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I’m building another ornithopter, which will be fitted with solid wings. It’s a resin model moulded for me by Curtis of Ramshackle games. Now all I have to do is finish the wings, which are well underway, as you can see below.
 Ornithopter The original model had insect style wings, which Curtis made for me last summer when I ran out of time to finish the solid wings that I was originally planning. It was also unarmed – I’m building this next one as a gunship, with twin rocket pods and a chin mounted cannon. Read how it was built in this previous post.
 Original ornithopter at BOYL
At the start of the month, I posted a photo from a battle with this building dominating the centre. Here’s a bit more about how it was built.
 Large building scenery Roof
It all started about 15 years ago with the roof, which is a base for a pair of ERTL tie fighters. I based them up separately, which left this big plastic rectangle covered in interesting detail. Hmm, I thought, that would make a great element for a building. At the time I was into the idea of Cyberpunk era skirmishing, so I decided to do a generic modern building. I built the
Walls
 Foamboard corners The walls are all built from 5mm foamboard. The regular sizes of the columns made it very quick – just slice it up with a metal ruler and a scalpel. To make the corners neat, cut one piece 5mm ‘too big’, so it overlaps the other, then cut a strip off the back so just the outer skin remains. This will then cover up the cut edge of the other piece. From the top, it should look like this diagram.
To hide the most prominent cut edges, I used mounting board rectangles for all the window cills. To add a bit of interest I stuck corrugated card on the panels between the windows (you can get this from craft shop – unlike cardboard boxes, it only has a ‘skin’ on one side of the wavy bit.
After I had built the walls, there was then a pause of a decade or more until a few weeks ago when I decided that I’d really like to see it finished.
Railings
This is 10mm mesh – you can get it from building suppliers like Wickes. You’ll need a strong pair of sidecutters to cut the heavier gauge like this. It also makes great ladders if cut in a single strip. I’m a big fan of balconies on buildings as they make them much more interesting when used in a battle.
 Inside building Inside
The main body of building has a removable floor. This makes it accessible and also means that it can have more scenery stored inside it (I’m always looking for ways to make scenery pack down. The floor is also foamboard with mounting board edging around the central hole.
Stairs
These stairs are free standing, so they can also be used with platforms etc. The landing is just large enough for a 25mm base, and they are made from foamboard and mounting board. These were the fiddliest part. The stairs themselves have a foamboard ‘ramp’ underneath, then I folded a strip of heavy gauge paper (thinner than card) in a concertina style and stuck it on with PVA, smearing it the full length of each ‘ridge’ so that it was held very firmly to the foamboard underneath. This was much quicker and neater than making separate steps.
Painting
The concrete parts of the building were all painted with a textured emulsion. This has a lot of body to it, so it’s good for covering cracks, and it also gives a much more substantial look when painted. Everything was painted with emulsion – colours used were black, very pale cream, brown, turquoise (used on the stairs and interior floor). Emulsion is much, much cheaper than acrylic, and for something like this is just as good.
I didn’t add much detailing – signs etc because I was trying to stick to the bare essentials. and also it makes it more generic. This could serve for pretty much any period from WW2, to post-apocalyptic, to Necromunda. Here survivors deal with a typical zombie infestation. Figures from left to right are: 2 Wargames Factory zombies, 2 Copplestone Castings zombies, a converted GW Delaque ganger and an engineer from my Warfactory range.
“Make the boy see sense”, she turned to her husband in desperation. “I just want to make something of myself, that’s all”, her son retorted “that Tom from Top Farm bought Betsy ribbons at the fayre. Where am I going to get money like that if I stay here?”.
“At least trees won’t fight you back, or take your fingers with the cold. And Frank’s brother came back, but he’s not been right in the head since. Doesn’t sleep all night or say a word that a person can understand”
 Woodcutter’s son Sometimes when you are painting a model, a story comes into your head, and it was definitely the case with this one. He’s from the Frostgrave soldiers box, and I love this head with the woolly hat – it’s so basic and so real. He’ll serve as a Thug (doesn’t really seem the right term for him). I imagine him in the inn with the hard bitten veterans, trying to keep up with the drinking and waking up with a sore head.
My painting rules for 2017 have been bent a little (see New Year post here), in that I’ve been painting a load of Antares stuff for Rowan, that isn’t in the tray. But I have also finished this unit which was in the tray at New Year. They too belong to Rowan and were a combined effort in that he did three and I did the rest, and to his credit, it’s not easy to spot which his three were, even close up.
 Bloodletter Unit These are from the current Games Workshop kit, which was an impulse buy from a little toy and gift shop called Dizzyware in Bingham (I’m sure they could do with your custom if you live that side of Nottingham). I’m not keen on a lot of the current GW ranges, but there’s a lot to like about these, specifically:
- They aren’t burdened with enormous guns, massive helmets, skull ornaments etc etc.
- They aren’t hugely over-muscled, but lithe and swift looking.
- They have a standard bearer and musician (that one on the right is carrying a big wiggly horn – it doesn’t seem to have any valves, so I don’t think he produces music in the normal sense of the word).
 Bloodletter Command Group The banner is based on the Donnie Darko rabbit – after a sarcastic suggestion that I should paint a ‘bunny’ on it. Well, will a Satanic rabbit do? The film one has characters making up the face, which I replaced with generic faces and a skull, otherwise it’s more or less a direct copy, although I wasn’t as successful as making the faces part of the head as I wanted. Probably a lot easier in Photoshop…
 More Bloodletters They are quite similar models, so to give them some variety and stop a Chaos unit looking too orderly, they were painted in a good range of skin tones, from the almost black one at the front to the brighter reds at the back. Their upper body is covered in small lumps, and these were painted in different colours on different models, some bright red, some the same tone as the surrounded skin and some in a sort of bone colour. The glistening red which you can see on some of the hands and weapons is translucent red paint for glass, which is conveniently water based and gives a much more realistic blood look than ordinary red paint. I’ve tried not to go to mad, with just a few dribbles on the weapon blades etc.
Another couple for the growing cult. These are the fantastic Bob Olley sculpts with new plastic arms. The one on the right spent a couple of decades in the corner of the cabinet with the original hybrid arms and an autocannon. Just didn’t suit him and he languished half painted and unloved (albeit with the natty red trousers).
 Bob Olley hybrids As part of the “get all the Genestealer stuff done” drive, I stuck spare Neophyte arms on and was really pleased with the results. The one on the left’s shoulders are perhaps a bit broad, but I think it adds to his air of hulking menace.
I’m not keen on some of Bob Olley’s stuff, but his baroque highly decorated weirdness suits these down to the ground. Look at those crazy metal jacket things at the back – how did Bob come up with those shapes?
“Begone, foul hell spawn”. A somewhat outclassed apprentice tries to see off this looming menace with a newly memorised bit of magic.
 Frostgrave worm – model from Ramshackle One of the more unusual monsters in the basic Frostgrave rulebook is the Giant Worm. I’ve been trying to collect up all the monsters and bits for the scenarios in the original book (yes, I am getting left well behind as more get released, but you have to be realistic).
I painted it purple because that’s what I remembered the book as describing it as, but revisiting it, there’s no mention of colour. I think I must have been thinking of a D&D purple worm.
A lot of people have used more dragon-like creatures, but this maggoty thing from Ramshackle Games is just perfect. The bestiary says “They were originally bred to clean the city’s sewer system, devouring all of the waste“, so a bloated, blind creature, with a mouth like a waste disposal unit, fits the bill, and for £5, it’s good value for something that can tower over a luckless adventurer.
Ramshackle Slag Dragon Maggot
Last year Rowan bought a box of Deathwatch Overkill to form the basis of a hybrid army. The Neophyte and Acolyte boxes have further swelled their numbers, but that still wasn’t enough, and there are plenty of spare parts on the sprues. So, to supplement the hybrids in mining gear, we’ve also been doing some cultists – rich purple robes, a bit more ragged and mysterious. This one is based on a spare cast from my own range.
I took the head off with side cutters, pinned on a spare plastic hybrid head and then added a green stuff hood to fill the gap. A little bit of ‘genestealer pattern’ in light blue livened up an otherwise fairly plain model. He also had a very normal looking foot protruding from his robe, so I whipped that off and replaced it with a claw.
The original cast
Rowan and I went to Warlord Games HQ in Nottingham for their fortnightly Antares games night last night. They are open till 8.30pm and there are four tables available, such as this rather nicely sculpted desert. We played two games, which were against each other as we were first to set up, but all four tables were in use by the end, one for Bolt Action. Ghar seem very popular, being 3 out of the 4 armies on the other tables. In our first game I took 750 points of the store’s Algoryn army and faced off against our newly painted Ghar.
 Algoryn prepare for the onslaught I took the Algoryn, who are heavily armoured, but their base guns use mag technology which isn’t as good as the plasma weapons that Concord have. Critically their penetration is too weak to cause pins on the Ghar battlesuits, so they are reliant on the Ghar rolling a zero on a d10 when hit (not very likely). Rowan fielded 3 squads of battlesuits and a squad of outcasts with a disruptor cannon. His outcasts (being puny goblin creatures) dug in at the back in some rocks, while the Ghar trundled forward, my mag rounds pinging off their armour.
A lucky shot from my command group took down one Ghar on my right flank, but other than that I caused no casualties. In the following turn the command group was obliterated when a Ghar shot deviated from its intended target of the skimmer. The skimmer which carried my only substantial weapon spent most of its time ‘down’ and didn’t do much. The game ended on turn 6 when I lost over half my command dice and my army broke altogether. Total Ghar casualties – just one battlesuit.
 Ghar close in on their luckless victims In the next game Rowan took the Algoryn and I used Concord. This time we played a scenario in which I had to capture at least 2 out of 3 objectives on his back line. I had 4 Concord squads plus two support squads consisting of two light support drones. All had buddy drones – these are spotters which allow you to re-roll any misses, which makes them very useful but they do die immediately if your opponent rolls a 1 (low is good) when firing at your unit. I hung back and used my superior firepower to blast him. Again the Algoryn skimmer didn’t do much. It got pinned and then rolled badly to activate several times. The Algoryn right flank was weaker, so I concentrated fire there, putting just enough fire on the other flank to interfere with their firing. One Algoryn squad was destroyed and another seriously weakened. I had lost the odd trooper and quite a few buddy drones, but was winning the firefight. With time running out, one Concord squad started to rush forward but took a couple of casualties and went down near the Algoryn troops, however, with supporting fire from another undamaged squad, it got back up again and sprinted for the first objective on the far right of the Algoryn line. With one turn to go, I had to clear his command squad and advance the depleted lead squad into the middle of his deployment area. Some lucky shots blew away the two troopers and his general failed his break test, so my squad could sprint to the second objective and secure a last minute victory.
All in all a good game, and we might well be back in two weeks time.
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