Using RTV silicone and making your own molds,

Recently I've been going to a club over in Coalville ran by a chap called Andy, as he's a one man band and a great chap I decided to help him out with some scenery for the lads that play 40K over there.

So I ordered some jersey & K barriers so that I could recast them and provide some waist high scatter terrain.

So after sticking the bits to a piece of spare plasticard,

I built a lego wall around it and smeared Vaseline to seal the cracks,

now normally you would work out the volume that you would need to mix but the place I got the RTV from didn't have that info on the technical sheets and didn't comeback to me via the email on there website, so I decided to simply "wing it" and give it a crack, One of the chaps that I play against on a regular basis suggested making a vacuum box to get rid of the air bubbles and all that jazz, but I'll look at that another time.

So after some guess work I used about 350g of mix and in a moment of madness managed to use all the catalyst! even though the ratio was 100:1.5 so I'm now on the hunt for more!

If I'd enough lego I could have done the crates as well but that can wait till another day, So popping the mold was quite tricky as I didn't want to rip it but after some work it came off,

So I poured the first cast and waited a good 90 minutes before popping the bits as the energy barrels would take a while to set, as as usual mixed too much plaster so I had a spare mold and one of Isla's sand molds to hand!

So the first casting compared to the originals, overall I'm very happy with these and a nice quick paint job and it'll provide some simple scenery,

One thing that I wasn't happy with was the energy barrels and with a little playing about I did this,

So I'll paint them yellow and I'll get a nice looking scream supply dump and post up some pic's.

Post Manticbowl report,

So I wandered over to the Mantic open day on Sat with Coops and decided to give the dreadball tourney a crack,

I rolled with the Orc's and with the tourney pack that I downloaded from the Mantic website spent my 30mc on a extra guard, extra coaching dice and 2 skill up grades, However thanks to Coops eagle eye on the form on the day it stated 20mc! so the skills went.

I wasn't overly fussed about the last minute change but personally it was a school boy error with the people running the torney as in the amended pack you could buy coaches and the like!

The four games I had were all really good and only got frustrated in one of them due to the fact that the chap I was playing against was fouling all over the place and doing some very dodgy underhand tricks with using the ball as a weapon!

I found a snap of the first game with Coops becoming famous, as well as my forearm!

As I was  in the tourney for most of the day I managed to get zero pictures! So the scores on the doors!

Game 1 - Judwan, got rolled 7-0 but later on speaking to Rich discovered that our game lasted the longest and had him worried the most!

Game 2 - Forgefathers won 2-0, real tight game and ran out of time but that didn't bother me as the chap was a nice guy and we spent most of the game chatting and the like!

Game 3 - Forgefathers draw 0-0, the one that did my head in! couldn't roll for toffee and with most of my team in the injury bin I'm surprised that I managed to do as well as I did!

Game 4 - Judwan against Coops! lost 3-0? spent most of the game battering his players and basically beating the be-jesus outta his chaps!

I've no idea where I placed as we didn't get any printouts etc, but the standings will be put up on the mantic blog.

In between games and at lunch I had a wander around and had a look at warpath 2.0 which looks quite nice and a lot more rounded compared to the 1st version, with the deadzone kickstarter going though the roof I tried to have a look at that but the table was always rammed with people so didn't bother in the end but looked at the greens and so on and they look ace, so looking forward to seeing the kickstarter complete and getting my funky toys!

The strange thing about the Mantic open day was the venue, a disused medical centre with no heating, partial power and the rooms that were used small and difficult to get around with the average gamer being "large"

If I'd not been in the tourney and paid a fiver to walk though the door I'd be miffed personally but strangely enough not seen any feedback on the mantic forums with regards to the venue? so I'm going to pop an email over to Ronnie and the crew with some constructive feedback rather than posting on the forum and becoming a flame/troll setup.

So now I've got my season 2 dreadball stuff I've plenty to crack on with and adding the SU-76's that I picked up at salute that I'd like to get done for Expo at the end of the month I suppose I should stay away from XCOM enemy unknown (2012 version) and do some painting!

so the pics of what's to be done in the next few weeks (ish)

MVP's the only two that I'll do is the robot & z'zor chaps the rest can wait

The Z'zor team that's missing a player so will arrive in season 3.

The robots, yes I could go all fancy and paint them white, but I that's not gonna happen!

The mighty SU-76 from blitzkrieg miniatures with some metal barrels via the bay of E

I've also got some crew for these bad boys as well,Finally because I don't play enough systems and have enough unpainted models some prussian HMG's for D-legions.

So without further ado I'm off to crack on with some painting!

5th Company Update and how to avert that spray disaster!

So after recovering from Salute and sorting out the rest of the Tactical marines to finish off the 6 Squads I managed to get cracking on with them and push through the pain barrier that I hit earlier in the month and played hours of Dawn of War 2, rather than painting green!

So the last odds and sods nearly finished just some skin and the effect and get then based and we're good to go for the squad numbers.

So whilst that lot was drying I decided to finish spraying the last of the devastator marines and start working on those next, But had a slight "issue".....

Either I over sprayed, the can was cold, I didn't shake the can enough, sprayed too close or just fluffed it up I managed to kill 2 Sargent's a "wound marker" and 2 heavy bolters!

So I deployed the detol and soak them for a couple of hours and some scrubbing with degreaser later....

Far better looking, so the spray didn't come off all together but gives me something to work with rather than a blob of paint that looks like a marine!

In the mean time I've been working on the stuff that I picked up on Saturday and managed to get it mostly painted up for the game of infinity that I'd arranged,

 So I got 5 crates, 5 barriers and a sat uplink model,and after a childless day managed to get them all done,

Add the compound set that I also had lying about and one can of ultramarine blue later the 4x4 was good to go!!

However the game didn't go my way at all and got stomped all over so its time to do some reading and suss out what the combined army can do!

I've also managed to suss out the pledge and this is where I'm currently standing...

		Bought		Painted		Difference
Jan		41		60		19
Feb		227		107		-120
March		26		19		-7
April		73		94		21

So thanks to the terrain I've blasted the month of April but still have a lot of catching up to do for the month of feb, Better crack on with some 20mm T-34's!

Salute 2013

So once more myself and the happy band of people from Leicester Phat Cats wandered down to excel in London for the 2013 Salute show, mingled in with the superfit London Marathon runners registering for the race on Sunday.

Personally fair play to the people who do this, I'll happily admit I'm a lazy monkey so wouldn't last 500 meters!

Any way onto the Geeky stuff!!

So myself, Nick, Lee and Steve travelled down on the train and slogged it across town to get in the queue, once more the queue filled up fast and soon looped back on itself!

So as soon as we walked in I picked myself & Khris a Warlord open day ticket for July so we can actually learn how to play bolt action and have alook at all the other shiny stuff that they have!!

I only managed to grab a couple of snaps this year compared to my 50+ from previous years, the tables that grabbed my attention were steampunk type tables...

and another one that caught my eye was,

And what must be the first in 12+ years some of us managed to actually play a game!!

Coops giving Relic's a crack

Lee & Nick going for it with Saga, whilst Dan threatening to get his "weapon of mass destruction" out!

The painting compo was high quality as always and grabbed a couple of pics of the ones that I could get to but as always it was a bit of a scrum to get close and have a look,

I also wandered over to the mantic stand to have a mooch at the new teams that they've just put pictures up for and I've pre-ordered the robots and insects and they look superb in the flesh so I carn't wait for those to turn up!

but I did spot these....

and Amera were taking pre-order for the stadium,

Personally I'm not going to bother mainly on the amount of room that it will take up and for what ever reason it doesn't float my boat, Spencer compared it to playing in a bath which did make me smile!

I picked u my pre-orders for Battlegroup Overlord and the display tables looked stunning!!

We had a bit of a natter with Warwick and the chaps and I'm looking forward to getting a game of this in at some point!!

But that didn't stop Nick & Coops having a good thumb through the book for the lists and commenting on the points increase/decrease on certain units!

Overall the day was a good laugh but my legs/knees decided to give me a rough time part way through the day so didn't do the usual running around looking at random stuff.

I also only picked up a few bits and bobs which included...

3 20mm SU76m's from lancer miniatures
6 StuG's from PSC
some infinity type terrain from warmill

and that was it!! The shocker for me was no new system!! but nothing that I saw interested me but I did spot a up and coming game called timeline 300 by troublemaker games I was speaking to the guys on the stand for quite a while and the game has a nice twist that you gain coal points at the start of each turn and you can make units so like a table top RTS so I'll be keeping my eye on this one. Also the launch of new games tends to be going through kickstarter at the moment so is that going to change the industry was we know it??

Painting Dark Angels the "Anton" Way...

As I'm currently ploughing though the 5th Company I thought a step by step might be useful for people looking for a quick and effective way to paint a 100 marines!

So once you've assembled your model spray it with Army painter angel green, I went straight over the plastic I didn't bother with a pre-coat of black or anything,

Once that's dried off I then mixed Caliban Green with some warpstone glow and dry brushed the whole model I did a couple of levels of highlight at this point.

Then I hit it with a Biel-tan green wash/shade,

Once the initial wash had dried I wasn't happy so went onto do another couple of washes to dull the green down, but if your doing salamanders or prefer your dark angels lighter looking then the single wash is fine.

Once I was happy with the armour I starter on the metals for the model using good old tin blitz,

At the same time I did the chest eagles and other boney type bits

Then it was back to the metal to finish that bit off,


At this point your glorious marines should look something like...

I used game colour gun metal and to give a old/different look I mixed some brassy brass into the gunmetal and put on the edges of the weapons and other areas to break up the flat surfaces, One thing that I haven't done is go for the "traditional" red guns mainly because I think they look pants.

so before I did the "details" I washed the metal with army painter strong tone (badbab black) and the boney bits with ogryn flesh.

So all that was left after this point was just the chapter symbol, the squad symbol and details like pouches, purity seals, the company symbol on the left knee pad and eyes, all easily done and once you've based the model in your preferred scheme your good to go!

So a nice and easy way to paint marines, using the new shades to full advantage, I've painted this lot using the above technique,

All I need to do is add the unit numbers, and in the mean time I have this lot left for the tactical squads to be finished off,

then its gonna be the mammoth task of the transports...

But I've had an idea with regards to the droppods so I'll be doing one as a test to see if my idea works then simply apply it to the rest of them.

As usual any comments etc pop them below,