2018 is the year of extracting digit. My old gaming buddy, mugodice.wordpress.com, had wanted an inn for his games a couple of years ago and I had been putting it off.
The brief was that it had to occupy an eight inch square footprint.
So spoiling his birthday suprise here it is.
Somebody yesterday on the Oldhammer Community page in Friendface posted an interesting question.
“Has anybody made replacement doors for the Mighty Fortress?”
The Mighty Fortress was a polystyrene castle made by Games Workshop in the mid-eighties.
Due to the age of this many of the plastic doors have disappeared or have been broken.
Some people on the Oldhammer page suggested 3D printing. This got me thinking.
Why can’t I laser cut replacements?
I dug my Mighty Fortress out and I used a piece of scrap 3mm MDF to guage sizes.
It fitted perfectly.
Next project.
A really quick and dirty job. These are from Dreamforge Games and I’ll be using them as Storm Troopers in my Not-Imperial Guard Army. It was a quick hose with the airbrush and a few little brush additions. Not my best work, but I just wanted to knock one out and have something on the table in a couple of days.
These figures actually deserve a bit more time and attention as they have some lovely detail.
I’m somewhat late on this one as I’ve been laid low with a rather unpleasant flu-like lurgy.
A quick catch-up on a couple of pieces from my last post.
Here is the Barbarian from the OS Miniatures Company. This was a challenge that I undertook to have him painted before Christmas. Nobody else took up the challenge which was a pity.
This was from Warmonger Miniatures, again painted up for Christmas.
There is one more figure which was supposed to be my last figure of 2017, but the lurgy stopped that. I’ll post when it is finished.
Old age seems to have telescoped the year. Blink and I’ll miss it.
The first three months were taken up with making the Rogue Stars display board. April/May I did some landscaping in the garden converting a be-shrubbed steep slope into a flat grassy terrace.
June/July/August were at Electric Love. I had a great time and it gave me enough money to buy my own small laser cutter.
The rest of the year seemed to evaporate, lttle jobs around the house and making bits with my loot from the summer.
Here is a group shot of what I finished painting. There is a lot more half finished and the 2018 goal is to finish all the half started jobs from the past few years, the Heresy Dragon being the main target, get all that out of the way so I have a clean slate. Then one project at a time, start it and finish it.
Yeah right!
Product of the Year 2017
On reflection it has to be the laser cutter. It’s small and slow but it has enabled me to prototype ideas and to make stuff on the fly. Christmas cards, party invites, party bag goodies, cake icing molds and gift tags just to name a few bits and bobs.
Heroes and Zeroes
Firstly the Heroes.
At the top of the list are the Facebook friends; EvH, DW, SR, ME and CF. They have been a constant source (sauce?) of inspiration, advice and encouragement. I might actually meet some of them in RL oneday.
Then comes the figure manufacturers who have gifted me with lovely toys this last year.
Ramshackle Games
http://shop.ramshacklegames.co.uk/index.php
The OS Miniatures Company
https://www.facebook.com/OldSchoolMinis1985/
Avatars of War
http://www.avatars-of-war.com/eng/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59&Itemid=51
Warmonger Miniatures
https://www.warmongerminiatures.com/
Finally Revolution Events
https://www.revolutionevent.com/
For fun, education and loot.
Now to the Zeroes
Wayland Games for lengthy delays, poor communication and their unwillingness (or inability) to combine orders.
TNT for their lack of customer service and making life just that little bit harder.
Games Workshop for tantalising me with the new rules for 40K, promises of fewer books and then conveniently forgetting about all that.
The new plastics are beautiful though.
Recently I got a parcel containing some miniatures from The OS Miniatures Company.
https://www.facebook.com/OldSchoolMinis1985/
This is a company aiming to fill the gaps in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle army books. Obviously with an old school feel.
So here are some images of what I have managed to paint so far.
A cheeky little chappie blowing his own trumpet
A Chaos Barbarian. This is part of a challenge to be completed before Christmas.
A Chaos Dwarf Arse Cannon.
Test paint
A Work-in-Progress shot of the whole group of Alpine Dwarfs
Blame my Daughter.
I am disorganised.
I am untidy.
I am lazy.
In my ideal world I would sit at my desk and paint, all day and everyday.
However in RL there are jobs to be done, kids to be fed, laundry, chickens etc. etc. etc.
I’d never heard of Bullet Journaling before. Go and Goggle it. There are about twelve million results, I just looked. So it must be fairly popular.
My Daughter visited in the summer and spent some time hunched over a notebook. I didn’t really pay any attention.
She came back last month and on a shopping/sightseeing trip (Salzburg is very picturesque if you didn’t know) had wanted to spend a small fortune on rubber stamps for her journal. My Wife told her to talk to me first.
I had some rubber sheet especially for laser cutting and knocked off a set of the stamps she was after. She was delighted and pointed me in the direction of stencils for journaling.
I erm “copied” a stencil sheet that she wanted. Basically traced the image in Illustrator, quite roughly and cut it on my laser.
She was delighted, again, and gave me a shopping list of designs that she wanted. There are a number of stencils on the market, but I want to do better.
The material I used was Kraftplex.
Kraftplex specifications
It’s a softwood pulp pressed into sheets and I had been given some samples to try from Happylab.
Back to the original topic.
I make myself “To Do” lists on the back of envelopes etc, which I proceed to lose or are “tidied” up.
So I considered buying myself a Bullet Journal and start organising myself. I took a peek at Leuchtturm1917 on Amazon which my Daughter stated was the absolute gold standard in Bullet Journals. Not excessively expensive, however it was the size issue. A5. I have a little Man-Bag and I carry around an A6 (ish) book from Tiger (their webshite is excessively annoying). So why not just use what I have and adapt.
Using my own bastardised version I have started making my own daily task lists. In reality this means I am always busy and tasks seem to overflow to the next day, but rarely to the next week.
I have just stumbled across this YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PhatWOP001/featured
By a guy called Vince Venturella.
Full of interesting little nuggets of information. I’ve just watched one on oil washes which makes me want to ditch my Army Painter Quickshade which has been my goto solution for just about everything.
Now to find time to watch the other hundred or so videos.
Winter is here
This really needs no introduction and a lot more eloquent people have written about this.
Frostgrave looked very interesting, never played it but never mind, but the only drawback that I could see was that all your scenery had to be winter themed which could be quite restrictive.
Ghost Arcipelago is set in a more tropical environment so the scenery can be integrated into other games.
At my rather casual reading of the rulebook it appears that it can be a sandbox of a rule-set. You want pyrates, OK. Savages, no problem. Dinosaurs, why not? It seems it can be a lot of fun.
I’ve put out a request for players on my local gaming forum, but no takers as yet.
http://www.diefestung.com/forum/
Next year’s Austrian Salute is looming and I’d like to try and win best gaming table again. I’ve set a standard so I have to go one better and I’m up against Christoph from Grune Horde who does his own laser cutting. To win I have to have an oustanding table AND play the game.
I have my gaming table, thankyou Electric Love. And I have started planning out a possible layout. I wanted my island system to be as interchangeable as possible so I could go from small islands to large conglomerations.
You can see on the right the first iteration of the design process. Looks nice however the pieces don’t fit seemlessly, there would be a little gully between each cluster.
This led me to laser cut this little device which means I can have perpendicular edges enabling everything to fit together unobtrusively. Hopefully.
Laser cutting some islands.
Lush tropical islands need to be accessorised.
Here are some scatter plants. I need a lot more. Thank heavens for eBay and cheap chinese aquarium suppliers.
Some scenery from my bitz box. Who knows what eldritch terrors this statue has witnessed.
On a final note. I’m having to squint to type this so apologies for any smelling mistooks. I had my eyes tested and my prescription has changed very slightly. Trying to be sensible and grown up and looking after my eyes I took the new lenses. After a week of squinting at the computer, I thought my eyes took time to adjust. Sitting a metre back from the screen hunched at a weird angle trying to reach the mouse I’d have enough and went back to the optician.
“You didn’t say you wanted to read as well.”
Using the interweb acronym FFS!
With my ill gotten gains from the summer I bought myself a laser cutter. It is a 30cm by 40cm machine from Shen Hui Laser Company based in China.
https://shenhuilaser.en.alibaba.com/
It was a bit of a performance getting it. First with the money transfer and then with TNT not communicating with itself.
But it arrived.
Unpacking revealed the quality of the components.
This, I expect most of you know this already, is the eighth iteration of the Warhammer 40K rule-set. I hadn’t played since Rogue Trader, the first iteration, back in the eighties.
I was lured to this by a new streamlined ruleset and the promise of not having to lug around armfuls of codices like the previous editions.
Something simple for me and the Boys.
I used the money earned from gardening towards this coupled with a discount from my “Local” (ha ha) gaming store.
The box is rather beautifully presented and it feels value for money. Fifty odd figures, thick rulebook and dice etc.
No complaints there.
A unit of Pox Walkers from the box
Top left, an old Chaos Marine from the eighties. Centre three figures from the Death Guard “push-fit” box. Rear right, a plastic Chaos Marine from the nineties?
Some of my longterm readers may remember a post from early 2015
https://grumpyoldtin.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/januaryfebruary-work/
Well I never heard a word of thanks or received a t-shirt. I was a little disheartened by this.
Anyway, earlier this year somebody posted on the Oldhammer Facebook Community page that a group from Exeter was planning to attend BOYL.
BOYL, Bring Out Your Lead, is sort of THE event to attend for Oldhammerers. Hosted at Wargames Foundry it is a chance for people to meet up and play games with old figures and game systems.
https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/pages/oldhammer
I posted asking if anybody knew Joe Bloggs, the guy who’d asked for the illustration. I got a response asking why and I replied that I was the illustrator and I was still waiting for my t-shirt.
I did get an apology from Joe and the promise that the t-shirt would be sent.
But I did get another message. Would I be intersted in letting my illustation be used for a new miniatures company? There would be some lead and a t-shirt in exchange.
This company had just run a Kickstarter for a very Oldhammer Gnome army which I had fallen for big-time but didn’t have the funds to back.
My response was immediate and in the affirmative.
Just after this Joe sent the t-shirt. It was a less than positive experience. The shirt had been worn and then washed, for which I was grateful. I don’t know why, because most of my clothes these days come from flohmarkts (I’m not very cash rich at the moment),I just didn’t want to touch it. But more dissapointing was the fact that the design had been printed in white on a black t-shirt. Had I have known I would have produced reversed artwork. The t-shirt looked awful.
A couple of weeks ago I got a parcel from OS Miniatures.
In it was;
A t-shirt
And some minis from a new Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/882426675/old-school-miniatures-presents-the-alpine-dwarfs?ref=profile_created
And a gnome which I couldn’t resist painting
I’ve had further good news.
My illustration is the basis of a miniature sculpted by John Pickford.
AND would I be interested in producing some more illustrations, potentially to be used for future miniatures.
A nice little project for those long winter nights.
http://oldschoolminiatures.blogspot.co.at/
I did manage to do a few bits and bobs before and during my time at Electric Love, but I don’t seem to have photographed everything. I plan to remedy this before too long.
This was inspired by the Blanchitsu articles in White Dwarf and I rather liked the floaty bits that people had made. This is part of my ongoing Imperial Court which is slowly building up.
This is a little speeder I’d lasercut and will be putting up for sale.
My old gaming buddy Seb had sent me some figures. With them was this halfling which I liked but just didn’t quite know what to do with. So rather than having it sit on the leadpile I thought I’d paint him up and return him. I had a blast painting him and I made the most impractical gaming base ever.
This was the Mayor of Helsreach, a freebie figure from Curtis of Ramshackle Games.
He was given out at the annual BOYL event at Wargames Foundry
http://bringoutyourlead.co.uk/
I really want to go to this one day.
As usual I’m far behind in my posts. Laziness, a trip to Legoland and starting work at Electric Love Festival. The ELF is my work for the next seven weeks with some very long days ahead the nearer the festival gets, so don’t expect much posting from me. If all goes to plan I want to by a small (400mm x 300mm) laser cutter with the money.
This was the event that I had been invited to the previous year and due to communication problems I didn’t make it. This year I did. Okay there were some problems with road signage and autobahn exits that were closed, but I was there.
It was advertised as a gaming day and it most definitely it was. There were three tournaments that day; Warhammer 40K, Infinity and Firestorm Armada. Also being played was Saga, Bolt Action, the ubiquitous Frostgrave, X-Wing Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Force on Force, Kugelhagel and a very brief appearance of Test of Honour (replaced by Halo Fleet).
It was held in a much larger space than the Austrian Salute. The thing I have found at gaming days is that I felt very slim. The average physique on display was, politely, well rounded.
My display
Painting competition area
Number One Son eying up a scratch built titan.
I would have written this a lot closer to the event, but I was a bit put off by events and didn’t really feel like communicating.
This was to be my fourth visit to the Austrian Salute, my third as a trader.
Plans had been made since Christmas to make and paint a display board. The aim was to win the prize for the best game. i may be crap at sports and generally poor at life but I really wanted to be good at something for once in my life. My wife thought I was bonkers and said that if I applied that much energy into other areas of my life who knows what i might achieve. I have proposed that she teaches me guitar for the next two and half months. It is something I have always wanted to do for a very long time. I actually bought a guitar thirty years ago. So maybe the time is now.
Note: this tuition hasn’t happened.
Two and a half months of feverish building and prevarication and one afternoon of actually playing the game. This seemed to throw up more questions than answers.
I had a t-shirt printed up for Number One Son and made sure the Gameboy had plenty of juice.
We arrived slightly later than planned which didn’t seem to be a problem as the venue hadn’t quite got it together to open up. Omens of later.
Setting up was slightly difficult as I had both Boys trying to “help” but it did get done.
I managed to persuade my Son to play, but he only lasted half an hour as the Gameboy was more exciting.
After a very disappointing lunch (sent back for being unappetising after an hour wait and rude and abusive staff) it was back for the afternoon.
In fact the lunch experience spoilt the whole show for me and I wasn’t really in the mood for anything.
On the plus side, I did win best gaming table.
News and announcements
(sorry, no balloons)
Olleys Armies Miniatures Blog, News and Workbench
Just a little bit about my hobby activities.
Let's build.
a maker, a teacher of making
In a world of poems, words steal love and put it on a blackboard
The adventures of my Greenskins, Dwarfs, and Bretonnians
A game designer's view of gaming
I play for fun... all else I take seriously
Collecting and Playing Orks
A Miniature Wargaming Blog
Turning Over a New Leaf
Fantasy, sci-fi and historical miniature gaming
Miniature painting, wargaming terrain tutorials, reviews, interviews and painting guides
A Gaming Podcast
Miniature painting and gaming from under the stairs
Custom Creations from Aaron Verbal Arcand
A fantasy war gamer grumbles into his beer.
My time well wasted
A wargamers hobby blog
Miniature painting and Modelling
Miniature wargaming and the occasional zombie
Wargaming
A YouTube channel about tabletop wargaming and the miniatures hobby, mostly.
a site for those who studied and taught glass at CSM as well as glass enthusiasts
Video Games, Comics, and Shenanigans.
An old git talking about toy soldiers and enormous wobbly breasts
genuine grumpy old tin 