Yesterday evening, I noticed a flurry of gossip in the blogo- and twitter-sphere suggesting that rules for the rumoured 6th edition of Warhammer 40,000 had been leaked, and uploaded onto a file-sharing website (the file has since been removed).

All this cafuffle prompts the following question: so what?

I’m trying — and failing — to work out why (a) Games Workshop should care about whether the rules have been leaked, but also why (b) anyone thinks that having “pre-release” access to the rules is in any way beneficial.

First, I am sure that any leak annoys GW, because there’s nothing worse than someone peaking round the edge of the canvas when you haven’t finished the painting. Anyone who enjoys creating things will know how pleasureable the “ta-da!” moment is, when you unveil your masterpiece for all to see.

But Games Workshop hasn’t always been like that. Epic: Armageddon never had a “ta-da!” moment. Instead of having a team of developers and writers toiling away in utmost secrecy, Jervis Johnson worked with a community of playtesters to develop the rules for E:A in an open, collaborative (one might even say “open source”) manner. And the end result was one of the best rulesystems that GW’s ever produced.

Furthermore, it’s hard to see how anyone could actually benefit from a sneak peek at the new rules. It would be of little use to GW’s competitors. Even the ultra-competitive tournament players (who somehow forget they’re playing silly games with with toy soldiers, and think that they’re actually playing high-stakes poker) would be hard-pressed to find the angle over their competitors by knowing about rules they can’t actually play with.

So I say this to Games Workshop: forget the secrecy (those guys at New Line Cinema who told you to go into stealth mode are full of shit. Since when did anyone in the movie industry know anything about managing intellectual property?). Embrace openness! Embrace the army of playtesters, critics and mathhammer fetishists who will pick your rules apart and find all the problems! Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (and all loopholes are closable)!

You’ll need a sculpting tool that looks like this:

I’m pretty sure that I bought this from my local Hobbycraft store.

You will also need a clean, flat surface such as a mirror or ceramic tile.

You won’t need to much putty, no more than a pea-sized amount for a waist-length cloak or loincloth. Apply a generous amount of water to your mirror or tile – it will stop the putty from sticking – then flatten it out until you’ve got a flat blob that looks like this:

The putty should be at least 2mm thick, or you won’t be able to imprint any detail without the sculpting tool pushing through to the other side.

At this point I’d recommend trying to lift the putty off the tile, because if it’s become stuck to it, it’s better to find out now than later on. Try sliding a hobby knife under the putty to lift it off the tile.

Now you need to cut it into the shape you want to use (for this post I’m just using a small rectangle):

Now, take your sculpting tool and press it into the putty in the bottom left corner. It should make a V-shaped impression on the putty. Continue along the bottom of the putty until you have a line of impressions like this:

Now you need to make another line. You need to position the impressions so that they’re diagonally above the row below, like so:

Continue until you’ve covered the putty with scales:

Then lift it off the tile, and apply it to your model:

And you’re done!

By process of trial and error (mostly error) I have worked out what I think is the best way to add decals to your miniatures. For anyone who’s built a model kit or wargaming miniature and been really pleased with the paint job, only to have it ruined by crappily finished decals, here’s my guide to doing them right, enhanced by my laughably amateurish diagrams.

Step 1: prepare the surface

Decals consist of an image printed onto a thin film. The film is brittle and plastic, in the technical sense that it remembers its shape (a flat sheet) and will try to return to it if possible. That means that unless you’re applying the decal to a perfectly flat surface like a mirror, you’re going to end up with gaps underneath the decal, which will result in bubbles that will ruin the finish.

Air gaps beneath the decal will result in an uneven finish

The best way I’ve found to solve this is to give the surface a coat of gloss varnish before I apply the miniature. I have a pot of Games Workshop ‘Ard Coat which I only rever use for this purpose: by brushing on a generous amount of varnish to the surface, you will get a nice smooth surface upon which you can apply the decal: all the troughs and peaks will be smoothed out and you won’t have air gaps underneath.

A layer of gloss varnish provides a smooth surface for the decal to adhere to.

Step 2: apply the decal

Now apply the decal as normal. I normally use warm water as it speeds things up, you won’t have to wait very long for the paper backing to come away. Use a lintless cloth or piece of tissue paper to blot away the excess water.

Step 3: soften the decal

Your local hobby shop will probably sell a decal softener such as Revell’s Decal Soft. That’s what I use and it works fine for me.

Decal softener works by softening the the plastic film so that it follows the contours of the surface it’s stuck to. You’ll want to use it even if your decal has been applied to a flat surface, as it will help the decal to adhere to any uneven spots, and will help prevent air gaps.

Once the decal is in position and you’ve removed the excess water, apply the softener with a brush and leave it for a couple of minutes, before soaking up the excess.

Step 4: weathering

If you like to weather your decals, now’s the time. Google has plenty of advice on doing this if you’ve not done decal weathering before.

Step 5: apply more gloss varnish

Once the decal is thoroughly dried, you should apply another coat of gloss. Doing so provides two benefits: firstly, it protects the decal from damage, but it also ensures that the decal has the same finish as the part of the miniature it’s stuck too: you won’t see the plastic film between the printed design and the paint underneath, so your decals will look seamless.

Another gloss coat protects the decal and gives it an even finish which matches the paint underneath.

Step 6: apply a matt finish

I swear by Testor’s Dull-cote, but Army Painter’s matt spray looks good and there are probably plenty of others. Avoid Games Workshop’s Purity Seal if at all possible, unless you like your minis frosted.

Adding a matt finish takes the shine off the gloss varnish without taking away to protective layer.

Behold:

This is Bray’arth Ashmantle, a venerable Ironclad Dreadnought from Forge World. This model normally comes with a pair of Dreadfire arms, but I’ve gone with an Inferno Cannon for the left arm.

I’ve made quite a few customisations using the Salamanders Etched Brass (also from Forge World), here’s a side view of Bray’arth:

As you can see, I’ve added a drake-scale banner made from Green Stuff to the Inferno Cannon’s barrel. I’m going to write a tutorial on how to make these in a future post.

Here’s the first squad of Terminators:

And another pic:

These models have also been pimped with Etched Brass and Forge World shoulder pads. Each model also has a piece of drake-scale attached to his armour. Here’s a close-up on the Sergeant:

His head’s missing as I’m going to paint it separately. As you may know, Salamanders are dark skinned, which requires painting techniques that I haven’t much experience of, so it’ll be fun to see how he turns out.

One of the Terminators in the squad has a very dynamic pose where he’s leaning forward. Unfortunately he’s leaning so far forward that his backside is exposed, a sort of Terminator builder’s bum so I’ve used more Green Stuff drake-scale to cover his modesty:

I’m really looking forward to painting this lot!

When I started wargaming back in the early 90s, independent wargames stores were pretty common here in the UK. Games Workshop opened their store in Maidstone in 1992 on Pudding Lane, and I’m pretty sure they chose that location because it was just around the corner from Maidstone Games, an indie store that had been there since forever, selling D&D books and BattleTech mechs and the like.

Nowadays, probably thanks to Games Workshop’s aggressive growth strategy (plus the general trend towards “clone town” retail districts), it seems like indie stores are pretty rare. Maidstone Games closed in the late 90s and since then, Maidstone has only had GW, and those few shops that did stock wargames miniatures and hobby supplies tended just to install a GW retail rack and be done with it (a notable exception being Hobbycraft, who also stock Flames of War and GF9 hobby materials).

As a result, it’s pretty hard to find a FLGS in the UK nowawadays, so the opening of No Man’s Land, a new — and more importantly, really cool — independent store in your home town is a pretty big deal, in fact it’s big enough to warrant a celebrity appearance at its opening.

Having discovered its existence, I wasted little time in dropping in and taking a look. So far, it’s like a dream come true.

The shop is large (much larger than I was expecting) and spacious, and filled with the awesome sound of hard rock and heavy metal (which for me is the only proper soundtrack to wargames). There are half a dozen chest-high wargaming tables that can be rented for £2 per hour – if you sign up for an annual membership (£20) you can pre-book them, otherwise it’s pay and play.

There’s also a nice big area for painting and hobby stuff, and a nook (still under construction) for playing RPGs.

They currently stock GW a-plenty (and at lower prices than you get direct), plus Flames of War, Mantic Games, Firestorm Armada, Distopian Wars, Talisman and many others. Classic BattleTech stuff is arriving soon.

Best bit of all – they play Epic!

I’m so stoked that No Man’s Land exists that I’ve made it my personal mission to support them with my hobby purchases. From now on, I’m going to buy everything through them, and only buy online or direct if they can’t buy it in. And I’m going to be dragging my mates down for games of 40K, Epic, and BattleTech.

Support your FLGS! If you don’t, then you can’t complain if it closes down.

I thought that it might be fun to post my plans for 2012, so I can look back next year and see how I did.

Salamanders 1st Company, the Fire Drakes

I’ve been inspired by Nick Kyme’s excellent Time Of Fire series to build a new 1500 point Space Marine army, specifically the Fire Drakes. The army list is being tweaked but it’s probably going to look like this:

• Vulkan He’stan
• 2 Terminator Squads
• 1 Terminator Assault Squad
• Venerable Dreadnought
• 2 Land Raider Redeemers

I’ll be pimping the miniatures with lots of bits from Forge World and Chapter House, so it’s probably going to consume most of my budget for the year, but I think it will be awesome fun!

More 15mm SF

I am quite pleased with the 15mm SF army I have, which is comprised of miniatures from Critical Mass and Ground Zero, but what I really need is another army to play against. I have some CMG Praesentia aliens and some female Sagittarians from Blue Moon, hopefully I will be able to develop one of these into a workable and coherent force.

I wrote a rule set for these miniatures which I rather like, but there are already some great rules for this scale, such as Gruntz. So my rules may see the light of day, or they may not. Stay tuned.

Repainting my Epic Knights

I have quite a few of the Epic Imperial Knights from the 1st and 2nd editions of Space Marine. They’re rather cool and a lot of fun to play with, but they’re looking a little tired. I had already thought about repainting them when I found out about Thom’s (from epic-fr) knight proxies, which are really beautiful, so what I’d like to do now is get a few of those and build a full army, reinforced with maniples of robots from the Legio Cybernetica. I’ve been collecting them on ebay and have quite a lot now!

See you in the new year!

Here’s the first FineCast miniature that I’ve assembled and painted. I recently took my step-daughter and her friend to one of my local GW stores for one of their “hobby tutorial” sessions (which was actually great fun) and we each bought a miniature to paint after. The kids both got Huron Blackheart and I got this, Imhotek the Stormlord.

Overall, I’m not especially impressed with Finecast: of the three miniatures, mine was the only one that didn’t have major gaps left by bubbles in the mould. Imhotek’s staff was quite badly warped (although that’s easy enough to fix), but the absurd number of injection sprues meant that getting the model off the frame was pretty risky, and I ended up breaking off his thumb, which I promptly lost, and had to replace with a piece of sprue. His foot also broke off and I had to reinforce it by adding some cork pieces to the base (which actually turned out quite well).

I was probably foolish in believing what I’d been told about being able to paint directly onto the resin: when the kids tried this with their miniatures, the paint refused to adhere and I had to give them a quick blast from a spray can to prime them.

Here’s a few more pictures of the finished Overlord. I think I am going to avoid Finecast miniatures whenever possible, and stick to metal miniatures if I can: thankfully a lot of the stuff that’s now Finecast only is still available on eBay.

I’m still pretty impressed by the new Necron stuff. I bought a box of Immortals/Deathmarks and these plastic minis are pretty fantastic.

Onwards and upwards!

With the building modules removed, you can see the road layout:

There are pieces of plasticard in the slots to elevate the building modules. This gives the effect of a slightly elevated pavement. The buildings represent three generations of Epic: the original foam buildings from the Adeptus Titanicus boxed set, the ruined buildings sprues from Epic 40,000 and the later Forgeworld Epic buildings:

You can also see a building from Gateshead Gaming, and the previously mentioned Kibri church, which is the centerpiece:

I’ve also created some ruined buildings, which could be used to replace buildings destroyed during the game:

The roads are arranged so that another board can be slotted in on either of two sides (assuming S6 starts selling the road system again, or I’m able to find suitable replacements). The other two sides will have a reinforced defensive wall from GameCraft Miniatures.

But if you want to use it to play Epic, it’s a little plain. It needs grimdarking, with the judicial application of spikey bits:

Having just bought a bunch of Cityfight boxes to build some 40K terrain, I’ve quite quite a few leftover pieces, which I’ve used to add some character to the building.

I’ve finally started to make some progress on my modular city system. I’ve glued down the roads and junctions in an arrangement that will let me expand to another board if/when Scott starts S6 Engineering back up again (or I find someone who can make some custom pieces for me). I’m planning on using the Fortress Walls system from GameCraft Miniatures to add a defensible city wall along two edges. More details to follow.