On the bench

Painting while watching a game, excellent!

Captain Flair

Done! My Assault on Black Reach captain is finally not just a black boring blob on the battlefield, but rather a feast of red, white, blue and gold. Power weapons also benefit hugely from being properly painted, since they are so important in heated assault battles.

I realized during the final detailing that I need to get myself a decent black pen to do banner texts with. Freehanding with a detail brush just won't cut it - I don't have the skills. I have done some lettering with a brush, but not this small. That is why the model is missing the "ULTRA" text on the banner.

Tabula rasa, part 2

As promised yesterday, here is the second part of my effort to make a lightweight, modular full-sized game table. Hopefully I will either help someone make their own or inspire people who think my version is crap to make an even better one!

After drying overnight, the glue will now have a firm grip on the Citadel Battlemat. Time to trim off the excess fabric. I used scissors, but to get really straight and clean edges I recommend using a scalpel or a sharp carpet knife.

Next up I lined the underside edges with masking tape. The idea here is to keep the styrofoam from chipping off, which it has an annoying tendency to do.

And presto! A finished game table with just a couple of hours of work. It can be laid out over almost any table in either 4'x4' or 4'x6' configurations. I must admit it will be rather sensitive to pressure. But not much of it is sticking out on each side of the table, and rule #1 of my table will be "no elbows". Worst case scenario: I will have to strengthen the boards with thin MDF on the underside.

As you can see on this last picture the game table stacks to a pretty reasonable size, which I plan to tuck away in my man closet when not used. Total cash spent is:
Citadel Battlemat: 25 €
Styrofoam boards: 8 €
750 ml glue bottle: 4 € (only used half of it)
The sum of all ingredients thus comes in under 40 €, which is nice.

Please tell me if you did something better or more clever, I am always interested in seeing cool projects!

Be safe,
PD

All your base are...

...not done yet. But that has a logical explanation (no, not laziness): I need to spray it with some purity seal matt varnish before gluing on the grassy patches. Other than that, I think I'm done. I could fiddle around a bit with the details and I can't say the lettering on the parchments are my finest work, but it's good enough™. And knowing when you are at good enough is a very important lesson to learn if a busy dad is ever going to get that army painted.

Finecasts are really fun to paint, but going back to regular resin models will be nice and easy. It will probably be a while until I do another finecast. That Librarian in terminator armor looks tempting though...

Next up: finishing my Rhino. Also, building some kind of lightbox for taking pictures of minis! A trip to IKEA is long overdue; baby stair protection gate thingy and better lighting for my hobby.

Cheers,

P Daddy