Monster Magnet

Don't you love it when you paint up a regiment with a lot of passion, spend hours upon hours shading and basing, only to have your models fall over 1000x during a 60min game?

I don't.

And that's why I wanted to try magnetizing my WHFB regiments. There are several ways to do that (buying individual magnets, magnetic paint etc..), but I chose to give pre-cut magnets and ferromagnetic foil a try, because they seemed the mose elegant solution.


I found this nice little online shop called Magnetbases.de, who ship at reasonable rates (~€4 within Europe which can be considered more than honest, compared to all these crooks who "offer" shipping at €10 and more).

The owner, Magnus Schwekendiek, is a nice fellow who will answer all your questions about size, compatibility, shipping etc...

On top of that, you get a small discout for ordering 3 or more base sets of the same type, e.g. if you buy 3 or more 2x5 20mm base sets, the price drops from €1.60 per set to €1.44.

This can save you a euro or two when you are basing more than one regiment of 20 men. Instead of buying 2 sets of 4x5 bases, just buy 4 sets of 2x5 and cash the discount.




This is what the bases look like. The ferromagnetic foil is included. Bases are pre-cut and have a "sticky" side, which makes then very user friendly to apply to the models.


Just peel off the protective foil, stick the magnet to your model, and put the model on the magnetic foil. Done. I glued the foil to movement trays for increased stability.

(I apologise for the unfinished models!)

Here you can see the magnetic foil I glued to the movement tray.

The magnet is roughly 0.7mm thick and does heighten the model a little. I had concerns about this at first, before buying the magnets, but they were quickly dispelled. The additional height is far beyond anything noticable. I'd be more concerned about the paintjob than about that :)

Aaaah! What a feeling of relief! No more shifting and falling models! BTW, this ALSO works with metal minatures... pretty amazing.

So if you have been hesitating to get magnets for your models, I can REALLY recommend this stuff. One of the most useful features for tabletop games.

Below I listed 6 advantages of magnetic bases, which make them more than worthwile in my eyes:

1) Protection. The models stand in place and do not fall over - which happens VERY readily during games. On top of that it abolishes this little annoying phenomenon of knocking over light plastic miniatures as you are placing more onto the tray, during setup.

2) Transport. You can actually transport the regiment as a whole! It also makes moving the regiment from its shelf onto the battlefield and vice versa a 100% safe undertaking. Especially for standard bearers, which tend to have a high center of gravity and fall over easily (rest in peace Questing Knight standard bearer).

3) Price. At around €2/ set there really is no excuse for not getting these. If you consider that some people are buying GW plastic "hills" at €25 *shudder*, you would like to advise them to save their money and buy magnetic bases instead.

4) Not so easy to make yourself. I am a big fan of only buying things you cannot manufacture yourself. So scenery is out. You cannot easily make magnetic bases yourself, so there is your reasonable buy.

5) Feel. The magnets and metal foil add a little extra weight to plastic regiments, which adds to this "old school" feel that I know from my early days, where all miniatures were metal. This might sound silly, but it does feel so much cooler to push around a "heavy" block of "massive" infantry, rather than something that feels like 20 LEGO figures...

6) Standalone. You do not necessarily need movement trays to glue the foil into! Although it is recommended as it adds a lot of stability, you can move around your miniatures on the battlefield with them standing only on the foil.

I hope this will inspire some of you guys to give magnetic bases a try,

Cheers,
Tom

Six inches of enchanted wood - Part 2 of 2

This is the finished wood, ready to be set on the table!

Oh... that reminds me, I need to make a table... hmmm.

Enjoy!

Six inches of enchanted wood - Part 1 of 2

What is the only Warhammer army that has a piece of scenery as a "unit"?

Exactly. My beloved Wood Elves. If you take a look at p.18 in your Wood Elf Army Book (everyone owns one, right?) you will discover the Woodland Ambush rule, which allows the Wood Elf player to place a 6" wood anywhere in his half of the table after scenery has been placed and before deployment.

In other words: I get to build a small wood to carry around with my army.
I am sorry, but you can't get any cooler that that :)

The trees are from Woodland Scenics. Here you see the base which I carved out of styrofoam.

Of course any Wood Elf-specific piece of wood (especially one that magically appears before each battle and can potentially be moved around during the fight by spells) need wardstones.
Making wardstones: This is pretty easy. All you need is a lighter and a metal tool of some sort with a pointy end. Heat the tool with the flame and quickly carve the desired shape into the styrofoam. The heated tool should last for approx. 5 seconds, which is more than enough to trace a quick spiral.

Don't worry about the metal getting all black and covered in molten styrofoam. Just take a damp towel to clean the tool and melt away the styrofoam residues from the tool.

I made some roots out of green stuff (I did not go into too much detail, because of lack of time and because most of the roots will be covered with foliage later anyway).

That's it for now!

I don't have a lot of time on my hands currently to do any painting, so the Wood Elf projects will just keep piling up until they get painted. But everything will get painted eventually...

See you next time!

[EDIT]: I forgot to mention that this piece of scenery is a first step towards re-vamping my very old WHFB table into a decent "rural" setting (as opposed to "urban" Mordheim) for games of Border Town Burning, Empire in Flames and WHFB.

Expansion Pack

As Nico has announced a looong time ago, he has realised the painstaking but heroic task of expanding our gaming table. Yay!

"This city is too small" he declared, and got to work with his knife and pen.
A bigger table also offers more possibilities for a larger number of players, and I must say that I felt our experienced warbands were in dire need of more space lately :)

Nico draws lines on the table with a marker to determine where the larger lines of cobblestone will run. Many hours of sudorific "stone-carving" (with a pencil) ensued...

A week later: Nico with the finished (unpainted) new gaming board in the middle of the table. Is this the same t-shirt Nico, or just one that looks REALLY similar?!

Now that Nico did all the carving (each single cobblestone was carved by hand) it is my job to paint this baby. Thank you Nico!

Today I painted the board. Perfectly in time for our International Mordheim Meeting on July 11th - 12th.

A city to remember

Erkwin - one of our forum members - has found and shared a link with us which shows pics of what probably is the best Mordheim gaming board of all times.


To quote our friend Erkwin by his painfully accurate formulation: "Prepare to cry guys, I nearly did when I saw this."

Click here to feel weepy.

Kudos (and respect) to Wolfgang, the author of this breathtaking Mordheim city.

The ivy house

I found time to complete the building I started a while ago. Here are the pics (courtesy of my friend Tortiou)! I hope you guys like the latest addition to our Mordheim table.

Cheers!
Tom

Arcs de triomphe

I was on vacation in Croatia for 2 weeks. It was really awesome: the people are very friendly and we had fantastic weather in a beautiful country.

I was walking down a medieval street in the beautiful town of Pula when my eyes beheld the KEWLEST thing: Great pieces of scenery at low cost. I had to buy them (they were at 2,90€ a piece, how cool is THAT?!).

Here are some pics ;-)

Mutter, der Mann mit dem Koks ist da.

That's a little project I started recently under the watchful eye of Nicholas :)

Here are the first pics of a very rough outline of the new building. The idea was to show a structure that took an almost direct hit by a meteor. I'll be gone for 2 weeks, but after I get back I'll try to keep you up to date about my progress :)

Take care!
Tom

Somebody put something in my drink

...aaaaaaaand, done!

Wow, I didn't think I'd see the day, but the long expected tavern is finally finished! And this time I mean the paintjob.

Please feast your eyes on what I would humbly call my "masterwork". Not because it is so extraordinarily outstanding, but because I must have listened to "Master of Puppets" about 1000 times while building it ;-)
And of course also because it is the biggest most time-consuming building I ever made. And because I think it is my best building so far.

Please take your time and enjoy the pictures. Oh, and leave me some comments! :)

(click to enlarge)

Thanks,
Tom

"Tadaaa!" Need I say more?

The little tower. That's where I would want to live.

Here are some pics showing the walkway. Satisfait, Nico?

Since I could not come up with a really satisfying name for the Inn, I chose to represent a little pint of Pat's Finest on the tavern-sign. My favourites were "The Tumbling Turtle Inn" and "Ale in a shell Tavern". Got better suggestions? I'd love to read them!

The facade again.