All about that base...

All about that base:

A quick update on the progress against the tracker….

It has moved very marginally post completion of the scouts shown last week. There was also an additional bump as I decided i’d run some scouts with sniper rifles (which i already have). This week has been all about constructing bases for the models to come, and so hasn’t had any impact. This worries the completionist inside me, who has been raging quietly away.

My process for the bases is pretty simple and entirely stolen (well, I bought the videos so not quite) from James Wappel’s blog Wappelious, which contains feats of painting excellence that I can only hope to one day not achieve. They consist of a layer of cork, a layer of pre baked sculpey*, which I then carve up into a rocky like texture before adding to with Vallejo gritty paste and sprinkling with small stones. It’s really simple but I think pretty effective. I also add twists of barbed wire, plastic girders, heads of slain alien scum or other such details, but this will come when the model is being fitted, as otherwise you can accidentally restrict yourself.

When painting them steer about a million miles clear of abbadon black or vallejos game colour black as they are just horrendously glossy and totally inappropriate for this purpose. Some quick drybrushes and a wash for depth and you’ve got a quick and effective scenic base! I say quick… this did take me an entire evening to do. But hey ho, with the peaceful background noise of the late Disney music (not my choice obviously) it wasn’t so bad! 

If you so choose, you can carve up the sculpey into more ‘intricate’ patterns, e.g. marble flooring and then paint it accordingly. My relatively amateurish attempt at this is shown below! Currently this base and a few other slightly poorer iterations just feature as objectives in our games!

 *A quick note on the sculpey, this is a very effective modelling/crafting tool and should definitely be employed for a variety of tasks – better people than me use it to build whole models! But make sure you follow the instructions when baking it and read all the packaging. What they do not tell you is that the sculpey is still soft after baking. DO NOT OVERBAKE IT, it does get hard when it dries. I was nervous about trying it as there are a few things about toxins if done wrong… I guess just make sure you do your research on it before diving in.. I’m not an FDA warning.

Don't underestimate the Space Marine Scout

We’ve all been there. The GF is away for a whole weekend, leaving days (days!) stretching out in front of us like a seemingly endless amount of time to fill with hobbying, and then we’ve all been there at 8PM on that Sunday evening with no shirts washed or ironed for the week ahead, malnourished from eating beans on toast for every meal and pale from lack of sunlight, desperately trying to finish off the one squad that your overly ambitious hobby check list has been whittled down to.

In my case I am overly aware that this is a major problem that I face, one which often leads to disappointment and a sense of failure. So aware in fact that I set my short term weekend goals significantly lower. I.e. I start with only one squad on my to do list. Last weekends fully achievable target was a single squad of space marine scouts. The learning point from the weekend was that you should never ever underestimate the little buggers.

In gaming terms the effectiveness of a T4 WS4 BS4 bolter wielding 4+ dude who has the rules to be all up in the enemies face on turn one is a surprise to no one. In fact, I’m really hoping that in my 10^th company heavy battle company (maxing out the scout units as opposed to taking the min of three) the little guys will do a lot of work, and at a very cheap price point.  Obviously they will crumble under a dedicated effort to remove them (although even then, in area terrain with a camo cloak they may surprise you), but anyway… I’m straying from the point. My main issue with them at the moment is that even the humble SM scout, of which I need to paint 25, is actually quite a painting task. Particularly when you, like me, equip him for a 6 week expedition by adding every pouch in the kit, as well as all the grenades to satisfy that one WYSIWYG sadist.

Anyway my attempt at a five man squad is shown below, overall I’m quite pleased, although it annoys me that the kit doesn’t come with enough parts to build them with five bolters. Maybe I should have a squad with all CCW…

I've attempted a free hand 'X' on each shoulder pad... which I don't think looks too bad, as always work is required though!