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...

Clear Coat Finish, Modeling Putty and Sculpting Tool
At this point there's only a few more things needed to complete the basics of painting and modeling supplies. Really, a couple of these things may not be necessary at this point. The modeling putty and sculpting tool may not be needed until you get some metal models.

Clear Coat Finish
You will really want to put a clear coat on your models if you plan on playing games with them. A clear coat will protect your models and the paint job. Testor's Dullcote and Citadel Matte Varnish are a couple sprays you can use as a clear coat to finish off your models. These two products I mentioned are matte, meaning they won't leave a shiny appearance. If you want a particular part of your model to have a shiny appearance I'd recommend picking up a bottle of gloss varnish and use a brush to apply it to the particular part after you have sprayed it with the matte varnish. Most of the paint producers, Citadel, Vallejo, etc. make a gloss brush on varnish.

I don't have a lot of experience with the two sprays above, but after doing a little reading on these items it seems the Citadel brand Matte Varnish spray isn't that good. I picked up a bottle of Testor's Dullcote for $4. This particular product is no longer available in Europe due to the EU banning a certain chemical that is used in it's production. I've also heard that Krylon makes a good spray varnish and is probably the cheapest. You can find it at most home improvement stores, but I think it's only available in North America.

Modeling Putty and Sculpting Tool
Modeling putty, also called "green stuff," comes as two separate strips of putty, a blue strip and a yellow strip. Once the two are combined the magic begins to work, it turns green and begins to harden. It takes about two hours to completely harden, which means you have two hours to do with it what you want. It's mostly used to fill in gaps on metal models, but you can sculpt a complete model out of the stuff. It's packaged and sold by GW for $8 for a small amount. You can also get about four times the amount GW sells from Gale Force Nine for $18. I bought a package of GF9 putty.

A sculpting tool is used to spread and manipulate the modeling putty. This keeps from leaving fingerprints and helps smooth the putty out. GW sells a tool for $6, GF9 sells a 3 piece tool set for $12, and if you're really into sculpting you can get this nice 12 piece set pretty cheap. I picked up the Citadel tool, because that's all I could find in my area. You can check out this article for tips and tricks using green stuff and a sculpting tool.

Odds and Ends
You may also want to pick up a few more things for your work space such as shelving. I had a local carpenter put together a simple shelf out of some scrap wood he had lying around. It was only $6, but something you could easily do if you have the tools yourself.



I also bought a couple of flatware trays at a flea market for $5. I had originally intended to store my paint on them, but that was before I decided to go with Vallejo paints, which didn't fit. However, I will use it to put my infantry size models on it for display. I picked up a cheap cork board as well for $10. I put a color wheel, mixing charts, and a Citadel to Vallejo equivalency chart on mine. You could also use it for inspiration by putting pictures from magazines or the internet on there.



That does it for this budget, it came to $49. That pretty much does it for buying painting and modeling supplies, from here on out you will just need to replenish what you have or maybe pick up a few new colors of paint. There will still be more budgets coming, we still have models to buy as well as gaming accessories.

A Note
As you can see, I changed the name of my blog from Warhammer 40k on a Budget to Wargaming on a Budget. The reason is, I'm branching out. It's going to take me a while to buy all the models to make my 40k army, but I'm itching to play something. I've been checking out another game recently, Warmachine/Hordes by Privateer Press. From what I've seen it's a fun game and pretty cheap to get into. Most games are 500 point games, you can get a battle box of 350 points for only $50 and then build to 500 points for less than $100 total.

I had some credit at a game store I used to frequent and used that to buy a Legion of Everblight Hordes army. The local store is starting up a WM/Hordes league next Tuesday that I hope to get in on. I will try to get some pics up of those models as well as my Chaos Space Marine squad that's about half way done. Until then...

There are a lot of different brands of paints and types of brushes out there. It can get confusing trying decide what to buy. I'll show you where I went to research paints and brushes and what I decided on getting for myself.

Brushes
There are bunch of different brushes out there. You don't necessarily need to worry about brand as much as you need to worry about what the bristles are made from. There's synthetic, camel hair, synthetic blend, squirrel, red sable, Kolinsky sable... it can be daunting. Here's a very good article that explains all the differences. The first thing you should do is not worry about any synthetic bristles. Some type of natural hair is usually better, with Kolinsky sable being the best. Kolinsky sable brushes are expensive though, about $10-$20 a brush. It's not that bad when compared to $8 for the GW brushes. Here's a few reasons why a Kolinsky sable brush is the best, this was taken from an article on the B&C written by Starks333.

-natural hairs keep their tips
-natural hair means they can hold moisture and oils better than synthetics which improves flow of paint
-natural kolinsky hairs are softer and less coarse, which means the paint comes off the brush smoother, less likely to streak
-good "snap" means the brush is less likely to fish hook from repeated strokes, or bend out of shape, it also means your strokes are smoother, less rigid(it slides along the piece instead of jumping around)

Yes, I was a skeptic at first, too. I went down to the local art store and took a look at them. They had two brands of Kolinsky sable brushes, Winsor & Newton and Raphaël. The W&N brushes were pretty splayed, so I took a look at the Raphaël brushes, specifically the 8408 Extra Pointed series. Let me tell you, I was surprised. Even I could tell that these were some nice brushes, they had a very nice point and they snapped right back into place after running the brush over the back of my hand. I was sold, the good news was they were 40% off. I bought a size 0 and a 1 for $22. You can also order these from www.dickblick.com. Sizes 0 and 1 should be good enough for now.

From the research I've done, if you take good care of these brushes they should last and hold their points at least a good 4-6 months. In the long run, they may be cheaper than buying $3-$5 cheap brushes every few weeks. I also picked up some brush soap for $5. Here's a good article on taking care of your brushes.

Paints
Citadel, Coat D'Arms, Vallejo, Privateer Press P3, and Reaper are some of the more popular brands of acrylic paints used for models. There are enamel paints out there for models as well, but a majority of people use acrylic paint. Acrylics can be thinned with water and you don't need a special type of thinner like you do with enamel. This site here has some reviews on some of the different brands I mentioned above.

My only experience is with the Citadel range of paints. These come in small pots with a pop top lid. I used them when they had a screw on lid several years ago. The Citadel paints I had dried out very quickly and this seems to be the main complaint about them still today. This was the main reason why I decided not to go with these paints... well, not completely. They do have some of the best metallic paints out there when compared to the others. So, for metallics this is what I decided to go with.

After doing some research, I decided to go with Vallejo Game Color paints for my colored paint. Their range matches Citadel only with different names, you can find a conversion chart here. The main reason I decided on Vallejo was the dropper bottles they come in, these bottles will let you measure your paint by drops when mixing. This makes it easier to keep color formulas when you mix your paints. The other thing I was hearing, was that they don't dry out nearly as fast as the Citadel range. Some folks even said they could last a couple of years in the bottle.

Before you actually buy the paint, you need to figure out what colors you'll be needing. I would suggest you get some neutral colors like black, white, gray, and brown. Maybe a couple shades of the gray and brown. As for main colors, I'd get 2-3 shades of those for highlighting, blending, and shading. I ended up getting 20 bottles of Vallejo for $59 and 5 bottles of Citadel metallics for $18.

One Last Thing
Since I went with the Vallejo dropper bottles, that means I'm going to need a palette since I can't just dip the brush into the paint pot. You can get a cheap small plastic palette for $1 at a hobby store. However, there is something better that will only cost you a few bucks more to make, a Wet Palette. Wet palettes are easy to make and they will make your paint last longer while on the palette, even up to weeks with the lid on. Here is a very good tutorial on making a wet palette. I found all the materials to make one at Wal-mart for $5. By the way, you definitely want to use Parchment paper and not wax paper for your wet palette.

In all, this weeks total was $109. I went over the $100 budget, but remember I brought over $20 from the last budget. It's a good thing I did, I kind of figured this week would be close. See you soon with information on primers and some pics of a few models I primed.