Armies on Parade - Terrain work

Hi all. It's been a while since I was last on here thanks to real life. I have not been idle though. Today I bring you a wonderful tutorial! I showed you a picture of my imperial guard bunker a while ago. Well, since I'm having to build another anyway, I thought I'd make all you internet people some templates and a little instruction book for building the basic frame. I will be posting WIP shots of my wrecked one as it's constructed, but I'll save that for another day. On to the (shortened) tutorial! The full version is available with the templates as a pdf at the end. Please forgive the template quality. I prefer to use my drawing board for hobby work so they are all done by hand.

Dawn of War Inspired Imperial Guard Bunker

1:   Glue the templates onto the required materials and cut out solid line only.

2:   Place or glue the BASE TEMPLATE onto your desired base.

3:   Glue all 1 parts into the marked notches on the BASE TEMPLATE.

3a: Glue parts 2a and 2 together (see Figure 3a).

4:   Glue the completed part 2 to the base.

5:   Trim the tops of parts 3 at an angle to dotted line (see Figure 5).

6:   Trim the sides of parts 3 to fit in the gaps between parts 1. Glue in place.

7:   Trim the sides of parts 4 and 5 to fit between parts 1 and 2 as shown on the BASE TEMPLATE. 

Glue in place.

8:  Part 6 should then be place on top, level with part 2, and with approximately 5mm of parts 1 showing

(see Figure 8).

9:     Glue part 7 over part 2.

10:   Glue part 8 on part 7.

11:   Glue part 9 onto the back of parts 2, 7 and 8 (see Figure 11).

12:   The main structure is now finished. The cylinders are made from 2L drinks bottle caps and the concrete

support behind is two parts 1 with card between giving a length of 50mm (see Figure 12).

Steps 5-8

Steps 1-4

Steps 9-10

Step 11

So fairly simple for the competent modeller. Give us some feedback please.

Here's the LINK for the templates and full instructions. Just print to A4 with no scaling.

Addendum: PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL SECTIONS ARE 5mm FOAMCORE APART FROM PART 1 WHICH IS 10mm. Because you always miss the obvious stuff.

Waiting on some mail

This arrived in the post this morning. I'm very excited. I've been waiting on it since Wednesday. Look what it contains.

Yes, that's right. It's my BT upgrade sprues. I can now continue building my marines! On first inspection of the contents I was surprised at exactly what it contains. It has twice as many troop sprues as is shown on the GW website. I did wonder why it was £18.50 where most others are half that price. Bonus! I've got a couple of "chapter marking moulds" setting at the moment to enhance the ordinary marine torsos and backpacks that I've got with some BT marks.

While I was waiting though I've not been idle. I've been working away at some space hulk genestealers. They're not near finished yet. Here's the proof.

It'll probably be a couple of days before I post again. I'm busy with the dreaded real life, but hopefully I'll have some torsos finished next time.

Till then!

Armies on Parade - Black Templar beginnings

For the second part of my build I'll discuss the army itself. The Black Templars!

**Scroll down for pics**

Being a rather fluff orientated gamer I took to the BT like a fish to a bicycle. I really didn't know too much about the chapter. Being a second founding there is not too much novel-based literature on them specifically. Of the little I have read they began to intrigue me as the only chapter still trying to behave like a true Legion; crusading through the galaxy to eradicate any threat to humanity!

To expand my knowledge (and make sure my initial choice was a sound one) I picked up a BT codex. I really am glad that GW puts so much thought into them. They are usually the true inspiration for me. I must confess now, that I have a few erroneous codices, just for the background fluff they contain. This galvanised my choice and got me thinking of a few choice details to add to the diorama, but more on that later.

Not being satisfied to just have your run of the mill marines I turned to a thread on Warseer by Guilliman (link here) on "classic" true-scaling his marines. Much nicer that some of the true-scaling I've seen (in my own opinion of course). He even gives us a nice little tutorial about half way down the first page. Sweet!

I had a test run with a random space marine I had lying around and ended up with what you see below. Sorry there are: a) no work in progress (WIP) shots, because I did it in a day before I had the inkling to start the blog; and b) no size comparison shots. I will get some up at some point. I just don't have any ordinary sized marines.

BT test mini

He's also painted in my test scheme. I assure you he looks better in real life. My camera just isn't very good. I tried to achieve a very dark grey for the edge highlight on the armour. I think any sort of grey is too light and you loose the true black, but it has got to have some depth to it otherwise it would be very boring to look at.

I also don't think the general positioning of the space marine legs fit with my intended idea of having a BT charging headlong towards his enemy. So I proceeded to hack up he next set of legs and reposition them (with much cursing and loud renditions of FETH!!!!) to appear as they did below.

Run Forrest. Run!

Much better. Now multiply by five and you have the beginnings of a very scary torso-less marathon team!

Do you think they noticed the highly powered, waist high laser trap?

Finally I ordered the BT sprue from GW today. Fingers crossed it'll be with me shortly and then I can start adding torsos to these guys. Don't panic though. I'll find something else to work on in the meantime. Perhaps I'll start the bunker. Perhaps not.

Oh, you'll get an update at some point! Till then.

Armies on Parade - The project begins

As I mentioned in my previous post I'm entering GW's "Armies on Parade" competition at my local hobby centre (GW Glasgow for those interested). I'm also using this as an excuse to start a Black Templars (BT) army. To check out the details of the competition see the link here.

Initial board sketch

My initial idea, subject to much change of course, is to display the BT doing what they do best; charging through a heavy artillery barrage heedless of their losses to close with the enemy! First off is the board itself. This is 2' square (approx 609x609mm). To add a bit more visually than just a simple flat plain I'm going to have a destroyed Imperial Guard (IG) bunker and trench system in place. This is to give the impression that the BT have appeared at a break in the line and are countering an enemy charge. There will be IG casualties everywhere, and possibly fleeing troops also.

I have previously built a full bunker, modelled on the Dawn of War IG troop centre, which I'll be replicating for the destroyed bunker.

Complete IG Bunker

I think that's enough to process for now. Next time I'll get on with some space marines! Till then.

An Introduction

**Skip to end for upcoming project**

Hi all. Just thought I'd give you a wordy first post to introduce myself and explain what I hope to achieve on here.

I began this hobby a decade ago and find myself lacking the drive to finish projects. I hope to keep a record here of the various projects I start so I can: a) keep track of them all, and b) force myself to finish them instead of them falling out of existence. I hasten to add the are usually rediscovered (possibly years later), but are then binned for lack of use/aesthetics/just being rubbish.

I don't really "play" owing to me living away from a stable gaming community (friends played, friends stopped, I kept going). I do however have a large Dwarf army for Warhammer (my first army) as well as various units I took the notion to paint up. I also have enough incomplete figures for a small Empire force if only I would stop stealing bits for Imperial Guard conversions! 40k wise I have roughly 1000pts of Imperial Guard infantry. I'm now bored of painting cadians. This brings me to my new project.

**NEW PROJECT** - I'm building a diorama for the Armies on Parade competition being run by GW (Games Workshop). I'm also using this as an excuse to build up my first Space Marine force. I'll give detals in my next post.

Till then.