My Magnetised Movement Trays/Display base (a tutorial)

 For some time now I've been making my own magnetised movement trays/display bases for my Lost and the Damned army, and as I was making one for my unit of 49 Diseased Flagellants I thought it would be a good opportunity to do a quick tutorial of what works for me. 

I magnetise both the top and bottom of my movement trays, the top obviously so that the models stay in place, the bottom so that all my movement trays can be safe in a large storage box and don't move about when in transit. Photos of that arrangement at the end. Now I realise that I could have saved a lot of time if I had made the tray out of steel and just applied magnets to the models and to the base of my storage box, but I went this way first and besides, steel is more difficult to work with.

Below you can see the tools and materials you will need for the basic construction of the movement tray:

From left to right: self-adhesive magnetic paper (thick), steel paper, balsa wood, 3mm plywood, thin polystyrene, pva glue, superglue, pencil, scalpel, metal ruler and scissors.

The first step is to cut the plywood to size. I used plywood as unlike card, it doesn't really warp and is easier to cut than steel. For this task, I knew that my unit was to be made up of 49 models (ranked 7x7), each on a 1 inch base, so the first dimensions drawn on were 7"x7". However you need to leave space for the movement tray edge, so here I added a 1/4" all around. So the overall size of the tray is 7 1/2" square.

Once the plywood was cut with a saw, I then measured (7.5" square) of the self-adhesive steel paper, sufficient to cover the bottom of the entire movement tray. This was drawn out and cut with scissors.

Back on top of the tray I then measured and cut a 7" square piece of the self-adhesive steel paper. This leaves a border for the balsa edges to be added. I find that balsa's ease of cutting is perfect for this. I use balsa that is slightly thicker than a warhammer base, which compensates for the raised height of the steel paper. Below you can see my measured and cut edges. 

These are simply glued in place with PVA and a stack of books added for weight to ensure a strong bond. Choose your books carefully and never use your best book at the bottom for fear of seeping pva! I used some of my wife's hardbacks at the bottom!

Here's the finished construction:

For the miniatures themselves, it is just a case of magnetising them. However the 25mm (1") bases are hollow, so they need filling. This is where the foam/polystyrene is great. I just superglue it in place:

And then cover it with an inch square of magnetic paper.

Here you can see the models on their movement tray and held at an angle. I could probably hold them upside down with the strength of the magnets:

Finally the movement tray is based to match my Lost and the Damned army bases. 

1. Paint the base colour brown (earthy colours as sometimes you can see this through the yet to be added foliage)

2. Then a dark green Woodlands Scenics is pva glued into place:

3. For the two subsequent layers of lighter green foliage, the pva glue is diluted with warm water and a few drops of washing up liquid and applied using a dropper bottle so as to not disturb the layer that is already glued in place:

4. The two lighter shades of green are sprinkled on, avoiding any large clumping:

5. The final movement tray with scatter leaves and clump foliage:

And a close up shot:

Can’t wait to fill this with all the flagellants I’m currently kitbashing (I’ll share these in my next post).

A Great Unclean One (based on the LatD illustration)

There's an Oldhammer project happening at the moment which is to create something from one of Tony Hough's amazing illustrations. Now a lot of his work is 40K based and therefore not for me, but having scanned the wonderful images in the Lost and the Damned, I came across one of his illustrations of a Great Unclean One, on page 12. It's certainly an illustration which I'd seen before but it's not until I have a ulterior purpose that I actually stopped and studied it properly, even more the case when I'm about to create a sculpted version of it. 

Now I'm not usually one to post wip photos, but I'm particularly happy with this as it's taken a fair amount of work, thought and observation. 

Part of the thought process for this type of project, is about what materials, parts, bits, models etc to use. I already owned an incomplete classic, 3rd edition Citadel GUO and I had the head of one of the more recent ones (from some old project many years ago). Now it's a head I don't usually like but I could see a resemblance to Tony Hough's drawing, both in terms of the wide shape of the head, the wide, toothy grin and the shape of the horns. Hopefully you can see that here:

To complete the scene I needed a couple of naked admirers and found these courtesy of Hasslefree miniatures. Both have had head swaps, the female heads being snipped away and a skull and a Tyrannid(?) head replacing them.

With the miniatures all gathered it was time to do some cutting and sculpting. The classic GUO legs section was far too narrow for what I had in mind, so I sawed through it, off centre in an area lacking in details, in order to space and then bulk out the gap between. I then wanted to change the pose of his left arm so made a snip at the wrist, so as to reposition it. I didn’t own a right arm and looked briefly on eBay but wasn’t willing to pay £15 for one, so decided to fully sculpt that appendage. As always Nurgle sculpting, thankfully, is quite forgiving!

The next stage was to start to put it all together, to see whether I could actually realise my intentions and keep it as close as possible to the illustration. This involved a fair amount of careful drilling and pinning to join respective parts together and to make a solid base for all the sculpting to follow. Here you can see that I chopped off the original horns and inverted them so that their shape was more reminiscent of Hough’s illustration and removed his goofy bottom jaw so the head sat more comfortably on the torso without any sign of a neck. You can also see the armature for the right hand here. I had the torso of the GUO ready to go without any changes (yet). The left leg had to be substantially repositioned, so an admirer could fit on his thigh, this created quite the gap and quite the forward step, but I figured I could reduce the space by extending the belly outwards to fill the gap.

Thus began the process of sculpting. I started off with milliput to bulk out the model and fill all the gaps (sorry no photo here, I was in a sculpting frenzy and didn’t want to stop the flow) and then green stuff for the details and texture. You can see that I’ve added a plastic tongue (from the Giant set?) and lots of postules made from dried seeds, pushed straight into the wet green stuff. At this stage I had to make a crucial decision - do I sculpt over the lovely mouth belly to maintain the Hough homage or do I keep it exposed for nostalgia sake? Obviously the former won out. Here you can also see me experimenting with the GreenstuffWorld green stuff roller to create some of the ribbed intestines protruding from his open belly.

There are lots of little details in the illustration that I wanted to include in the sculpt, so I will share those here too, as these are intrinsic to trying to capture Hough’s style of work. When an earlier wip photo was shared on the Oldhammer Facebook page, it highlighted that the illustration seems to be quite renowned for the uzi toting Nurgling that hovers in the top left corner of the picture. So I found an old spore (?) model and sculpted over it to create the Nurgling. The top hat is made from a plastic tube off cut and a circular bit of plasticard for the brim. The uzi is the nozzle from a gun off the Gaslands sprue and a snip off a cable tie:

Here you can see, in more detail, the lounging admirer. A greenstuff tongue was added as if to lick the man breast and some hair and spikes adorn her head. Her left leg also had to be snipped and repositioned at the knee to both fit on and to represent the illustration. You can also see a tendril wrapping itself around her other knee and the completed belly, sans mouth.

A close up of the head shows some tiny rolled maggots infesting his horns as well as a four legged, hairy skull creature on top. I was really pleased with the sculpting of the GUO’s head, I think I hid the goofy, quizzical look of the original sculpt and created a more sneering, malevolent look of the illustration. You can also see the sculpted bile coming from his mouth, this will be added to with some stringy UHU glue after painting. 

I had to think carefully about how to create all the webs and strands of organic goo that drape off the GUO. I had a eureka moment when the vacuum cleaner got clogged with a long, thin piece of string, so used it here, soaked in pva to make it solid. I also found some tiny roots from some moss that I had in a baggie and used them to dangle from his right hand. 

And from the back, not quite so much detail here, but you can see some beads squished into the milliput sculpting.

The last part was the base. Now this is me breaking my own rule (to a degree). I’ve never really appreciated display plinths, much preferring models to be properly based, but I was given this wooden one and decided to use it here. I’ve compromised by also basing the model on a round 60mm base and then magnetising both so that he can be separated from the plinth. It seems to be a sound solution...

Both bases required some added detail and interest, so I got to work with the greenstuff roller and made some more worms to scavenge around in the foreground and hit the bits box for a range of organic looking bits. In fact I delved to the very.p bottom of the box and pulled out some interesting shapes of off cuts and unwanted pieces, including bits of horn, a pouch, some sort of lip thing and bits of resin skull. On the left is part of a GW familiar, on the right a resin chap with gas mark that I was given at a meet up, sorry I can’t remember who. Obviously there is an old Nurgling at the forefront because it’s just too cool and a mistake of Tony Hough’s not to include one there!

So there we go, the model is made. I’ve just undercoated him today with a zenithal undercoat of grey and white and my intention is to monochrome him (adding a dark wash for shadows first) then with just some washes of very subtle colour, in an almost illustrative style. Hopefully my skills are up to the job, we shall see!

Magnetic movement trays and storage

I started doing this after a "prompt" from my missus: "Your models and little men are starting to take up too much room under the bed; I'd like to get some space back for my shoes". Now I was quite happy to be given a hobby related task by my lovely wife and of course I really wanted to ensure she has enough shoe space, so last night I set about trying to rectify the problem.

A lot of my models are in those sponge GW cases which whilst protecting well, do take up a lot of space for a small number of models. Also when they are stored in them, I can't see them and glance over my handy work. I tested the waters with view on getting a Display Glass Cabinet, but it was not met with much enthusiasm - and she does have a point, we don't really have anywhere to put it, certainly not until I get my man shed...

So I got hold of some big plastic storage boxes, found my old bits of sheet and strip magnets as well as my paper steel and set about making some magnetised movement trays that would then in turn be magnetised to the bottom of the storage boxes. Below you can see me working on my ogre unit as an example:

The thin steel paper has a self adhesive layer and was trimmed to fit inside the movement tray which I had already made. Thankfully (from experience) I had the foresight to make the lip of the tray higher than necessary so that the additional layers and bulk of magnet and steel wouldn't leave the models higher than the tray's lip.

Self-adhesive magnets were cut and applied to the bottom of the base.

Some steel paper was then applied to the bottom of the movement tray. In future I would consider actually making the entire movement tray out of steel, so as to skip two of these steps, but for now I'm adjusting what I already have.

The finished, fully magnetised unit.

And in the storage box. I've used strips of magnetic tape across the width of the bottom of the box, again self-adhesive and the movement tray is now firmly positioned in the box. 

Here you can see some further progress with other units. This is box 1 of 2. This box is my "Allied/Mercenary Factions" box; Chaos Allies with Centaurs, Minotaurs, Chaos Dwarves and of course the Ogres. I'll be adding Orcs and Goblins, a Giant and a Dragon to this box.

Next up is my Lost and the Damned Nurgle Army, containing all the units that are represented in the army list from that tome. (Hence why Centaurs and Minotaurs have become Allies). Some Plague Knights, Skeletons, Diseased Flagellants a War Altar and a Plague Cart all need to be added to this box.

So magnetising all of this will take some more evenings, but hey, I was asked to do it! 

(ps. it hasn't saved a great deal of space under the bed, perhaps enough for two extra pairs of shoes, but it is certainly tidier and allows me to take out the box and have a look over my creations...). Win win!

Frostgrave/Heroquest scenery tutorial: modular walls

I felt that my dungeon tiles were a little flat and lacked atmosphere without some walls, so combined with my hate of waste, I've used a load of extruded polystyrene off-cuts to create some modular and multi-purpose walls which will work on both my Heroquest dungeon tiles and then as ruined walls for Frostgrave. The only problem I had to overcome was how to modularise them, in other words, how they can be attached and detached from different bases (i,e a dungeon base and a ruined city base)? The dimensions for the walls were easy to work with as the measurements had to fit into the dungeon tile system where each square is 1 1/2", so the wall sections had to be in increments of this size. I decided early on that I wanted these walls to be ruined, one so that they fit into the Frostgrave environment of a ruined city and help the gaming mechanisms (cover etc) and also so that they are not too intrusive or awkward when moving miniatures around a dungeon. A full wall on the dungeon tiles would be quite high and would also look too uniform - I like the idea of the walls being different heights to give the viewer glimpses into the dungeon.

Magnetised to a corridor - you can see the different lengths of wall here, ranging from a small 1 1/2" to 3" and 6".

And here they are surrounding a summoning tile. Note the gap for a door (on the to-do list)

And then the same walls in a Frostgrave environment, note the different magnetised bases which are designed to fit into a city theme

In terms of how to make the walls modular and multipurpose for both an interior dungeon setting and an external ruined city setting, I initially I experimented with velcro as the way of attaching and detaching the walls (you'll see it in some of the initial photos below) but realised quite quickly that the bond was too strong and it left a bit of an unsightly, furry gap between both floor and wall. So I reverted to applying strips of magnets to both the dungeon base and the city base and then strips of ferrous paper to the base of the walls (bought from Abel Magnets).

So here's the step by step pictures of how I made the walls:

An unwanted off-cut from my dungeon tiles to be used as a ruined wall

Using a pencil to draw in the brickwork. You need to consider scale here - what size of bricks are they to be? I went for breezeblock size as bricks would be tiny in 28mm and would take forever..

Remember to inscribe around the edges to. You can see the aborted velcro attached here

After drawing in the edges make sure you follow the lines around to the other side of the wall so that they meet up.

Once you're happy, then press harder to make a deeper mark

Start making the vertical edges to the bricks

remembering to stagger them

The walls can look to flat, so using the back end of a pencil I squashed down random bricks

Here you can see how much better that looks, with a bit of extra work

I also removed a few of the bricks to create a more ruined appearance

Next I added so texture to the bricks using my stone. I've also used a ball of tin foil for this stage

Construction done

At this stage I was still trying out the usage of Velcro, you can see how it looked here. You may notice a prototype working door, these are still in progress...

As I wrote earlier, the Velcro was far from perfect. The bond between the fabrics was stronger than the self-adhesive glue that attached them to the styrofoam, often pulling away from the base rather than from each other. There was also a rather horrible, thick and furry join (I did consider painting this to make it look like moss!). Eventually I then tried magnets and ferrous paper:

Applying the strips to the dungeon tiles - they are self-adhesive, but I will use a few dollops of hot-glue gun to ensure longevity of bond.

Here's the ferrous paper attached in strips to the bottom of the walls

And all of the walls I've made. Not all are straight, I've made a few with corners and one with the remnants of  a second level, especially useful for Frostgrave games.

Here they are attached to the sides of a dungeon corridor

And the view from within. I hope you agree that they add an extra level of realism and atmosphere. The magnets are slightly visible at the joins, but that is the compromise for making the walls modular.

Applying a corner wall to the a summoning room in the dungeon

And a fully walled room - note the space left for a door. Of course I could use a different combination of walls to allow a second door in a different wall. I also intend to make double doors...

I like the range of heights that are created by the ruined nature of  the walls

The next step was to create the bases for using these walls in a ruined city (Frostgrave) environment. Corner pieces and straight edges were prepared on some thin styrofoam (although plywood might be better):

Here you can see the magnet strips stuck to a scenic base, with both grass, rubble and cobble apparent.

And with the wall pieces attached!

No longer dungeon walls, these now act as ruined walls for my warbands to gain some cover.

And the sections with a second level come into their own in this game.

In the future I'd like to add some vines and some torches to create even more atmosphere, but for now these are my magnetised, modular and multi-purpose walls. Cheers!