10mm Napoleonics

Viva Le France

Something happens to you when you turn 40. For some reason the section of the store with the old boxes no one ever buys, thats right the historicals section suddenly appeals to you, in more than the empire pikemen way. For the last few years (yeah its been that long since I posted) I have been gradually building up my napoleonics collection. I overbought 28's foolishly thinking I could paint up a ~ thousand miniatures. But now I am on the right track, I believe with 10mm. In my early tests, I figured out that I paint 10mms 5 times as fast as 28's i.e. 5 10mm ligne in about the same time as 1 28mm ligne. And with rule sets like blucher I could come up with a brigade of infantry in the same time it would take me to paint a company (4-5 figures) in 28. So now I have 2500 figures to paint, but I've already managed to paint 250 on a very light schedule in 2 months, and I should be playing the smll battles of the napoleonic wars (I am targetting Raab) in about 3 months.So until the battles come, I will be updating painting on this new page on my site:
Old Glory 10mm French Review

The Knights of Infinite Rust

My latest painting project for adding to my chaos daemons army.

Key:
G: Games Workshop
F: Folk Art
A: Americana
V: Vallejo
AP: Army Painter
S: Secret Weapon
R: Reaper
+ colors are mixed
: Technique Used

• Primer
• Orchard Supply Hardware Gray Primer
• Basescoats/Highlights
• Skin- (G)Rakarth Flesh, (G)Pallid Wyche Flesh: Layered
• Armor- (F)Dove Gray (V) Pale Grey Blue,  (V) Dead White: Sploched
• Bone- (AP)Skeleton Bone
• Cloth- (V) Sombre Gray, Mix Sombre Gray with (V) Glacial Blue: Layered
• Light Cloth & Leather: Reaper 09149 Moldy Skin: Layered
• Wood- Americana Burnt Umber, (F) Mushroom: Layered
• Super Nurgly Skin: (A) Light Avacado+Moon Yellow,(F)Capucino andSkin Colors: Layered
• Rust Effects
• (A) Burnt Umber, (A) Georgia Clay, (F) Terra Cotta, (V) Plague Brown: Sploched/Dry Bruched, Layered (as you go up to brighter colors)
• Do not Ink!
• Washes:
• Dark Cloth: (S) Blue Black
• Bone: Sepia Shade
• Armor, Light Cloth, Wood (S) Baby Poop: Cloth overall, Armor Crevices only
• Skin: (G) Carroberg Crimson
• Bases
• Pour Glue and Dry Bases to make them smoother
• Bubbles made by rolling greenstuff and pouring glue over bubbles
• Used (A) Light Avocado added (V) Moon Yellow for Highlights, Ger. Camo Drk Green for Dark Areas. Mixed all paints with water effects
• Dirt- Burnt Umber base, (V) Green Grey
• Static Grass to taste

Scenario Ideas for Warhammer Tournaments

So Reece recently posted this: http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2013/12/18/40k-tournament-format-and-the-future/ and for those who care about 40K even less than I do, he basically said:

• Comp sucks because it restricts what a player can bring (and is horribly inconsistent)
• Special rules (i.e random movement, magic fluxx, fog of war) suck because they take away models that a player paid points for,
• So maybe the way to even out discrepencies between lists is to fiddle with victory conditions.

I'm not sure that comp completely sucks as for example banning allies in 40K would be an excellent idea, but when looking at fantasy the idea of altering victory conditions does seem to have merit.

I started thinking up ideas about how this can be done in warhammer, and I am going to write them down here and now for your amusement. These are ideas for scenario victory conditions, not actual scenarios!

Haunted house, improve the supposedly unplayable scenario where the winner is the one that holds the building with

1. Holding building is an extra 500 points
2. Assualting the building makes it 50 points less valuable

This makes it so both players have to think more carefully about which unit holds the building, as putting your best unit in the building could allow your opponent to destroy the rest of your army. the 50 points less valuable thing allows an interesting use for larger units of weaker troops who have no hope of taking the building but could chew away at how valuable the building is.

Wheat from the chaffe (any or all of below), 

1. none core units count half for victory points
2. core units only count half for vp
3. player who killed largest unit (by wound count), gets 100VP bonus
4. player who killed most expensive unit gets 100VP bonus
5. killed most flyers (by wound count) +100VP
6. killed most missile (or warmachine) units (by wound count) +100VP

First blood/Vandetta

1. First/last unit (broad sense of the term) killed counts for double vp
2. Player declares a unit  (broad sense of the term) at the beginning of the game

Blitzkrieg

1. Table quarters +100
2. Enemy deployment zone +100
3. Unit still in own deployment zone -25
4. 4 objectives placed by players worth 100 each at end of game (uncontested)
5. Cleanse style mission for Fantasy

Favor of the dark gods:

1. Every miscast + 50 points
2. Winning a challenge of any kind +50pts
3. Winning a challenge against superior class champion < hero < lord +50 points per class
4. Accepting challenge +25 points

Awards (nothing like best General...best painted)

Wins and losses DO NOT MATTER, as this makes all games meaningful, and solves the problem of having a "true winner" over 3 games, it does create the problem of possibly having someone go 3-0 and still not win

Chosen of Khorne: player who killed the most points of enemy models (i.e. Regardless of how much he had killed of his own)

General of the Empire: Player who had most objective points at the end of tournament

Architect of Fate: Player who gave up the least points (mission and killed) at the end of the game

25 Facts About the Imperial Fists

A Few years ago, at the height of the Chuck Norris Facts  craze, me and a friend of mine decided to record some facts about the Imperium's foremost space marine legion/chapter, the Imperial Fists. Posting it here to keep it from getting buried on the forums I posted it on.

1. It is true that Guilliman wrote the codex astartes, exactly as dictated by Dorn
2. Imperial Fist Librarians don't take Perils of the Warp tests, the Warp takes Perils of the Imperial Fists tests.
3. When an Imperial Fist crosses the road, no dares ask him why he did it.
4. The pen is mightier than the power sword, when properly wielded by an Imperial Fist
5. Imperial fists tactical squads don't take special weapons, as every weapon is special in the hands of the imperial fists
6. The universe is always expanding, but it knows full well that it can't escape the wrath of the Imperial Fists
7. The Codex Astartes defines Impregnable as: "Can only be taken by Imperial Fists"
8. The Imperial Fists have designed several fortress worlds, and let them fall to Chaos, just in case they get bored
9. They Catachan devil was known as the Segmentum Solar devil, before the Imperial Fists started hunting it
10. The mechanicum's 3rd law of motion is wrong, there is no reaction equal and oppisite to an assault by the Imperial Fists!
11. The mechanicm's 1st law of thermodynamics is wrong as well, an Imperial Fist can destroy anything, even energy
12. Rogal Dorn invented black, in fact, he invented the whole spectrum of colors...except pink which is clearly the work of the Ultra Marines
13. An imperial fist can play russian roulette with a fully loaded storm bolter, and win!
14. Had the Lord of the Rings featured an Imperial Fist instead of a hobit as its main character, it would only be 5 pages long
15. Rogal Dorn once engaged in a staring contest with the eye of terror, and won!
16. If at first you don't succeed, you are not an Imperial Fist!
17. The Codex Astartes was originally titled: "How to be more like the Imperial Fists"
18. The Imperial Fists did not lose Bechters Gland (spit poison) they donated it to needier chapters
19. The Imperial Fists got rid of the Sus-An Membrane (1/2 sleep) because they realized that
20. if they didn't take an occasional break there would be nothing left to kill in the Galaxy
21. To this day no one knows if Imperial Fist Vehicles have a reverse gear, as they have never retreated
22. An imperial Fist never has to oil his bolter or armour as they are always slick with blood.
23. If an Imperial Fist wants your opinion, he'll beat it into you.
24. After taking a steroids test, the Apothacaries informed Rogal Dorn that he had tested positive. He laughed upon receiving this information,
25. and said unto them "of course my blood tested positive, what do you think they make steroids from?"

Unleash the Flames of War

After running a long 40K campaign, I am ready for a warhammer (40K and Fantasy) vacation. So I've set up a trade for some of my chaos warriors for Flames of War Germans and Russians. So Obviously the goal now is to save on hobby supplies. I had to order german late war armor spray from flamesofwar.com at full retail, as I couldn't find it anywhere else, but I am determined to use craft paints for most of my models because a) I already have a ton and b) anything I need is half the price of Vallejo or GW. So with a bit of digging I found this chart, which has the Folkart conversion for every fow color.
http://wargames.nordalia.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=34

Finished First Section Of My Wall of Martyrs

I decided I'm going to use this blog to keep track of the formulas I use for painting stuff. 

First up is this section of my wall of martyrs defense line that I just finished, this was done by stipling  10 or so colors (from both the folkart and the GW range) onto the main body, and another 3 colors for the fiery parts. Recipe can be found in the recipes page: 

Why I Like Shogun Miniatures Trays

I had an article earlier about magnetizing your miniatures, but I talked mainly about your bases, this one talks about the trays. For Warhammer fantasy...to me, there is really no debate to be had, Shogun Miniatures is by far the best choice, here's why:

1. They are very reasonably priced, compared to GF9 or Litko Aero
2. They seem to provide just the right level of adhesion compared when paired with my favorite base magnetizing solution (magnetic rubber base bottoms from Litko Aero
3. They come in ANY reasonable size you want, which means the tray can fit whatever formation and base size combo you have so you never have to glue movement together
4. The lip of the tray is very thin, meaning it blends in with your base and it avoids arguments about with to measure distance from lip or tray.
5. They are metal which means there is no rubber sheet that might fall detach from the tray.
6. They are very durable (which is less of a problem now that finecast is prevalent , but if you have entire large units old metal miniatures like I do, your tray wont break like some of the plastic ones you glue together.

Pictures of my Vampire Counts Army

Long time no post, but I finally finished my army and want to share it with the world

Converted GraveGuard

Converted Hex Wraiths

Whole Army

My Ghouls Painted With Folkart and Americana Paints (mostly)

I keep running into nay-sayers with regards to "craft store paints" on the various boards, so I thought I'd show my ghouls, which were painted with mostly Folk Art and Americana paints to help show that craft store paints work just fine . The only non "craft store paints" are the darkest coat of teal (hawk turquoise) and the more yellowish bone base coat (GWs Bubonic Brown).

The recipe for the skins, which I am particularly proud of:

Brown Prime (army painter)

Americana's:Cranberry Wine base coat then going up in half steps through (i.e. cranberry+heritage brick then heritage brick then heritage brick + Georgia clay...):

Americana's Heritage Brick

Americana's Georgia Clay

Folk Art's Terra Cotta

For those who care... that's an 8 dollar savings just for the skin. All in all I used 4 more Americana and Folk Art paints...saving me enough to buy an extra 10 ghoul bodies and legs from Hoard O Bits, and using my leftover arms and legs to make 10 more ghouls for free.

The whole tribe:

A Few Closeups:

Next up...unit fillers

The Ghoul Kings Court

The first part of my VC army will be the ghoul kings, pictures coming soon

Ghoul King (2500pts)

2500pt Vampire Counts 8th Ed (2012) Roster (Standard)

Selections:

Lords (615pts)

• Master Necromancer (240pts)
  Extra Level (35pts), Lore of Vampires, Nightshroud (40pts)
• Strigoi Ghoul King (375pts)
  Aura of Dark Majesty 6in -1 LD (25pts), Dark Acolyte- Nehek Cast+D3 to roll (25pts), Fear Incarnate- Enemy Reroll Fear Test (20pts), Fencer's Blade (40pts), Potion of Speed (5pts)

Heroes (410pts)

• Necromancer (125pts)
  Book of Arkhan (25pts), Extra Level (35pts), Lore of Death
• Tomb Banshee (95pts)
• Tomb Banshee (95pts)
• Tomb Banshee (95pts)

Core (630pts)

• Crypt Ghouls (630pts)
  62x Crypt Ghouls (620pts), Ghast (10pts)

Special (380pts)

• Crypt Horrors (190pts)
  5x Crypt Horrors (190pts)
• Crypt Horrors (190pts)
  5x Crypt Horrors (190pts)

Rare (465pts)

• Terrorgheist (225pts)
• Terrorgheist (240pts)
  Rancid Maw (15pts)

Profile Summary:

• Name	M	WS	BS	ST	T	W	I	A	LD
  Crypt Ghoul	4	3	0	3	4	1	3	2	5
  Ghast	4	3	0	3	4	1	3	3	5
  Strigoi Ghoul King	6	6	3	5	5	3	8	5	9

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Who Runs Bartertown???

Originally this post was going to be titled Lessons Learned while acquiring my Vampire counts miniatures, but then I realized that most of what I was going to say was about bartertown anyway so I figured I'd turn this post into an ode to the greatest warhammer site of all time!


What is bartertown:
bartertown is an online flea market for nerds! Whatever gaming related items you want to buy,sell or trade bartertown has them, usually at prices 30+% below retail. Obviously, 40K and WFB dominate, but it is not hard to find items for the other major games: MTG, WM, Hordes and so forth.

How bartertown works:
The site is organized as a discussion forum, rather than an online store or an auction. The major boards are divided into different categorys of gaming: i.e. a board for WFB, a board for 40K, a board for Privateer Press and so forth.When someone wants to sell something the create a post on the appropriate board with titles like: "H: orc boyz, skaven slaves W: empire spearmen". With the H: standing for "have" and the W: standing for "want", and more details in the message body.  You can start creating posts as soon as you create a free account, mine was created years ago, so I don't know if they make you jump through more hoops now, but it seemed fairly straight-forward at the time. I won't bother to go over the various posting rules (as the forum is well moderated, and they are clearly explained there), except to say that advertising commercial services (painting...), bumping posts, and posting to often are frowned upon.

Once you find a deal you like or someone finds a deal of yours they like, you exchange PMs and work something out...the negotiation points usually are:

• What are the items/money being exchanged-expect to get equivelant value for newer kits, trading "in someones favour" for older for newer kits, and at least a 30% discount on goods exchanged for money (remember even the newest kits are generally available for 25% off on eBay)!
• What condition the items are in- some common terms are:
• NIB- New In Box (may have been opened)
• NOS- New on Sprue
• Off Sprue- Be careful here ask for photos, as often even the seller may not know what he has
• Assembled/Primed/Painted- Always find out if you are getting the extra bits or not!
• Stripped

• What version of the items they are: clan rats can be from 3rd, 4th,6th or 7th edition and it is important to know which.

Lessons learned:
 
Always take pictures:One thing that you should always do to avoid misunderstandings is take pictures...its possible you think you have all the bits but something is missing that you clipped and forgot, its possible you thought the box was 12 men, when it really should have been 16...even if your error was in good faith, and even if you can work it out...shipping can eat into your savings fast...so the best thing to do is to trade pictures (good ones) of whatever it is you are selling

There are plenty of fish in the sea: Give yourself time to make a good deal, and be prepared to walk away if you feel you are not being treated fairly...there are always more traders!

If your going for the flavor of the month be prepared to pay a premium: want the new vamps coming out this week? Guess what, you are not the only one, be prepared to pay a premium or wait a month.
While waiting for demand for a particular army to cool down, use it as an opportunity to play some games with proxies to figure out what you should and should not get, or even if you want the army at all!
If you must start painting right away, get a new kit first as those are not likely to come out on bartertown right away anyway, and paint it before moving on.

Always check seller ratings, and references: You can do this by clicking on the number next to each profile's name and reading what past trading partners had to say.


Even highly rated sellers can disappoint: Suppose you need a unit for a tournament that is coming up in a month, and the seller is notoriously slow shipper...that lives on the other side of the country!

Watch out for weasel words: They can be honest misunderstandings, or a way to get over on you. I once traded for a converted ogre butcher...which, to me, meant->Ogre butcher converted in some way. To my trade partner it meant: Ogre holding the slab of ribs. Again pictures often take care of these kinds of misunderstandings before they happen.

Use common sense for the: Higher rating ships first rule. You get two points for a good review..so a guy with 100 rating and no bad reviews is probably safe, but if someone has a rating of say... 12 and you have a 2...and they insist you ship first I would find some higher rated people to deal with...especially if they are offering a really good deal. I personally have never been ripped off but it has happened.

One thing to consider if you and your partner can't agree is splitting up really big lots into phases, so 
maybe instead of sending a 500 dollar army all at once you split it into 3 shipments each.

Before contacting a trader:

• Make sure you are okay with their ratings, 
• You know what country they are in (shipping goods between countries may be really expensive)
• You look at their profile to see how they prefer to be contacted- some may prefer to be contacted by private message, some may prefer email, some may prefer to talk on the board itself.

And finally:
Follow the golden rule, be honest and forthright in describing what you have, communicate frequently and openly, most people will

12.25 for one mounted yeoman is outrageous, here's how I stuck it to the man!

At tournaments, when we discuss armies and I have my Brets with me, my yeomen are what I am most proud of, because I used less than 30 dollars worth of miniatures total on a unit that cost over 55 dollars retail at the time.

It all started when I wanted some yeomen as cheap redirectors to fend of death-stars for a few turns, and as squig kamikazes, but 55 bucks was too rich for my blood. Searching the various historical ranges available at the time didn't yield any satisfactory results either and I held off buying, until it occurred to me thatjust because a unit is cavalry doesn't mean the riders have to be actually mounted on their horses. The rest was easy.

I had remnants from my peasant infantry and archers, and I simply combined that kit with a few horses I had from renegade miniatures. and then I made these:

Components:

1. 1 pack of  5 medieval horses, I used some old horses from renegade miniatures I had, but GW's or finding your own by googling "28mm horses" will also work. I think they are 3 bucks a piece from GW.
2. 5 men at arms bodies, heads and arms (you do have peasants in your army, right?)
3. 1 Set of archers arms with bows,I think I had some from an old empire sprue, but I think almost any arm with a bow will work.

Altogether this should come to about 5.50 a miniature, and in IMHO looks better than the real thing.  If you don't have some/all of the bodies/bits, and don't need the full kit you can use bitzbarn or hoard o'bits or black dagger games, or bartertown.com or ebay to get them.

Basing Your WFB Models the Cheapskate Way

This article is not about making your bases look good, but how to do it as efficiently as possible in whatever color and texture you want. I believe that magnetizing your Warhammer miniatures is well worth the extra expense and one of the reasons is that magnetized bases are extremely efficient to texture and paint. The recipe should be apparent from the pictures but basically it goes like this:

1. Buy and magnetize your bases and their movement trays

2. Buy a medium sized piece of sheet-metal at home depot for about a dollar.

3. Pour your base texture onto the sheet metal

4. Arrange the bases flush on your tray

5. Brush some glue onto the bases (I like Gorilla Glue because it dries faster than PVA, but slower than super glue). Note that in the pic I have only dripped the glue (I then used an old base to spread it over each base)

6. Dip the tray of bases into the texturing material (in this case flock, but sand, dirt or whatever will work just as well)

7. Paint as desired (you may want to paint before you dip into the texturing material depending on if you want to paint the texture material or not)

8. When you paint, you can use the sheet-metal tray to hold the bases for you, that way you don't have to go back over where your fingers were

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A better way to magnetize your fantasy miniatures

This won't be of use to 40K players as for the most part you magnetize different weapon options
but for those of us playing with movement trays... there are a few options.
With the recent price hikes buying rare earth magnets and gluing is the most expensive option...when I looked on amazing magnets site, even the tiniest cheapest magnets were going for $.24 each. Way too much when you need a hundred or more. Fortunately there are two other ways to go. If you need bases as well as magnets Amazon is selling Gale Force 9 magnetized bases for $7.74 for $36 a decent price considering you you get a 20mm base. If you don't need bases though, the only way to go is litko aero. Not only are they much cheaper than magnets they are better.

• No Glue which means no messy hands and no waiting for glue to dry, they are applied like stickers to the bottom of your base
• Magnets seem to always be too strong or too weak with these stickers you have but two choices regular strength for plastics, and heavy duty for metals
• No polarity issues (placing magnets the wrong way can case minis to repel each other on the tray)

Once you get your minis magnetized there are a few alternatives for getting magnetic movement trays (in all cases cheaper than Games Workshop movement trays) going at about 2 bucks a tray.

• Since your minis are now magnetized, your movement trays no longer need a lip to keep them from going off the tray you can get Litko's flex steel movement tray inserts and simply stick them onto pieces of balsa that you cut out
• Custom metal movement trays from a company called Shogun Miniatures these attract magnets very well (obviously) and there is no cutting involved. Price is very competitive.
  
• They also sell flex steel steel trays at craft stores, but they do not work very well, they are just not very receptive to magnets
• I also found this site which has better prices than Litko but I have never used them so I have no idea if the rubber steel is more like Litko's or more like Micheal's/Home Depot's

Lessons Learned While Getting My VC Army Together Part 1

Well, the last of the packages came today...the one containing the Varghulf I bought...and this completes my latest foray into bartertown.com (for now at least). I am still trying to get rid of a few miscellaneous things but the are more to clear my garage and to get some money for the 3 or four GTs I plan to attend this year than to get what I need to build my army. In all I have around 60 skeletons, 60 Ghouls, 40 Zombies, 60 Grave Guard, a couple of Varghulfs and a bunch of characters. I already had a really nice bsb from Rackham, and I plan to use chaos knights with more appropriate heads as blood-knights (ghouls or possibly daemonettes would work I think).

So what lessons can I pass on to my fellow cheapskates? Well, I think the most important thing is that my foray onto barter town proves Law #3 quite nicely, it is better to have less of what you want than more of what you don't! Specifically in my last post...note that I tracked money spent and the retail value of what I got...I didn't really care that I was giving away a fortune in Skaven, because to me they were nearly worthless. It meant deals were easy to find as I was giving way more than I was getting. Lets consider what I got rid of (some of this stuff is old so estimates of what it would cost retail follow)
1 Box of Storm Vermin (41)
18 Metal Plague Monks (80)
170 Clanrats (350)
1 IOB Set (90)
4 Books (36)
1 Box of new clanrats (25)
1 Vermin Lord (50)
1 Warp Lightning Canon (20)
2 Assasins (20)
1 Ratling Gun (10)
1 MK I SM Vets (41)
1 Box Marauder Knights (25)
2 Pegasus knights (30)
4 Phoenix Guard (18)
8 Bret KOTR (35)
2 Metal Rat Ogres (20)

So the total value of what I gave up is 861 +109 (what I spent) to get less than 800 dollars worth of stuff. A bad deal to some... a great deal if the 861 is stuff you wont miss!

Building My New Vampire Counts the Cheapskate Way- Trading

The new Vampire counts pictures went up just after I started this blog
and I was prepared ... I had been reading Warseer for the past few months and following the Vampire rumors...by the end of November I started looking through my unused armies and noticed my Skaven were sitting around gathering dust, and I had no enthusiasm to paint them... and really never had. Perfect trade bait...but I had to act fast, before everyone wanted VC...what follows is a guide to acquiring miniatures with minimal cash.

Trade 1 (Local Friend): Check with your friends- Though I had an ad on bartertown...my first instinct was to check with my local gaming buddies...and sure enough one of them wanted to trade undead for my newest skaven:

He got: 20 New Stormvermin, 20 Clan Rats, A Couple of 6th ed rat ogres, 15 of my 4th edition plague monks, a few old metal assasins, a couple of ratling guns, and an old style warp lightning cannon!

I got: Corpse Cart, 20 ghouls, arms/heads/legs for 30 more ghouls, 10 grave guard

Total Spent: 0
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 116

My grave guard (Ebay)Thinking I was going to be done acquiring grave guard I ordered 20 more grave guard on ebay for 50 bucks...assembled without bits but still a respectable 41 percent off retail....

Total Spent: 50
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 200

Rounding out the Ghouls (Hoard O' Bits): Since I had bits (arms and heads) for 30 ghouls, I ordered 30 sets of ghoul bodies and legs from Hoard O'Bits for 40 dollars (they have an ebay site and an online direct site the direct site is a little cheaper

Total Spent: 90
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 275

Trade 2(bartertown.com): While waiting for my ghouls bits, I traded the elves from my old IOB box and an NIB pegasus knight (I wasn't planning this but I had the extra models) for 30 skeletons and 8 grave guard...after compensating my trade partner for some bits that were missing from my shipment...and paying for shipping:

Total Spent: 121
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 383.6

Trades 3 & 4 (bartertown.com): Were actually sales...I had a bunch of 6th edition clanrats (something like 170) and I sold them all for 68 bucks+shipping (someone got the better part of an army for under a hundred bucks!) and this brought me some very good karma in my next trade

Total Spent: 53
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 383.6

Trade 5 (bartertown.com): Major score! I traded a some Bret Knights of the Realm and a second pegasus knight for 10 grave guard...the person I traded with decided to just send me their entire VC collection (I will take every spare Bret Model I can find and send them as a gift)

18 GG Assembled10 GG Brand new

15 Skeletons assembled

10 skeletons on sprue (missing legs but thats only like 10 bucks)

1 varghulf

1 corpse cart

3 necrarchs

female vampire

new necro

Krell

a bunch of ghoul bits (don't need but hey)

Fur cloak vampire on foot

Old mannfred no horse

Now I am not going to count every model on here for retail acquired as I would never have bought some of these but even by conservative standards this is what goods acquired looked like: 120GG+65 Skeletons+35 Varghulf+25 Corpse Cart+20 New Necro+ 30 Vampires=~295

Total Spent: 53
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 678.6

Trades 6&7 (Bartertown.com) Feeling flush I bought a metal varghulf and a metal mounted mannfred for 56$ on Bartertown

Total Spent: 109
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 678.6

Trade 8 (Barter town.com) I traded a unit of chaos marauder horsemen, 4 old metal phoenix guard, an old box of space marine veterans (the original one) for 70 zombies!
Also I need to buy legs for one of my skeleton sprues for another 10 bucks

Grand Total Spent: 119
Grand Total of Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 763.6

I'm still trying to sell a few items to pay for supplies (magnetic bases, trays, I ordered for the army, flock, primer...) but this will be part of another article

All told...I will be fielding an army of
66 Grave Guard
65 Skeletons
50 Ghouls
70 zombies
2 Varghulfs
2 Corpse Carts
A Bunch of vampires/characters all for under 120 dollars and a bunch of miniatures I did not need/want!

I'll discuss lessons learned and how they apply to people not swimming in miniatures, in the next article!

Don't Waste Money On Carrying Cases

Thought your warhammer army was expensive? Try buying storage for them! I often go to one of the local stores to paint, and I usually don't interfere when the staff are trying to sell someone new to the hobby something they don't need. But nothing makes tempts me to butt-in more than when I see a staff-member circling some poor newb taking minis out of his shoebox like a vulture..."for only 99 dollars plus tax you can store 120 of your minis" (but not tanks that costs another hundred bucks)...

Think about that, retail price for a rank and file GW miniature is 2.48 + tax..., now you have to add another 90 cents (about a third of the models prices) just to store them? No waaaaay!

The online retailers are no better...Battle-Foam is even more expensive than GW, and Army-Transport isn't much cheaper. Besides, miniature cases have a lot of problems too

The trays either custom conform to your models...but then you can only use them for those models

or

They have those small slots...like gw cases and are the death of standard bearers and assault marines and devastators alike.

Also there is the problem of storing the foam trays, as they don't really stack well and you have to buy cases for all your foam trays...but if you have multiple armies this makes buying for each army kind of inefficient. and even if you do create say a shelf to store all the foam trays you have to pack and unpack your carrying case every time you want to swap out armies.

The other thing is (at least for my Army-Transport bag) is that adding and removing modular trays from a bag tends to cause you to squish them and that can break models in and of itself

So what is my solution then?:

Ladies and gentlemen...I submit to you the humble GWCheapskate army transport system. This article will cover the 40k version... and a future one will cover Fantasy (which is a little different because you want to keep your models ranked up).

Materials:
1 28 Quart plastic box (something like this...note the price there is for a box of ten...but you can pick them up individually locally).
2 or 3 Large Bath Towels depending on how many layers you want (note you can also use eggshell foam)
1 Scissors to cut the bath towels

Obviously you can pick the container that suits you best, I just find that 28 stores 1500-2500 pretty well and is just high enough to store my high elf dragon standing up. One important thing to note is make sure the box you pick is high enough to store your tallest model.

One other important thing is make sure the towels are thin but not too fluffy as pointy things get caught in really fluffy towels.

I recommend going to your local Target or Walmart for this stuff...(Hardware stores won't have the towels). Dollar stores may also work, but I have only recently discovered the Dollar General near my house so I will update.

Once you have the materials...cut one bath towel to the size of the bottom of your storage tray (with about a 1 inch overlap) and line the bottom.

Cut the other towels with the idea of putting miniatures in layers (and vehicles taking up one section at the bottom in single a layer).

Then simply lay your miniatures out heaviest/sturdiest on the bottom
Lightest/most fragile on top.

Finally, cut a towel to cover to the size of the top of the box (usually the top has more surface area than the bottom in these types of boxes), and cover your minis with it this prevents them from bouncing up and down in your trunk!

There you go... your 15-20 dollar miniature carrying case. Feel free to mail me a check for the difference :-)

In the next article I'll have some pictures of my cases and how I store them

The Five Laws of the Warhammer Cheapskate

Being a Warhammer cheapskate isn't just knowing a set of tricks, it's a way of thinking! An intellectual discipline if you will. To start people in the right frame of mind here are the first five laws. There are just five to start with, I will add to them as I think of them.

1. Most, but not all, hobby supplies are a scam.

2. All miniature transport products are a scam.

3. It is best to have less of what you want than more of what you don't want.

4. Metal can always be stripped, plastic can usually be stripped, resin can sometimes be stripped, finecast can never be stripped.

5. Paying cash for brand new official warhammer miniatures from Games Workshop is NOT the only way to build your army.

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My Credentials

I am the warhammer cheapskate...pleased to meet you. We all know this is not a cheap hobby, and with this blog I hope to pass on some of the things I learned to make the hobby just a little bit less expensive.

So in this post, I hope to explain where I got my experience, and how I will use it to benefit you!


First of all, I've been playing a long time. How long? Will I was painting at a store...and I kid asked me what I thought of Space Marine? I proceeded to tell him that I liked Space Marine more than 40K at the time, and had a huge squat army, and wished I hadn't sold it off before Epic Armageddon came out. 5 minutes later I realized he was talking about the video game, which was also pretty good!

Second, I love Warhammer, and play it every chance I get, and I have really explored the Warhammer universes over the years. I've owned every fantasy army except dark elves and dwarfs at least once, and have had 5 different 40K armies. I've owned Blood Bowl, BFG, Space crusade, WFRPand have read a ton of Warhammer books. So I know the subject really really well! Moreover I had to paint and store all my stuff over the years and I know the possible options for this aspect pretty well as well. But I am not just a fluff bunny. I play competitively (go to tournaments) and I win my share of games...

Third, I am the kind of person that is always trying to improve things and I'm willing to try different things to do things better, cheaper, faster even if it means I occasionally got burned (and I have)

Of course, one of the things about doing something for a long time, I've been at it for over 20 years, is that you forget things over time! So this blog will serve as my place to write down all I have learned about how to do things in this hobby better and cheaper, and to write down the new stuff I learn and you teach me.