SOON

I literally cannot think of anything hobby related while I wait.  This happens every time there is an impending release.

I should have the new Codex: Necrons in hand at some point later today.  I can't wait.  The plan is to read, read, read over the weekend and come up with a solid 1500 point list using what I have and what I picked up from the auction last week.

Then...  a schedule.

It worked great for me when I built my Farsight Bomb Tau army.  I planned a list and painted 1500 points worth of models in 2 months.  It was tough, but it happened.  The Necrons scheme I'm using is a little tougher, and might take longer, but should still be doable if I stick to a schedule.

Until then, I found this online somewhere.  Awesome piece of fanart.  This would make a great forum avatar.

Game Swap Treasure Trove!!!

It's time!

So, I went to the Showcase Comics Game Swap this past weekend in Swarthmore, PA.  I got some absolutely fantastic deals.  I took pics of everything just now so you can see what I'll be working on over the months to come.

Warning...  long post!

First up, I got this Shield Bag from Battlefoam for a measly 5 USD.  It didn't have any foam, but is otherwise in perfect, unused condition.  I have TONS of GW sized foam, which is what this takes.  What a deal!

Next up are these four blisters for my Necrons army.  I checked out all the casts and they look perfect.  I might end up replacing the weapons with plastic replacements from a Praetorians kit, but that's easy enough.

These guys will end up seeing action as converted Space Marine Scout Bikes for my rough and tumble Scout Army which is currently very much WIP.

I bought this on a whim.  I think it'll probably go to my buddy who plays Ogre Kingdoms.

I have absolutely zero use for this, but it was only $3 and it's painted really well.  I believe it's Eltharion on Stormwing.  I have a small High Elf army I never play with, but three bucks is three bucks.

This thing just looked too ridiculous to pass up.  It was only $1 because nobody else bid on it.  I took pity on the poor ugly thing.  The head might be nice for a fancy Ork Warboss conversion or something.

This was actually pretty cool.  $7 got me a Legion of Everblight metal starter and an extra blister.  I almost bought this recently, but didn't think it was worth 50 bucks to me.  Totally worth 7.

I was so excited when I saw this come up for auction.  Nobody else was interested, so I think I got it for $3.  It's 10 super old scouts from back when the Scout Sarge had power armour.  The Heavy Bolter is an over the shoulder style.  I love it.  These will definitely get painted for my Scout army.

This was thrown in with the above lot.  No real use for this, but...  eh...  Termie parts!

Tend bucks for this.  The Crashed Aquila Lander is an awesome terrain kit.  With proper bases and painting, you've got quite a bit of nice looking terrain for your table.  I'll probably base these on MDF and go from there.

Can't go wrong with one of these.  You'll see why in a second.

28 Scarabs still on sprue.  I got more later on.  Combined, there are 56 Scarabs.  I tend to put 3 per base, so that's 18 bases with some leftover.

This was an awesome find.  Ten old metal Flayed Ones.  I think they're getting Deep Strike and Infiltrate now.  They might actually be usable.  I like these older ones better than the newer ones.  For one, metal vs. Finecast.  Two...  they're less cartoony and more menacing.  I like it!

This dude was a steal.  $3.  Part of me feels like no aspiring painter can say he's serious unless he or she has made an attempt with this model.  I'm going to put some serious, top tier effort into this guy.

TRANSFERS.  ZOMG, SO MANY TRANSFERS.

I grossly misunderstood this auction.  I thought I was bidding on standard Fantasy Chaos Marauders.  These things look great, but are super weird.  The legs are from Kroot models and the bodies...  I have no idea.  I'm probably gonna try to offload these somewhere.  At least they were super cheap.

Big Box o' Sprues!  Lots of assorted Necron Bits.  There are enough bits to make about 20 Warriors...  except for the total lack of legs.  I might have to work out some sort of Necron phasing in/out setup by casting some legs in clear resin and then painting an electric effect on the transition point.  No idea.  But the box was around $5.

Can't go wrong with these guys, especially now that there is a Destroyer Formation in the new Codex.

28 Warriors with 28 accompanying scarabs.  Other than the one assembled dude, everything is new on sprue.

Yay!  This was a total surprise when I got home.  It was in one of the above lots and I didn't notice.  Pretty sure this is the out of print Lord.  I like the claw hand.  I'll probably replace the weapon's head with a new plastic one, but otherwise, this guy was a great find.

This was an amazing deal.  $7 for these guys.  It's enough parts to make three full Tomb Spyders...  er...  Canoptek Spyders.  I like the look of the old Spyders quite a bit and have been looking for more.  They're too expensive on eBay, so this was great.

Lastly, a treasure trove of Dark Eldar.  I don't have time to pull them out and they're likely getting sold to a friend tomorrow, but you're looking at the following...

• 5 Metal Incubi
• 1 Metal Archon (Converted Nicely)
• 9 Helions
• 20 Wytches (appear to be in 4 blocks of 5 from a Wargear standpoint)
• 40 Warriors (lots of nice conversion work with Fantasy Dark Elf bits)
• a Raider

Add in the Webway Portal above and this is a really nice start to an army.  It's around $320 retail and that doesn't include the really nice assembly work with all the conversions.  Assuming my buddy buys and paints them, I'll pester him for photos to post later.

As you can see, this was a fantastic auction.  Usually I end up getting a couple of things at a reasonable, but not great price.  This time I got just about everything I wanted for a pittance.  I can't wait to get working on some of these things!

I'm going to try to work out a schedule over the next several days of what I'm going to work on next.  Unfortunately, I have very little ability to prime right now as it's cold as crap outside and I live in an apartment.  That means no garage or basement with a fan pointed out an exhaust pipe.

More to come!

Sneak Peak - Auction Winnings

It was a VERY lucrative auction.  I ended up sitting next to the guy who buys EVERYTHING to resell on eBay.  He was a great guy when you talked to him.  He didn't bid on anything I was interested in.  It was awesome.

I'll post a full list on Wednesday, but here is a quick sneak peak shot.  I'm estimating about $350 or so retail value in Necron stuff...  a fair amount of which was out of print.  Old Spyders, old Lord, old metal Flayed Ones.  4 new sealed Finecast Blisters.  Some really good stuff.

Game Swap

I'm writing this post ahead of time because I know I won't have time to write one Sunday night.  I'm headed to the Showcase Comics Game Swap in Swarthmore, PA on Sunday (which will be yesterday when this post goes live).  It's sort of like an auction, except that it's not one.

Gamers bring in tons of stuff and the store does a sort of combination auction/buy it now event and if you win something, you pay the store, they give the seller store credit and you get some new stuff to work on.

The plan is to pick up whatever Necron stuff is available, plus whatever else catches my eye.  You pretty frequently find hidden gems during these events.  It sort of depends though...  several eBay resellers show up and they snap up  the good stuff pretty quick.

Hopefully my next post will have a run down of the awesome stuff I won.  Wish me luck!

Necrons are SO CLOSE

ZOMG!  I totally can't wait.  I just NEED the new Codex.

I'm hearing pretty good things about how the armies can be laid out.  Things like...

Also, this dude looks amazing.  I can't wait to get him and paint him up to be my Overlord.

This week was a little rough at work, so I wasn't able to do much hobby related stuff.  On the upside...

I GOT PROMOTED.  I'm a boss man now.  I'm pretty psyched.  Expect to see some sort of hobby related reward for myself in the near future.

A Preview While We Wait

Before I get started, this made me laugh for a good five minutes straight.  You're welcome.

Danny Dorito!

It's Wednesday.  The Necron Codex goes up for preorder on Friday.  Ugh.  My whole life seems like it's about waiting right now.  Not just in my hobby, but in my work and personal life.  Patience might be a virtue, but it's not one of mine.

I don't have much time to post today, so I'm just gonna tease a quick piece of Tau terrain I'm currently working on.  The goal is to make a full table of Tau themed terrain to go with my main army.  Obviously, much work left to do on this.

A First Experiment with Casting

It was a...  moderate success.  Definitely learned some things.

So...

I bought some mold making material as well as some pourable two part resin from the local Michaels arts and crafts store.  The stuff is manufactured by Alumilite.

Alumilite "Amazing" line of casting materials.

I built some tech bases as you can see from a previous post and glued a couple onto some thin plastic card.  I did this to make sure no mold material seeped under the base while pouring.

My bases glued to plasticard.

Next I built a little frame out of Legos and stuck my bases into the slots.  I actually knew how large this would be and had cut the plasticard to be the exact correct size.

These legos are literally 30 years old.  I got them from my parent's house.

A perfect fit!

Once my fram was assembled, I mixed up the mold material as directed in the instructions and poured it in.  It's a pretty messy process.  Don't even attempt to use the little tiny cups that come with the kit.  Get some plastic cups or something.  I tried to use the little cups and made a huge mess.

Mold material!

I probably should have made the molds both wider and deeper, but live and learn.  The instructions tell you to wait 2-4 hours before the mold will be ready.  Try more like 8 hours.  It was still kind of gloppy at the 4 hour mark.  I'd suggest just waiting until the next day.

When I was finally satisfied that the mold material had cured, I pulled apart the Legos and pulled out my new molds.  Success!

Molds!

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the one one the left is "sagging" a little.  This is because I didn't make the mold big enough.  I should have made it wider and deeper.  You need to make sure there is enough material to keep the open space the correct shape.  As it is, when I cast bases, there is a little bit of a bump.  Nothing terrible, but the mold warped a little when I tried to take it out at the 4 hour mark.  The one on the right wasn't touched, so it's in much better shape.

Now to mix the resin and pour...

Looks like clear jelly.

I put in a little too much and their's a definite bump sticking out the top of the mold.  This isn't really an issue as I can sand the bases flat later.

The instructions said to let these sit about 20 minutes before demolding.  I waited 3 hours.  Mainly because I was binge watching Zombie flicks on Netflix.  Yup.  I'm exciting.

When I did pull them out, I was met with...

Great success!

Great Success!  A little too much flash, but easily trimmed.   I wouldn't have had any flash if I hadn't overfilled the mold.

All in all, I'm very happy with my results.  The starter kit I bought didn't really have all that much mold making material in it.  I'm going to have to consider what to do next.  Honestly, bases are pretty easy to make by hand unless you're doing a huge army.  They are fantastic "test case" casts though.  I've seem lots of people start with complicated models.  Seriously...  start with a base.  If you can do this right, everything else is doable even if it's a little more complex.

Necrons Incoming!

Mixed feelings.  Looks like a new Codex, a single new clampack Plastic Overlord and...  nothing else.  I'm sure there will be new formations and what not in the Codex, but I was really hoping for a new Destroyer Kit or something.  Anything.  Oh well.  At least we're getting a clampack.  Grey Knights got a steaming pile of less than nothing as units were taken away.

Also, we're getting this for about 165 USD.  It's actually a pretty solid deal with models just about everyone can use.  Ten bucks says there's a new formation called "The Tomb Awakened".

New Warhammer/Warhammer 40k Softback Army Books/Codexes?

So, it looks like this is a thing now...

I guess they're making softback army books now.  Codexes have to be next.  Hopefully these are full color.

I imagine we'll be seeing more softback versions of army books and codexes coming soon.  I'm not gonna lie.  I think this is a really good thing.  I would love to go back to the olden days of being able to actually afford a physical copy of EVERY rulebook.  Nowadays it's hard to justify the 50 USD a pop for a book I'm not likely to really read through more than once or twice.

In other news, we have house guests, so I haven't been able to work on my casting efforts.  The plan is to do something with that this weekend once everything has settled down.  I think I'm going to start by casting just a single base.  I only have a starter kit, so I don't think I have enough for more than one or two smaller molds.  If it works, I'll have to order a larger batch from Amazon.com or somewhere else.  I can't find anyplace local that sells the stuff.  If anyone knows of anywhere in the northern Delaware area, please let me know.

Tech Bases for Casting

I decided to start the casting effort with something a little more ambitious than a couple of cork bases.  I picked up some diamond plate looking think plasticard and went to town making bases using various bits as well as some guitar cable I had laying around...

I started out with some 40mm bases...

...and then went digging around in my bitz box.

I also found some plasticard diamond plate.  Cool Stuff!

I cut the diamond plate to shape.

Added some bitz and guitar cable.

Added deck plating to some of the bases.

And here they all are!

I expect to be able to work on making a mold in the next couple of days.  I'm pretty excited about this.  I'm really hopeful that this will work out well.

Some (Hopefully) Exciting New Things - Mold Making and Casting

I went out to my local Michaels store this evening and made a purchase that I've been toying with for quite some time.  The efforts of a friend of mine finally kicked me into gear on this.  I purchased some Alumilite mold making goo and a box of pourable resin.

Alumilite Casting Resin and Pourable Mold Material

But, what am I planning on casting?

Canoptek Scarab Swarms...  aka, Subject Alpha for Project Clone-a-Bug

These guys!  I have 16 of these currently made up and I'm looking to run a huge Canoptek themed army.  To do so will require three full units of 10 Scarabs with a compliment of 9 Spyders.  I'll hopefully be generating 9 additional bases per turn, so I'm going to needs tons of these things.  I think this will work, but might have to cast the bases and the Scarabs separately.  We'll see how this turns out.  I've talked to several people about casting and the general consensus seems to be that bases are the easiest thing to cast.  My plan is to do a "temple" themed set also.  I'll make up 5-10 each of the various size bases.  The goal is to do something like the below, but with more "tech debris" and maybe some tile work.

Step 1 is to make some "test bases" with no undercuts that I think will be easy to cast.  My goal is to have those complete by Wednesday with a test mold and test pours done by Friday.  Hopefully it'll be a productive week of casting fun.

Work in Progress Killa Kans - just to show off the bases.

Work in Progress Killa Kans - base detail.

The Killa Kans themselves are a work in progress that I sort of got distracted from.  My goal is to eventually make a full Ork Mech/Grot army with no real Boyz at all.  The Troops with all be feral Grots and the HQs will all be Meks of various kinds.  I think I can convert everything else to be Grot related including Grot Tanks, etc. from Forgeworld.