Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Building your own Miniature Transport Case

Initial Thoughts and Motivation (skip to pics at bottom for construction guide ;-))

I don't know about you but I have never been really satisfied with the available storage and transport solutions for miniature, in particular the foam trays which I initially used: Too much hustle to pick up the individual miniatures from the foam and fuddle to put them back. In addition foam trays need a lot of space. 

Then there is another aspect to consider: I would like to display my miniatures at home in a glas cabinet. So I was looking for an overall solution which would allow me to transfer miniatures from my cabinet to a transport case, take them on a spin at my gaming club and put them back into the cabinet after with the least possible hustle. 

The solution is probably obvious to you: magnetise the miniatures and put them onto steel trays! 

There are some excellent solutions for this out there like the transport system from A-Case. Two downsides for me personally: the very high price, and the shape of the trays not optimal for my cabinet. 

So why not do it yourself?


Materials

I did not want to build outer case myself though but was rather looking for a suitable aluminium hard case. The best I found was this one:

The Theatro Case from Comair (for hair dressers):


It has the following dimensions:

Width: 42 cm

Height: 33 cm

Depth: 20 cm

Most important for me it were the side doors in the fron which would allow easy putting in and taking out of trays.

At the time, I bought it (in 2021) I could get it for 65 € (in Germany). I am afraid that it is not that easily available so you might have to look for something similar that is available in your place and adopt the dimensions of the other materials below.

Further stuff:


- the steel trays! Ordered and pre-cut online to 40.5 cm x 18 cm. Important: Use raw steel not stainless steel! Stainless steel is much less magnetizable, i.e., the magnets do not hold as good!


For the construction of the tray hold on the inside, I used ply wood plates and some pine wood stripes, and that's basically it.

The tools used:

Step-by-Step





















The finished case






Let me know if you have any questions!

Sunday, January 30, 2022

My first Age of Sigmar Army -- A Stormcast Eternal Warrior Chamber

 Hi all,

Two years ago I thought that the right entry into Age of Sigmar would be "the standard army", the Space Marines of Sigmar, aka Sigmarines, those who define the game as a kind of benchmark. Fast forward to 2022: Here they are! Roughly 3000 Points of a Warrior Chamber. Took me the larger part of 2021.

For the colour scheme, I wanted something different than gold! Nothing against gold (apart from that it can be a pain in the butt to paint... ;-)) but my vision was something more fundamental. Something that would emphazise the cold untouchable aura of these warriors. Angels sent from heaven! What could be better suited than white?! Two years ago, I did what I always do before starting with a new colour scheme: I google what other people did, for inspiration! As I read recently in the amazing 28mm Magazine, the act of creation is a symbiosis, aka "stealing" ideas from others and creating something unique by mixing them together. 

So in my case, the inspiration came from the excellent Immortal Tribunal by Bruticus on exprofundis. Check them out, they are stunning! So in this case not much mixing on my side, just some minor adjustments, mostly because of my much lower skill level... ;-)

Here are some potraits of the whole army. You can find individual pics on my instagram

I will do a rough step by step guide as well...

Happy warhammering!













Thursday, July 8, 2021

Finished -- Daemons of Nurgle (for Warcry)


 Hi all,

triggered by Warcry and my desire to test enamel washes, I painted up some Daemons of Nurgle. My plan was simple: do one unit of each type that can be used in Warcry plus some objective markers (which are often needed in Warcry games).  

Almost everything was painted with GW Contrast paints plus enamel washes from AK Interactive. All steps were easy going. What a pleasure!!

What follows is the resulting gallery of Nurgle:














The hair was done with after painting the mini with the Pro Grass Micro Static Grass Applicator by War World Scenics (WWS). For fixation, I used their Basing Glue, which works a bit better than PVA. The "hair" is Scorched Grass in 1mm and 2mm length also from WWS. 
After applying it, I carefully tipped a bit of Agrax Earthshade onto the hair to visually merge it with the rest of the mini. 























For the Plague Drones, I tried out some Colorshift Cameleon paints from Green Stuff World which I applied by airbrush on a gloss black priming for the carapaces. In addition, I used some on the wings as well to make them look more interesting (hard to see on the photos).

















And finally some custom made objective markers build from the bits box: