Kosh's Korner - Wargaming on a Budget

I've finally gotten started on some modeling. I started assembling the box of Chaos Space Marines I purchased last week. I've decided to only put six together so far, as I have plans to magnetize the other four. Hopefully, I will get started on that magnetization project later this week.

Putting together Space Marines is really pretty simple. There's basically eight steps to doing it and Games Workshop has an instruction page on it that you can find here. The eight steps are:

Step 1: Glue the legs to the base.
Step 2: Glue the torso halves together.
Step 3: Glue the torso to the legs.
Step 4: Glue the weapons to the arms.
Step 5: Glues the arms to the torso.
Step 6: Glue the head to the torso.
Step 7: Glue the shoulder pads to the arms.
Step 8: Glue the backpack to the torso.

That's all there is to it. I made a tutorial video of me putting mine together. It's not much, I just wanted to get my feet wet with Windows Movie Maker more than anything.



There are a few things to remember. Try to clean up any flash or mold lines before gluing the pieces together. It's okay if you miss a few, it's just easier to do before the model is completely put together. You can see that I missed a few on the arms and weapons.





That's it for this week. I'll see you next week with a new budget article. Hopefully sooner if my magnetization project comes together.

It's budget time again. This pay period I'll be buying the last few items needed to get our models primed and ready for painting. Also, I'll share with you the first set of models I bought. On a side note, if you're looking for a very, very good tutorial on taking pictures of your models check out this article written by Hyun over at Wee Toy Soldiers. Let's get started.

Modeling Sand or Flock
Modeling sand or flock is used for basing your models. It's glued on to the base using PVA glue and can be painted with the rest of the model. Some people like to base their models before they prime them, while others like to base their models as the last thing they do. I think I'd prefer to base them before priming and paint the base material as I paint the model.

GW sells this stuff for $8 a tub. I bought sand made by Gale Force Nine. They have three types fine, medium, and rocky. I picked up a container of each and mixed them all together, it was $13 for all three containers. There are plenty of cheaper ways to get basing material. If you want sand you could go out and collect it on the side of the road or the beach if you live near one. As for flock, you can make that out of sawdust and paint. Here's a written tutorial and a video on how to make flock, both are from Miniwargaming.com.



PVA Glue
PVA Glue is used to make your sand or flock stick to your base. PVA glue is nothing but ordinary white or yellow glue. Elmer's Glue, Wal-Mart brand, wood glue, it's all the same. Whatever you do, don't pay $7 for the GW PVA glue. I picked up a big bottle of Elmer's Glue All for $2. You're also going to need a cheap paint brush, I'd say a size 3 or 4, to apply the glue to your base. I got a cheap brush for $2 at a hobby store.

Spray Primer
Primer provides a base coat so that your paint adheres to your model. Without a primer your paint will rub off the plastic when it's handled. GW sells both white and black primer for $10 per can. From what I've read, beginners should use black primer to start out with, while most advanced painters tend to use white primer. If you'd like to know the reasons why, since I have no experience with either, check out this article by Starks. I bought the GW brand Choas Black for $11. Honestly I wanted a gray primer but, was unable to find one. If you know of a good brand of gray primer let me know.

Buying Models
I haven't completely decided on an army list yet. However, every list I seem to come up with usually has 10 Chaos Space Marines in it, therefore I bought the Chaos Space Marine box set for $39. Yes, sales tax in my state is ridiculous, it's 9.75%. Anyway, I'm pretty excited about getting started on them and hope to do so sometime this week. Check out the sprue.






Budget
The total amount spent this time was $67. I'm going to save $20 from this budget and bring it forward to the next budget. I'm anticipating that I'll need it to buy paint, brushes, and possibly some shelves to store the paint. But hey, I'll be back before then. The next couple of articles will be works in progress on modeling the Chaos Space Marines. See you then.

The List
After making my way through the CSM Codex, I wanted to start working on an army list. My goal is to get something together so I'll at least have an idea of what models I should pick up on the next budget. I wanted to select units that I thought were interesting, in both game mechanic and model aesthetics. Here's the first list I came up with.

Army #1
HQ
Chaos Sorcerer - 145
-Mark of Slaanesh, Lash of Submission, Jump Pack

Troops
9 x Thousand Sons - 274
-Aspiring Sorcerer, Bolt of Change; Personal Icon

8 x Noise Marines - 275
- Champion, Power Fist; 6 x Sonic Blasters, Blastmaster, Personal Icon

Fast Attack
5 x Chaos Biker - 235
- Biker Champion, Power Fist; 2 x Meltagun, Icon of Chaos Glory

Heavy Support
Chaos Defiler - 150
- Close Combat Arm

Chaos Predator - 120
- Demonic Possession, Heavy Bolters

2 x Obliterator Cult - 150

2 x Obliterator Cult - 150

Total Points - 1499
Models - 29

I wasn't too sure about putting Slaanesh and Tzeentch into the same army, but with the way the Codex is set up it seems to work for a Black Legion army. I also wanted to try out both the Noise Marines and Thousand Sons and then maybe make a choice between the two. I went with the Choas Sorcerer out of fluff, thinking this is a unit put together by Abaddon to try and locate artifacts and ancient technologies. Although, I'm thinking a Demon Prince may be a better choice.

I went with the Chaos Bikers because I liked the look of their models. I'd like to mod the Champions's bike and make it into a chopper. I also thought giving them the meltaguns would allow them to swoop in fast and hit any armor of the enemy. I've been told that it's a good theory but doesn't always work out.

As for the Obliterators, I thought I would try deep striking them in, which is why the two infantry units have a personal icon. As for the rest, I just liked the look of the models. Anyway, I went ahead and put the list up on a few message boards to get some feedback.

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5582
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=129486
http://warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=127023

After reading the feedback, I decided to make a few changes. Here are the results of that.

Army #2
HQ
Chaos Sorcerer - 125
- Mark of Slaanesh, Lash of Submission

Elite
5 x Chaos Terminators - 170
- 2 x Power Fist

Troops
9 x Thousand Sons - 269
- Aspiring Sorcerer, Bolt of Change

8 x Noise Marines - 230
- 6 x Sonic Blasters, Blastmaster

10 x Chaos Space Marines - 220
- Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Chaos Rhino, Extra Armor

Fast Attack
5 x Chaos Biker - 235
- Biker Champion, Power Fist; 2 x Meltagun, Icon of Chaos Glory

Heavy Support
Chaos Defiler - 150
- Close Combat Arm

Chaos Predator - 100
- Heavy Bolters

Total Points - 1499
Models - 40

Playing A Game
I went to my FLGS on Sunday and met up with The Hoder to play my first full game. He was playing Orks and I used his Chaos models to put together Army #2 with a few proxies. Seeing as this was my first game, it went kind of slow and I thank Hoder for his patience. I was asking a lot of questions, we only made it through 1.5 turns and that alone took almost 3.5 hours.

I learned a lot of things though. For one, rolling double 1's when using a Psychic power is not a good thing. My Aspiring Sorcerer bit the dust trying to use Bolt of Change at the beginning of the second turn. During the first turn I lost my Chaos Sorcerer to an instant kill. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was a nice big blast that took out a couple of Noise Marines as well. As for the Bikers, I'm still not sure about them. I had to hide them behind terrain the whole time, because they are fragile. Maybe next time.

Overall, it was a lot of fun. I'll probably make a few changes, possibly drop the Bikers for Raptors, but I'd like to get a full game in with the Bikers before I decide. I think I will definitely trade out the Chaos Sorcerer for a Demon Prince, as well as drop the Thousand Sons in favor of another Noise Marine squad. I'm working on another idea now, more of a mobile force, with the infantry all having a Rhino.

I'll see ya next week. I'm really excited, another budget blog coming up and I'll get my first models and start working on them. I can't wait.

With last Friday being pay day, it's time to buy some more stuff. Everyone likes more stuff. Now that we have our space set up and our army picked out, we need to start acquiring the tools we need to put our models together. We also need to start thinking about our army list. For this, we'll be getting some basic modeling tools as well as the army codex. That would be plastic glue, plastic clippers, a hobby knife, a file set, and the Chaos Space Marine Codex.



Plastic Glue
This stuff is also known as Polystyrene Cement it's used for joining polystyrene (plastic) pieces together. It actually melts the plastic and allows the two parts to fuse together. There are many different brands of this glue out there, including a Games Workshop brand although it's a tad expensive. The one I went with was Testor Model Master Liquid Cement. This glue comes in a black bottle and has a nice metal precision tip. I've used this stuff before and found it worked very well. The metal tip really lets you hit tight spots and if it becomes clogged you can just heat the tip up with a lighter real quick to unclog it. I was able to find a bottle at a local hobby store for about $5. It's almost as expensive as the GW brand, but well worth it for the metal tip I think.

Plastic Clippers
You can get these almost anywhere, pretty cheap too. I checked out Wal-Mart and Hobby Lobby, but couldn't find a pair I really liked. I ended up getting the Games Workshop pair for $16. You need a pair that have a flat back to them for cutting off your pieces from the sprue. I would have liked to find a cheaper pair, but I think I was being a little picky. In the end I think it's worth it as you'll use these a lot.

Hobby Knife
Again, you can find these just about anywhere. I picked up a nice one at Hobby Lobby for $5. It's made by Excel and has a soft rubber grip similar to the Games Workshop knife. You'll be using this thing to cut small pieces off sprues and cleaning up flash and mold lines. Be careful, this knife is very sharp. Be sure to cut away from yourself.

File Set
These are a little harder to find. Games Workshop makes a three file set for $12. I was able to find an Excel 6 file set at Hobby Lobby for $12. You want them to have a very fine pattern as not to leave any rough edges. You'll use them mostly for filing down mold lines and doing conversions. The set I got had files so small you could store them inside the handle. Yet they are plenty big enough to get the job done.

Chaos Space Marines Codex
I picked up the codex at my FLGS for $24, remember all these prices are after tax. I'm about half way through the codex so far. Come see me next week, I should have an army list ready and will start talking about the first models that I'm going to purchase.

I had a few extra dollars left so I picked up something else for my work area. It's a nice little Carousel Organizer for holding brushes, files, glue, just about everything. It was only $6 at Hobby Lobby, making this budget's grand total $68.

What did I choose?
When I first started doing my research, I only wanted to concern myself with what the models looked like. If I thought they were cool looking and had a nice paint scheme then that would be good enough for me. I started looking at all the different army types over at Games Workshop's website and the two that stood out were Space Marines and Witch Hunters. I was really gravitating towards the Witch Hunters.

The more research I did, the more I realized I'm going to eventually have to play with whatever army I chose. So, I started looking for game related things concerning Witch Hunters. I found this post over on Warseer. It talks about rating the armies in regards of how difficult they are to play for a new person starting the game. It seems that most people rated Space Marines, Necrons, Choas Space Marines, and Orks somewhere in their top 5 of easiest to play for beginners. Witch Hunters were always near the bottom. I decided not to go with Witch Hunters because of that and instead go with something in the top 5 from that post.

I started looking at Space Marines next. They were great looking models, but seemed a little generic. They weren't really grabbing me as they were before. So, I started looking at Chaos Space Marines. Now that was more like it. They didn't have a generic look, lots of spikes and other strange things. Also, the possibility of using demons. Seemed like a lot of diversity with CSM, I liked it. To be fair though, I took a look at the Orks. I wasn't so sure about Orks in Space, seemed kind of strange to me. I guess I'm just used to Orks only being in fantasy settings. The more I looked at them though, the more they grew on me. I was back to two, but I was leaning heavily on CSM.



What, more choices?
After deciding to go with CSM, it looked as though I needed to pick a specific Legion. I looked through all the legions of the CSM and tried to decide based on the paint scheme and their role in the game. I liked the look of the World Eaters and Black Legion the most. After reading some of the game mechanics I decided I liked Black Legion the best. The only problem I had was that the paint scheme seemed really basic. My friend Hoder pointed out to me though, that you don't have to go with straight black as you can see here of Matt Birdoff's BL army. I'm going to try to incorporate some deep purple or dark blue into mine when I paint them.



I did find out later on though, that you could mix different legion units in one army with the new Codex. That's a relief, as I think I'd tire of painting black all the time. Speaking of the codex, I'll be picking that up on the next budget, as well as some basic modeling tools. See ya then.