My Magnetised Movement Trays/Display base (a tutorial)

 For some time now I've been making my own magnetised movement trays/display bases for my Lost and the Damned army, and as I was making one for my unit of 49 Diseased Flagellants I thought it would be a good opportunity to do a quick tutorial of what works for me. 

I magnetise both the top and bottom of my movement trays, the top obviously so that the models stay in place, the bottom so that all my movement trays can be safe in a large storage box and don't move about when in transit. Photos of that arrangement at the end. Now I realise that I could have saved a lot of time if I had made the tray out of steel and just applied magnets to the models and to the base of my storage box, but I went this way first and besides, steel is more difficult to work with.

Below you can see the tools and materials you will need for the basic construction of the movement tray:

From left to right: self-adhesive magnetic paper (thick), steel paper, balsa wood, 3mm plywood, thin polystyrene, pva glue, superglue, pencil, scalpel, metal ruler and scissors.

The first step is to cut the plywood to size. I used plywood as unlike card, it doesn't really warp and is easier to cut than steel. For this task, I knew that my unit was to be made up of 49 models (ranked 7x7), each on a 1 inch base, so the first dimensions drawn on were 7"x7". However you need to leave space for the movement tray edge, so here I added a 1/4" all around. So the overall size of the tray is 7 1/2" square.

Once the plywood was cut with a saw, I then measured (7.5" square) of the self-adhesive steel paper, sufficient to cover the bottom of the entire movement tray. This was drawn out and cut with scissors.

Back on top of the tray I then measured and cut a 7" square piece of the self-adhesive steel paper. This leaves a border for the balsa edges to be added. I find that balsa's ease of cutting is perfect for this. I use balsa that is slightly thicker than a warhammer base, which compensates for the raised height of the steel paper. Below you can see my measured and cut edges. 

These are simply glued in place with PVA and a stack of books added for weight to ensure a strong bond. Choose your books carefully and never use your best book at the bottom for fear of seeping pva! I used some of my wife's hardbacks at the bottom!

Here's the finished construction:

For the miniatures themselves, it is just a case of magnetising them. However the 25mm (1") bases are hollow, so they need filling. This is where the foam/polystyrene is great. I just superglue it in place:

And then cover it with an inch square of magnetic paper.

Here you can see the models on their movement tray and held at an angle. I could probably hold them upside down with the strength of the magnets:

Finally the movement tray is based to match my Lost and the Damned army bases. 

1. Paint the base colour brown (earthy colours as sometimes you can see this through the yet to be added foliage)

2. Then a dark green Woodlands Scenics is pva glued into place:

3. For the two subsequent layers of lighter green foliage, the pva glue is diluted with warm water and a few drops of washing up liquid and applied using a dropper bottle so as to not disturb the layer that is already glued in place:

4. The two lighter shades of green are sprinkled on, avoiding any large clumping:

5. The final movement tray with scatter leaves and clump foliage:

And a close up shot:

Can’t wait to fill this with all the flagellants I’m currently kitbashing (I’ll share these in my next post).

7 Chaos Warhounds(160pts)

I think these are some cracking sculpts, but having now completed them, I wish I’d thrown in some more conversions to make each one a bit more unique and Nurglesque. Anyway, here’s the unit of 7 on their display tray.

I tried doing a lot of Contrast paint work on these and then highlighing up on the raised areas. These first two are relatively straight forward:

These two I went a bit darker and tried adding a bit of pattern to them as well (again, this is something which I should have explored further)

The warhound on the left here is the most converted model based on the warhound sculpt. I received it incomplete and so added an extra head, a troll’s back leg and a tyrannid’s arm at the front. The dog on the right was painted using Typhus corrosion, which gave a really interesting effect as the colours separated (I didn’t shake it enough) and then I highlighted up from that base.

The leader of the pack is a conversion I had started years ago, based on a metal cold one and with a wolfs head, horns and horses tail added. The base colour for this was also Typhus Corrosion which adds a bit of texture to the model and highlighted up. It’s not a good paint for this technique as it’s quite thick and certainly isn’t great for your brushes.

So that brings the tally up to 3155 points. I’ve got some spawn and plaguebearers on the painting table at the moment. More of that next. 

Mighty Chaos Warband of Nurgle (400pts)

Perhaps the greatest attraction of the Lost and the Damned is the opportunity provided within to roll for and create your own Nurgle warrior and his accompanying, wandering warband. Now you may or may not recall that I had a self-set project to create a model for each of the possibilities on the Warband Retinue table. The majority of these 19 options have been absorbed into my Chaos Allies project or my Orc Allies project, but the remaining models (and a few other Nurgle side-projects) can now be absorbed into my main Lost and the Damned army by way of a cool mechanism in said book which allows for new and/or existing warbands to be part of the larger army.

So here is my warband as a unit in the army, led by a Mighty Champion (further on the path to Chaos then an Aspiring champion and less so than an Exalted champion - 200 and 600 points respectively), my Mighty Warband is worth 400pts and the equivalent of D4+4 rewards, so about right in terms of followers from the Retinue table. 

So amongst this chaotic rabble (just how it should be), you may be able to make out a Troll, a maggotty spawn, 6 Dark Elves, 4 Cultists and a Chaos Magus and Warior, an Undead Chaos champion and the mounted Mighty Champion himself. I really like the eclectic mix of models, races and characters in the same unit and one day I'll write up a backstory for this lot, how they came together and how they have fought their way along the path to damnation. The idea behind an undead chaos champion and a spawn and the path they took to get there are just too tantalising... 

So there we go, a 400 point unit taking the tally so far up to 2455pts of rank and file... A hefty character will be next...

 

14 Chaos Warriors of Nurgle (1120pts)

You may have seen these before, as a previous blog post showed how I had finished painting all 11 of the original Citadel Nurgle Warriors well there's now another 3 models added to make it up to the magical number 14, in two ranks, with a standard. That's a hefty 1120points right there in 3rd Edition Lost and the Damned numbers.

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As you can see, I’ve re-set up my attic scenery space, as I had to pack it all away when the builders were here. It’s so much better for taking decent photographs of wide units.

So these and the Beastmen give me a grand total of 1270pts thus far, I think this army is going to be a lot of points! 

Classic Chaos Beastmen (150pts).

This blog was originally set up, some years ago, to chart my progress in creating a Nurgle army from the classic Lost and the Damned tome. Along the way I have been easily, inevitably and enjoyably sidetracked by a plethora of new ideas, miniatures, games systems and competitions, but for now I've decided to come back to the project and try and complete it! Ive finished my Warhammer 3rd Edition Chaos Allies Contingent, which have the same basing, so I looked back at my many incomplete Lost and the Damned units and decided to tackle the unit which needed the least amount of work.

I had painted half of these classic Chaos Beastmen some time ago, and I remembered collecting them so that they were a disparate, ragtag bunch (certainly not just goats), of different shapes, sizes and races and of course choosing some of my favourite sculpts from this era along the way.

Here’s the now completed unit:

I've painted their skin with a variety of tones, trying to unify them slighlty by keeping the colours slightly drab and pastel like, and as always allowing the basing to tie them together further. 

The banner is painted from an image in Fighting Fantasy's Army of Death and is held by a Beastman that was regularly headswapped in Dale Hurst's iconic Tzeentch warband from White Dwarf 135, something I had always wanted to do since I first saw the article in 1991 and here I've done so with a new, plastic plaguebearer head added to the Citadel lead body. 

Here’s the original illustration  by Nick Williams, as found in Fighting Fantasy: Armies of Death:

The last part was to construct a movement tray, which is really more of a display tray to hold the unit together. More on how I do this in a future post.

So then that’s 14 Beastmen, with standard, making a total of 150pts.

Chaos Allies - Chaos Dwarves

It’s been a long time since I painted up a full Warhammer unit and, if truth be told, it broke my hobby mojo. But after a break, I’ve come back determined to complete it (and other unfinished projects). The unit consists of the original Chaos Dwarf Renegades as command, a Chaos Ogre for some beef and visual height and a range of the classic Citadel Chaos Dwarves which I had slowly collected over a number of years. This unit will form the backbone of my Chaos Allied list from Warhammer Armues 3rd Edition, which is now complete! I’ll take photos of the entire contingent kater. For now, here’s them Dwarves: