Kosh's Korner - Wargaming on a Budget

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.