Nurgle Maggot Mounds

Well, I hope everyone got what they wanted from under the Newtonmass tree?

The Maggot Mounds are some pieces of scenery done for my Nurgle table.

The overall construction is very simple: some disks of expanded polystyrene covered in sand, some pillars made from wedding cake columns, some maggots made from painted grains of rice and some bitz.

There are three mounds (normally placed in the shape of the symbol of Nurgle) and each mound has three pits that are disgorging maggots (also in the shape of Nurgle).

I've made these as strong as I can so each piece has been given several coats of matt varnish. The maggots and entrails were also given a final coat of gloss varnish.

In games of 40k, they either provide 5+ cover to models that are on them  (the wussy version) or they provide 4+ cover save but  each model has to take a dangerous terrain test every turn (whether they move or not).

Chaos Forest Of Pain

This was a project I started ages ago and never finished. The idea was to use this as a "mysterious forest" on a chaos table.

The rusted wheels are cardboard, the trunks are dowel and the rest is odds and sods from the bitz box.

The barbed wire used here is hand made using my "real barbed wire" technique

My contribution to the End Of The World.

Happy Newtonmass, everyone

Barbed Wire

This method produces the most attractive, cheapest barbed wire possible but is not the fastest way. Still, we all have to suffer for our art :)

This barbed wire is attractive because it is made from real wire, and this lets it fold, drape and stretch like real wire.

As I say, this is a little time consuming... it will take an hour or so per meter of length but I urge you to try and make a short length... maybe 10cm... just to feel it and see how cool it is.

As an added bonus, the little barbs are capable of drawing blood just like the real thing.

Making it is really simple too. All you need is wire and a craft knife.

Start with some normal wire from the hardware store. Strip out the thin strands of copper wire from inside.

Grab three of these strands and tie a basic knot in them.

Pull the knot tight.

Carry in doing this. How close you get the knots really depends on your patience. Aim for no more than 1cm between them to get the best effect.

Once you have got a length you want, tease out one of the strands from the three and cut it close to the knot. The little pieces left over will form the barbs.

Necron Apocalypse Obelisk

I have always wanted a Necron Pylon from Forgeworld but to be frank, I can't justify the cost. So this is going to be my next best thing.

I took the template for my normal obelisks and enlarged it until the top was the same size as my cyborg monolith. Then I changed the file so that the top of the apocalypse obelisk was flat.

Now I have a model that I can either use as a terrain piece for normal games or as a Pylon if I ever play a game of Apocalypse.

There are a few bugs in the big model but once I have worked them out I will move it to the lasercutcard.co.za web store. This will probably be early next year.

C'Tan Shard

This blog was supposed to be about how I was going to try and paint everything I had that was unpainted. 

It as been hijacked a little by LaserCutCard but that is not to say that I am not doing any "normal" painting.

I always had this model but I did not like the paint job. 

I was painting up some new obelisks and I thought that I would give the C'Tan the same parabronze treatment so that it looks like it is formed from the same material as all the other buildings on my Necron table.

Ammo Dumps and Tarpaulin

Awhile ago I mentioned I had found some cheap little plastic stoppers at the hardware store that looked like ammunition crates.

I finished these off last night and since they are so cheap and easy to make I thought I would share how I did them.

To make them all you need are your crates, white glue, some tissue (for blowing your nose, not wrapping paper) and maybe some string.

Start  by doubling over the tissue and then cutting a piece big enough to mostly cover your scenery. So if the tissue is double-ply then this will give you four layers.

Next, take some slightly watered down white glue and, starting at one end, dab it on to the tissue, pushing it on to any surface detail and trying to get it to hang naturally (tarpaulin is quite heavy)

Near the end, fold back some of it so that you don't cover up all your hard work.

Finally add some string to represent tie downs. The best stuff I have found is this wax cord that you buy at beading places.... anyone who makes necklaces will know where to get it. I glued it down with superglue.

After that, it was just about painting. I painted mine olive drab and then drybrushed up by adding tan.

Simple, fast and cheap.

Hot Tank Action!

I don't get to play that many games so when I do I really like them to try and look good. Part of this is normally "politely requesting" (the rest of my gaming group would probably say "be totally anal about") my opponent having a fully painted and preferably WYSIWYG army.

Fortunately Steph, down from Johannesburg for a year, has a beautifully painted IG mech army and so I hauled my IG - the 24th Romanov Rifles and tarted them up a little.

The main reasons for playing though were:

• the baneblade
• the table

The baneblade is a scratch-built kit I made from plastic card when the forge world kit was first released. In all that time it has never been in combat.

The table is something I have been working on in dribs and drabs for the last two years. Some of the pieces on it (the container terminal) are quite new, others date back a while.

I'm going to be making a lot more terrain for this table and it is all going to be art deco rather than gothic. Watch this space...

I have put up a few pictures here but the bulk of them are at the Laser Cut Card facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/LaserCutCard (if you are on facebook then please "like" the page - I generally will update it a few days before the blog.

Steph's army: 2500 points of mech IG

My army: 2000 points of Romanov Rifles. I gave Steph a 500 point advantage as I thought the baneblade would be overpowering in this relatively small battle. Boy was I wrong.....

The table in all it's glory. The centrepiece was the skyscraper that also saw the bulk of the fighting.

The container terminal, made up of these parts:

30mm containers

security fencing kit

site office kit

Steph's warlord tank in the ruins of the furniture factory

The baneblade near the ruins of the other factory.