Here’s another quick tutorial on making bases. This time I’m making a wooden pier base. This approach can be used to create bases that look like ship decks or tavern floors too. The materials are pretty straight forward too. You’ll need a base of the appropriate size, a small coin (preferably one with a smooth edge), a piece of 3mm balsa wood and some Super Glue. You’ll need a hobby knife too.

Make sure the base is cleaned of mold lines and venting, then start off by gluing the coin to the base. Use the hobby knife to cut a 1cm wide strip that is about 2.5/3cm long. If you cut along the grain the knife will go though it like butter. 3mm is a little thick for the wood, so take the blade and use it to slice the strip in half. This gives a rough finish and it perfect for the exposed wood. Make as many strips as you need to finish the base.

Glue the strips to the coin and cut a small piece of balsa to represent a spot for tying up boats. You could leave it there, but it might be worth coating the wood in heavily watered down PVA glue (1:1) to toughen it slightly. If you’re doing a ship deck you should cut the wood so that it looks like planks and fit them inside the raised edges of the base.

Owen

I’ve been working on my Privateers for about a month now and they are coming along nicely. Most of them are on custom resin bases that I bought with the miniatures. These bases represent wooden and stone piers, but I’ve run out and am waiting for a consignment of bases before I can start work on my next unit (the Press Gangers).

I’ve written a basic basing guide before, but this time I decided to attempt to sculpt a couple of simple stone pier bases. With these done I can get Lady Aiyana and Master Holt assembled and painted. Here’s a step-by-step guide of what I did.

Step 0: What You’ll Need

The base I’m planning to build is going to be quite simple. It will be based on a 30mm rounded edge base (the kind Privateer Press use for small-based miniatures). I’m going to use half of a Games Workshop 20mm base as the bulk of the pier. Green Stuff will be used to sculpt the stones and Super Glue to stick the components together. That’s all of the materials required. On the tools side I’m going to use a sculpting tool, but a tooth pick/cocktail stick would do fine. You’ll also need a sharp bladed hobby knife. I also have an old plastic blister to supply something with a flat surface. Other than that I have a glass with some water, a piece of tissue and a bit of rough edged balsa wood (to make impressions on the back of the base – I’ll get to that later).

Step 1: Building the Basic Structure

When performing and kind of sculpting you want to minimise the amount of Green Stuff you use. It should only really be used for the actual detail and if possible used something else to form the structure. This is where the 20mm base comes in. The slot in these bases is off-centre, so I’m going to cut of the large half using the hobby knife. I also clean any mold lines or sprue marks from the 30mm base. Once these components are ready I used the Super glue to stick the 20mm half base to the 30mm base, being careful to try to cover the slot in the 30mm base with it. Ok – that’s the basic structure built.

Step 2: Adding the Green Stuff
There are several different types of two-part modelling putty, but I’m using Green Stuff as it’s the one I’m most familiar with. To prepare the Green Stuff cut a section of about 1.5cm (1/2″) off the strip and remove the plastic. As the yellow and blue parts are in the strip side-by-side the bit in the middle usually cures (i.e. it’s a bit hard!). I use the hobby knife to remove this tiny middle bit. The first thing to know about working with Green Stuff is that it is sticky. Before working with it I wet my fingers with a small bit of water. Now blend the yellow and blue bits until it is green.

Again using your finger, spread it over the 20mm half base structure. If you wanted to leave it cure for 10-15 minutes it’d make the next step easier, but I didn’t and it turned out fine.

Step 3: Sculpting the Base
After step two the base will be covered in finger prints. Use the empty plastic blister to gently flatten and smooth the Green Stuff. Again – make sure the plastic is a little wet or it’ll stick to the Green Stuff and possibly pull it off the base. If the blister doesn’t quite smooth out everything us a flat part of the (wet) modelling tool to smooth the rest.

Now it’s time to sculpt the stones. Lesson one in any sculpting is to decide what you want to do before you put the tool to the putty. I wanted defined edging stones that were reasonably big. I wanted the vertical edge (i.e. the one that goes into the “water”) to have long stones, with the bottom ones looking like they were submerged. The stones on the top would be small.

That’s the basic base built and sculpted now. I used the rough balsa edge to imprint on the back side of the base. I guess this would represent the fine rubble foundation on which the stone pier is built, but I did it as sculpting stones all the way around the base would look weird!

Leave your base to cure for about 24 hours and you can then pin your miniature to it. Viola, not too hard at all. If you are feeling adventerous, you can also add more detail at this stage. You could sculpt a sack of grain or dip a piece of fine string in some watered down PVA and add it to look like rope.

I’ve also built a wooden pier base from balsa. I’ll write a short article on that soon.

Owen

Last night the talking stopped and the fighting started. There is no better way to learn a game, faction or new warlock than to dive straight in and get some games in. Anthony brought his 35pt Cryx force up to the house. This was my chance to try out the list and tactics I posted yesterday.

Anthony’s army list looked like this -

• Warwitch Deneghra
• Deathripper
• Deathripper
• Nightmare
• Bile Thralls (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mechanithralls (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• Necrosurgeon & 3 Stitch Thralls
• Soulhunters (Leader and 2 Grunts)
• Darragh Wrathe

Anthony won the dice roll, but let me deploy first. I decided to pretty much deploy as planned with Saeryn surrounded by her beasts with the Feralgeist, Swamp Gobbers and Shepherd in close proximity. The Legionnaires would hold the left flank and the Striders would harass the enemy on the right.

Anthony went for a tighter deployment with the Mechanithralls and Deathrippers leading the way. Without access to arc nodes Hordes struggles on ranged magic attacks, so I’d have to close the gap quickly and try to take out the Deathrippers at the earliest opportunity. The Necrosurgeon was going to keep close to the Mechanithralls, so I’d have to find a way to do away with her before I started to turn them into corpse tokens. Darragh Wrathe and the Soulhunters can move ridiculously fast. I had no obvious counter for these guys, but I had to hope that aggressive play would force Anthony to keep them in a defensive mode. All of these threats to worry about and I haven’t even mentioned Nightmare! Anyway, here’s Anthony’s deployment -

The early part of the game was about positioning. I moved everything up pretty fast. I cast Respawn on the Carnivean and Banishing Ward on Saeryn herself. She was kept in a concealing cloud from the Gobbers and usually had Tenacity cast on her too. Anthony’s army came straight forward and the Soulhunters galloped up my left flank. He was pretty aggressive with the positioning of the Deathrippers, so I took the opportunity on my next turn to charge them with the Nephilim and Carnivean. Two wrecked Deathrippers. The Striders shot a couple of Stitch Thralls and Mechanithralls that were too far to yield corpse tokens. Seeing the Soulhunters’ speed I moved the Angelius onto my left and moved the Legionnaires into the centre to offer some resistance against the horde of Mechanithralls. I should have cast Breath Stealer on them. This would have prevented their charge!

The Mechanithralls caused a bit of damage on their charge, damaging the Nephilim, taking out two Striders and a Legionnaire, but it was the Bile Thralls that did the real damage, killing another four Legionnaires, with the final one succumbing to corrosion at the start of my turn. Thankfully the purging Bile Thrall took out two of his own. Anthony knew this would happen, but he needed to position them to leave a charge lane to the Carnivean open for Nightmare. Nightmare lived up to his name and lead to the Carnivean respawning safely out of reach. Anthony pulled his Soulhunters back to block charges to Deneghra.

Now there was an opportunity. Saeryn moved up and feated, granting her beasts immunity to melee attacks for a round. She threw her Deathspur at a Soulhunter who blocked a charge lane to Deneghra, but missed despite boosting! She then attempted to cast Breath Stealer on Deneghra and again missed despite boosting. The Nephilim Soldier charged over the Mechanithralls engaging him to attack the same Soulhunter. Guess what, despite a boosted attack he missed too! Four of the Striders CRAed against the same bloody Soulhunter and, you guessed it, missed again! I should have shot at it before the Nephilim engaged it, but I originally had other plans for them. The turn was falling apart. To salvage something the Angelius charged Nightmare and did a shocking amount of damage. The Carnivean, who was originally going to charge Deneghra had the Soulhunter done the right thing and died(!) charged in and finished Nightmare. At least my beasts (and Saeryn) would be immune to a melee retaliation.

Anthony debuffed the Angelius as much as he could with Deneghra, including popping her feat. He then used the remaining Bile Thralls to massively damage it. Darragh Wrath charged in and finished it (with his magical attacks). He surrounded Saeryn with the Mechnithralls and moved up the Necrosurgeon behind them. The Soulhunters fell back to protect Deneghra.

The Striders took out the Necrosurgeon and remaining Stitch Thrall and Saeryn used Blight Bringer on herself to kill off most of the Mechanithralls. The Nephilim Soldier and Shredder killed off the other two. Things went downhill from here, though. The Soulhunters and Darragh Wrath finished off the Carnivean, Nephilim and the remaining Striders for the cost of two Soulhunters and Darragh’s mount.

This left Saeryn low on Fury, but there was little she could do. The last remaining Soulhunter, who was loaded up on Soul tokens, charged in and missed with both of his melee weapons, but struck with the mount. Saeryn was down to six damage points. She took it out, but in the meantime Deneghra skulked closer and came in for the kill. It took a lot of boosting to finally land a blow, but when she did it was game over. Saeryn was dropped by the Warwitch. Game over.

That was a great game and I think I played pretty well. Deneghra could have been in real trouble had my dice not abandoned me on my feat turn. It was a game of high attrition, but once my beasts were gone I was in real trouble. In retrospect the Carnivean could have finished Nightmare by itself and I could have kept the Angelius back. That and better use of Breath Stealer could have improved things. That said it was still a close game and I’m happy with my progress so far. I might change the list a little for next time. A Harrier would be useful for its animus and I think Warmongers would be more useful than the Legionnaires. At least it’s not back to the drawing board, more subtle tweaks than a complete redraft.

Owen

From the last post we learned two things – I can’t play Hordes (certainly not using the delicate warlocks) and I can write a lot of Hordes Theory. Now it’s time to go from talking to doing. I have a game later this evening and I’m making up the army list. Saeryn will be my warlock, but what else should be in the army?

BEASTS
I think she can support beasts quite well and I’m considering bringing two heavies. I own a Carnivean and an Angelius so I’ll include them. The Carnivean is a beat stick that would be a great target for Respawn. The Angelius really benefits from Saeryn’s feat as it can fly over intervening models, ignoring free strikes, to get at a targe behind. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Nephilim Soldier (I think it’s a fantastic sculpt). It is quite a mundane beast now, but Reach on it’s weapon and Flight make it useful in a similar manner to the Angelius. For the beasts I’ll round things out with the Shredder. Saeryn has +2 DEF on ranged attacks. Throw in Tenacity (the Shredder’s animus) and she’s effectively DEF 19.

SOLOS
Now I’d like a bit of support for my beasts. The Shepherd is an obvious choice as she effectively allows a longer strike range for the beasts. I can run the Shepherd up just before the Angelius dives in for an assassination. This allows me to ensure it can be forced even outside of Saeryn’s control area.

The Feralgeist is another nice option. Between it and Respawn my opponents will be sick of killing (and re-killing) my heavy beasts!

UNITS
Saeryn doesn’t directly buff her units, so the first unit I selected was one that buffs her – the Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew. The concealing cloud can either completely hide Saeryn or at least give her an additional +2 DEF. With the buffs discussed above that leaves a fantastic DEF 21!

For Leigon units I went with the Striders, as they can be quite disruptive, and the Legionnaires. Defensive line makes the Legionnaires slightly more survivable and I plan to use them as a cheap tarpit. Warmongers may be a better option, but I’d need to find an extra point somewhere.

THE LIST
Anyway, enough talk. Here is the list -

• Saeryn, Omen of Everblight
  • Nephilim Soldier
  • Shredder
  • Angelius
  • Carnivean
• Blighted Nyss Legionnaires (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Blighted Nyss Striders (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt)
• Blighted Nyss Shepherd
• Feralgeist

I’m limiting myself to using models I have painted. Dropping either the Feralgeist or Gobbers and the unit of Legionnaires would allow me to add a minimum unit of Warmongers. Maybe I’ll try that next time.

PLAYING THIS LIST
The VASSAL screen shot above gives an idea of the setup. The Stirders will try to cause a nuisance on whatever flank has terrain for them to hide in. The Legionnaires are tasked with keeping up with the army and providing some kind of speed bump. Saeryn will cast Banishing Ward on herself and Respawn on the Carnivean. She is going to have to keep pace with the army so that her support spells can be effective. The Carnivean and Angelius will run up with the Feralgeist in relatively close pursuit Remember it can take over a dead beast within 8″, so it doesn’t need to be too close. The Shepherd wil be screened by the Nephilim soldier and the soldier will primarily be a speed bump on the right flank. The Angelius is set up for the assassination run, which the Shepherd may need to support. Massacre is a useful animus for it to have cast on it.

Anyway, I’m playing later, but you know what they say about best laid plans!

Owen

Progress on my Privateer force, my MkII project, is going pretty well. Here is a gallery of photographs -

Captain Phinneas Shae

First Mate Hawk

Lord Rockbottom, Expetidion Financier

Doc Killingsworth

Bosun Grogspar

Mariner

Buccaneer

Sea Dog Crew

Sea Dog Riflemen

As I mentioned before this is a strange project. I bought some of the miniatures painted. Everything shown here has seen some paint from me to touch them up, but the Mariner, Buccaneer and Bosun Grogspar were painted from scratch, as was one of the Sea Dogs. They are coming along nicely now. I’ll post a painting guide for the ‘jacks soon.

Owen