly - I didn't even get to all the small wings, sensors. rocket pods etc. Grrr!

I have to figure out some kind of bodge for this tail fin...I'm sure this is some kind of fluke, or maybe a sign of a new product, as generally I have seen nothing but top quality from Khurasan.

This model is beautiful, and I would love to get this thing on the table. I commend Khurasan for coming up with this and getting it to the market. I am sure it took a lot of work.  But I wish they had thought it through a little more - as in, how will this thing actually get out on to the table top? And I urge caution to all out there who are thinking about getting one of these things.  On the other hand, if you are like me, you had been waiting for so long, you probably already bought one...in which case, I wish you better luck that I am having!

Get Up, Stand Up

Here's a mini post about how clever I am (!) in making a flying stand for my 15mm Old Crow VTOL.

Components: Large GW round base, styrene (plastic) pipe, neo-dymium magnet, magnetic sheet, basing materials.

I wanted to be able to have the VTOL fly around the table either laden with cargo, or without. This would be handy for scenarios where the cargo pod plays some role - either being delivered or removed! I cut a piece of magnetic sheet to size and stuck it to the bottom of the cargo pod.

Then I superglued the plastic tube to the base and the neo-dymium magnet to the top of the pipe, applied Liquitex Gel Medium and after it dried, sprayed the assembly black and finished the groundwork.

I was careful to place the magnet on the stand with the correct polarity so it would be attracted to the magnet sunk into the top of the VTOL's hull (this is the same magnet that keeps the cargo pod stuck onto the VTOL).

With the magnetic sheet stuck to the bottom of the cargo pod, the stand holds the model securely in either laden or unladen configuration. I reckon this project cost no more than a couple bucks - I got 4 magnets (used one) for $5, a whole ton of magnetic sheet for $5, and had the base and plastic pipe on hand.