The Servo-Skull tape meassure

So I've been working on the Servo-Skull tape measure a bit today. Work has been taking precidence lately so I haven't had much time to work on 40k material but I've been able to squeeze an couple hours to at least get a base coat and layer down for the skull:

The servo-skull

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Repainting a tool

Okay so I lost my tape measure sometime before last Thursday and I had to buy one at the shop at the last minute. All the store had in presently was one of those Servo-skull looking Tape measures Games Workshop releases with the release of 6th Ed. I never much cared for those ones, but I had little choice so I bought it. While I played the game with it I got more and more annoyed with the coloring of it. So I resolved to dismantle it, stripe it, and paint it to look more like... well like a servo skull. So Here we go:

Got it dismantled:

I had it mounted on some cork board and got it primed today. I was going to take a picture of it, but the black primer made it really hard to see details of any kind. So I didn't take a picture of that. In place of it, see a picture of it assembled after being primed black:

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Updates and various projects

So life has been life of late. Work and school have been mounting of late and it takes a toll on the time tables. So there's several things to talk about in this post.

First big thing: I will be hosting an Apocalypse game September 28th at the Game Vault in Fredericksburg Virginia. So if you're going to be in the area and want to get in on the action drop me a line with you email address in it and I'll keep you informed of details and arrangements.

Next thing: I've hit a rather odd streak of inspiration recently, one that has lead me to Toys 'R' Us. I've found several things there that I believe I can convert for various 40k usage.

First up is a 6" Shou Khan figure.

Shou Khan figure

With some creative conversion work I think I can build up a nice large scale Blood Thirster figure. Something larger then the Games Workshop model, but smaller then the Forge World model and something different then either of them but still comparable. Right now I'm figuring I'll cut off the back panel from the helmet, add on Dreads and sculpt in a lower jaw bone with teeth to go with the skull mask. I'm not sure weather I'll keep the hammer or build an axe or build a pair of axes. All three options have an appeal to it. I'm going to add the Hive Tyrant wings to the model and sculpt over the joints to secure the pose of the model.

Second project is a bit of a divergence from my normal, it's orky!

Toy Dinos

I ran across these two dinosaur figures for $10 and had a thought that I could convert a combination of them into a Ork Gargantuan Squigoth.

So what do you think?Can I combine those dinos into something that resembles this?

I think by replacing the Tricerotops' head with the T-rexs' and sculpting on new details, like a tongue, larger teeth, horns and various Orky accoutrements I'll be able to get a reasonable Ork mammoth monster. From there it'd just be a matter of building the howdah and adding the Ork crew members.

Last thing: in preparation for the Apoc battle I figured I needed some extra materials for it. So I called on a friend and we spent a couple hours producing some of the materials.

burning damage markers

Remember those burning damage markers I made a while back? Well we made 3 dozen more. I expect the apoc battle will involve lots of burning wrecked machines so this way we'll get to see it in action.

The last Apoc game I was involved in we had a really hard time keeping track of kill points and strategic victory points through out the course of the battle. So for the game I'm hosting I'm gonna try and make that simpler, with these:

point tokens

200 1-point tokens! Each player will have a cup and each time they earn a victory point they get 1 token to put in their cup. When we finish the game, they can count up their tokens.

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Gaming Aid: Damaged vehicle markers

I ran across this idea on the blog Ded Ard, and it was something that looked like such a good idea I wanted to give it a shot. Here's the basic idea of it: take one of those battery powered flickering "candles", cut off the plastic 'flame' to expose the LED light, and then glue some poly fill stuffing to the base around the LED. Light spray paint the stuffing with a yellow paint, then spray paint the upper sections of it with black paint to give it a smoke coming out of fire effect. Let the paint dry, turn on the base and viola! Burning wreckage markers that glow!

As an aside I'm considering a variant of this idea for making "Soul Blaze" markers. We'll see how it goes.

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Objective Markers

Since I actually started playing games and not just building models I've noticed the need for something, and it's something I don't see mentioned very often.

Objective markers!

A lot of the games I've played have been objective based, where you attempt to control more objectives then your opponent at the end of the battle. Most people I've seen just use dice to mark out objectives. While this works it seems mildly lazy. So I've set about building a set of Objective markers for my Blood Ravens army. Thus far they are nothing more then the Space Marine Casualties from GamesWorkshop. I bought them on the same order I originally ordered the Storm Talon on so I would break $99 and get 6 months to pay it off through pay pal. Over all I rather like the models and hope they will make casualty models for other armies.

The package comes with 3 models of Space Marines in various stages of being killed.

The first marine is shown to be in the midst of a fight, desperately backing away from his attackers attempting to gain the upper hand or drive his attackers off with bolter fire. I painted dripping blood on the armor coming from the bullet marks in the shoulder and painted it as having dripped down onto the torso, the groin and down the marines hips.

The second model is a recently killed commander with a power fist. Nothing particularly note worthy about this paint job.

Finally we have a Space marine corpse. This one has an exposed skull showing he has been dead for a while. I rather like the Ork skull under his leg. I think it adds a fair amount of narrative to the model showing that it was likely Orks that he was fighting when he died. Bonus points because my frequent opponent plays Orks.

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Gamers Aide: Psychic power cards for Space Marines

So I've been experimenting with using a librarian in my army of late. The versatility of the Librarain has a lot of options and since the psychic powers are free and chosen after deployment you don't have to commit to what they are when you build your army list. So I went to work in Photoshope and created a series of Psychic Power cards. Each card represents 1 power and has the rules for that particular power on the card. Nothing much more then that to it. I've put the card images here in the post so you can download them and make your own if you so choose.

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