Beachhead 2016
I went to the Beachhead 2016 Wargames Show at the
Bournemouth International Centre on Saturday 20th February. I almost
didn’t make it due to illness. I started feeling ill on Wednesday night
that week. I had a headache and a nasty cough, my joints hurt, I couldn’t get
warm and it felt like my whole body had been beaten all over by a gang armed
with baseball bats. This lasted for a week but a feeling of confusion and
disorientation lasted longer and I am only now starting to shift the cough.
All that was keeping me functional was a Beechams Max Strength
Hot Lemon drink every four hours. Basically I was in no fit state to travel to
Bournemouth on my own. Thankfully my parents decided to drive me to the event
and spend the afternoon shopping in Bournemouth. I was very grateful, I
probably wouldn’t have attended otherwise and I would have been very disappointed.
I spent a lot of time wandering around the show taking photos.
Unfortunately when I got home that evening I discovered that about 75% of my
pictures were completely out of focus and blurry, I was so ill that my hands
were shaking while I was holding the camera. I must have looked like a bit of a
crazy person, walking around taking photos with shaking hands while sweating
absolutely profusely.
You can see a couple of the photos I took below, and the
full album on my Flickr Account here:
I bought a couple of items. I bought a can of Army Painter ‘Daemonic
Yellow’ coloured primer from the Warlord Games stall. I’m looking for a
shortcut to painting my Heresy Era Imperial Fists army, which largely consists
of seventy-two infantry models. I also bought another copy of Games Workshop’s ‘Betrayal
at Calth’ set from the Lesley’s Bits Box stall. I think I paid £80 for it,
which is cheaper than I’d seen it anywhere else, even on eBay. Just that
morning I had read a rumour online that it’s being discontinued and I need two
copies to make the Heresy Era army list I wrote.
I spent a long time walking around checking out the trader
stalls. There were a lot more than there were at Fisticuffs 2015 last year and
some bigger companies too like KR Multicase, Warlord Games and Battlefoam. It
was generally a much bigger event but I personally longed for a ‘Bring and Buy’
stall, which Fisticuffs had but Beachhead did not.
As always I would like to have seen Games Workshop games
being represented, demonstrated or played. But other than one table playing Mordheim,
there weren’t any. I would also have liked to see a lot more participation
demonstration games being played of some of the bigger brand tabletop wargames
like X-Wing, Infinity, Malifaux and Bolt Action. I’m sure they were there, but
they didn’t feel inviting for random passers-by to join in.
It was a surprisingly big event, and I really hope that they
run it again next year and if they do I will definitely look forward to
attending, hopefully I won’t be half-dead though!
Brush Rack
Until now I’ve been keeping my paint brushes in an old jam
jar on my painting table, with my four “main” brushes (two Detail and two
Standard) kept separate next to my lamp. I decided a few weeks ago that I
wanted to organise my brushes. I spent a few days researching existing
paintbrush racks, pen pots and even test tube racks, but everything I saw was
unsuitable or excessively expensive. So I decided to make my own.
I wanted ten spaces, two each for; Fine Detail, Detail, Standard,
Large and Dry Brushes. With one slot for each being for good condition brushes
and one being for older, worn but still serviceable brushes.
I wanted my brush rack to be hardwearing so I decided not to
make it out of cardboard. I ordered a 1m length of 40mm diameter PVC pipe from
Amazon and sawed it into ten 10cm lengths. I then glued them together into two
rows of five, and glued these onto an MDF base. The same MDF I use to base my
terrain projects.
I wanted to make my brush rack look like a piece of terrain.
So I blended the pipe sections into the base and filled the gaps between them
with air-drying clay. I also capped the bottom of the pipes and filled the
spaces between the pipes with plaster of Paris.
I then glued sand to the base and sprayed the whole assembly
black. I bought some duct tape with yellow and black hazard chevrons on it to
decorate it. With hindsight I would have skipped this step. Applying sticky
duct tape to an irregular and curved surface was a waking nightmare. I then
quickly painted the brush rack up and added static grass and name labels from a
label maker.
I did the majority of the work in a single day during the
peak of my illness, so I feel like I rushed it and made lots of mistakes. When
it was finished I was so disappointed with it that I just wanted to throw it
away. But I think that was the illness talking, it really messed with my head
and prevented me from thinking straight for a week or more.
I’m still not super-happy with how it turned out, but I don’t
hate it, and I’m using it and that’s probably good enough for a paint brush
rack!
Project 004: Heresy Era Imperial Fists
I am still working on my Heresy Era Imperial Fists, only now
the project has doubled in size with the addition of a second copy of ‘Betrayal
at Calth’. I wasn’t able to paint for a couple of weeks as I had company, so I
was desperate to get back into it. Unfortunately the next time I was able to
sit down and paint, I was ill and things did not go well.
I was trying to paint my Legion Praetor in five
sub-assemblies and I was frustrated with how long that was taking so I decided
to completely assemble it and worry about painting it afterwards. I had trouble
gluing it together. I tried to fit the top part of the terminator armour back
to front. I spilled some glue on the desk and then dropped the model in it,
which took off some of the paint. I applied Martian Ironearth to the base and
accidentally got it all over the cape.
My illness was clouding my head and I was making more and
more mistakes and getting more and more annoyed. I even snapped three paint
brushes in frustration when they wouldn’t hold a point. I was in the wrong
headspace for painting and I realised that, so I gave up and walked into town and
bought some new Games Workshop brushes. I will write a full review at some
point, but my initial impressions of the Army Painter brushes I bought are not
very positive.
A week later and I was feeling much better, I sat down to neaten
up the mistakes I had made on the Legion Praetor and it went well. He’s now
quite close to completion and I am much happier with the state he’s in.
I have been assembling the contents of my second ‘Betrayal
at Calth’ set in the evenings this week. Although the plastic Contemptor
Dreadnought comes with two different weapon options, the pose of the legs and
torso is very static. Having two identically posed Dreadnoughts would not look
great. So I decided to do some conversion work on the second one. I sawed off
his leg and torso and reattached the leg at a different, more extended angle,
and reattached the torso turned to one side. Once they’re finished I think it
will be quite effective at making them look distinct.
I opened my Forge World Imperial Fists MK IV Legion shoulder
pads today and washed the resin. I had terrible trouble removing the Plague
Marine shoulder pads from the excess resin and almost all of them ended up
damaged. So I tried a new approach with the Imperial Fists shoulder pads, I
snapped them off gently by hand without using any knives, cutters or tools. The
results were much better, only about one in six was damaged and none of the
damage was as severe as with the Plague Marine shoulder pads. I’m so pleased
with them in fact that I ordered another 30 this evening, for the second set of
‘Betrayal at Calth’ power armoured infantry models.
I found a couple of spare Chaos Space Marines in my bits box
and decided to use them as test models for the Army Painter Daemonic Yellow
spray paint. The model on the left was sprayed with Citadel Skull White spray
paint and then with Army Painter Daemonic Yellow. The model on the right was
just sprayed with Army Painter Daemonic Yellow. One half of each model was then
painted by hand with Citadel Averland Sunset and both models were washed with
Citadel Seraphim Sepia.
If Games Workshop made an Averland Sunset spray can my life
would be much easier. I have always found Army Painter spray paints very, very
thick, so thick they often seem to fill in detail. Daemonic Yellow is no
different. Like other Army Painter sprays that I’ve used it also seems to leave
a very glossy, plastic-y finish that’s hard to paint over, particularly with
washes and inks. It was also very bad at covering the bare plastic model.
Currently I am painting my Imperial Fists by priming them
with White Spray paint and then applying two coats of Averland Sunset by hand,
as one coat doesn’t give a solid enough finish. I think I will proceed by
priming them with Citadel Skull White spray, and then base-coating them lightly
with Army Painter Daemonic Yellow. As you can see on the model on the left, one
coat of Averland Sunset applied by hand over Daemonic Yellow seems to work ok.
That may not sound like a great advance but it halves the number of coats I
have to apply by hand with a brush, and we’re talking about 72 infantry models!
Current Size of the Unpainted Legion: 307 models.
Currently Reading: ‘Only in Death’ by Dan Abnett.
