Milliput

Today: a brief shout to Milliput.

What: It was (I think?) the only greenstuff available in the 1980s. It is still sold today and remains my greenstuff of choice.

Why: Long shelf life (I've still got a tube bought in 1991 that is going well!), several different "grades" of milliput available, and being an old-timer I'm used to using it (more than Games Workshop's greenstuff).

Uses: Anything greenstuff can do. And then there's the home DIY aspect: this stuff can be used for small leaks on water pipes, can set underwater, and works wonderfully well in conjunction with superglue on fiddly little arms.

Vendors: Most hobby places that sell model railways (etc.).
Online, there's plenty of places that sell this stuff, e.g.: terrascenic in the UK; and hobby tools Down Under.

Fiddlesome Flamers of Tzeentch

Tzeentch daemons must rank up there in the all-time most fiddly miniatures to assemble. In particular, both horrors and flamers seem to annoy me the most (and I suspect a number of other folks!).

The principle problem are the arms. They just don't want to stay in place in the slightest. If gravity doesn't want to defy your chosen pose for these miniatures, then invariably, they end up welded to fingertips instead of the miniature's arm sockets.

Speaking of the arm sockets, some of them also seem to be chronically tiny, or ill-cast in comparison to the nubs of the arms that are supposed to fit in to them.

Well, enough complaining. Here's my solution. After ensuring that the arm holes are large enough (perhaps with a bit of work from a file), I then dab a small amount of superglue on to the arm and in to the socket. I then place a very small blob of milliput (greenstuff) in to the socket. Milliput interacts with superglue in a neat way - it creates an almost instant-cement effect with the glue, but is still malleable for a few minutes. I then press the arm into the superglue plue milliput socket. Hey presto, the arm stays in position and doesn't stick to my fingertips (in preference to the sockets). I then quickly sculpt away the excess milliput and leave to dry for a good 24 hours. Works wonderfully well and saves me having to pin every darn arm in to their sockets.

Mutated Plague Champion

This plague champion sports an overgrown left arm and some naked brains. He has been in my collection for some time now, and I wanted to document his construction and purpose.

Model.
The model is primarily a metal plague marine miniature from the plague marine boxed set -- he is the champions body. The left arm is from the chaos mutations sprue that all plastic chaos space marine boxes used to come supplied with. They're still available from direct order though.

The shoulder pad with the skull transfer on it is simply a terminator should pad that has been a little defaced with a hobby knife to make it look older. I chose this shoulder pad since it covers up the protrusion of the mutated arm quite readily. The arm itself was pinned in to the metal body of the plague marine prior to the shoulder pad being applied. The melta bomb was more of an after thought along the lines of "I've got 5 spare points to spend on constructing this army list".

The left arm features a combi-plasma gun from a loyalist marine (a librarian terminator if my memory serves me correctly). A standard marine arm was used to hold the plasma gun, but I did spend some time removing the imperial eagle logo from the side of the bolter and generally defacing it a bit. I did leave the purity (impurity?) seal on the outside of the plasma gun as I'd already spent way to long removing the imperial eagle from the other side.

Painting.
The painting scheme follows my usual approach to plague marines - going for a greenish but rusted appearance. However, I knew I wanted the mutated arm to stand out a little. So I used a purple basecoat followed by a deep purple inking to create the effect. This was followed up by some careful drybrushing to lighter shades of purple. The final detail on the arm was to pick out some random lumps and bumps and paint them yellow with black dots on top. Not quite certain what disease that is supposed to represent, but I'm sure Nurgle would be proud.

The nails on the mutated arm were painted in a combination of wet blending browns and creams together to suggest the appearance of a marine who doesn't really go in for many manicures. Nobody would want to be scratched by those talons!

In Game.
The configuration of this miniature is by no means cheap in the points department. He is kitted out with a combi-plasma and a melta bomb which adds up to some 53 points straight away. I sometimes remove the melta bomb to free up a few points, but otherwise, he stays as he is. His primary role is in support of two other plague marine plasma gunners in a small squad. This makes for 3 plasma gun shots (preferably rapid firing) early on in a game. My typical use for such a squad is to sit them in a crater (or other terrain feature) near to an objective, for the entirety of a game. They then shoot at anything that passes by in range. I think the best result I've had with them is destroying an entire posse of loyalist marine bikers that swerved to close to them. But, I usually play him simply for the looks. In more serious games, I'd be tempted to ditch him for a power fist armed plague champion.

A Completed Plaguebearer Squad

A new squad of plaguebearers, freshly finished! This squad of plaguebearers deviates entirely from my usual sickly green colour scheme for plaguebearers. They feature predominately darker, muted and broodier colours (earlier examples and close ups of which can be found here and here). I've retained the unifying feature of blue plagueswords however -- its always good to have such a theme running through diversely painted miniatures.The miniatures are mostly of the modern variety, but there is one Rogue Trader era miniature in there as well (third from the left hand side) that I stripped down and re-painted. As usual, the bases haven't had much attention yet. I think this squad also needs a name -- suggestions welcome!

Test Model: Chaos Warrior on a Round Base

Whilst having a browse through my collection, I came across some chaos warriors from the Warhammer Fantasy range. I wound up thinking: "I wonder if they would look okay on a round base?"

So, I assembled one together and glued it on to a plain Warhammer 40,000 base, just as a test model to see what it looked like. My thinking here is that I could use the model in a Chaos Space Marine army as a "generic" lesser daemon. Perhaps summoned by radical Alpha Legionaries, this model could represent a cultist - part of a local populace waiting to lay siege to "invading" imperial rulers?

This miniature is not that high up on my painting list, but I'll get around to it before the year is out, I hope! I think the miniature suits a round base and is a reasonable size match for it. Certainly it is on a similar scale to power armoured marines and doesn't look dwarfed on the base, or too large for it. Not a bad fit really in my opinion.

Living Objectives

Today, I wanted to summarize my experiences with an (old) idea for an alternative to the usual objective based missions: Living Objectives.

There are several variants on this theme, but they usually come under one of several flavours.

(1) Random moves.
At the start of each player's movement phase, roll the scatter die for each objective. The objective then moves accordingly. Perhaps malign warp entities move the objectives on a planet within the Eye of Terror?

(2) Attraction.
At the start of each player's movement phase, each player moves the objective to the nearest friendly unit / enemy unit / random terrain feature / other objective(!) / board edge.

Variant on the theme: if the objectives are attracted toward one another and they meet up, then a huge explosion results (use something suitably apocalyptic in radius).

(3) Non-random moves.
The objectives start off at one board edge and move 6 / 12 (whatever) inches to the opposite board edge unless within 6 inches of a unit. In that case, they don't move at all. The narrative here might be they're pre-programmed drones that are delivering messages.

(4) Kill-able objectives.
(in conjunction with one of the above) The objectives can be killed with a single shot of any weapon. When dead, they stop moving! Perhaps the objectives represent small game that has swallowed a valuable data-crystal?

Variant on the theme: shooting the objectives might totally destroy them (5+ on a d6?).

Anybody got, or played, any further ideas with the living objectives idea?