Wargames @ farfaraway.org » Warhammer

Gamers Hub – New Wargames Shop in Maynooth, Ireland

Owen — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 21:30:22 +0000

We have a new wargames shop here in Maynooth called Gamers Hub. It opened a couple of weeks ago and stocks Privateer Press (Warmachine and Hordes), Games Workshop (Warhammer, 40k, etc.), CCG (Magic The Gathering and all that nonsense!), board games and plenty of other things. Ethan, the store owner, can order in anything you need, so just let him know what you want.

The shop is located just off Main St. near Equestrian World (just on the left from this Street View). The shop also has its own Facebook page, so check it out. They have two 4′x8′ tables, so enough room for four Warmachine/Hordes games at a time. There is also a small painting area for those looking to get some miniatures ready for the tabletop.

They are running a Warmachine/Hordes slow grow league at the moment, so now is a great time to share a 2-player battlebox with a friend and start playing!

Owen

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Coldren Minis Painting Service

Owen — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:00:30 +0000

I love painting miniatures and in particular I love the spectacle of a fully painted army. I’ve had the pleasure of facing Tomek’s sublimely beautiful armies on a couple of occasions and not only were the games fun, but they were also stunning to behold. Tomek has been painting for over 15 years and this experience shows in the amazing paint jobs he produces. Here are a few examples -

You can check out more of his work at CMON or on Facebook.

For anyone interested in having an army as beautiful as Tomek’s the good news is he has set up a painting service – Coldren Minis. If you are interested in owning some gorgeously painted models drop him an email (coldrenminis [at] gmail [dot] com) and he’ll get back to you with details.

Owen

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Wargames Audit: Warhammer

Owen — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:30:09 +0000

This is the fourth post in my Audit series and this time I look at Warhammer, a game that has very much fallen out of favour with me.

Warhammer

My Warmachine, Hordes, Malifaux and Flames of War models all sit in their cases in the house. My Warhammer models are out in the shed! They outnumber all of the game system models, but they haven’t seen the tabletop in over two years. You can tell where my prioties lie by looking at the number of blog posts in each category – Warmachine:160+, Hordes:90+, Malifaux:27, Flames of War:22, Warhammer:7 (and several of those are sympathy categorisations!). I haven’t played any 8th edition games and indeed the goliath rulebook was my last Games Workshop purchase.

My anti-Warhammer sentiment stems from a couple of places. Privateer Press put in a lot of effort to produce a well honed set of rules that manage to (more-or-less) balance two different games (Warmachine and Hordes) across almost dozen factions. They did this in less than ten years. After 25 years Warhammer is still sloppy in parts, with FAQs appearing almost as soon as rules are released. Privateer Press held an open playtest before coming up with MkII. Warhammer still feels like only a dozen players ‘tested’ it before it was released. So, my first main gripe lies with the lack of precision in the rules and (acknowledged) lack of balance across the armies.

My second problem is with GW’s pricing. Starting a new army is prohibitively expensive when compared to other systems. GW have crept the ‘standard’ size game up to 2500pts. You still only get a 2 hour gaming experience with that and compared to the other games listed above it is at least twice as expensive to collect an army.

It’s not all bad though. The guys playing Warhammer in our club (certainly the ones playing it for fun rather than the tedious ETC/tournament practice ones) seem to be having fun with it. Recently Fergus ran a campaign with custom scenarios and everyone who participated had fun. I think this is what Warhammer is designed for. As I said above, the rules and balance are suspect in (a lot of) places, but what does that matter if you can still have fun with it.

I may play some Warhammer in the next year, but it’ll be for fun, with existing models and rules. Warmachine is my competitive game of choice. Warmachine is also something I really have fun playing. Warhammer will struggle to compete with it, Malifaux and Flames of War for my attention this year, but who knows!

Next up in the audit: The Rest!

Owen

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Making Beach-style Bases

Owen — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:44:36 +0000

I’ve used lots of different ‘piratey’ bases (see here and here) for my Warmachine Privateer army, but a sandy beach was one I hadn’t attempted until I was working on the last unit of Thamarite Cultists. I could’t find any good tutorials on this, but I decided I’d give it a go.

Step 1: Since I was using Warmachine rounded-edge bases, I decided to fill the inside of the base with Milliput. For these kinds of modelled bases I always work with the model off the base. Before the Milliput dried I pressed the base into fine (but not too fine) sand.

Step 2: When this dried I used a watered dow PVA mix to liberally coat the base and again dipped it in the sand. I’m not too concerned about uniform coverage as walked on sand is rarely smooth.

Steps 3 and 4: Repeat Step 2.

Step 4: Attached the miniature to the base. As always time spent pinning them on now will save heartache later on.

Step 5: Undercoat the miniature. I decided to undercoat these guys black, which was better for the miniature, but would mean a few more steps in painting the base.

Step 6: Paint the miniature. This is easy and should only take a minute or two, right?!

Step 7: Paint the base. I tidied up any mess from the earlier painting using Chaos Black. Next I used two watery coats of Khemri Brown to get rid of most of the black. A watery coat of Iyanden Darksun (a deep yellow colour) was applied next. I then drybrushed the base with this yellow colour. Next I mixed it 50:50 with Bleached Bone and did a light drybrush. Finally there was one more pure Bleached Bone drybrush. Take some Chaos Black and tidy the edge of the base.

(I painted the base and then the miniature, but that was the wrong way around as then you need to be very tidy when working on shoes, etc.)

Step 8: Add Seaweed. I grabbed some moss from the back garden and left it to dry overnight. I mixed a very watery PVA mix and then dipped the ‘seaweed’ in it and added it to the base.

That sounds like lots of steps, but when your basing a whole unit there is very little hanging around as (certainly with the painting) once one step is completed on all of the miniatures you can go back to the first model and start the next step. Easy and effective.

Owen

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Making Wooden Pier Bases using Balsa

Owen — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:59:26 +0000

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

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Sculpting your own bases with Green Stuff

Owen — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:19:53 +0000

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.

Using the sharp edge of the (wet) tool I marked out the edge stones first. I did this by rolling the bladed edge rather than dragging it. Initially I treated the edge as one long strong and then added the separations. I took a similar approach to the vertical stones, but made them slightly narrower. The stones on the top were sculpted to run at 90° to the edge stones and these were smaller again. Slow and steady is the secret here. Keep the tool wet (I know, I know – I can’t stress that enough).

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

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Tournament Check List

Owen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:02:19 +0000

I’ve played in lots of tournaments, mostly Warhammer, but also Warmachine and Hordes. It’s easy to forget something vital when packing up for a tournament, so here are my check lists.

Here’s my Warhammer tournament check list -

For Warmachine and Hordes I add the following -

I also bring paracetamol and loads of water as they are long intense days, so some emergency supplies may be needed!

Owen

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Warhammer Wood Elves Forest Dragon: Complete

Owen — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:35:53 +0000

Here it is, practically complete. I only have basing details left to do. It’s a monster of a miniature, but it was nice to paint and will look great in the Wood Elves army. I’m looking forward to the Gorey tournament now…

When I have the patience I figure out how to photograph such a large miniature properly.

Owen

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Warhammer Wood Elves: Forest Dragon

Owen — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:56:05 +0000

It is coming…

Owen

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