Kosh's Korner - Wargaming on a Budget

Unfortunately, I have to get out of the Miniatures Wargaming hobby. Well, I'll just leave it at that.

Scenic Magnetic Base
This weeks budget is going to be used to buy materials for a scenic magnetic display base. There will also be plenty of material left over for terrain making in the future. Most of the materials needed are self explanatory and can be bought at your local DIY store (Home Depot or Lowe's.)

The first thing we need is pink or blue insulation foam. Not just any foam, but extruded polystyrene. This foam is very dense and not like the foam you find at hobby stores used for floral arrangements. The blue type is made by DOW and the pink is made by Owens Corning. This stuff can be difficult to find depending on where you live, I've heard it's almost impossible to find in California. Luckily, in my neck of the woods, Lowe's sells the blue stuff and Home Depot sells the pink. It's sold in 4'x8' sheets, similar to plywood and can be found in the building materials section near the plywood in both stores. I bought two sheets, one 2" thick and one 1/2" thick for $40.

Next we'll need something to cut the foam. Actually, two items will be needed, a keyhole saw and a hot-wire cutter. The hot-wire cutter cuts through the foam like a hot knife through butter and leaves a nice smooth cut. However, due to it's shape it's hard to cut a large piece of foam off the sheet with it. To cut a chunk off the sheet, use the keyhole saw, cut it about 1/8" bigger than you want off the sheet. Then, using the hot-wire cutter, cut off the 1/8" for a nice smooth cut. The hot-wire cutter can be purchased at a big chain hobby store. I got both the saw and cutter for $15.

The rest of materials are as follows:
Wood Filler - $5
Wood Glue - $3
Foam Board - $6
1" and 1 1/2" Zinc plated washers - $6
1/4" Dia x 3/32" Thick NdFeB Disc Magnets (Model #D094B at Amazing Magnets) - $12
Flat Black Spray Paint - $4
Hot Glue Gun and Glue Sticks - $8
Styrene Sheets (Plasticard) - $7

This will leave plenty of materials to build a lot of terrain as well as a scenic base.

Project 1 - Magnetic Display Base
This project came out of No Quarter Magazine #5. Your best bet is to get a copy of NQ #5 if you can, but here are the very basic steps.

Cut out a block of 2" foam big enough for your army.
Cut out smaller pieces of foam to create tiers.
Cut out foam board to match your base and tiers.
Cut out circles for where your model bases will go.
Glue all the pieces together.
Glue zinc plated washers inside of circles. (Don't forget to glue the magnets to your models base.)
Fill in all cracks with wood filler.
Place any rocks or other scenic items.
Splotch on a mix of wood filler and water, should be like mud.
Glue sand to each tier level.
Cut and glue plasticard around the outside of the bottom base.
Spray paint flat black. (I'm at this point so far)
Paint the base how you want and add static grass or any other scenery you like.



Project #2 - Painting Legion of Everblight Hordes Army
As you can see above I'm still working on it. I decided to go with a different color scheme than normal for Everblight. I'm going with red/orange looking dragons and a dark color (mechrite red/chaos black/liche purple 1:1:1 mix) for the spines and elf armor. It is similar to the bottom dragon pictured over here.



Project #3 - Chaos Space Marines
Last but not least, I haven't forgotten about 40k. I'm still working on my CSM squad. I'm painting them in a Purge color scheme. I still need to highlight the green armor, then hit all the metallic bits. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to highlight the black armor. It will probably be gray with a slight touch of green.

That's it for now. The total budget this week was $106, looks like we went over a bit. But, at least we have all the basics to build some terrain, as well as plenty of material left over. There's still a lot of work to be done...