Necron basing crystals anyone?

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, the dungeon accessories mold from Hirst Arts also has crystals on it. As I've been casting up my boxes and barrels, I've also been casting up crystals and everything else on the mold as well. This has left me with a reasonable collection of these crystals that I have no real use for and so I thought in true blogosphere community tradition, I'd pay them forward!

The crystals are cast in Herculite2, so they're a lot strong than plaster of paris but can still be trimmed down with a hobby saw or clippers and the bottoms can be easily sanded to alter the angle they sit on. I wouldn't recommend using hobby files on them to be honest, sand paper is far more effective. I should say that the do have the odd air bubble here and there, we're still perfecting our casting technique, but if you can deal with failcast, you can easily deal with these.

So, if you're a Necron player or have another great use for them, drop me a line in the comments and I'll get them over to you. If a few people want some, I'll split the pile, if there's loads, I'll randomly pick one or two of them. The only thing I ask is that once you've used them, send me a link so I can see what they look like painted up on a base.

Col

Barrels and boxes everywhere

As I've mentioned previously, we're seriously getting into dungeon delving with little man. Our ruleset of choice is the old Heroquest game from MB games.

Now, in typical Corbania Prime style, the idea of playing on the board that comes with the game or even the modular card floors that come with GW's Advanced Heroquest just didn't seem good enough. This led us to look into ways of making a proper 3D dungeon and ultimately, led us to the Hirst Arts brick molds.

Now our dungeon is coming together nicely (I'll blog about that soon) but little man commented that we needed some more bits for the dungeon because it was a bit bare compared to some of the pictures we'd been looking at online. This led us to buy the dungeon accessories mold which I have to say is brilliant.

The mold is designed to create a host of items that you'd find in a dungeon or fantasy setting. There's a host of barrels, boxes, crates, chest, buckets, sacks, bowls, as well as a really large barrel, treasure pile and other ornaments. There's even crystals (Necrons anyone?) and a wooden bridge!

We've only really experimented with the barrels and boxes so far but they really do enhance the dungeon rooms

Painting them couldn't be easier, little man did these with two coats of a foundation brown and a devlan mud wash.

With a little added dry brushing, they really do look realistic.

Overall, they're cracking accessory pieces for any 28mm fantasy game and even futuristic settings. Hopefully, we'll be bringing you more pics really soon.

Col

My First Building by Cpl Corben

Hi, it's Corben again.

I built a building with my dad today. My dad told me to clip out the pieces to make the building. I had to put the flat edge of the clippers against the model because if I didn't, it would go all wonky.

I glued the pieces together.

I glued the rest of the pieces to make the wall. My dad helped by holding it still.

There were lots of pieces.

I used special broken windows for the end of the wall.

I put glue all away along the top edge of the window pieces for the second floor.

Then I glued the second floor on.

Next I glued the side piece of the wall.

Next we took a picture of the ground floor and this is it.

I glued on the buttresses and the wall on the second floor.

This is a picture of me and my sister Willow and my building.

Now I will have to paint up the building.

Cpl Corben

(Had a cracking afternoon making this with little man, he's really getting the hang of putting these models together! - Col)

Can a brother get a little hobby help?

So, as part of the half-term holidays, I've been getting in some serious hobby time with my lad.

I had promised him that we'd build one of my guard vehicles but when we dug it out, it appears that the floor is missing from the sprue.

I know it's a long shot, but do any of you guys got a spare old school chimera floor that you wouldn't mind selling?

If not, if anyone can give me the dimensions etc so I can attempt to reconstruct it out of plasticard please.

Thanks in advance guys

Col

The War Diary of Major Tiberius Corbane

These are the words of the dead.

We no longer fight defiantly to an honourable end.

The time of standing proudly side by side, brother to brother, facing the cursed corruption ended three days ago with the great betrayal.

Now scattered throughout the city, surrounded by the cursed, we seek only righteous retribution for our loves lost and unrelenting vengeance for the day that will come to us all.

Until that day comes, we are the Corbanian 1st, our deaths will cost them dearly!

Major Tiberius Corbane
Commander of the Last of the Lost

Three days after the Betrayal

Challenging Horses

My recent foray into historical gaming has presented me with some interesting challenges. One of these challenges is painting, no longer is my painting station full of comforting guard greys, it's now swamped with an array of new pots holding all sorts of non grey colours.

Never being one to shy way from a challenge, I decided the first historical models I should tackle should be horses. My Norman force has a substantial cavalry element, so I've got quite a few of these beasts to paint, 17 to be precise!

(I always thought my first horse would be a rough rider, who'd have guessed they're be William the Conquerer's mates.)

Anyway, I digress, it's not only new colours I've got to contend with, it's new painting techniques as well. Dry brushing and hard edge lining don't work so well on horses, so I've had to start to learn layering, blending and washing as well, it's the dark arts of painting I tell you!

The final challenge I've had to face is the actual colour schemes. 40k gives you a lot of freedom when it comes down to colour schemes. It's down to you what colours you paint your army, there's no real right or wrong way, and most the 40k community accept this happily. The same is not so with the historical bunch. They like their models to be accurate and so I've found myself researching what Normans would wear, how their shields were decorated, what dies were available etc. Who would have thought I'd end up doing history homework as part of my toy soldier hobby!

Luckily, my mate Mike is a fountain of knowledge when it comes down to these things but even with his help, I'm still having to do lots of research. Take these horses, I must of spent at least three hours looking through google images to work out various colour schemes for them and I'm only just getting started.

So, those are the challenges and these are my first very challenging horses, let me know what you think in the comments guys!

Col

State of play ...

I thought I'd put together a post about where I am in the hobby world right now. Hopefully, this will give you an idea of what sort of things will be coming in the future on this blog.

So where am I? It's a bloody good question to be honest. I suppose you could say I've reverted back to my first days of gaming. I'm playing simpler games now and I'm enjoying gaming a lot more.

Don't get me wrong, I love 40k but it's a hell of a lot of hard work. It's expensive, time consuming, mentally fatiguing at times and to be perfectly honest, it's had a dedicated decade of my hobby life all to itself. So the time has come to put it aside for a while. I doubt it'll be aside for long as I'm still buying white dwarf and I do love my guard but I'll only be dabbling in it occasionally. There's more important hobby activities to be pursued right now. Saying all that, I do have a mate who's itching to get back into 40k, so in typical Corbania Prime style, who knows!

On the actual gaming front, I'm seriously getting into Saga.

Saga is a dark age skirmish game based in Europe in the time leading up to the battle of Hastings. It's a really simple game to learn, has a relatively low model count and the lack of 'superpowers' so to speak means it's more tactically challenging. The games mechanics work really well with all your actions (unit movement, shooting, combat) being based of the availability of certain symbol from a pool of symbolic dice. The amount of dice in that pool depends on the amount of units you have at that point and so decrease with your army's losses. Finally, each faction has a unique set of abilities that can be activated by certain dice or combination of dice. The welsh have skirmish, ambush and archers abilities, my Normans have cavalry and archery based abilities. This combined with the simple fast game play (we played four games in three and a half hours) make it a genuine pleasure to play.

The other game in my hobby life is Heroquest. Or should I say, our own modified version of Heroquest. I've been working with little man to come up with a simple rule set for playing a very basic dungeon adventure game. I've found by coming up with the rules organically as we play the game is really helping him understand and learn the rules bit by bit. So far, he's recruited his two cousins into his band of adventurers. We have his cousins for sleepovers quite a lot so there's plenty of hobby time.

In hobby time, I've found the added bonus to hobbying with your kids is that my wife is far more supportive of hobby activities and purchases! Oh the joy of children hey gents!

As a spin off, to make things more interesting for little man, we've been working on casting up a modular dungeon to play on. I'll blog more about that in a later blog, but it's a great activity for me as much as the kids.

So gents, that's the state of play in my hobby world. Any of you guys playing Saga or Heroquest? Or even casting up Hirst molds?

Col

Painting faces

As some of you know, I have a real problem painting faces. For the past couple of years, all my faces have been a base coat, wash and dry brush affair.

Well, this is no longer the case. After a master class over whatsapp with my mate Mike, I managed to paint the face of my HeroQuest adventurer. I have to say, I'm really chuffed with this guy. Let me know what you think guys ...