Latrunculi

Latrunculi is an ancient Roman game, played by the owners ("Lanistas") of the Gladiators schools ("Ludus").
I spotted it on the TV one day and did lots of research and found the most common rules and set up.
I then set about making a board out of a little hardboard. Then I made some 'Kings' from some little cubes of wood. They should have been Pyramids but I couldn't find anything like that as yet.
The 'stones' proved difficult to find, so I resorted to using actual stones. It took HOURS combnig the local beach for x12 of each in the same colors / sizes and shapes, but I got some that will do the job. 

Heres the rules...

Latrunculi

Name of Game: Latrunculi - Version Two, with 12 Soldiers and 1 King per Player.
Origin of Game: Ancient Rome, before 27 B.C.
Players: 2
Pieces: Each player has 12 round pieces (soldiers), and 1 king  of a different shape. One black set, one white.  
Board Design: A 12x8 rectangle.
Objective: Capture all opponents soldiers or trap the king.
How to Play:
The board is set up as illustrated (right). The king is placed in front of his soldiers just right of centre. The kings are not directly opposite each other.
Either player may go first. Future games rotate starters.
Players take turns moving their game pieces. A player moves one of his pieces, (either a soldier or a king), any number of spaces in the horizontal or vertical direction. A game piece may not jump another game piece.
The objective is to capture one or more of your opponent's soldiers between two of your soldiers or king in either a horizontal or vertical row, (not diagonal). When a soldier (or soldiers in a line) is captured it is removed. Edges cannot be used to capture, only immobilize the king. A stone in the corner can be captured by two stones placed across the corner.

In the illustration, each white soldier with an “X” mark has been captured. Several soldiers in a row can also be captured. However if the king is in the same row (shown in red) none are captured.
If the king is surrounded by pieces so the king cannot move in any direction, then the king has been captured and the game is over. Eg. In the illustration, if the round white soldier moves in the direction of the arrow then the black king will be surrounded and the game will be over. The black king will have been trapped by two of its own soldiers and by one white soldier. This rule changes the focus of the game from capturing enemy stones to cornering the king with clever forcing moves and can make for sudden victory, even by an outnumbered force.

The only way to capture an opponent's piece is when it is your move. You can safely move one of your pieces between two of your opponent's pieces and your piece will not be considered captured since it was your move.
Winning: There are three ways to win.

1. Capture all twelve of the opponents soldiers.
2. Surround the other player's king and so it cannot move.
3. If the game stalemates, the player with the most captured enemy stones wins.

Sequences of plays that repeat endlessly must be prohibited (this is usually obvious to both players after two series of moves repeats -- any move initiating a third repeating series of moves is illegal). 

Flames of war. Minefields

As part of my German defences, heres some minefields  made.

Fiber Board. Cut to size.  Cheap Filler, molded into little craters.

Whole lot painted brown.

Static grass added. Little plastic discs added.

These were cut from some plasti-card with a hole punch, glued on then brushed with a little silver.

Gravel effect sand glued onto craters to create blown earth.

 Then washed with a little brown ink.

Im now considering some logs and bushes, but not convinced yet. 

Flames of War HMG Bunkers

So, after deciding on playing a defensive force of Germans, I chose a list that included HMG nests.
You can of course buy them, but I really liked the home made version I saw over on Model Dads blog so decided to try that.
Heres the outcome....

Cocktail sticks for the gun window. Extruded foam to bulk up the edges.

Cheapy filler created the slopes and shape. Then glued down the 'log' roof.

Texture paint added

Drybrush lighter brown

Finally some static grass and tufts :-)

Flames of War

So, after a break from 40k for a while, Ive recently been playing Flames of War with some friends.
Its proving to be huge fun.
Its WW2 15mm and has a Team on a base rather than a single figure.
You can play Early, Mid or Late War, or indeed WW1 The Great War.
Almost all the major and many minor Nations involved are catered for.
Take a look here.

Cry Havoc(s) !

Ive had x4 Havocs with Missile Launchers for some time, but always wanted some with Auto Cannons. Like most people I cant afford to buy x4 boxes of Havocs to get them.  So I decided to try and make some.
I was trying to work out how to create them, and had some Plasticard cylinders that would make good barrels, but nothing to make the weapon body from.  I didnt want to use any special weapons, as they are hard to come by as it is.
Then I remembered that months ago Id bought the Bastion Upgrade kit, in order to have the Comms Relay for my Aegis Line. In the kit was a bunch of other bits I knew would come in handy one day. What I'd forgotten about, was that there was also x4 special window mounts, including the specially moulded Heavy Bolters to go in them.  With some heavy remodelling, they'd do the trick.
I cut down the bolters into hand held weapons, and added Plasticard Barrels and drum mags, then after painting added them to x4 standard Chaos Marines, who's arms Id already glued into the right places to take the new guns.

I do however, think I got the scale a teensy-weensy bit wrong.  But hey ho, they're fun, and having a massive weapon is no bad thing :-)

Cheap ground debris

Flocking, grass and leaf debris for bases and scenery can be expensive, but this stuff is super cheap, and looks great!  Anything from £0.40p to £0.99p for a decent jar full.
Look around the dried herbs section for lots of different colours and textures.

Bunkers

I saw this idea online so decided to try it.  I got some hexagonal craft boxes made from balsa wood I think, although it feels a lot tougher than balsa. They are usually used for crafting projects where people paint or decorate them for use as trinket / gift boxes and that kind of thing.
Not for me though, these were going to be WW2 Hardpoints :-)

Original box with standard 28mm fig

Opened, showing original little mag closure and hinge

Hinge removed. Slots for gun ports being marked and cut out with a little modelling saw. I tried a knife, but it was very hard work.

Cleaning up and smoothing the fire points

Ready for some paint

Basecoast of olive brown colour. I believe black or most browns / olives would work. Perhaps even yellow for a desert bunker.

 

Light layer of a decent stone fleck effect model paint. This was obviously the easy route but gives a brilliant fast easy finish. Otherwise, a few layers of various greys and / or browns could create a great colour. Googling "ww2 bunkers" gives LOADS of inspiration :-)

Adding a couple of rare earth magnets at opposite corners gave me the option of using them open or placing troops inside.

Added some Moss Green weathering liquid from Model Mates, then a little sepia wash around the edges and a line around the base.

The finished bunkers

More Chaos Spawn - Eyes

I had this idea a while ago, but as usual its taken me ages to finish, but here they are. Five chaos spawn on the theme of eyes, each with an animal flavour.  Cat, Dragon, Goat, Fly, Human.
I added some spikes to the cat, and blades to the goat to add some mutations and interest.
The Human is in fact an ancient corrupted Space Marine, so hes got some long service studs, the remnants of his power armour pack and shoulder pads fused to his body, slowly rusting away. (bonus points if you can spot which chapter he was!)

Some silly ideas, based on some ping pong balls, lots of green stuff and spawn box parts....

Start of modelling

Getting the green stuff done. Base coated. Deciding on Pupils

Getting some texture on.

Start of the painting

Some drybrushing

Nearly there!

Object Source Lighting. Good or bad?

Here's some examples of what I understand "Object Source Lighting" to be.

From the blog - 'From the Warp'

From the blog - Dees Paint Filled Hell Hole

I cant deny it looks very impressive, and having had a go at it I reckon its a very skilled person who can do it, (which is why I couldn't !)  however,  I just cant decide if I actually like it on models.
For some reason, despite its accurate reflection of what a light source would be doing, it kinda strikes me as looking sort of messy. Perhaps I'm just not very artistic or I probably don't have a very good eye for these things.
Perhaps its one of those things that is very black and white in its execution, that unless its done absolutely bang on, its just wrong - do it right or not at all.   I'm not sure.  I'm still rather on the fence about it.

Chaos Spawn

I got my unit of Chaos Spawn done now. Its got one from the box in a fairly standard layout (the green skinned one), and the other 4 are made from lots of bits from the box modelled into a lot of greenstuff  that I tried my hand at sculpting with. I wanted some to be very different from the standard box layouts to show how varie and odd spawn can be. I learned a lot from the sculpting, but its clearly not something I'm very good at :-)
I'm happy enough with them to use them, but I think I'm better at just 'coloring in' bought or converted models rather than sculpting from scratch.  I always found converting fun, so will stick to that for the time being.