Update on Terrain Bases Post

I was getting some reports that the article wasn't showing up for a few people, If you had this issue I just removed a few lines of bad HTML and that seems to have fixed the problem.

Update:
It appears our host for the podcast is also down.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Quick and Dirty Terrain bases

Sorry for the double post tonight but I have been working on this tutorial for awhile and I am going to be fairly busy the next few days so you are getting some some material in advance tonight.

Quick and dirty method for making decent custom terrain bases in 40k. Alright so here is what you are going to need.

-A pair of latex or rubber gloves

-a tub of drywall Spackle

-a putty trowel or Spackle spreader

-a cheap large tip brush (the kind you get in a pack of 5 for $2)

-black primer

-sponge (optional)

-Newspaper

-a generic matte brown acrylic paint (I used reaper master series)

-dark gray acrylic also matte preferable a cheap kind (I use Formula p3 Greatcoat gray)

Alright first off you will want to move to your garage or outside since this stuff gets everywhere, usually you can clean it off once it drys but if it gets on furniture or carpet its going to be a task cleaning so just best to do it where you don't mind a mess.

That being said you'll want to open the tub and hold your base in your other hand, or you can hold it in place on the table while you dig out a finger full of Spackle, now judge how much you think should be used by eye, if you want a little platou you'll want to glob a bit more in the middle, if you want more or less average ground a big finger full of the stuff should do, adjust amount as needed.

Now you will want to spread the glob of Spackle out evenly with the drywall trowel, don't worry if it looks to flat, now with your finger dab at the smoothed layer until its got a little less smooth. Now this is the part where I recommend the artists sponge cause its an easy way of texturing the wet Spackle, just lightly dab the sponge on the Spackle until you see a good even grain/texture. If you don't have an artists sponge you can use a cheap bushy tipped brush, just dab and roll over the layer and use it to push and mold the wet Spackle into any shape or foundation you want.

Before letting it sit to dry take the model you will be placing on it and gently press the base of it in making slight indentations. This is an optional step but it will help greatly when its time to glue the models onto the base.

After the Spackle has dried chip or sand away any loose Spackle on the edges of the base and use the same texturing brush to wipe away any dried loose Spackle on the top, you do not want any dust to accumulate of the sealing primer layer wont harden right and it will chip.

Now that you have cleaned up the base simply take it outside/to your painting area and give it a good primer making sure to get a complete coat, make sure there is no white spots remaining cause it will stand out or chip later on. I use black primer because I make muddy dirt bases but I will tell you an alternative way to make snow/ice bases at the end of this tutorial.

After waiting at least 30 minutes for the primer to dry and seal the Spackle now take that same bushy tipped brush (after washing the Spackle out) and dip the better part of the tip in your gray acrylic and just roll it over the Spackle layer, don't press down to much but make sure everything has a good even coat and try not to go over the edges. After that's dry do the same with the earth/brown acrylic but don't use as much as you did with the gray just enough to cover and only lightly roll over the edges, this will make it look like a mushy clay/earth color and contribute to the aesthetics of the piece.

After everything is dry I like to add just a light layer of black wash, again this is optional but it will add some tone and shadow and fill in any cracks that might have developed when drying. After that a little bit of glue on the contact points of your models and then position them on the base, some glues might slosh over a little bit around the edges of the contact points, simply apply a little bit of that earthen brown or gray on these spots and it should look ok.

Variation/Snow base:

All you need to do is use the artists sponge to flatten and texture the Spackle, then switch out your black primer for a matte white primer. After that drys brush on a generic coat of acrylic white paint, then when that drys use a light blue wash and just gently apply that over the textured surface and around the edges. I have not tried this variation yet but if you do please let me know how it turns out and maybe send us some pictures.

The beauty of this technique is that the foundation material is so pliable and versatile not to mention cheap that you can really do what every you want with it depending on what base colors you use and how you shape it. Indeed you can easily add all manner of flocking be it gravel, sand or greenery and be assured that it will hold, you can also add bits of rubble or little metal plates, as long as you have a good sealed primed base there really is no limit to what you can do with this stuff so toy with it and let me know what you come up with.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Weekend Showdown/1st BoLs post

On The Battlefield:

This weekend over at Legends I managed to get in a brawl with my number one knock down drag out arch enemy army (the guy I played was very nice though) anyways if your wondering, its Necrons, years of abuse at the hands of 3 Edition (unpainted) Necrons had left me a bitter and tested man when it comes to fighting them. However this game turned out to be rather casual and fun, my opponent played a great game and for the most part I won a fair game (we both played about 1000 points) So now after realising how badly GW has neglected that codex I have taken a much softer view on playing them, this dose not mean I wont do everything I can to blow them away but this game was definitely one of sportsmanship.

Deployment saw my Dark Angels fielding two 10 man tac squads, a chapter master, two dreadnoughts with Multi meltas and a squad of termies and a razorback with a twin plas las configuration.

He fielded 3 destroyers 6 scarab swarms, 20 Warriors and one lord with the orb (I was assured that that was 1000 points)


Turn one saw my orbital strike obliterate his scarab swarms (by accident naturally) which In my opinion possibly lead to my victory later on do to the loss of the only unit that might have taken down my Razorback.

Turn 2 was mostly short movement, I brought my Dreadnoughts up to the front and he swung his destroyers around to face my Razorback while I played it safe and kept my Tac squads out of range and stationary so I could fire twin frag missiles into his ranks through the broken cover.

Turn 3 was a firefight between my dug in marines and a unit of his Warriors of which he had attached his lord to, in the end I felled 4 of them but thanks to the "well be back" rule he had managed to resurrect all 4. It was at this point that his lords squad became the soul target of the full force of my dreadnoughts, but to no avail I managed to wing a lone Destroyer and wound his lord but he managed to bounce back.



Turn 4 was mostly much of the same but by now he had lost 3 of his warriors and my Razor back was doing its best to lay into his Destroyers with a full barrage from the twin las plas and storm bolter but again he made some damn good saves, oh it is at this point I will mention that my termies which where brought to the front also suffered some damage, I lost two but by the shinning light of the dice gods I managed to make a miraculous 10 saves (don't ask me how)


Turn 5 was a drag out fire fight but when the dice stopped rolling and the dust had settled 2 of his Destroyers where down and he had jumped his remaining warriors to my side of the table to face off. He managed to blast away 4 Tac marines but by turn 6 I was on the counter attack.

Turn 6 saw my heavies open up in full force with my two rocket launchers and a flamer which in the end smashed his lord and another warrior, here we can see the end result with his broken Destroyers.

Over all it was a great game and I hope to get the chance to play him again although maybe with a little less armor. In the end though what really capped it was my heavy weapons and ranged armor. I think that had I taken Sicarius as I usually do instead of a chapter master things may have gone differently. When it came down to it he was prepared for an assault where as I planned a ranged offensive (I played eldar and now guard of course I am going to be shooty) though to be fair the tactics I used where more guard then space marine, I simply filed up my marines and moved my armor into cover and began multiple barrages which over the course of the game eventually ground down his warriors.

On The Work Bench:
Its a new week and guess what I am back on the the guard, that right I now can devote my attention the the Hammer of the imperium because today my order from pig iron came in. 20 Kol militia covered heads to go nicely on the 69th troopers. I also got in my tech priest from WCC, which I have to say was a thrill to paint slightly inebriated, but still i love the robes and bare metal on this model, I wish my camera was not in such a temperamental state. So expect more on the Guard in the coming weeks.



Ok just a reminder, on the 1st of July we will be officially announcing the Bay Hammer Radio contest so stay tuned for that on the blog.


Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

And now for something Different

-Imperial 66-

-rules of the game-

These rules are meant not only to frustrate you possibly to the point of violent behavior but to force creativity in game dynamics and strategy, you may find that with shackled with these rules in play you will see more ways to play the game and from many more angles while at the same time testing your knowledge and skill of the game. This is not for new players, this is a headache waiting to happen and if its not tell us what we can do to change that.

1: Game cannot exceed 1200 points

2:Artillery must have Line of sight

3:There can be no HQ choices

4:Allies are not allowed

5:Units must be at minimum base painted

6:Heroic and Legendary units are not allowed

7:All Terrain is difficult Terrain

8:Missiles will only roll to scatter 1d6

9:Game Cannot exceed 2 hours

10:Deep striking and infiltrate are not allowed

These rules have been inspired by the short lived film school known as the Dogma 95, a cinematic manifesto written by Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. It was essentially a set of extremely limiting restrictions on film making and in a similar spirit we have drafted up some similar rules to essentially making it as hard as possible to play a basic game.

I was sitting around flipping through my DVDs and I randomly pulled out a copy of the 5 obstructions a classic dogma 95 film which illustrates all the key points of the original manifesto. So I thought to myself "how can I adapt this to 40k" the truth is to do so I would have to expand to more then 10 rules and at best this will be annoying so please let me know how you think you could help adapt these to make a simple game of 40k absolute mental hell. I will point out I am not being cruel I am being creative and I hope this will inspire some of you to take on another view of the game.

Cheers

Scott

BH Senior Editor

Reaching back

Alright so last night in a fit of nostalgia I ripped through my boxes and managed to dig up my copy of rogue trader (with no torn pages thank you very much) and while reading through what can be called the foundation of the 40k universe I realised something, we got screwed. Now let me explain my nerd rage for a moment, the original game, in essence was an RPG more then a table top strategy now given that it has evolved into a much larger entity, but in doing so GW effectively stripped out a majority of interesting fluff and units (and of course many other smaller races like the squats and the Jokaero) not only that but the emperor used to actually still communicate with the high lords of terra. In short I feel that in the transition from a classic miniature based RPG to table top strategy a lot of cool ability's and options and plot where lost. Ok maybe I am just being obvious but I l got introduced through rogue trader/3rd edition and I am now getting used to 5th edition and I feel cheated.

Ok so here is why I brought this up, my Sargent's that came with my black reach marines do not have bolters, instead they seem to be pointing at nothing in particular, so I thought "what if I can make a hand weapon without having to mod the model" well I did and damn it I converted it from a weapon found in rogue trader called "The Jokaero Digital weapon" now obviously I cant convert the stats to easily to 5th edition so here's what I did, I just took the stats from Yarricks Baal eye, since they are almost identical weapons in function I find it to work perfectly. Just a fluff option for casual games but still I think its a pretty nifty substitute.

So in lue of anything useful or interesting I posted this, its been a slow day, also if you have any RT marines or guard you would be willing to sell or trade send me a line. Questions and comments always welcome.


Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Images Copyright Game Workshop 1990-2009

Episode 1: Remastered

Thats right I spent the last 2 hours converting the whole show over to new audio and going through and removing all the suck and awkward moments and what we have left is something that resembles what the originally planned show should have sounded like. So now if you have been holding off telling your friends about the show because the raw audio on ustream was a bit to long winded you can now link them to the gcast page (our webcast audio host) and be assured they they will in fact speak to you again the next day. But in all seriousness we have been seeing a lot more attention and there have been requests to set up an RSS feed for the show. You can now subscribe by clicking the link under the embedded player on this page.

Update:
I am not overly thrilled with that echo still in the beginning and the volume is still a little high so ill be updating that recording tomorrow night.

On The Work Bench:
Yet again I have another Blood Angels Commission, this time its a Land Speeder Tornado, optimized for anti infantry (cause that's what Ian usually goes for) I have to say for such a small project, I mean I got most of this done in just a few hours, its been a fun build and paint project. After this I cant wait to pick up the new land speeder storm to add to my Dark angels so keep an eye out for that project coming up in the next few weeks.



Happy Listening

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Happy Fathers Day and Battle Report

First off if you are one of the many lucky men to have the fortune to oversee the growth and learning development of your own gene stealer brood then happy fathers day (seriously though with what my father has done for me over the years I cannot express how much I owe him. So enjoy your fathers day)


So on a less dramatic note, we finally organized the game space down in the octagon (only had to move a few hundred pounds of metal to really open the place up, also there are more tables behind me this shot just looked best) so now things are much more feng shui I suppose.

Two of the game tables and a BR demo table

In other news, I got in not one but two battles over at Legends on Saturday, Ill spare you the long back and forth details of my first battle, one cause I forgot to get my camera and two because I was fighting Tau and it was basically a slap fight between his Devilfish and my twin Dreadnoughts for the first three rounds.

Turn 3 saw the loss of 1 of my Dark Angels squads
and a unit of his fire warriors to both storm bolter fire
and a incident involving a GPS failure during the moral check

Again in turn 3 Dreadnought number one managed to take down one of the enemy Devilfish but not without taking a fatal blow wreaking it, but in the process saving the second dred from the remaining garrisoned tau's LoS

The start of turn 4 See's the broken smoking hull of the Devilfish (imagine smoke damn you)
By Turn 6 our commanders had come to blows in a furious battle in which neither commander could gain the upper hand (he didn't fall for the untied shoe trick either)

The match ended with the failed roll to go into turn 7 and with a roughly equal amount of points and units lost we decided to call it a draw. All in all it was a great game and I hope for a rematch (Ill have my marines taste fresh sushi yet)

Alright so to start of the intro to my second battle I will say this, I lost, tabled by turn 5 by a combination of poor choice of unit place meant on my part and a slightly better list from my opponent (who by the way was fielding some amazingly painted salamanders)

Deployment

Turn 2 Dedicated Transport moves to table edge

My dread backed by infantry goes to meet them

by turn 3 my infantry have been out flanked by his mobile armor but I have managed to take out his company master and one of his assault bikes and a few odd infantryTurn 4 I have my Terminators holed up in the ruins firing into the massed troops both behind the dedicated rhino and in the open

Turn 5 my infantry is decimated both dreds are down and my commander has finallay been blown away by his bike.

Over all it was a good game, I wish I had moved my dreads into his armor a lot sooner but I made the gamble to split my forces to try and divide his target list, which needless to say he had enough troops and armor to compensate for. Again look forward to a rematch, possibly against my Guard when I have them done, but for now the Dark Angels will have to do.


Happy Fathers Day

Scott
BH Senior Editor

P.S.
Planet Strike is comming up, so dont forget to place your advance orders with WCC to have everything at your door by game night.

New Imperial Armor

Image Property of Games Workshop 2009

Finally GW has put up the new Demolisher and Hellhound kits up for advance order. Both kits will be retailing for about $50 (or $38 if you go through WCC) all in all though I am not upset about the price, both kits have multiple variants for the turret and they are all plastic, no more eavy metal bitz weighing down your collection. The sets should hit stores August 1st so keep an eye out at your FLGS for the new sets.

Your Local Game Store:
Legends Comics and games is as usual having there Saturday Game night from 12 to 8pm down in the octagon in front of sears so if you want to come hang with the Bay Hammer crew or just play some 40k head on over.



This Saturday Game Kastle will be participating in Free RPG day and giving out among other things the new Fantasy Flight Games Rouge Trader RPG booklet, so stop by if you can, supplies will run out fast. On a side note, free RPG day and Free comic book day are not actually free, the stores that participate in these events have to pay for those books and comics, so pick up something while your there, doesn't have to be big some paint maybe or a new brush, every bit helps support your local hobby community. For a full list of the stores participating check here.

On the Work Bench:
Well its been a busy week getting the show up and dealing with finals on top of getting the orks painted up but I some how managed to get ten of the little buggers painted up and I have 4 tac marines waiting to be detailed so needless to say its going to be a long night.


Corrections for BH Radio:
-Land Speeder Storm has deep strike not infiltrate
-no announced release date for space wolves (I keep hearing September though)
-Legends is offering %15 off on the black reach sets only now that they have the new buyer card system
-Man hit by train did not actually explode, he was dragged underneath for about 100ft
-Legends will be open july 4 but game night is postponed (so if you want to get your planet strike stuff you can stop by)

Well that about wraps everything up for today, hope last nights show wasn't to unbearable and to some degree informative but hey I am just glad we got it moving.

Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Episode 1: The Train Wreck

Well we got it done, things didn't not go as planned for our two intrepid adventures, only one mic worked and we lost the key points sheet, and of course Ian saw a man hit by a Train on the way over to the office. Its haphazard at the start but things smooth out a little while in, we where getting a lot of odd feed back in places but damn it we got the show done.. If you are looking for a more casual 40k webcast have a listen, we tried to just keep it on a conversational level.

Quick Addition:
I mean no disrespect towards Space wolf players, that was simply my soapbox to ramble on about GW single release practice, If you have any ideas for future shows or are in the area and would like to come on send us an Email at the BH gmail. (if 40k Radio is like the NPR of the community then we are the howard stern show)

We loosely covered:

Planet Strike
Space Marines Artillery
Space wolves
GW move to plastic
new Terrain
casual topics

So if you missed it we have the recorded show up now on the Bay Hammer Ustream page. So listen in to get details on the BH contest before I start to coincidentally lose this episode in a pothole off the highway. As always questions and comments welcome.

Happy Listening

Scott
BH Senior Editor
&
Ian
Battle Reports and leisure

The Razors Edge

Alright its down to the wire and things (and co-hosts) are not going so smoothly, but tomorrow Thursday June 18th Bay Hammer radio goes live at 6:30 pm GMT. Will I be stuck soloing or will Ian pull through and manage to make it to the studio, tune in tomorrow to find out. I plan on going over planet strike, new releases, and whats this the first Bay hammer contest announcement, but here's the deal on that, I will be announcing the contest on the blog when we join BoLs, but if you listen to the show you will get the full details about 2 weeks ahead of everyone else so you can start early. So tune in and see if we can pull this off, I sure hope so and if not we will be recording all live shows so you can go back and listen at your convince.

In other news.

On the work Bench:
Its been a rush getting everything done on top of it being finals week for me, but despite all that I have managed to get in a fair bit of painting. The house orks for Legends are almost done and I manged to get two Terminators and the Dreadnought done last night so things have been active to say the leaset. Sadly though my IG are still on the side while I get my commisions situated but expect more on that front soon (aka after I get this mess sorted)



A Word From our Sponsors:
WCC Comics and Collectibles has just restocked there GW inventory with a number of new sets at there usual %25 off rate, this includes a selection Eldar and Space marine sets.
-Farseer and warlocks
-Eldar War Walker
-Eldar Rangers
-Guardian squad
-Space marine scouts (both sniper and classic)
-Land Raider crusader/redeemer
-SM Command Squad
-IG Basilisk

So head on over and look around, if you have been looking for that one Eldar set for awhile but have been looking for a better price now is the time and they always have more innovatory on the way. Don't hesitate to ask about advance or custom orders, they are more then happy to take large or specific orders of any kind.

Happy Painting

Scott
BH Senior Editor

Bay Hammer Radio! (next week)

Update:That's right folks no more procrastinating, I have secured the equipment and the stream and if we are lucky I will have our first show up and being broadcast by next Thursday. If you would like to keep tabs on whats going on check out our Ustream page here. I would like to thank all of you for being patient while I have gone through the long and costly progress of setting this all up and I hope to be able to provide my listeners and local gamers with some degree of professional relevant news and views (that's what I said what actually happens might be more casual) so tune in next Thursday for the first actual Bay Hammer radio show, remember "Bay Hammer Radio, home of the Chaos Tyranids"



On the work bench:
one last dose of BH goodness before I sign off here, the blood angels Land Raider and six or so of the orks (now named Mels mob) are nearing completion, and oh whats that, another dreadnought? Yes thats right I have started yet again on the space marines of which I now have a total of 1000pts worth so Ill keep you posted there. I just want to say that I apologise if the guard postings are in frequent, I am flipping through getting 3 different armies done this week so things are hectic.



From the interweb

Scott
BH Senior editor

Weekend Showdown

Not so dramatic in play but I can tell you that if you are still on the fence about the black reach set, get one, the stock list of marines can hold its own and I just picked up another 500 points by going dutch on the last $60 set, I paid $20 for $80 worth a marines.

Saturday game night over at Legends was more active then we have seen it so far, with the new demo table set up we are attracting much more attention and greater interest. Ok so enough of this talk of my work (I was running the demos) I actually managed to bring in my finished black reach space marines, almost 600 pts stock list, and I played against Elmo's Chaos noise marines in a fight that can only be described as casually intense as you will see below.

We started with a standard set up with about 600 pts each

Turns 1 and 2 where spent mostly on movement and the odd pot shot

Turn 3 had one of my tactical squads drawn into the open by his sorcerers psychic attack, but by then I had moved my dreadnought up behind the exposed units and the dice gods had not been favorable with his blastersUnfortunately some pictures have gone missing but I had my dreadnought and 4 tac marines in line of sight with his squad, I had one un moved rocket launcher in the exposed squad so I fired into him and managed to take out 3 of his noise marines, after that I followed up with the melta and storm bolter on the dreadnought which tore up the rest

This is where the battle ends at turn 5 with my captain locked in assault with his sorcerer who again the dice gods did not favor so no blows where landed.

Meanwhile some kids are checking out the demo table with Bryce they seemed to enjoy the gameplay

Over all Elmo played a great game and I hope to see him again at our other sessions, the game had ended in a time run out as he had to bolt but he bowed out gracefully and since we where playing annihilation it was looking rather grim in any case I got the tingle of victory that day.

On The Work Bench:
I have been getting more and more projects lately, and regrettably (well not really) the green menace is now on the number two slot of my to do list. I have offered to make a house army to use at the demo table and I kept the Orks from the black reach set so I have been experimenting with colors and I have to say, I can see how orks can get addicting, took me about an hour and a half to base paint 5 not the greatest things in the world but you could play with them.



Mean while Ian's blood angels Land Raider is still on the table and I have been steadily adding more the the paint scheme, I decided to mix in some weathered bleached bone highlights and I think its coming along rather nicely.



On a last note, look what I picked up, sure its slightly used but you just cant find these bags lately (not until July anyways) $30 empty is not a bad deal and i went and got the trays for about $22 so over all not to shabby. Again I would like to thank the seller who knows who he is, for getting me the hook up on this greatly needed piece of gear.


Cheers

Scott
BH Senior Editor