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).

Wip Diseased Flagellants

I don't tend to show too many WiP shots on here, (Instagram is my vehicle for that) but I've particularly enjoyed the creation of these first few Diseased Flagellants for my Lost and the Damned Nurgle Army. In advance of creating these, I arranged all my bits and selected those that would best fit in with the theme of diseased flagellants - so vaguely humanoid, bloated, undead, spiked balls and flails etc bits were set aside. And then I started to build..

Here's all 7 with their leader.

Some Plaguebearer, Nurgle, Flagellant and Bretonnian bits here

Poxwalker torso, Empire head and Mantic ghoul legs

LotR Goblin body and a plague cart head (probably my favourite - it really has that pathetic aesthetic that I like)

Flagellant torso and bits with a beastman head

Cawdor (?) torso, flagellant head and poxwalker leg

Mostly flagellant bits with an old Chaos Knight banner. Not sure where the head is from for this one, but I like the sadistically stitched facial features.

After the initial build and greenstuffing was complete I then tried something a little different - applying texture straight to the conversion prior to painting. To do this I used some Agrellan Earth for the cracked texture (usually on skin), some Typhus Corrosion and Astrogranite for the texture where the rust will go and some pva and bits of static grass for, well, grass and hair and matted matter on weapons. We shall see how they look when painted... I also used this opportunity to go dark with my photos, so you will see a first time in using a black back drop and decreasing the brightness and saturation when editing the photos. makes them a little more grimdark. This will be a unit of 49 (so Nurgle going 7x7) but will include a war altar/shrine in the middle. I'm introducing a new model a day for advent on Instagram, if you're interested in seeing more there (makingasmallerworld) or wait here until I've got all the conversions made up for an update. All the best!

2 Chariots of Nurgle - 500pts

 The Warriors of Chaos who follow Nurgle are more inclined than other Champions to ride Chariots. This is partly because carts and wagons form the Nurgle cavalcade, and chariots give an appropriate sense of pageantry. Another reason may be that Champions of Nurgle often pick up uncomfortable debilitating diseases which make it difficult to walk or ride a horse. Chariots are often larger and more like wagons or carts than those associated with other Powers. Chariots may carry banners, flags or other decorative features and may have additional non-combatant crew such as Nurglings....

Straight out of the Lost and the Damned and a nice bit of writing to create a context for me to make my own Chariots of Nurgle. I chose a couple of obese and mutated, plastic Nurgle characters to ride my chariots, thinking these figures would find it hard to slog on foot or mount a horse and I deliberately chose a plague cart as one of the vehicles to match the description in the above caption. Hence why there is also a fair amount of decoration on the chariot itself. The non-combatant crew for me are a couple of Chaos Dwarf drivers (one of whom is on a step to be able to see out of the chariot!) as I recall reading somewhere that they were often pursuaded to do so. 

The draught animals are quite the mixture for each chariot. Below is made of a Gorkamorka mutant steed and I have added a skeletal head and painted it in a zebra scheme. The Gorkamorka head has been transferred to the plastic steed and a reptilian tail too, to keep the scaly texture.

The Chariot itself is modified slightly, an old Orc Man-Mangler facial emblem has been added at the front (a nice hefty chunk of lead on an otherwise plastic model) and I went to town on the weathering with Astrogranite applied to the bare plastic prior to undercoating to create a rusty texture before the appropriate rusty oranges and brown colours were washed on. The metallic scratching you can see in places was simply added with a pencil.

The other chariot also has the Chaos Dwarf driver with whip, but this time is pulled by a Reaper Bones model (I know not the name). For me this acts as a draught animal that has been turned to a Spawn and yet is still devoted to, and loved by, the Champion in the Chariot. Slow, writhing progress across a battlefield. A jewellery chain was wrapped through it's gaping mouth and re-attached to the underside of the plague cart to show how it is pulled. The design of the plague-cart, I think, is perfect for a chariot of Nurgle.

It took quite some time to paint all of the eyes on this beast.

Lots of weathering washes on the wooden frame of the cart, and a mutated Chaos Dwarf.

A close-up of the modern plastic Nurgle miniature, they really are pretty impressive sculpts. You can see me attempting to get some dappling on his numerous tentacles here:

And finally the WIP photo that shows the kitbashing/converting/texturing and choice of models before they were painted up:

So that's another 500pts to the army, now standing at a total of 5125pts, with some Diseased Flagellants up next...

The Glass Cabinet

For my birthday a few months ago, I was kindly given a glass cabinet by my wife, in another new display of her accepting my hobby and giving it some space to be shown in the house. This is quite a momentous occasion for me too, having not really publicly shown my hobby off before. It is in the downstairs bathroom though..

So here it is now mounted on the wall and starting to be filled with some of my smaller projects:

Blood bowl Orcs and a couple of Fighting Fantasy tributes:

Gaslands at the top, Buried Giant tribute and a human warband

More Fighting Fantasy tributes along the top (characters from the novels and choose your own adventure series) and of course the Freeway Fighter. Wood Elf blood bowl team beneath:

A barbarian warband based on Frank Frazetta's art and some (unfinished) Star Wars miniatures. 

Some 40k Rogue Trader along the top:

A Halloween Night Horror

I've had this mini in my collection for a very long time and decided, on the eve of Halloween to paint it up (there's also a competition on the Night Horror and Gothic Horror Facebook page which helped motivate me). 

I've tried out a black background for my photographs for the first time too, for added spooky darkness.

This old Night Horror wraith came to me broken, the scythe was missing and so a suitable old, rusty replacement sword was located (I think this is from the Mantic skeleton sprue) and I placed the sword where the hands would be, trying to make it look like it was being held by the unseen, supernatural force of the wraith. 

The paint job was so easy. Primed black, zenithal through grey and a touch of white from above and then several washes of nuln oil to make the zenithal blend together. Then quote simply a few highlights of grey/blue on the robes and a final glaze of a black. Gloss varnish applied inside the jood. The rusty sword was boltgun metal washed with bestial brown and then part bestial brown and part ryza rust. Edge highlights with chainmail. Perhaps 30minutes all in including the base. 

Makes me want to gather all my other undead and see if there is a start of a quick army there....

Orctober 2020

 This month I've been busy painting a selection of Greenskins from my collection of Orcs and Goblins. I've chosen to work on the models that relate to the Citadel Combat Card system to try and work towards completing one of my many ongoing projects! So here they are together as a group, my Orctober offering:

I've stuck with my normal greenskin recipe, a brown wash over white primer and then a build up of layers from baneblade brown highlighted up with increasing amounts of pallid Wych flesh to the brown. A final glaze of dilute waywatcher green and then the facial extremities and knuckles have a glaze of Kislev flesh to add some warmth.

This one had a few arrows added, simply paperclips through a hole in the shield and then some plastic arrow feathers on the back end. 

You can see here that my versions are just a pastiche of the originals. I wanted to add some checkers to his hood, but not the entire hood! Also I've generally gone for more drab colours than the quite gaudy originals.  

Here you can see that I've made my own shields, sculpted with greenstuff and again loosely based on the original designs.

Never quite work out why they flipped this image! 

This one was a conversion, I didn't have the right head but found a close approximation. I don't quite have the right body or sword either!

And the boss of the warband to finish with. Hopefully next year's Orctober will see me complete the set..