Hashut’s Blessing:
First of all, may I congratulate all entrants and wish them good luck. This voting poll shall be closed on the 22nd of April at 4:00am GMT. originality, plausibility and coolness are all factors here!
ENTRANT 1
Quake Effect
Take a large round base and flock it or sand it, according to preference. Next, take a plastic sprue and cut it into cubes, gluing them onto the base randomly. Add metal shavings for added flavour (remains of the earthshaker round). Paint the cubes like stone (to suggest bits of a wall) and you’re done.
Animosity Marker
Materials = 1 hobgoblin khan on wolf, as many hobgoblins as you deem fit on a 40mm by 40mm base and a circlet of greenstuff.
Take the hobgoblin khan and assemble him normally, except for one thing: cut a hobgoblin’s head off and put it in one of the khan’s hands. Then take the decapitated hobgoblin and do 1 of 2 things: either place it in the khan’s mount’s mouth or behind the khan with a blood trail from the neck to below the head when painted. Then model all of the other hobgoblins to be looking at their leader trying to restore order.
Wound Marker
Materials=empire general banner (the one with the wraith on it) a piece of thin wire, a few skeleton heads from the new vc stuff and a drill.
Take the banner and glue it on a round base towards the back. Then take the thin wire (a paperclip is fine) and straighten it. Drill a small (very small) hole in the front of the base and through all the skeleton heads. Stick the wire in the hole, fill any gaps with greenstuff, and put/remove the skulls on the wire as required.
ENTRANT 2
Wound Marker
The basic idea is to have a spike and you skewer a skull onto it for each wound. You can either start with a skull for each wound the character has and remove them as he gets wounded, or you can add a skull to the spike every time he takes a wound.
The skulls are best made using spare plastic ones from the skeleton sprue. Drill a single hole through it with a pin vice, top to bottom, side to side, anywhere except through the face. When drilling through such a small piece don’t start by drilling with the larger drill bits. It is best to drill a very narrow hole first and then follow with the larger ones. If you use the larger bits first then you are likely to split the plastic unpredictably and ruin the skull.
The spike is easy to make: you can use cocktail sticks/toothpicks or the pole of a plastic spear, sharpened to a point. When it comes to mounting the spike you have several options. One is to mount it on a normal square or round base as if it is sticking out of the ground or a dead body. You can really go to town on decorating this piece and use it for any character. You could have the spike sticking out of the ground on the character’s base, although it can get fiddly to add or remove skulls if the character is in a unit. The final way is to have the spike on the character in some way, as part of a helmet or shoulder decoration, the top of a back banner or on the weapon or shield. A long spike can look a little strange so you could have several short ones instead.
Alternatives:
Rather than skulls, you could sculpt any of the following: small heads, lightning strikes, Hashut symbols. You could also use shield designs.
Instead of spikes you could have horns.
Animosity Marker
Convert one of your greenskin models to be holding a hollow tube with one end blocked. You could also just drill a hole straight through the fist of a model, and a drilled-out arrow quiver would work too. Using a piece of thick wire, make a simple banner pole. Add a banner to the pole: this can be something as simple as the word “Animosity” or it can show an elaborate fight scene of the unit members attacking each other. When the unit fails an animosity test, just slide the banner pole into the hollow tube and it is clear to everyone.
Quake Effect
Sculpt a mini volcano out of greenstuff. Lava dripping down the side, or even spurting out of the top if you are ambitious. Put this next to any unit affected by a quake. This can also double as an objective marker or as difficult terrain scenery if you have several of them.
ENTRANT 3
These are all to be used as tokens placed next to the models affected.
Animosity Marker
Wound Marker
Quake Effect
ENTRANT 4
Wound Marker
For the wound marker, you will need a 20mm base. A smalle amount of greenstuff is squahed into a flat cirlce, which leads off of the base. It will extend a distance that will need to reach any model in the army capable of uisng it/to another wound marker.
This may not be easy due to differing distances and I doubt people would like to move their models around the bases they are already glued to, but you will probably want to make several wound markers, dependant upon your army composition.
This allows this problem to be averted more easily as certain wound markers can be used as the first wound for certain models. If you would like to mark them for certain models, a hero may have a bone or skull or enemy’s head on the base as well, a lord may have two, a sorcerer may have magical trinkets and bottles and the like. Ogres may have scraps of food or a squashed gnoblar. Be imaginative. Then, secondary wound markers don’t have to have these trinkets due to their ability to attach to the first marker.
Once these markers have all been made, paint the base to match your army and the pool in a colour that you deem to be the colour of your chaos dwarf’s/creature’s blood (probably red for most people). Don’t forget these can be used for a great taurus, lammasu or bull centaur as well.
Animosity Marker
For the animostiy marker, you shall need to create one for each greenskin unit in the armny, just uin case you are REALLY unlucky.
For hobgoblins, this is a simple mini diorama. On a 40mm or 25mm base if you can fit it on (these are best to be round bases so they are not confused as models in the unit) of two hobgoblins punching each other. Make them normally, but if you can have them running at each other, do so. Clip of their weapon so it looks like a punch being swung and glue a weapon (and shield if they have them) onto the base to show they’ve dropped it. If possible, have one strangling the other and throwing a punch.
For other greenskin units, you will need two markers. One as described above, but using models of that unit type and one to show a result of “Waagh!” as they run forward. For this second result, have a single or several models on the base. The primary one should have it’s mouth open, face turned up and arms streatched above its head, to show its warcry. Others may be bashing weapons against shields and psyching themselves, whilst others may be at full tilt towards the enemy. If you like, during the turn you get this result, you could replace 4 of the models with this base as a unit filler.
Paint in the colours of the unit effected and base it accordingly.
Quake Effect
The Earthshaker effect will be far cheaper and more simplistic to make, unless you wish to embellish it. You will need 2 toothpicks or similar instruments. Effectively, a thin and preferably tall stick. Paint these in a colour that matches your army or, better still, assuming you’re capable, paint explosions running around them (even though they’re a few mm wide).
Get some sting which will need to be slightly over 12" long. You can paint this or use coloured string if preferred. Tie one end to either stick so that the distance between the two is exactly 12".
On top of ONE of the sticks, wrap a small amount of greenstuff around it (make sure this is level and there is a few mm above it), then place a 2" wide piece of cicrular card/cardboard. Push the stick through slighty and add a little glue. Once this has dried, sculpt some cracks onto it or, if you can afford it, the base of Acrchaon (mounted) with the spikes clipped out and the hole filled on top.
Paint this base brown and muddy, then cover in static grass, being sure not to fill the cracks. Roll the string around this stick and when you need to measure, unravel to the necessary distance. The 2" top is the minimum blast radius and the full-length is the maximum.
ENTRANT 5
These are concept art for the models.
Wound Marker
Animosity Marker
Quake Effect
ENTRANT 6
Basically my idea for the 3 markers were to sculpt basic shapes out of putty, 1 for each of the conditions; wounded, shaken and animosity.
I sculpted them out of the cheaper milliput, the wounded and animosity into basic circles like markers and the shaken into a special lightning bolt shape. I was originally going to just sculpt designs onto a round plastic base, but my markers are smaller so take up less room on the gaming table and less likely to get in the way than a full sized base.
Once the basic shapes had hardened a little I sculpted the designs in. All I did was basically use a clayshaper and put the word shake on the lightning bolt and some question marks on the animosity counter. They are to show confusion and not that the riddler has been! The wound marker was done in a kind of explosion shape. For the sake of simplicity, I then pushed in a skull from a black orc banner instead of sculpting my own. This saves a lot of time and anyone can do it. I was inspired by the blood bowl blocking dice for this.
Once I had done these, I decided that instead of painting them straight away, I could copy them in a simple 1 part mold.
The basic mold is made by gluing the shapes to a flat piece of plasticard, ‘ringed’ by the top of a plastic cup, also glued securely (as in the image above). Once the glue has set, you pour rubber over this until the rubber is set. It is then a simple procedure to pour resin (or any other casting material) into the rubber mold.
The finished products should be exact replica of your sculpts, with flat bottoms because they were poured in a 1 part mold.
I then painted them accordingly. The animosity counter is green so you remember it is for greenskins only! A simple coat of foundation paint and then a wash was all that is needed to highlight the details. The wound counter was painted as an explosion and the shake was in a highly noticable red and gold scheme.
Although rubber molding and casting is sometimes considered an advanced modeling skill, I feel that, with the correct materials, this type of project would be perfect for a beginner to learn those skills. It also helps to get more than 1 of each counter. My 2nd batch is on the way as we speak!
ENTRANT 7
Entrant 8
Animosity Marker: Hobgoblin Foursome on monster base
This ‘marker’ will consist of an acted out scene where 4 hobgoblin models have each dropped their weapons and are in a brawl with one another. The four models will be converted to be in a scrum or pile-on formation in the centre of the base, with the dirt around and underneath them showing clear signs of being disturbed, and their discarded weapons strewn on the ground surrounding the pile. This quad base can replace 4 regular hobgoblins during an animosity strike, and represent the entire unit suffering.
Quake Effect Aftermath scene on monster base.
Since our enemy/target changes, two monster bases (one of each size) will be created to the same specifications. The base will have the ground built up on the edges, forming a large crater taking up the majority of the base surface area, and will be laden with metal debris and blown apart rock. The ‘marker’ is places at point of impact, and all models in base contact are to be tipped over in the direction directly opposite of the side touching, to represent the quake/aftershock.
Wound Marker: Chaos Dwarf Single Miniature
This ‘marker’ will consist of a Chaos Dwarf character model, the model will be converted to be gritting his teeth in defiance or screaming aloud in pain over the agony of his injury, which will also be part of the conversion. Specifically, his left arm will be severed at the elbow, with blood oozing out of his arm while his remaining arm poises to swing his axe in revenge!
Still only 21 votes! Seriously, start telling everyone on the website to vote. There’s 750ish members and 21 votes, 8 of which are likely the participants.