54. Bad Casting. 40K Urban Terrain - Pavement Side Crater part1.

In one of my posts on the Underhives bulletin board (I don't know what I'm talkign about), I was talking about casting some stuff for making terrain.

The basic story is, on what once was a fairly nice bi-weekly trip to a local town, I picked up a plaster cast kit at a charity shop (which was pretty random, I'll admit).
I bought it because
A) It was from the British Heart foundation (Y)
B) It was cheap
C) Why not? If I could make something usfull with it, then we we're onto a winner.
A while back (when I got the hobby bug again) I thought I'd try it out.
So I grabbed a couple of the Rhinos from my 'car pool,' and...



What?!



THE BUBBLES!!



Needless to say, it did not go well at all.
I know when casting you're meant to tap/vibrate the mould/surface to aid in releasing the air bubbles, but it just didn't seem to work.
I've cast many smaller pieces before using a two part liquid silicone.
This stuff was a 1 part powder and 1 part water mixture.
It just... NO!

The good thing about plaster of Paris is that it is fairly malleable, so it was fairly easy to get rid of those crazy air bubbles.





Looking a'ight for ruined vehicles?
That is what I thought! So I continued on, but it wasn't long until I found another problem.

I'll get to that in a moment.


With these new found trashed vehicles, I thought I'd do some more themed terrain.

Enter the crater;





This terrain piece, like all my others, tells a a little story about what has been happening on this battlefield (in relation to my armies).
In this piece the Space Marine (Probably a Marines Malevolent captain) lies dead in the crater left behind by an explosion.

The cause of the explosion? The destruction of his command Rhino;



I love the concept.

I was going to add large chunks of shrapnel to make it look like it had one of its flanks and part of the under carriage blown out by a mine or something.
This would visual explain why it is in the position it is in.
The Marine would be one of the casualties thrown clear from the wreckage.

All going well? WELL FUCK YOU DARKHAZZL3!

Here is where we return to the aforementioned problem.

PLASTER OF PARIS WONT GLUE TO ANYTHING FOR LOVE NOR MONEY!

Seriously!
I tried Super glue, Plaster of Paris, Polly filler, green stuff, milliput., PVA...
You can't pin it either, or it just crumbles.

So this terrain piece will likely be the last to be finished (if ever!), as I figure out a way to fix the rhino to the base, or just re- model the crater a bit to make it look like one created by an artillery shell (maybe from the entrenched gun position).

Either way. I promised a post about this experiment.
So unto you; The Underhivers, I deliver.

If you have any experience with Plaster casting then feel free to drop me a comment.
Weather it is words of advice, words of frustration or examples of casts done by you.
You can do it below this post, or at my WiP on the Bolter&Chainsword!
Failing that you can tweet me @Twitter - @DarKHaZZl3

Until next time.
-DH-

23. Random Update part 2 - House Army, aka, Something different. Again.

  A while back I was discussing the hobby with a friend.
This friend is whom originally got me into the hobby (and probably why I've ended up doing Salamanders).

We were talking about how a substantial portion of our friends were into strategy games and board games. Which brought us on to 40k.
A couple of these friends have expressed interest in the hobby before, just not the financial backing, time or resolve to build an army.
We thought it would be great if we could get these folk to play.
But how to go about doing this, without lending them one of my armies (as currently I have no playable armies XD), or throwing proxies around?

One of the pulls of 40k is making your own list, and playing games with nicely painted armies on awesome battlefields (like pretty much all table top war games). So this is what needs to be done.
Then it hit us.
A House army.

I find myself in a unique position: I have way more Space Marines than I have use for.
So the basic idea is, in adittion to my armies, I will also be building a basic set of Space Marines for any, none hobbyists to get stuck in with.
They will be built, and painted, and ready to rock; just like a board game.

If they don't like the game, then fair enough. If they decide they do, then they can keep using the house army. If they decide they want to use 'X unit' instead of 'my Y unit,' then they can go out and buy that for themselves/ donate one to the house army. Thus getting folk started in a more exciting way.

Anyway, enough writing.
I did a test model for it....well, I started one at any rate.



I've decided to wait until the new codex lands before continuing with either Space Marine project.

But what do you guys think?
Yay house army, or neigh?
What do you think about the test marine?



Any comments/criticism on this warmly welcomed

Thanks for reading/ adding to my google adsense account. ;).

-DH-