Eldar Codex: A Review

Keep in mind. The Eldar collection I inherited began around the time that the Harlequin boxed set came out. This was before Avatars (well, harlequin sergeants were called Avatars), this was before Dark Eldar. Hell, this was before aspect warriors. Since then it has grown. I have probably 80 or so Guardians. 3 Wraithlords (one harlequin), 4 vypers, fourteen jet bikes.

I have Nuadhu. Who in the world has Nuadhu? Just me, right?

So, my read of the new Eldar Codex is probably a lot different than other peoples...and that's good I think. Let me try this another way, between Howling Banshees and Striking Scorpions, you would have been a fool to pick the banshees, and realistically, you would have been better off putting your points into a seer council. Between Guardians and rangers, that was a toss up, but they were both better than dire avengers. Dark Reapers were nice, but better than a fire prism or a falcon with a combat crystal? No way. Bikes were useless. Even the special wild riders from the craftworld codex. They were too expensive and they didn't do anything. The Phoenix Lords weren't worth the points, and the Avatar was worth the points even if he never did anything. In other words, while the Eldar codex had grown over the years to encompass a large array of models, half the book would have been a mistake to use. Eldar have a plan for victory--that plan did not include Swooping Hawks. Nice models. Great chance to really show off your painting skills, but actually putting Swooping Hawks on the table was a big f'ing mistake.

Now, from what I understand, the big news behind the codex is the inclusion of this new HQ choice: The Autarch. Okay. I'm not against that. That's nice. I'll probably never use him since the Eldar have ten or so HQ choices already. I suppose if I run out of points, I could put in an Autarch, but I don't really need a cheapie HQ for my Saim Hann force. Plus, given WYSIWYG, I can already see that people will expect me to have twenty versions of this guy so that I can play every Autarch combination. So...I'll convert, but I'm not going to be going crazy on this.

The big news for me is that the codex seems to have brought back to life the troop choices that had fallen into ill repute. Swooping Hawks and Howling Banshees, Jet Bikes and Dire Avengers are all worth buying again. The bad news is that Eldar vehicles aren't nearly as kick butt as they once were, but let's face it, that combat crystal on all the vyper combination was...how should I say this...unfair (and not just in the 40k in 40 minutes games where it wasn't unfair but rather cheating). The best part is that GW didn't cheap out on this. Their solution to the "fix the Eldar" dilemma is ingenious in its simplicity. Half the Exarch powers now extend out to the squad. Wow! That's a good idea. It's great. Oh, and give everybody Fleet of Foot. That was the stupidest crap I'd ever heard of in my life. Half the army could fleet of foot, unless they had an exarch; that was dumb.

But I think the single most worthwhile thing they could have done in the new book (besides making War Walkers worth buying again...thank you GW) was that they brought back the Harlequins. They even made them an interesting troop choice. They aren't the "unofficial Harlequins from GW's site, but for that we should be thankful, I have a feeling that these harlequins will hold their own. My only complaint is that they took out the Solitaire, but I'm sure the Solitaire will make an appearance soon enough.

Problems? Yeah. The way the book is set up there's kind of like this doubling up thing. Under each troop choice is this intricate list of what everything does and then the second half of the book features the point cost of those same items. That's kind of dumb. Just put the PV down with the troops. Last night I was reading the Striking Scorpions entry and was tricked into believing that they didn't have shuriken pistols anymore. Because the weapon wasn't new it wasn't explained along with the striking scorpions; I had to go to the back of the book to look at the "real" army list to see that they were still using two hand to hand weapons at the same time.

My other complaint centers around GW's ever shrinking photo gallery in these codexes. With the number of painters out there, it seems ridicolous that I can't get more than one picture of a Fire Dragon and no pictures of guardians from Saim Hann (the craftworld I play). I realize that most of Saim Hann is flying around and all, but to have that same tired old picture from the old Eldar codex and the old Craftworld Eldar codex...well, I want to see some new stuff. When you pay $20, I think you can ask for some full color glossys.

All in all though, I think that this is a wonderful incarnation of one of the classic 40k armies. I realize that Eldar players are not as common as Necron or Marine players, but as the army has been around for awhile, it has accumulated a lot of different figures to account for, and so I can appreciate the complexity that goes into making rules for the Eldar.

On a final note, this has little to do with the codex itself, but the hot new figures for the eldar are NOT the Autarch. What GW has done with the always ugly Wraithlord and the war walkers is absolutely amazing and I recommend hitting a store just to see these figures.

Slow month for 40k

Jeez, it's been a while. Well, ebay's been flopping, or not flopping depending on how much money I guess I want to make. The problem with ebay is that you really know the ammount of time you put into something and you put it up to sell. Past that point, it wouldn't be so bad, but they let you know how many people are "watching" the item and so as a seller, you know that there's interest. If the item doesn't sell past that point, you know that your prices are too high, but then, I'm not about to drop my prices just because...some of this stuff takes quite a bit of time and effort. In other words, I make this pact with myself to not sell out by selling low, and then... well...and then I have an attic filled with scenery that I need to do something with.


At that point, I should update my bargain bin, but things have been hectic around here. I hope to get pictures up this weekend.

On the playing front, not much to report. Our spot has had major surgery (the ceiling was coming down) which meant not much playing for a few weeks (and a number of comments from the landlord who simply cannot wrap his head around miniaturized wargames). We've supplemented with guitar hero to pass the time and are now, nearly, back on course.

Back on course, by the way, means that I can bring back the scenery that's worth playing on. Last week we did manage to get in a game played almost exclusively on unpainted, unworked out scenery. There was one hill that looked like a hill. Two forests that didn't have any trees. Six or seven little hills made out of green styrofoam that looked like...green styrofoam, and a pink building frame for the center to the table. Oh yeah, and an obligatory terrain bit from Battle for Macragge. We played carnage with four 40k in 40 minutes armies, and no one won because, well...we forget to make the half strength morale checks. My army, though, was last to reach the point where they could not claim the center of the table and I learned a really important lesson: I hate the dark eldar.

Seriously, a raider with a disentegrator, a splinter cannon, and 10 guys inside all rapid firing--what kind of bullshit is that?!?

But, as per usual, the genestealers (which I was playing) did pretty well, managing, in one turn to dessimate an entire squad of grey knights without taking a single casualty. I like to only play Tyranids once in a while so that I don't spoil my fun with too much of a good thing.

In any case, supposedly the week after Thanksgiving is the grand re-opening of Chris's attic and at that time I plan on putting up a new battle report. I am gearing up because we plan on innaugerating the new attic with a city fight board, and well, I want to do this right. I should be putting some pictures up soon under coming attraction, but I'm not sure how forthcoming they will be. After all, we've cleared the attic. No reason to take crappy scenery back out of the box when I can replace it.

Chris is telling me that there may be a big con at Stoneybrook that he wants me to go in on with him. Supposedly one of his WOW guild members runs the show which guarantees us super top secret backstage passes. In any case, I don't think they'll have too much complaint when I show up ready with an Ice World to run some 40k games.

I plan on writing more later about molding techniques so watch for those, but I think that belongs in its own post and not in an update.

My special place

I'd like everyone to know that I, Monstro, have a special place. It's the place where I put scenery bits that I plan to use within the next twenty four hours, like that second floor to the bombed out building that fit perfectly and that I lost in my special place for nearly 2 weeks, or the sidewalks that I plan to mold from some child's toy that are perfectly detailed and to scale, there in my special place now too, wherever that is...

You see, what I do is I look through my bits and I say, "Grip tape, this will be perfect for the fences that I'm about to make." And then I move the grip tape to my special place and lose it.

Of course, since I'm a scenery designer, that means that half the crap I own was bought at a dollar store, a clearance bin, a yard sale (tag sale for you New Englanders), or browsing through the Final Cut, Big Lots, Walmart, or Home Depot. In short, half of the things that make it into my special place are things that I can't just go out and buy again. The Bit Bin on my website is an attempt to not have a special place, but let's face it, it's incomplete: I have five other boxes filled with stuff that have yet to be catalogued. Not to mention two little bookshelves covered with bits, pieces, chemicals, clay, rocks, flock, and paints that I'll never get to.

I write this here as advice to fellow scenery designers. DON'T HAVE A SPECIAL PLACE. It's just somewhere where you can conveniently lose things for weeks on end. Leave that important bit in with the general mass of crap you've collected. Yes, it will take more digging to get to it, but damned, you'll be able to find it without having to tear your house apart. Or you'll go out and buy a suitable standing part, which is right when you find the original, and now there's no damn continuity between your pieces!

Man, those sidewalk things were sweet. I'll never find them again.

Monstro: Not Quite Beta Material

So, recently I've been told that my blog is too old school to allow commentary from new school hep cats. In other words, it's not beta. So, I decided to rectify that situation by becoming beta. Good news! I am now beta. Isn't that awesome. Bad news. My blogs aren't.

You see when I log in as Beta Monstro, it asks me whether or not I want to make a blog. It does not give me the option of transferring over the blog. According to blogger.com, as time goes on they will be asking more and more blogs to move over to the beta format. They just haven't asked me yet.

Obviously I could open up yet another blog called Gretchin Rock! or some shit like that, but man, I've got links going back and forth from my site. That sounds like an incredible nightmare.

Of course, this does make me feel a little better. I think I've received three comments on my blog total, and one was quite clearly a mass mailer. On my website, my guest sign in book is pitiful. Maybe I should run a bulletin board? By the way, anyone out there know how to run a bulletin board?

The idea that there are thousands of Warhammer junkies out there who would just love to comment on my blog is, I think, inticing, but my general attitude is: "how the hell would they find me?" I have a vision of how this thing sort of works and it involves using ebay as advertisement for my website, and from there, maybe they find my blog. Or the opposite, maybe people who look for 40k websites will find "The Empire of Mankind" and move from there to my website. I did not expect, however, to get anything going until I started putting crap up on ebay again.

Well, last week the website got 71 unique hits. Eleven of whom stuck around for more than twenty minutes. Where are these people coming from? Well, glad you like what you see, tell friends. I will attempt to put up more stuff on the bargain bin shortly.

As for people who'd like to comment, man, I'm trying. I really am. I have a minor in computer science. I have worked as a webmaster. I can obviously design a web page. But I know nothing about how computers work. If there is some "interesting" feature that I should be using, forget it. I'm a busy man, or I'm not a smart man; take your pick. But if I can't figure out how to get frinds on my IM account, I sure as hell can't get my blog turned beta until they make it some sort of push button operation.

There's always anonymous posting. I would love to publish even anonymous posts so long as they're not rudeness or open hostility.

Space Marine Tactical and the las cannon option

Again, this is based primarilly on my playing space marines in the most recent battle, but I'm not quite sure that the las-cannon option for the space marine tactical squad is the best option available.

With a devastator squad, it seems to me, you know what you're doing. You put them in the corner of the board and there they sit. They fire. They don't fire. Either way, you know they are where they're supposed to be.

The problem with the tactical squad armed with the las-cannon is that you're inclined to sit them back like a devastator squad and let all the regular marines sit around doing nothing the enitre battle. That's a lot of people getting nothing done so that you can fire 1 measley las-cannon shot a round. Enhhhh... I'm just not sure it's worth it. Keep in mind, the standard of the tac squad is the sergeant with a really mean hand to hand weapon. So, you have a squad sitting at the edge of the board which will never get into hand to hand armed with a sergeant with master crafted power claws or something like that. That, or you make a squad with a las cannon and you put them in close so the sergeant can attack shit and the las cannon never fires.

I think the heavy weapon in the tac squad sort of has to be viewed as the thing you use if there's no reason to move. The problem is, when that weapon's a las-cannon, you kind of invent reasons not to move.

Obviously, all this is a thing of personal preference, but this is, I think the reason I suck with tactical marines but I love playing Thousand Sons. There's no reason the Thousand Sons shouldn't keep moving forward. After all, they want you in rapid fire range and their sergeant is an absolute bad ass. There's never the whole, "but then I'm wasting a las-cannon shot" to screw up your game.

Marine Snipers

If you read my recent battle report, you'll notice my use of marine snipers. I don't know. The juries still out.

I've noticed that GW has this habit of making a weapon that's almost okay. Hits always on a 2+ (cool). Wounds always on a 4+ (cool). Full armor save (nearly useless). The same is said of nearly every harlequin weapon available, ultimately making that army not worth playing. I don't know. I haven't seen the new Eldar codex so I dont' know if Harlequins are in it whether they've been improved or what, but as it stands now, you either take the target's toughness out of the equation or their armor out of the equation, but never both. Some weapons should have that capacity. Without such potential, harlequins kind of suck.

As for the marine sniper rifle, who exactly is it good against? Eldar Wraithlords? Tyranids? Anyone else. I mean, a bolter against most infantry grant a better to "wound roll" and have a better capacity to ignore armor saves. Plus you get two shots at close range. Like I said, the jury is still out.

Two things, I think, keep the marine sniper squad in the game. Well...three unofficially. The unooffical "third reason" is that I have about sixty space marine scouts and I want to play them as a "10th company army." With that many scouts, you kind of hope you can pull their cool force--the sniper rifle--out of the pit of uselessness.

The second reason not to immediately abandon the sniper rifle is its ability to kill low armor vehicles. It's alright at killing walkers, sentinals, and all manner of hover vehicles. I know what you're saying: "no it's not very good. It has to roll a 10 minimum on two dice." Well, yeah, but a whole squad with those weapons gives you a pretty good shot that someone will roll a 10 or higher.

This brings up the third advantage, and one that I keep forgetting. Scouts have inflitrate. The real trick then is to make a scout assault squad and send it forward, but there's another advantage to having infiltrate beyond being able to get as close to the enemy as possible. Infiltrate allows a squad like snipers to set up with a clear shot at whoever they're mission is to take out that battle. They don't have to get close, and they shouldn't; that's not the point. But you can set them so that they are perfectly positioned, after everyone has deployed, to have an open shot at the speeder or whatever.

I just wish they could insta-kill. That would make them loads better.

Battle Report updated

I have officially put up a battle report on my site. Chris and I play against one another. I'm playing Ultramarines (which is my main army which I never get to play) and Chris is playing Daemonhunters. Wee Fun!

It's pretty much win-win for the Emperor.

new stuff for dead worlds

I suppose it's not too hard to figure out that I really like Ice Worlds. The problem with ice world is that, in 40k, they're just worlds that are white rather than green (or brown). I think that's...nice. I mean, I like the aesthetic, but...can I get some more, I suppose is what I'm asking. I mean the idea behind an alien ice battle is troops popping out from under the ice and losing your dreadnought in a fozen lake and giant geo-thermal vents, and that damn monster that grabs Luke and hangs him in this cave. That's an ice battle!

So, two things. First of all, up on my website, monstromakes.com, I now have rules for using Stratagems to spice up your ice world games (including a couple of new stratagems). My list of new stratagems is growing, but I've decided to put them out a bit at a time as a teaser.

But not teaser on point two. I've put up the basics for how to make snow and ice effects for ice world scenery. I got tired of answering all the damn emails one at a time. I figure, if you read those directions and want to make the ice world scenery then chances are, you aren't rushing to me to buy scenery anyway. On the other hand, if you look at the directions and think, "oh, I'm never going to do that," maybe you'll be more willing to buy the scenery from me. So, yes, that's kind of a trade secret, but not one that, if leeked to the world, will put me out of business.

3 Way

Heh...heh...heh... I said three way.

Hey all, I put up scenario rules for a three way battle up on my website. I say this because I know that three way scnerios are a rarity. I will be playtesting it tomorrow at which time I will be shilacked as normal. I'm hoping that at that time (cross your fingers), I will have a battle report to put up.

Wish me and the Ultramarines luck so that my foes (who will most probably be IG and Daemonhunters) will fall by the forces of the emperor.

negative cover

This is a reprint from my website:

As of now, there are a few ways to define cover: height, cover save, difficult ground, area, passable/impassible, dangerous, etc. All of these are well and fine, and I would even say the more variance you put into your cover rules the more dynamic the game will be. Let's face it, your 1000 point Necron list doesn't really change much from week to week, but the board does.

That being said, I would like to add another terrain characteristic that I'm pretty much stealing whole sale from Dawn of War: negative cover. Negative cover means that an area of the board is more dangerous than just being out in the open. Maybe there are things nearby that might explode if shot (making that position intensely dangerous) or perhaps moving or "getting down" is an impossibility. In D.O.W., negative cover is generally applied to any water areas. I especially like this because the rules concerning water, standing or otherwise, seem to me to be remarkably inadequate. Most people say that water is impassible terrain, be it stream or ocean.

What negative cover does in terms of game mechanics is that it allows opponents to re-roll misses during their shooting phase. Thus, it isn't that the water is impassible, exactly...it's just that you don't want to be caught in it!

Two special concerns for negative cover (over and above the enemy re-rolling misses in their fire phase). First off all, if the enemy re-rolls misses those hits must be allocated to troops that are actually in the negative cover. This is different than the general cover idea of majority rule. Some members of the squad can be in negative cover, while others may be out of negative cover (or even in cover! In which case majority rule, and the troops that are in negative cover get a cover save).

Lastly, as far as hand to hand is concerned. Negative cover still counts as cover. Troops without special equipment charging a unit in negative cover will attack last.

The New Site

For the most part, my activity on Ebay has sort of dwindled...which is kind of hurting me because business is pretty good right now for selling scenery on Ebay and I'm out of the loop. I took myself out of the loop for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I got a really big custom order and I don't think I realized how big. It's very close to being done so I'm happy about that, but it took a damn long time to build. Teaching three classes and trying to get a Ph.D. is taking more time away from my business than I figured. Maybe I
was a bit too optimistic about the whole thing.

The other thing consuming my time has been the creation of my new web site. I've gone from having 250 mb of space to 2 gigs and so I'm really excited by the possabilities of what I can do. Of course, it's just me and so again, I'm possibly getting a little too optimistic about how much ass it will kick, but nonetheless, all signs point to "major."

My gaming group, thank God, has finally decided to play one on one games instead of the four way (or more) battle that we've been playing week after week after week. for the past year or so. The result is that two of the players who rarely win, won--which I assume makes the game a bit more enjoyable. I mean, it's a friendly game and all, but still, no one wants to lose every week. So, congrats Chris and Russ on your fine victories, and Chris, I underestimated your demon hunters--it won't happen again.

The funniest part about our last game was that Russ, the durability tester in my group, commented on my lack of stuff up on Ebay. I think he may be checking to find out what kind of scenery is going to be in play. I don't know. It's kind of funny. Russ, if you're reading this, I'm bringing the death world again next week. Hurrah for the death world!

I haven't heard anything from Griffon Games, but then I need to take them some better stuff I think. I don't know. I'm a pretty harsh critic of my work so...there you go.

That's it for now.

Busy, busy, busy

Well. Let's see.

I now have a physical place that is selling my stuff. I take the first armload of stuff down to Griffon Games later this afternoon. I am really excited about this because I like the store. its a good place to play, the staff is helpful, and everything looks really good. When I first came to Massachusetts, I went to Griffon games and pretty much slobbered over their display case. Now I will be in it...not for my miniatures obviously, but for my scenery. It's a hell of a accomplishment for me.

Next up, the website is getting re-vamped. My beautiful and wonderful wife has signed me up for enough space to make it much bigger and much better. But even better, it will have a much shorter URL, which I think makes the whole thing more convenient.

Custom orders have been coming in and that's always good. A few small ones, some larger ones. Regardless, it's nice to see that side of the business taking off because I really much prefer working with a customer in mind than anonymously for ebay. Of course, with Ebay there's no deadlines and that's nice too. I will in the future be doing both, don't worry.

Moreover, someone finally pointed out that all the email addresses on my Bargain Bin were wrong. Great! The one part of my website where I sell stuff and I couldn't sell anything offf of it. I kind of gave up on the bargain bin because of this so you can all rest assured that now that the problem is fixed, more stuff will be going up.

Well, that's the appraising of stuff at this point. Keep watching the site, it should be getting a major facelift very soon.

Thinking about levels of height for terrain in 40k

Because people use space marines as the basic unit of measurement in the 40k game, level one is an inch or less. Level two is an inch to three inches, and level three is three inches or more. This is, of course, absolutely wrong, and what's worse, it makes boards look like crap. Chances are 90% of your terrain is going to be level one; it provides cover for level two minitures but it doesn't block line of sight. That means, 90% of the stuff on your table should be an 1" tall. Does anyone have a board where that's true? If so, how does it look? Like crap? Yes, I imagine it does.

Now, I know that there are a lot of people out there who assume that if a building or structure has holes in it at less than an inch then it's considered level one terrain. Great. So, a ten inch tall building is level one because you can peek through a window.

This all seems to me to be badly worked out solutions to a common game problem. Here's a better solution. First of all, don't use marines. Marines are one of the smaller of the level 2 miniatures. A better idea is to use something like a wraithguard, a Tau crisis suit or a Tyranid ravener. If you use a Tyranid ravener for instance, you'll find that level two really starts at about 2 1/2". Level one is below 2 1/2" and level three starts at about 4 1/2" or 5". Well, why not? I mean really, if I put something down on the table that's 5" tall, very few players are going to have trouble believing that it can provide cover for most level 3 models (except the Defiler, of course). 3"?....Not really. Put something down that's 3" tall and put a Land Raider behind it. Hull down, yes; blocked LOS, no.

Keep in mind that this is also extremely useful for terrain designers like myself. If 3" is level three, than a 3" hill is level three and there's really not that much room to do much in terms of sprucing that hill up. You can't carve out interesting symbols in a 1" space--at least, you can't carve them out so that they look interesting from 5' away. But if a level one hill is up 2 1/2" tall, and a level two hill up 4" tall, all of a sudden there's more room on the board to move upward without having to get weird about it, or without making pieces on the board look out of scale.

So, final results or me are: level one hill 1 1/2"-2" tall. Level two 3" tall minimum. Level 3 about 4 1/2 or 5" tall. Of course, this coincides nicely with the basic unit of scenery building: the styrofoam sheet which sells in 3/8", 3/4" or 1 1/2".

How's that for convenient

Quick Tip: the glue gun

Seriously, you want to use the glue gun. The glue gun will glue shit together. Yes, it's hot, but then, you aren't a real scnery builder until you have your first third degree burn. Ahh, nothing like scalding hot glue melting your skin. You take it off, but it takes a bit of you with it.

Alright, problem. Crazy glue, sucks, doesn't work half the time, and won't bond to a lot of surfaces (but man it bonds skin like nobody's business). Better glues take longer to dry. By the way, Mod Podge is king of the White glues. It takes an hour to dry.

Here's where the glue gun comes in. It will hold something for awhile. It is not a permanent solution, but it will definitely hold something for long enough so that the E6000 or the Gorrilla Grip will dry. That's why you use the glue gun.

I'm not sure if this will work for little miniatures. I imagine that the gloopy mess of the glue gun is prohibitive, but that's really not my department.

More paiting big stuff

The first thing you need to know about painting big things is that you have five stages of highlighting, so beyond anything else you do, you are already going to be highlighting five stages. Maybe you want to do more. Fine. But five's pretty good.

Those stages are: Base coat. Oh I know what you're saying, the base coat isn't a highlight, it's the base. Very good, but not really. The priming is the real base. Don't screw around and make this harder than it has to be. Spray paint it black. Use Krylon, or whatever, if there's no styrofoam involved. Use Design Masters or H20 if there is styrofoam (neither of these paint lines will melt styrofoam, except for Design Masters Black) Then you paint over that. Probably in really dark grey.

stage 2: Overbrush- Overbrush is what happens when you make sure the brush isn't dripping but you don't care whether the whole area gets painted. Yes, you're still slathering on the paint, but you couldn't care whether it gets in all the cracks.

stage 3- Overbrush with crappy brush- Either a foam brush or a stenciling brush. You're looking for a crappy brush that will barely hold paint. Obviously if it holds less paint than your good brush, it will spred less paint too. You can buy a bag of stenciling brushes at Michaels for about $2 for a bag of $20. By the way, when I say good brush, I mean a pack of brushes 4/$2 you buy from hardware stores. You're wasting your money buying anything better than that.

Stage 4- Drybrush with good brush- Do the drybrushing thing, just like you normally would. It's a little harder with a big brush, but don't worry about it, you just need less paint than before.

Stage 5- Drybrush with a crappy brush- It's really here when you'll figure out the ingenious nature of the crappy brush. I swear all of those effects you've been trying to do for years, the crappy brush does them naturally. You'll say, "wow, it only deposits paint on top edges!" Yes, that's because it's a crappy brush. Remember Monstro's motto: you don't need talent when you have the right tools.

Now as for how to paint. You should prefer downward strokes from the top of the scene to the bottom rather than attempting to paint in all directions all over the model. Remember light FALLs. And therefore, the top should be lighter than the bottom. Also, you're going to want to lighten large flat spaces. Steps 1-3 are technically still your shadow stages. Large flat areas really don't have shadow on them.

Mostly, take no time. Honestly, the quicker you go painting large things, the better. You can overdo this, and for most 40k painters, that's the real temptation. I can paint a road in about thirty minutes, most of which is spent shuffling pieces.

Good, now all you have left is the metalic bits. Test out all your silvers to find out which is lightest and which is darkest. Paint the thing the darkest. Good, now you'll want a reddish copper. That's rust. wash the thing in rust, running a wet brush down the flat parts of the silver thing to keep them clean. Great now take your really bright silver (or if you have a silver pen this will work even better) and put a straight line through the middle of all the flat pieces. Whallah. You're done.

Painting big stuff- the philosophy

First of all, painting scenery has very few of the same artistic components as painting miniatures. There are reasons for this, but before I go into those, simply, think about what you want a miniature to look like. You want that space marine to look like the light of the emperor is upon his reflective armor. Every edge highlighed up to the lightest shade of the base color before it becomes white and everything on the miniature describable as "rich."

This philosophy is fine. As far as painting is concerned, it comes from the romantic school, where what you are painting is, essentially, idealized versions of the warriors of the 41st millenium. You're not painting gritty realism. I rarely see a space marine that doesn't look fresh off the drop pod. The armor doesn't look 10,000 years old and dented by hundreds of rounds of bolter fire. No one so much as has mud on their boots. There are no drowned out effects. Hell, what your going for when you paint a miniature is that the miniature looks like the paint is still wet. Look at White Dwarf and you'll see what I mean.

There's nothing wrong with that. Miniatures are meant to be painted as if they could be picked up and examined and someone will raise cries of oooh or ahhh. It's just that you're not going for any of those kinds of things with scenery. Every so often you see someone paint a building the same way they'd paint their war hero, and well...it just looks cartoon-esque. I mean, you're making a hill--does the light of the emperor really fall on hills the same way it falls on Brother Captain Sterne. I think not.

The thing is, scenery isn't painted (generally) in the romantic school. The reason is that you've seen a building, you've never seen a space marine. You can romanticize a space marine much more easilly than you might a building. Most 40k scenery is based off of scenes from the world wars. Again, you can see actual pictures of those things. Objects that have been in a warzone for a couple of days are generally covered in dust, can you imagine what they look like having survived shelling for a few centuries?

The other source that 40k draws its scenes from is sci-fi, but sci-fi is pretty standard stuff. Scenery is either earth tones (Tantoine, Pitch Black, Starship Troopers) or grey scales (Death Star, Terminator, Aliens). --For a good combination of both, see Dune or Universal Soldier--. Most things drawn from sci-fi are HUGE in scale("that's not a small moon"). It is better to think King Kong (the over the top Peter Jackson version) than it is to think Braveheart. Braveheart scenery is perfect for Fantasy, not for 40k. Hell, in Empire they aren't on an icy continent--even Antarctica is too small. They have to be on Hoth--an ice planet.

So big, and rather simple in color. Simple color has the added effect of really making the details on the miniatures pop...and after all, they're the one's you're spending lots of time (or money) on painting, right?Keep in mind the tenants of this philosophy. Quite a few miniatures are already on the verge of looking busy all by their lonesome, put them on a giant checkerboard crazy looking building, and they clash. For Orks this tends to not be as much of a problem. They're kind of supposed to clash. But for imperial stuff, the scene can quickly look like a carnival, and unless you're playing Harlequins, you don't want that.

Keep in mind, however, that when I say that colors should be "simple"--I am refering to the number of colors on the palate, and not on the actual painting. You're still going to have to do a lot of highlighting and shadowing of grey. You're still going to have to pick colors that go together. And, despite what I'm saying, there are still some color choices that you'll have to make. If everything's grey, after all, think how much a single yellow object will stick out. Sometimes, you'll want that.

Cities of Death- Battle report

Chris and I played Deamonhunters versus Thousand Sons on a Cities of Death board last night and I have to say, even with my second forray into COD, I really really like it. There's something of the grittiness of Rogue Trader in it but with the rule clarity of 4th ed.. We played the second level up on Firesweep mission, so it was essentially capture the flag with five ruined buildings and one intact building (a water cooler). I think my major victory came the very first roll of the game when my dreadnought got firefrenzy with the Inquisitor's squad in his sight (twin linked las cannon and havoc launcher). After that, it was all sort of downhill for the Emperor's finest.

However, Chris and I had loads of fun. I think we had more fun being in a city then we did playing the game, but we both kind of came to the same agreements and I thought I'd share them with you.

First of all, if you're going to take special building stratagems (like ammo dump or medical facility) then take them all in the closest building. Chris kind of spread them out and it just ended up taking too long to get to the building that would have allowed him to re-roll to wound rolls.

Second, range is never better than punch. You're just never able to get a long shot off. So, if you have the choice, I would suggest always going for the punchier short range weapons, or even better, load up on hand to hand troops--they will come in immensely handy.

A spin off on this is that dreadnoughts seem to be far more useful than vehicles. Your average tank is going to get within charging range before it can get its shots off, and that means its opened itself up to some of the more powerful weapons in the game.

Third, we decided that at least one grey knight in any squad should be armed with a thunder hammer, because, man, they can't do shit against dreadnoughts. Oh, I know, this is their downfall, but its a huge downfall. They are supposed to be bad asses, but they never seem to come through. If you're playing daemonhunters concentrate on the army that they're running around with. Think of it as an IG army that can get terminators or a space marine army that can get crazy personalities, but don't think of it as a daemonhunter army with some people tagging along. You'll be wondering why you have no las cannons and you won't be able to stop the predators, the Land Raiders, or the Dreadnoughts.

I'm still curious to see what my Eldar do in the city fight. I think next week we're back to a 2 on 2 match up, so we'll see then maybe.

By the way, I got the booby trap stratagem. It was absolutely awesome. I think it killed one guy, but who cares. I had booby traps everywhere! If the rules allow, get it twice.

A Funny Story About Game's Workshop

So, there are two game stores in my area where one can purchase 40k merchandise. Both are twenty minutes away in opposite directions. One, Griffin Games in Greenfield (everything's a field in Massachusetts) absolutly rocks. It's what you'd expect in a game store: big selection, numerous titles, four tables, book cases full of scnery, etc.. The other is a GW store in a mall. It's one of those tiny stores too. It has two tables, both are maybe 4'x4', and I'm stressing maybe. And they generally have a game set up so that they can teach barely intersted (and slightly astonished) people how to play the game by pitting a squad of space marines versus a land speeder.

The other day I contacted both stores to determine whether they would be interested in my services. The guy at Griffin Games was out on vacation so...cross your fingers...but the guy at GW was in.

Me: "So, do you guys ever have people make scenery for your store."
Them: "No."

That was about it, but it reminded me of a funny story which I would like to now share.

Okay, so the funny story happenned awhile back. I had managed to purchase two Obliterators off of Ebay and the third one arrived in the mail but it was the old kind (will those work as Termies?) and so in my disappointment, I broke with my plan to slowly build up my Obliterators on the cheap. No, I don't play Iron Warriors (grumble grumble frickin' cheaters grumble).

So, I walk into the GW store on a Saturday afternoon and it's loaded with twelve year old guys who could probably come up with better shit to play on at their house, but you know...it's a GW store...it's official. So anyway, they're all huddled around a table watching a squad of Orks charge...whatever (anything's charge range if the table's small enough!) and there's a mother and her son on the other side of the store, and the son is attempting to convey to his mother how necessary it is for her to buy him a Necron battleforce or some shit like that, and the big owner of the store (and I do mean big!) is attempting to run the battle for the kids while two register jockeys in their red shirts (which is unfortunate because the store is just outside the exit of Target and it really looks as though they've escaped, or that Target has started selling 40k stuff). Anyways, the two red shirts are up there looking smug because they know if they were playing the Orks they would have charged a different enemy. Yey team.

So, one spots me over at the shelving unit marked "Chaos" and he siddles up because I'm the first male adult he's seen in the store for a while. I am obviously NOT a mother listening to some argument that ends with her $60 lighter, nor am I one of the kids at the table, of whom only one will buy a Terminator and that will be that for this week. Oh no no no, I have money. I can afford to spend bucku bucks. Just as importantly, I look like I know what I'm doing. Chances are I'll be buying something impressive. So, here he comes, offering "Can I help you?"

I resist the urge to plead, "Look, I used to play Squats, now I play Eldar. You're not going to discontinue that army too are you?" After all, this red shirt, he is not the face of evil. He is, at best, a Nurgling to Grandfather GW in Nottingham or some crap where they have absolutely lost their frickin' minds.

This is what I honestly say to him, "Hey, yeah I'm looking for the Obliterators. I've got two, I need a third. I was trying to, you know, wait for one to come up on cheap on Ebay..." he looked around nervously hoping that no one heard me mention the dreaded E word, "but I'm tired of waiting. I'll tell you, with prices in these stores going up and up, it's hard to justify buying the lead, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. I can't paint the Obliterators unitl I have that third one, so I guess I'm willing to break down and pay the $20."

His reply, no shit: "They're $25, they raised the price last week."

And that was when I kind of lost it.

"My God, is the company going out of business."

He looks around knowing that the trouble is starting.

"$25 for a piece of lead are you crazy? I could cast twenty of them for that price."

Really, it's getting ugly and he hurries me over to the register as I go into good old days mode. "I remember when I could buy twenty space marines for $30 and Rhinos came three to a box for $25." Which, by the way, they did.

He rings me up and I walk out of there with my $25 miniature with the stares of confusion from a group of twelve year olds, and a nice mother who suddenly realizes just how senseless her son has become. Hopefully she bought him that Battleforce on Ebay.

Anyways, two weeks later I go to my game night and who should show up but the red shirt guy who was trying to usher me out of the store. He tells me that he doesn't blame me, that he doesn't much like GW either and he doesn't mind that people are mad at the company.

The thing is though, he doesn't really mean it, and I launch into another tirade about how GW going out of business would be the best thing for the game. You'd finally be able to afford the minis and there wouldn't be the threat of another "edition" of rules every two years.

It is then that I find out why the GW employees are so fiercely loyal to the company they work for. They pay for bits by the pound. They pay like a tenth of what the rest of us pay. That's their employee discount. That's crazy.

I'm fairly sorry that the GW store does not want to buy my scenery. Mine looks better than there's. Had they said, "come on down and we'll take a look," they could of put me on payroll or at least given me the employee discount, but too bad.

Last time we were in there they had three deli trays from a dollar store put together with four cardboard tubes from wrapping paper that were supposed to be elevators and all of this was set on a black base with clear glossy plastic over it. It looked horrible. I said nothing. I stay to their display case now looking at the miniatures all lit up with beautiful day bulbs (which isn't exactly a trick, but it's sneaky nonetheless). My wife looked at the scenery and said, "You should tell them how to make scenery honey." I thought the red shirt standing next to the scene was going to choke. He'd built it and up until she said something he was all but beaming with pride.

Upstairs, downstairs.

If you've ever watched someone really play gin rummi then you have some inkling of what it is to design a lot of scenery all at one time. First of all, you have to understand the constraints. My workshop is about 12'x10'. It's tiny. I do most of my work on a card table and the space on my desk. I have little 1x1 1/2x trays that I move around with my various projects on them. I am able to paint in the living room, which I do while I'm watching my son. I store most of my materials in my attic, which is about four times the size of my workroom, but I can't go up there when my son is sleeping. So, when my son is sleeping, I can't go into the attic, and when he's awake, I watch him 50% of the time. Meanwhile, anything that involves a hot knife, resin pouring, spray painting, or baking, is done on my back porch. Mine is a second story apartment. Meanwhile, as it is impossible to store certain materials upstairs because of my son and his sleeping (well, he's 9 months old so cut him some slack), I store the materials that are vital to my trade in the basement or, as is the case now, I let them collect in my anchorite cell hampering my every movement.

Did I mention that I'm claustrophobic?

On any given day, I run up and down probably twenty flights of stairs. Not bad for an aesthmatic I'd say. Meanwhile listen to this:

River
2 sets of city ruins
2 sets of ice craters
2 sets of glaciers
1 set of road
2 sets of brick walls
2 longhouses
death world
ice wals
2 spires
ice hill
Jungle
Pine forest

This is my list of stuff that I'm currently working on and that are close enough to completion as to require only one or two more tweeks. That's 19 things! And most of those things contain multiple parts. I've counted 'Death World' as one thing, but clearly it isn't one thing. It's 13 plates!

So, the question then becomes, how in the hell do I do it. Good question. The trick to this is, strangely enough, performing like tasks. I look a the list and I try to determine from what I see how many of these products are going to require me to cut styrofoam. Great. That means downstairs. Okay, what else can I do downstairs?

Today I cast road pieces and sanded them flat on the ends (that's downstairs work). I spray painted them (also downstairs). I put "ground" on the river bank (not technically downstairs, but the basement is becoming the place where I put down large ammounts of things that need plaster of paris or hydrocal--the basement has a sink, but it lacks a drain...go figure). I also put flock on the walls, the same flock needed on the river banks, so it was...downstiars, that's right. And then I went upstairs, and while my child played in his play pen and we watched "Reading Between The Lions," I painted glaciers so that they would be really white and not blue.

And then, out of nowhere, I made the pine forest, which might have been a mistake as I think people are getting a little tired of the ice world stuff. Yes, it may be time to move on.

My point is that this is reminiscent of the game Gin Rummi where people move cards around to make their stuff. I find that I'll start the day with two projects and then quickly, while I'm waiting for the hydrocal to dry, I'll find myself making a hill, and well, as long as I have to spray paint a hill, I might as well cast some rock walls real quick, and there's no sense casting just some rock walls, why not cast some gothic bas relief plates so that I can make a bunker, and now I'm gluing, so I might as well... It can be days before I get back to the original thing.

Aye.

Night fight Tonight!!

Okay, so Tuesday last, I went to play 40k as I always do, except that I knew we'd be a man down as one of our regulars had headed out to S.F. to hang out with his wife's family.

When I got there, one of the other regulars bowed out of the fight because three way batttles are kind of dull and that left me playing Eldar versus my buddy Russ who plays IG, and Russ suggests that we play this new scenario that he found that he really thought looked good. The scenario allowed for reserves, no deep strike, no infliltrators, but most importantly it started as a night fight and on turn four you rolled a dice, on a 4+ the sun came out and the night fight was over.

It sounded good. Let me say that. I love the idea of a night fight because it means that tanks aren't going to be as important. People with long range weapons just don't get to fire all the way across the board and the hand to hand troops are more likely to get in close before they can be fired upon. Or so I thought.

Here's what I learned. First of all, the Eldar (ex rulers of the universe) have yet to master the highly technical advance of the searchlight. Whereas, the IG have a searchlight every third man or so. All those tanks pretty much get searchlights, the IG player need only highlight a squad and everybody on his side can annhialate you.

As it turned out, I needed to worry more about cover more during a night fight because the IG could see me, and I couldn't fire back because they were always out of range. Oh sure, I could rush across the battlefield (not a very strong Eldar tactic), but I still wouldn't be able to open fire until I was within 21" on average.

The game lasted something like 30 minutes. It was a route. I managed to destroy one sentinals multilaser, but it didn't matter because it still had a search light.

I think the bottom line is that night fights have tactics to them, but not the one's you'd expect. The game becomes about annhialating one foe at a time. Shining down one search light so that one vehicle is vulnerable and then unleashing with everything on the target it illuminates.

This is well enough for most armies. IG excel at it, but if you're playing a night fight battle, leave the Eldar at home. They can't get searchlights so they're pretty much just waiting to get destroyed. They can only attack the thing that hit them with the searchlight, and if they're fighting IG, that target will always be a Chimera (because its expendable) or a Leman Russ (because very little can kill it). The hundreds of little guys out there will stay safe for most of the battle.

Ebay=Sketch

Not to bite the hand that feeds me or anything, but man, Ebay is sketchy. Honestly today I received two emails. The first, a guy who took a month to pay me for the $200 worth of scenery he bought, wasn't there to pick up the package. According to him, the box sat on his stoop until the Post office picked it back up and sent it back to me. This would have been a month ago, and I have yet to receive the box.

Ahem...does the U.S. mail really pick stuff up that sits on someone's porch too long. I mean, I know that UPS will do that if they require a signature or something, but the USPS has an option for that sort of thing, which this guy didn't take. Theoretically, the box should have stayed on his porch from now until doomsday.

My guess is that someone walked along and stole it.

In any case, because I was the one who sent him the package, evidentally, this is my responsability. He's wondering how I can fix the problem.

On the other hand, in the second email, there's an object that arrived broken. It happens sometimes, that's why I advise insurance. I don't think after today, that "option" is going to be optional anymore. So, I'm writing this guy back telling him that I can replace parts, if he wants to send it back to me, I can fix it, etc., and then I notice the date. The guy has had this particular item for a week. A WEEK! He hasn't noticed that its broken for an entire week?

The worst thing is, I'm really trying to do business with a certain ammount of trust. I want to be the guy who sells you a product and then stands behind it. Unlike the Dell computer I'm currently typing on, I want my things to have some sort of reliable fix-it man face behind them. I want to tell the guy that as soon as I get his package I'll send it back to him. I want to ship out spare parts to fix the guys broken scene.

But then, what if the package is sitting in the guy's living room and he just wants more stuff? What if the guy just wants two pieces of scenery for the price of one? What then? There's a fine line between customer service guru and sucker.

The bottom line is that if you're going to sell on ebay, you kind of have to be a hard ass. There's really no two ways around this.

So my answer now is that I will refund anything, but I want the item back, and I'm not paying for the return shipping. That's pretty fair I think.

Terrain rules redux

Man, I just read my previous post and it was both long winded and complicated...the one on cover saves. So, let's try that again. I'm taking the level 1,2, and 3 from the regular 40k book. So, level one miniatures are like wripper swarms, level 2 is your regular miniature, and level 3 is a big miniature (a dreadnaught or a tank). Fine.

And I am also taking from the rules that if a level two terrain, say, sits between two level two miniatures, it blocks line of sight. Good so far?

On my boards, level one terrain is up to 1 1/2" tall, level two is between 1 1/2" and 3" and level 3 is above 3". Fair?

Alright, here's my problem. Officially if troops (level 2) are standing behind a level 2 hedge, they cannot be shot at nor shoot over. If the hedge were considered area terrain, they could move into it and then fire (so long as they were within 6" of the edge) but just on the other side, they would be blocked completely. The problem is that a hedge can be conceivably entered. The model of the hedge might even accomodate this, but what about a wall. Can a 1 1/2" wall not be taken as cover and be fired over? See the difficulty?

Also, the other problem is that quite often we play with ruined slabs of something or other or overhead things. Terrain that you can see through in spots but not everywhere. Should that block line of sight?

If your answer is yes to those questions then you're probably okay with the regular rules. But I don't know, I want the interaction between the minis and the terrain to be a bit more complex.

I think that the answer may very well be to divide terrain up so that it does two things (at least), it can block LOS and it can provide cover, but it does not necessarilly do both. What I'm saying is that you might define a plate of ruined buildings that are little more than skeletons as level 3 cover but unable to block LOS at all, or maybe they block line of sight at level one.

I think the way you figure this out is that you put a mini behind the scenery. If you can't see his knees when he's behind the scenery than the scene blocks LOS at level one. If you can't see the head, then it blocks LOS level 2, and if you can't see a space merine dreadnaught behind it then it blocks LOS level 3. If you can see these things, but there's still a whole bunch of stuff here and there, or you can't see these parts of the mini looking through the scene from every angle, then it will still provide cover to the level of the scenery's height.

Maybe say that vehicles can't get "hull down" unless LOS is blocked at level 2.

I would also say that scenery that clearly isn't area scenery (like a wall)--scenery that cannot be "entered", can be taken if it is equal to the miniatures height and the miniature is within an inch of the scenery. So, a unit of space marines lined up at a level 2 wall, would be able to shoot over it, and the enemy would be able to shoot at them. The wall would provide a cover save but it wouldn't block LOS. Of course, the unit would have to declare that they were "taking the wall"--I wouldn't make it automatic that just being within an 1" of this kind of cover would immediately make you a target.

That's what I think I was going for with all that crazy tech language.

Dawn of War- evil Eldar tactic

Well, I officially played my first on line game against total strangers and it was...every thing I feared it would be. Honestly.

Now I know, I know. I'm a newbie. I'm so new that you have no idea, and to tell you the truth, there's a reason I'm a newbie. I don't want to play against random people. I want to play against a computer the way that God intended video games to be played.

But, unfortunately, they don't really make games for people like me any more. It's the multi-player option that sells the game. Witness Doom 3. What a disapointment.

And so, I figured it was time. I'd after all beaten both Dawn of War and Winter Assault on the highest settings, how bad could it be?

So, I called up my friend Russ, who plays IG at our usual game and runs a computer fix it business, and we tried to connect. But of course, my computer has three firewalls, and the wireless router is connected to a gateway and the gateway is connected, evidentally to Bill Gates who then tells me that I can't play on line. The only other option is game spy, and well...Russ can't play on gamespy with his copy.

But I can, because I am an honest person. I knew there would be an advantage in there somewhere. So, I get on gamespy and quite suddenly find out that something is wrong. I produce, no shit, a squad of scouts, and my base begins to be assaulted by wave after wave after wave of marines. So someone's cheating. Then I play another guy and I lose. Fair and square I'm thinking, but the third game is a four player game...I think. I don't know, my support never showed up and when I went over to see what the hell he was doing, he appeared to be making Defilers. No troops mind you, just Defilers.

This was the point at when I stopped playing on Game spy and began again to play against the computer. Man, am I good with Eldar. Also, I've managed to get games going against my friends (I just had to reload the game and get rid of those pesky patches), but they've got a bit of building up to do, I think.

Alright the Eldar tactic, and this is fricking viscious, is to teleport in pretty close to their base with your bonesingers, build a webway portal and then just start building turrets...not late in the game; first thing. They'll never get more than a squad out before they lose their armory if all goes well. And even if they do, a turret can take out a commander before it goes down. Especially if the bonesingers are repairing it. Plus, you can hide them in the webway portal, if needs be to protect them.

My new Web page

Hey, I've got my web page up and its ready for visitation.

Terrain: house rules

For a while now, I've been thinking very seriously about how bad the terrain rules are for 40k and how they essentially destroy all possability of playing the kinds of games I would like to play as a terrain designer. In fact, they kind of impede the rather you're-right-there-ness that I think initially propelled 40k above the likes of Battletech or Carwars which were its contemporaries. These games used grids, whereas 40k said "any direction." And these games said, "this hex will be a hard bunker hex" whereas 40k said, "if YOU can see the model when you get down on the table then you can shoot that model." Okay, okay, yes I do remember the fights, but that's not my point. The fights happenned because, though the spirit of the rules were ingeneious, their application sucked. What GW has done since then has been to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Make rules that are better in that same spirit; that's my solution.

But of course, GW will never do this. Their goal now is to hook as many people as possible which means making the rules as simple as possible. Okay fine, but why not release a supplement that's a stronger answer to what terrrain is supposed to do.

To this end, I've decided to start the ball rolling with hills. First of all, I want to talk about the "footprint." The footprint aught to be that area that, when seen from above, obviously is the terrain. Thought of another way, if you were to wrap a rubber band around the terrain at the height which the terrain is supposed to represent (level one, level two, or level three), then that would be the footprint. So, take for instance a building, surround by rubble. The building is one terrain "zone" of say level three height, the rubble is another terrain zone of level one height. The entire area will not give you the building's save, nor will the entire area block line of sight.

A Note: Why Change Anything
I suppose the aswer, "because the current rules are ridiculous," or "because terrain becomes either useless or too useful," are not the answers I should give here. Okay, let's try this. Area terrain, stops too much fire and no one's really quite sure how it's supposed to work. For instance, let's say I put a wall down the center of my board. Does that block line of sight? What about people who are right behind the wall? What about city fights where there are various bits of terrain everywhere, should I always assume that I have a cover save, and that unless I'm ridiculously incompetent at tactics, I've blocked your line of sight. What I'd like to point out is that the current terrain rules for 40k only work if you use a few pieces of terrain, nothing too big, and you forget the rules half the time in order to make the whole thing work. People on one side of a wall, poised to shoot over it should get cover, but they shouldn't have line of sight blocked. A building of enormous size shouldn't just be level 3 if there are windows that one can shoot through on the ground floor.

But more than all that, 40k is a game of futuristic combat. Turn on any sci fi movie and you will see that futuristic means insane and often gargantuan landscapes. The death star is the size of a planet. The battle for the future in Terminator is covered with piles of debris the size of houses. Hell, even the pictures in the 40k guides are littered with gigantic bits of cover which could not be put on the battlefield lest they make play impossible. What I am essentially saying is, we need a set of rules for terrain that make those kinds of landscapes feasible. Keep the cheap and easy rules for people running games with one foam hill and three sets of trees. I want to fight in hive world and space hulks dammit; I need rules!

Being In Cover-
In cover and out of cover
Now, if we can conceive of the footprint, then we will define four modes of cover by it. The extremes are obvious. In cover means models wherein more than 50% of the squad are within the footprint. Out of cover means that there are more than 50% models to be chosen as targets in the same squad who have nothing between the shooter and the model to block line of sight or to provide cover.

Taking Cover
The other two conditions are a little more complicated, but only slightly. "Taking cover" refers to models that are not actually in the footprint but who are behind it and close to it. Models can be considered "taking cover" if:

1. More than 50% of the models are within 3" of the cover.
2. More than 50% of the enemies have a shot on a "covered" model (within 3" of cover) of the attacking players choice that must go through the cover that is "taken."

In other words, models take cover. The attacking player determines whether he can shoot any of the models within 3" of the cover without having to shoot through the cover. If he can't then the models are assumed to have taken cover.

Blocked fire

The last position, signifies shots wherein an attacker attemts to shoot troops with an intervening object within their field of fire. This type of fire occurs when the majority of the attacked squad (more than 50%) either cannot be seen or must be seen through a terrain feature by the majority of the attacking squad (more than 50%). For now, suspend the standard Warhammer 40k rule that any intervening area terrain immediately blocks line of sight.

Here's how this is done in practice: Take each member of the squad to be attacked in turn and ask the opposing player of that model, can this miniature be seen, seen but with intervening obstacles, or is line of sight blocked (more on blocking line of sight later). If the answer is yes, mark that model, and the model that can make the shot, and move on to the next attacked miniature. When you've gone through the squad, if more than half the squad cannot be seen, all members of the squad receive full cover save from the area terrain, and limited casualities (can only lose troops up to the number that are able to be seen to be chosen by the defending player). If more than half can be seen but are behind the terrain, the defending player receives a full cover save. Otherwise, the squad can be shot and wounded as normal.

Blocking Line of Sight

According to the 40k rules as they now stand, area cover of the attacking miniatures height will block LOS for anything behind it. Thus, a level 2 miniature cannot shoot through a level two terrain obstacle. He may shoot into it, up to 6" or something like that. What I suggest is this: given any piece of terrain one should be able to look at it and decide what can bee seen through it from eye level to the table. This can and should be used as the deciding factor of what kind of line of sight is blocked. So, for instance, if a terrain feature is put down on the table, and one can see the miniature beyond it, but not its base, then the feature blocks line of sight for level 1 miniatures. If one cannot see the miniature at all, then the feature blocks line of sight for level two miniatures, and if one cannot see something like a Predator beyond it, then the terrain blocks level three. This decision should be made by looking at the lowest point in the feature's footprint.

Two things are important here:

1. Some single feature may have multiple footprints. From the earlier example, the building surrounded by debris may block los up to level three though the debris only blocks los up to level one. A hill may have a level one footprint, a level two footprint, and a level three footprint.
2. Blocking LOS is not the same as providing a cover save. If that same building had windows at its ground floor, it might block LOS for level one only, but provide cover up to level three

There is conveniently, one exception to this rule. Before the game, while the players are discussing the scenery, they may designate a feature type which always blocks level three throughout its footprint regardless of what the feature's model actually looks like. Generally, this is a forest, but it might be something else depending on the nature of the board.

Hiding in cover

Squads that are actually within the footprint and with more than 50% of its members within 6" of the footprint's edge should be considered "hidden." As long as the cover is the same height as the hiding miniatures the squad cannot be targetted (even by miniatures with a height advantage). Likewise, the squad cannot target any squad outside of, or within the cover that has more than 6" between the majority of the squad and the footprint's edge. Simply take enough of the closest miniatures to make up a majority and measure from the furthest squad member to the edge of the footprint to determine whether attack is possible.

Providing cover

While blocking LOS is conservative (if I can see the miniature then LOS is not blocked), cover is more conservative. Generally, if the miniature is in the footprint, then it receives cover, if the miniature has taken cover, then it receives cover, and if the miniature falls into the situation described under "blocked fire" it receives cover. It should not be hard to get cover, it is much harder to block LOS.

I think that this effectively covers that basics. What I would hope for, and what I may write on this blog are some more expanded sets of rules for how to use terrain, especially the more common pieces, and yes, Avram, I think there is obviously room to make rules for gun emplacements.

The Many Brushes of Monstro

Some painting experts promise painting tips that will improve your paint jobs, but sometimes their advice is a little thin on an actual new knowledge. But fear not for I, Monstro D. Whale, have got something that actually will help you.

Okay, go to Michaels, go to the children's paint aisle. Okay, okay, are you there? Good. Now look at their brushes. Do you see the bag of like twenty crappy brushes for $5? Good. Buy those.

They might as well say "brushes for dry brushing" on the pack. Use them. Abuse them. It doesn't matter. Their about a quarter a piece. They won't hold paint if you want them to, which means that they are PERFECT for dry brushing. Especially the big plastic looking ones, and especially big bits of scenery. This is not some minor tid bit here; this is the real deal.

'Nids go boom

Up somewhere in the description of this blog is mention of tactics. Therefore, I would like to share with you a little something I'd like to call, how NOT to play Tyranids.

First of all, all mention in this blog of my tactical mistakes I owe to the fact that I no longer sleep due to the new baby. Also, most huge mistakes were due to my listening to my partner Chris who had never played Tyranids before. That having been said, I have, and thus, I should have known better.

Tyranids. You want rending claws. You always want rending claws. Gaunts are fine if you can get rending claws (some variations allow). Otherwise...

By the way, I haven't played with the new rules so I don't know what fleet of claw does in them or what nasty special something or other is available. However, I am using Army Builder, and as such, I sort of have the new rules, but not really, and anyone who uses Army Builder knows what I mean. Still, it does allow for Harlequin Wraithlords. There's nothing wrong with that.

Anyway, wrong army, back to Tyranids. They aren't as fast as you think. They aren't, for instance, "Dark Eldar in a raider" fast. They're just a little faster than normal. Like, for instance, the Raveners will get 18" instead of 12" if they charge, but if they can't charge, they only get an extra 3". This means that for a while you are going to have to move your tyranids across the board. This is important. You win or lose with Tyranids based on whether you can get them across the board. For no other army, save an all Vyper Saim Hann force, is cover so important. You want to ALWAYS be in cover. If you can't get everyone in cover, make sure that at least 51% of the squad is in cover. I cannot stress this enough. Without cover, entire squads are going to be dessimated before your eyes and Tyranid squads are big. It doesn't matter. 30 hormagaunts? Who cares? If they become a primary target on the battlefield, they will be done for. YOU MUST HAVE COVER!

Preferably, you want cover that blocks line of sight from as many models as possible, but if you can't get that level of cover, you at least want something that will give you a saving throw.

I ran Tyranids at an Eldar army and they wripped me a part. the main reason for this is just what I've described. I thought that, one way or another, they couldn't decimate entire squads of guys. They can. They will. Get into cover.

something new everyday

One should learn something new everyday. For instance, today I learned that RTV rubber will strip the paint off (and most else) of something unsealed and made of plaster. So, that's completely destroyed.

Good news though, I got the mold! I just kind of had to pry out rocks with a dental pick.

There's a bigger crater that goes along with it. I'm hoping to spare it's destruction by using liquid latex. Cross your fingers.

Death Jester on ebay; harlequin question

I did not, as it were, link from my newest ebay post back here because I didnt' want to write a step-by-step on painting death jesters especially since it's been a while since I painted said Harlequin. But I thought I'd put this out there for someome to help me out with this.

The question is this: power blades are bought as equipment--in other words, not weapons. They allow the harlequin to ignore armor saves (like a power weapon) Here's the question: do they give the harlequin this ability throughout the rest of their arsenal. Can, for instance, a harlequin with power blades and a harlequin's kiss ignore armor saves on the kiss's attack? Because if not, then why can the harlequin get two weapons in addition to the power blades and why don't the power blades themselves count as a weapon, and if so....DAMN!!!

Oh, I suppose I do owe some kind of painting tip. Before painting a death jester, get really good with black washes. There, don't say I never gave you nothing.

Dearest Avram

First off folks, I am not Avram.

Avram is, in many ways, the first guide on my journey into the making of molds and such. Actually, Avram bought me my first hot knife. He is a long time friend and fellow wargamer, and evidently, a fan.

As such, it is unreasonable for you, Avram, to be bidding on these objects. You need but ask and I will grace your table with little trees, as many as you like..though admittedly, too many trees and the board gets a bit clutterred. I believe I was payed the highest compliment very recently by one of the guys I play with, Russ, who looked over at the bookcase of scenery they no longer use since I joined the gang and said, "can we get rid of this crappy terrain finally." If I could sell our city scape board without incurring $80 worth of S and H, I would. Perhaps soon I will post pictures of the ruined city. Though, Avram, I think you're right. The game needs rules for buildings, installations, listening posts, etc.. There are minor rules in City Fight, but that's for the last edition.

I presume that you are making this "move" of bidding on my items because you see that I have no bids on anything as of yet, and you fear that I will be left in the lurch. Fear not and stay the course--people generally bid at the last minute. Besides, if you do a search for trees and Warhammer, you will notice that I am one of two scenery designers in the U.S. as of now who are making little trees (probably for good reason, but hey, my masochism is your bargain). This is reason alone to think that the trees will sell.

bio

I think way back when I started this blog...back in the good old days of January ought six. Oh wait, that was like a month ago. Anyways, hidden somewhere back there, there's a bio of me or something. Rather than have ebay customers trying to find it, I figured I'd just re-up. Let's see. I've been a carpenter, if that matters. I began playing warhammer 40k back in 88 or 89...something like that and I have always been the "scenery designer" of whatever group I play in. I wish I could say that I have 17 years experience, but that's really not true. I took a hiatus, so I probably have something like 9 years. Moreover, it's really the last four without adult supervision that have been the most profitable.

Let's just say this. I have a dremel and I'm not afraid to use it. I have three hot knives, not to mention the glue gun, which will melt Styrofoam. I have boxes and boxes of packing material, various Christmas town accessories, tubs of all kinds of spackles, and bottles full of chemicals. I am the McGuyver of the scenery building world, and luckily, I have a wife who supports me in this, occasionally saves trash for me to use, and most of all doesn't throw things out. What do you say at this point...I'm that guy.

What kind of guy? The games workshop stores take notes when I talk scenery building. Well, that's not always true, but it is sometimes true. And anyway, that's no great accomplishment. Those guys are good at painting armies, they don't build scenery.

So, I guess in the end, that's probably the thing I think is most important for my customers to know. Way back in '88, I saw this game at Dundracon, back at the Oakland Hyatt, and I thought, 'I don't care how it's played or how much it costs, I want to play that game.' I thought this because 40k looks good. Now, for some people, this means painting miniatures that could go in 'Eavy Metal. Okay fine. But what does it matter when you're throwing a sheet over some books to make a hill and decorating the board with shampoo containers to simulate a factory. If the scenery doesn't look good, it doesn't matter what your miniatures look like. That's where I come in. My scenery looks good.

The craters on Ebay

Heh, heh, heh. I love my craters. Seriously. I love them.

First of all, these are not the first, nor the best craters that I have built. That much will be clear once I put up my other craters on ebay, but that's not the point. I spent three days working on a prototype for craters and then realized that the craters I had built weren't necessary. I could make the things out of clay, which I did. So, I made two prototype craters out of Sculpi and then bought RTV rubber from...geez, I don't remember any more.

Let's say this: there are different qualities and such to RTV rubber. For instance, I bought some stuff from a company that produces miniatures made out of lead, and thus, the rubber in my mold is extraordinarily heat resistant. Well, that's fine, except that it's about double what it should cost.

Long story short. I bought enough RTV to make a mold of one of my craters. I decided to start with the average sized and less involved of the craters. That sounds bad. The crater I might have otherwise made the mold of is bigger around the sides--the O is thicker, but it is also better looking. Trust me, if you're paying attention to what I sell, you'll see. But the starting bid isn't going to be $3. I will say that.

I digress. The point is that I wanted to make something that was comparable to the discontinued Armorcast line since I was tired of trying to buy them only to find that they were going for 3x what they were worth...and I think I have made a comparable product. They are not made of resin (which isn't that sturdy, let me tell you), but they are made out of Excalibur, which has held up against my fairly innocuous attempts to destroy it. In other words, pieces dropped on my hardwood floor don't break.

The only real question for me was whether I should sell these craters painted or unpainted. Truth be told it doesn't exactly take that long to paint them. Paint them dark brown, dry brush the a lighter brown, highlight in a different shade of light brown and you're done. The numerous details allow for effort if you feel up to it, but it certainly isn't necessary. If you so desire, however, just take a dark grey, paint the various pebbles, and then go over them again with a lighter grey. It took me about 30 minutes to paint one, once it had been spraypainted.

The problem is that it does take time. I want to sell these things dirt cheap, which means that I don't want to take time. I have other things that I sell that I paint. This need not be one of them. Furthermore, it limits the options. These craters could easily double for blown out tree trunks, or ice fortifications for an ice planet. I don't know. I figured I'd leave it open.

ebay trees

The truth is, I decided to make these trees as a quick companion piece to the building I was selling. I figured, how hard could it be to make some trees. Three days later....

What I will say is that the trees were overbuilt. In other words, it isn't that there weren't corners that I could have cut, but rather, I added a whole bunch of corners.

Case in point, my basic design for the root system was based off of the War 40k, 3rd ed. version of making craters. So, I got out my Styrofoam, I got out my knife, and I cut forty or fifty little triangular wedges to arrange in a circle around the trees. Truth be told, this was absolutely unnecessary. Once you put the plaster of paris on, unless these wedges are an inch high and three inches long, the effect is negligible. Had I to do it over again, I could have achieved the same effect by by making 'O's of Styrofoam about an 1/2" to an 1" across which would have saved me an hour's worth of time, but no matter. I did all the work while watching episodes from The Office- British version. Man, that show is funny.

I'm not a big fan of plaster, which is what the ground is made of, mainly because it cracks, but having read the message boards over at Hirst Arts (love those guys), I figured out to put sand into the mix to strengthen it up. I decided to shred speaker wire and add that as well in order to get that root system look. This was aided immeasurably by the glop nature of the mix because bits of Styrofoam were left open to the air and they melted under spray paint. That's a trick I always enjoy...if it can be controlled, which I did. So, it looks like some of the plates have gopher holes and shit like that. Crazy as all hell. As for paint...what? Brown undercoat, camel drybrush, tan highlights. Nothing too spectacular. I was going for trees on a flood plain which means that the dirt has to be yellowish brown. The sand in the mix made natural rough patches which I painted as moss. In any case, if you read my blog, you know by basic feeling about two sentence painting tips: they're useless.

As for the trees. Trees are cheap, its everything else about them that's expensive. I took a set of plastic "make 'em yourself" trees and began by gluing and winding Spanish moss around them. This gives the impression of dead branches sticking out and the kind of character of a wild tree. Basically, I gave them all the horrible twigs and shit that generally screw up my frizbee golf game. Then I applied the major foliage in a few shades so as to give the impression of a forest of a few types of competing trees. I would have added ground cover too, but Russ has made me all but paranoid about making the bases presentable.

The trees are removable from the base, with a bit of care, which makes the area extremely playable (though without trees, is it still a forest? Sorry). Overall, I like the terrain piece, but I did not like how long it took me to build and paint. There are faster ways. I know them. I should have done them. Regardless, no sense keeping too many of these forest plates around so I put up on Ebay. Enjoy!

Armory on Ebay

I put up a piece of terrain I made on ebay and linked from it back here to my blog, and thus, I must write.

Let's see. Well, the first thing is that this marks ultimately a transition for me from what I will call dry terrain building to wet terrain. In other words, having learned how to cast things, I've kind of changed my whole philosophy on terrain building, or I suppose heavilly modified my previous philosophy. What the hell do I mean?

Well, let's go with the old philosophy, of which this feature is pretty much a direct result. The old philosophy is something like this: SAVE EVERYTHING. Old chinese food containers, the sheets that house Oreos, plastic easter eggs. When I say everything, I mean everything. I've got twenty or so cans of Trader Joe's coffee upstairs waiting for the great big great big watertower project (and yes, I did mean to use the term "great big" twice). I've got three craft assortment bins, four large paper bags, not to mention countless boxes--big and little--filled with "unnofficial" wargame building supplies, plus enough bits to make Games Workshop thousands of dollars (and me nearly hundreds). My office and attic are otherwise full.

When attendant to such a philosophy, the dollar bins are your friend, as are fairs, clearance sales, tag sales (same as garage sales out on the west coast), dollar stores, church bizaars, and of course, flea markets. But no friend is greater than Home Depot, which is where I picked up most of the stuff to make this Armory in question. Would I be ruining it if I gave away the trick? I doubt it. The point I'm trying to make here is that this mighty conglomeration is nothing to you if you already have the stuff, and a pain in the ass if you don't. The building itself is a heavilly modified switch box, which means that it's designed to protect from electrocution. Folks, when I say sturdy, I mean sturdy. The rest of it is...geez, can I remember, lag bolts sawed in half, a couple of those power poles from Macragge cut in half. I like the front lights. They're lag bolts with little wooden caps. Here on the homefront, I pretty much litter our city fight board with them. That and those rubber door stoppers that look kind of techno in a steampunk kind of way. I digress.

The ground is that crazy press board that they make clipboards out of. God bless the Dremel corporation! Textured with...vynil spackling? Can't really remember at the moment. I think that's what it was, but then I'm always experimenting with various products sold in tubs. By the way Painter's Putty is all but useless.

Anyway, the new philosophy is that you don't need all that. No, no, no... you need one of everything and a whole bunch of molding equipment. Which means that where my house was once filled with trash, it is now filled with various molding chemicals, including plexi-glass resin, which I'm afraid to go near.

But notice that some sort of middle ground must be achieved. Without the proper prototype, what are you going to cast? And besides, this isn't a piece that one could mold (easilly anyway) in one piece. So, I suppose as far as craters go, I'll be making resin models of this, as soon as the new batch of RTV rubber comes in, but for buildings, it's still going to have to be piece by piece.

Battle for Macragge

One of the guys I play with bought Battle for Macragge a while back, and well, we don't play it, because we play 40k, and as far as I can tell, Battle is just a 40k starter set. The thing is though, if you don't already know this, it is a very inexpensive starter set. It comes with a bunch of genestealers, a bunch of gaunts, a few marines, some really cool scenery, and a rulebook.

The real rulebook for 40k costs about $50 (last time I checked) which is only slightly more than Battle and you get a slightly abridged softcover of the book. Mostly they take out the crap rules that you could either come up with yourself, no one ever uses, or the ones you can get on line for free. No 40k in 40 minutes, for instance, but other than that, nothing you really need to play.

So, overall, I think Battle is worth the $45 it sells for. Here's the thing though, and I think this says everything about GW as a company and its relation to its players. The major terrain for Macragge is a crash space ship that basically composes five or so plates ranging from 2"x3" space to enormous plates of about 8"x4." They look good too. I'll give them that, but as a guy who builds terrain, let me just say this: getting terrain that looks good isn't difficult. Think about hills. Do you think it's hard to make a hill that looks natural? No. It's a lump of stryene insolation, nothing more. Cover it with some grass and people are likely to say, "wow, that's a good looking hill," but terrain makers don't do that. Nor, may I add, do we grab models from Korea anime and bury it half into a plate of styrene concealing the lines with spackle. We could. It's not that hard.

The thing is, 40k scenery has to serve two functions. It has to look good, sure--that's the first function. But it is the second function that is the most important. A miniature has to be able to interact with the scenery. If a building is supposed to block line of sight up to level 3, then I don't want to see the skimmer hovering over it. If the footprint is cover, then any miniature inside the footprint better look like it has cover. Otherwise, I could just draw out the battle on a vinyl battle map. At the very least, a miniature aught to be able to stand on the terrain.

That's why hills aren't made as lumps but created in steps of height. That's why staircases are the bane of 40k terrain designers. But GW evidently doesn't know this because it is nigh impossible to stand a miniature on any of the scenery that comes with Macragge. You end up having to call it impassible terrain or some shit, and it's just not true; it doesn't look impassible, just poorly envisioned.

Still, you get a rulebook, a bunch of miniatures, and terrain that looks good if little else, and for $45, as far as the GW line is concerned, that's a steal.

A cast of thousands

Or not.

So here's what I did. First of all. I took plasticene and pounded it pretty flat. Then I pushed a flat piece into the impression mold and pulled it out. I'm fairly sure that vaseline would help all this, but I didn't use any, and the whole thing worked okay.

For the next step, I mixed up a little bit of paster (2 teaspoons, 1 teaspoon of water) and poured into the mold. Then I took a stir stick and carefully skimed across the top so as to even the paster throughout the mold and also to get the mold fairly even on top (no big bulges).

I let it dry and, after a few hours, I had a flat panel (one sided). I simply peeled the plasticene away and it was done. All I had to do was sand the back by floating it across a piece of 220 grit, and it was ready to ornament whatever installation I wanted to deck out in crazy techno looking stuff.

But the panel was about the thickness of three dimes at its thinnest and it was one sided. I have since set out to make the experiment a bit more challenging.

The results of those experiments are as follows:

First of all, don't go thinner than three dimes or so with plaster. You get chips. They break, they don't hold together at all, and well, you're wasting your time. Even three dimes is a bit thin, and if you get it to work you'll see what I mean. Whatever I put this panel on, I had better not drop it or the thing is going to fly into a million pieces.

So, I got myself some of that nylon resin that I've been hearing so much about these days. The problem with it is that you don't want to use too much of the hardening agent because it's dangerous, but then you don't want to use too little or the stuff comes out like a wacky wall walker. Maybe its the thickness factor, but you want enough of the activating agent to make the stuff hard. But that's easier said than done. The back of my box says 15 drops per ounce, and well, my molds hold about 1/10 of an ounce. Let's just say, I used two drops and it wasn't enough, but it did harden somewhat...it just feels kind of rubbery. At least that's how it worked for the one sided molds of the some power poles I got with Battle for Macragge. I can glue them to the side of a building, but they're not exactly sturdy.

My success story, however, came from my two part mold. I made a two-parter of the Ultramarine commander's powerfist. Here's how I did it. I took two beer bottle caps, filled them with plasticene, put the fist in, pressed them together, sheered off the excess plasticene that had squeezed out, pulled the fist loose, and wallah...I had a two part mold. Moreover, it worked. The fist looks about as good as the original--including the double headed eagle holding the skull and the coils on the power fist. Yeah!!!

Here's the thing, and this is my new project. The plaster breaks away from the plasticene clean. The resin does not. It doesn't mix or anything, but you do get a gloppy mess of plasticene that you have to clean off. There's got to be a better way of doing this, but I used Q tips and turpentine to clean the things. Still, it would be better if I knew some kind of release agent for plasticene. I'm thinking perhaps PVA (Poly Vinyl Alcohol), so it's another game of going to the store and finding a store to go to. Cleaning one of the power poles ended up breaking two of the coils off.

Speaking of the store. Nylon resin seems to be about the only thing that you can't get at Home Depot. I finally found it at a local upscale art store. I did not find any at Joanne's where the molding material is kept in the children's section. I have not checked Michael's.

Lastly, I switched to Nylon resin primarilly because the Fiberglass resin sounded too scary. Nylon resin is far less dangerous, but it still has its problems. It stinks like gasoline being the worst of them. Whereever the stuff is, it seems to put an odor out just underneath everything else. I was hoping to use the stuff indoors but I'm thinking that, even with proper ventilation, that might not be such a good idea.

I'll fill you in more when I have more information. Hopefully my RTV rubber molds will be here soon and I can play with those.

Results of previous experiment

Okay. It worked.

Need I say more. I'm sure I will later, but it worked!!!

IT'S ALIVE!!!

(For those of you who are wondering what in the hell I'm talking about. Read the end of the previous post for greater detail. The lesser detail is this: I've figured out how to cast little things--so far only one sided, like Land Raider doors, for instance--in about an hour with really really good results)

Molding mistakes

I suppose I should talk about successes and failures. Or more importantly, I should talk about my mistakes BECAUSE there haven't been any successes and...well...I should say something, right?

The truth is that when you begin to learn how to mold, even if you have a step-by-step process, and even if those directions are phenomenal, you are still going to have to give yourself about fifteen or so tries before you get anything right, and by the way, getting it "right" isn't really the end. Once you get the mold to work, you still have to find a good "release" as well as a good casting material, and you have to find a good way to get the casting material into the mold. Plaster of Paris, for instance, doesn't just naturally fill in the mold the way water would, and when you're molding things like Land Raider doors, you really have to think about what you're going to do to, first of all, fill the mold, and second, make sure the back of the casting is flat.

I have made one mold successfully of the imperial symbol produced by Forgeworld. I used a Sculpy Mold Maker thing and filled the mold with sculpy. Popped it in the oven and wallah! But the Mold Maker was only about enough for four such molds and it costs $7. That's not horrible, but keep in mind, you're kind of limited to making things out of sculpy. I want to make Ravenars and that's just not likely to happen. The mold doesn't actually have a release agent, so essentially you're peeling the casting out which can stretch it a bit if its uncooked sculpy. Moreover, the mold doesn't go in the oven with the sculpy, so there too you have a problem. It would be much better if you could bake the sculpy in the mold and then pull it from the mold all hardened, but you can't and so the delicate bits of raveners are likely not going to work in this. At least, that's my opinion on the matter.

But that's the point, because really, making molds and casting is all a game of trying it out. Don't trust me on the sculpy thing. Until someone puts the mold with the wet sculpy in it into the oven, no one will know if this thing works.

So, here are some things that I've tried that I know DON'T work. First of all, I've been making molds with plaster of paris. Bad idea all around, but it seems to me like a good place to start to figure out, conceptually, what you're doing. And believe me, you are going to need to figure that out.

The problem with plaster of paris, as I understand it, is that you can't cast very many materials in it. Really, the only conventional stuff you can cast in it are either liquid laytex (which is too rubery to be used for much) or plaster of paris, which if you work with plaster of paris for even a day will seem like a nightmare.

The reason for this is because, no matter what release agent you use (vaseline or hand soap) the original thing never seems to have enough on it and the plaster of paris ALWAYS sticks. You end up prying the damn thing loose. This probably is easier when you're casting a vase, or something like that, but a mold the size of a land raider door simply cannot afford to chip a half inch. I'm using a dental pick to get the pieces out of the plaster (which helps), but I started using an exacto blade which basically tore my mold out. Plaster is not very solid and it cracks and flakes and crumbles so easily, that anything you use to provide the trauma necessary to release your original is likely to break the mold. I have had success with this, but my success was due almost completely to my slathering the pieces in vaseline and letting the mold dry overnight with the originals still stuck in it. This process is harrowing considering the land raider door has plaster drying to its front and as you can imagine, if it doesn't release right, you will probably never get the plaster out of all the little contours. Mine worked, but I then tried the same thing on a collection of ravaner parts without much luck. Plaster seemed to come up along the spine about 1/2 a dime in length across, and about a dime in thickness. In other words, whatever I made from the mold would have a dime's thickness worth of flash. That's no good.

Still, what am I going to cast from these molds? If the plaster is flimsy at best, what chance do I have of prying a plaster press from the plaster mold. In my mind, I can picture the whole thing cracking into powder after hours and hours of labor. I hate plaster molds.

I tried another technique which was this. I put sculpy in the plaster mold and put it in my oven. I can't tell you what level of detail the sculpy picked up. From the flinty little pieces it didn't look like much, but I don't know for sure. The sculpy dried just fine in the oven inside the mold. The problem is that it didn't seem to want to come loose of the mold and nothing I tried as a release agent seemed to work. Believe me, I tried everything. I put it in for 15 minutes, I put it in for 45 minutes. I tried each of these with vaseline, I tried each of these with a wet mold. No matter what, prying the piece loose cracked it every time. I did not, however, try different kinds of sculpy, and maybe that was my problem. After all, I remember Sculpy coming out of the oven with a little give to it, and the sculpy I was using did not, but the sculpy I was using was not one of those .$99 packages, but rather the big flesh colored stuff that comes in a pack of pound for about $12. Maybe it's different quality, I don't know. I have a chaos lord with wings made of sculpy. They're thin enough to look tattered and they aren't prone to breaking, so...

Anyways, my next experiment is actually this. I've decided to do without the permanent mold. Rather than embedding half the miniature in plasticene and making a mold from the other half. I'm going to make the mold out of the plasticene. My thought is this: make the mold, pour in the plaster of paris and then peel the mold away. Will this work? Who knows. I'll tell you the results after I'm done. Wish me luck.