Monster Magnet

Don't you love it when you paint up a regiment with a lot of passion, spend hours upon hours shading and basing, only to have your models fall over 1000x during a 60min game?

I don't.

And that's why I wanted to try magnetizing my WHFB regiments. There are several ways to do that (buying individual magnets, magnetic paint etc..), but I chose to give pre-cut magnets and ferromagnetic foil a try, because they seemed the mose elegant solution.


I found this nice little online shop called Magnetbases.de, who ship at reasonable rates (~€4 within Europe which can be considered more than honest, compared to all these crooks who "offer" shipping at €10 and more).

The owner, Magnus Schwekendiek, is a nice fellow who will answer all your questions about size, compatibility, shipping etc...

On top of that, you get a small discout for ordering 3 or more base sets of the same type, e.g. if you buy 3 or more 2x5 20mm base sets, the price drops from €1.60 per set to €1.44.

This can save you a euro or two when you are basing more than one regiment of 20 men. Instead of buying 2 sets of 4x5 bases, just buy 4 sets of 2x5 and cash the discount.




This is what the bases look like. The ferromagnetic foil is included. Bases are pre-cut and have a "sticky" side, which makes then very user friendly to apply to the models.


Just peel off the protective foil, stick the magnet to your model, and put the model on the magnetic foil. Done. I glued the foil to movement trays for increased stability.

(I apologise for the unfinished models!)

Here you can see the magnetic foil I glued to the movement tray.

The magnet is roughly 0.7mm thick and does heighten the model a little. I had concerns about this at first, before buying the magnets, but they were quickly dispelled. The additional height is far beyond anything noticable. I'd be more concerned about the paintjob than about that :)

Aaaah! What a feeling of relief! No more shifting and falling models! BTW, this ALSO works with metal minatures... pretty amazing.

So if you have been hesitating to get magnets for your models, I can REALLY recommend this stuff. One of the most useful features for tabletop games.

Below I listed 6 advantages of magnetic bases, which make them more than worthwile in my eyes:

1) Protection. The models stand in place and do not fall over - which happens VERY readily during games. On top of that it abolishes this little annoying phenomenon of knocking over light plastic miniatures as you are placing more onto the tray, during setup.

2) Transport. You can actually transport the regiment as a whole! It also makes moving the regiment from its shelf onto the battlefield and vice versa a 100% safe undertaking. Especially for standard bearers, which tend to have a high center of gravity and fall over easily (rest in peace Questing Knight standard bearer).

3) Price. At around €2/ set there really is no excuse for not getting these. If you consider that some people are buying GW plastic "hills" at €25 *shudder*, you would like to advise them to save their money and buy magnetic bases instead.

4) Not so easy to make yourself. I am a big fan of only buying things you cannot manufacture yourself. So scenery is out. You cannot easily make magnetic bases yourself, so there is your reasonable buy.

5) Feel. The magnets and metal foil add a little extra weight to plastic regiments, which adds to this "old school" feel that I know from my early days, where all miniatures were metal. This might sound silly, but it does feel so much cooler to push around a "heavy" block of "massive" infantry, rather than something that feels like 20 LEGO figures...

6) Standalone. You do not necessarily need movement trays to glue the foil into! Although it is recommended as it adds a lot of stability, you can move around your miniatures on the battlefield with them standing only on the foil.

I hope this will inspire some of you guys to give magnetic bases a try,

Cheers,
Tom

Chicken wings

I got asked how I made the wings on my plastic conversions of harpies.

You know what they say: an image says more than a 1000 words, so I made a little image tutorial that should answer that question :)

Enjoy!
-Tom

(click to enlarge)

Happy April 1st 2009!

Ah, the joys of Photoshop CS2.

HAPPY FIRST OF APRIL EVERYBODY! ;)

Mordheim PC game - Screenshot surfaces!

Big news!

A WIP screenshot has just surfaced on the internet, of a PC game adaptation of the tabletop game Mordheim! The game will be called "City of Corruption" and it is apparently in late alpha, so there is no release date or system requirements yet, but I guess we can expect it to come out around Q3 2010.

So... will the PC version see eye to eye with its tabletop counterpart? Leave you comments!

Shady business

I had some spare parts. To be exact, I had 5 Corsair cloaks, a few left over Daemonette heads, some Wood Elf parts and some more Corsair arms.

So I figured, why not make a small unit out of these?

My eye fell on a pretty useless one indeed: Dark Elf shades (only surpassed in uselessness by Shades with great weapons). But since it was all going to be made from bits, I thought, I might aswell give it a try.

So here is another WIP project that patiently waits to get painted :)

Enjoy

I did not feel like using wood elf cloaks AGAIN, since I have done so already on my Dark Riders (soon to be revealed) and my assassin. So I used Sea Dragon Cloaks... I think it was not a too bad decision after all. It looks okay I think.

I added a little bit of detail with Green Stuff. Since my Dark Elf army is winter-themed, I thought thick scarves were in place here.

A few inaccuracies in equipment: I did not have any Repeater Crossbows, that Shades should normally carry. I only had some Repeater Handbows (rule wise, the R-Crossbow's little brother)... but who cares really?

Dark Elf Harpists, nay... Harpies

All right, out with it!

Like almost every collector, I have quite a lot of unpainted miniatures (mostly conversions) and virtually no time to paint them.

So instead of hoarding pics of my unfinished projects on my hard drive, I might aswell start sharing WIP pics (with no guarantee that these projects will be completed anytime soon).

Here is a little project I have started a while ago, but, like many others, is currently on hold. For some inexplicable reason, I felt the urge to make some harpies for my tiny dark elf collection, because it sounded like a cool challenge to try and top the "original" GW models.

So I got myself a little box of the newly released Daemonettes, since I thought the models are just PERFECT to represent harpies (with a little conversion of course).

Below you will find some WIP pics of my conversion attempts!

My special thanks go to Alan Preuss, for his generosity. He provided me with A LOT of plastic dryads, which partly found their place in my wood elf army and were partly used for this project.

I hope you enjoy these few modest pics ;)

My 6 plasitc harpies... in the making.

I wanted the bases to reflect the harpie's role in combat. The massive "stone" formations should suggest that Harpies are there to overcome difficult/impassable terrain.

I also imagine them as dwelling in caves, somewhere high up on mountains (who cares what the Dark Elf Codex says, the fluff in there is abysmally unimaginative and badly written anyways :).

The bases are pieces of bark I scratched off a tree. I made sure to take it from the very bottom of the tree and to only remove loose bark to avoid wounding the tree too much. No trees were harmed in the making of these bases! :)

The wings are a bit of a challenge. I don't know if this will work, but so far I am optimistic. I cut out rough wing shapes from cardboard and attached it with a pin/hole system to the torsos.

The bodies are Chaos Daemonettes. The hands are transplanted from Wood Elf Dryads. I added some thumbs where neede as dryads often only have 4 fingers. I think they make pretty cool talons (albeit a little disproportionate).

I intend to reinforce the wings by adding green stuff detail.

[EDIT]: Here's a little tutorial on how I made the Harpie's wings.

Six inches of enchanted wood - Part 2 of 2

This is the finished wood, ready to be set on the table!

Oh... that reminds me, I need to make a table... hmmm.

Enjoy!