Well, it took a combined total of twelve hours in design and test building after a friend let me borrow the plastic kit to measure, but I can now make Nephilim fighters out of four sheets of letter sized printed cardstock instead of a ridiculously overpriced kit from GW ($75 for two sprues of plastic). Send me an email if you want the PDF. I also have cut files for the Silhouette desktop cutting machine if you have one of those handy. Also keep in mind I’m for hire if you want anything commissioned in papercraft.
Jarl Kurk Thunderfoot in artificer armor. Since I use pistol weaponry as the rifle versions, I had to hunt down an old style plasma pistol to differentiate between which was which.
Barney here is a Rogue Trader era (1987) Dreadnought with twin linked autocannon arms made from imperial guard heavy weapons team autocannons, greenstuff and some extra eldar weapons shields. I think I went a bit overboard on the knotwork.
People will often criticize the old style of 40k, but with just a bit of conversion, it can still be usable with the newer models. I’m quite pleased with how the conversion part of this build went as well as the final look of it. I will have to go in and clean up the highlights at some point before I can actually call the piece finished.
And last but not least are my sniper scouts. These are completely unaltered Ratling Snipers. I’ve seen the older ratlings, and these guys are much more dwarfish in size than they are. It’s almost as if they were intended for Squat snipers and were quietly reclassified by Games Workshop so they could still be released without causing a fuss. I absolutely love the little sculpted details about the minis here. One has an eldar soulstone as a charm. Another has a half eaten bag of apples and cheese behind him and a discarded apple core at his feet. Some of them have little rat skulls collected as trophies (I imagine they’d be hard to hit at a distance with a sniper rifle, thus would the skull prove their skill with the weapon). They also come five to a $20 blister, which is one of the few bargains you’ll still find from GW.
So I decided my Emperor’s Knuckles Space Marine army (Squats, AKA spess dorfs) needed another HQ choice to go with the terminators I made. My original plan was to get another 2nd edition plastic terminator sergeant and bling it out to make a captain, but then I came across this fellow:
This is a 1st edition Space Hulk Terminator Librarian from the Genestealer expansion. Being plastic was a plus, as converting it was a breeze. I didn’t even really need to shorten the legs by that much since the model is a fair bit smaller than the current terminator armored figs anyway. The arms were another story, as they seemed to have been sculpted in a larger proportion than the legs, so I had to relocate them as well. I got the dwarf parts from this guy:
Unfortunately, Finecast, despite being fragile when you drop it, is actually pretty hard to cut into if you want to do an extensive mod like this. I ended up having to cut off the bits of the guy I wanted in larger chunks with a sprue cutter before whittling out what I could with a hobby knife and finally breaking out the dremel tool to get to the finer points. Freeing up the beard from the pistol was a chore in itself. I wanted to keep the geared hammer and replace the axe head of the force weapon as well as a few of the runic pouches, charms and random bits from the backpack. Here’s how he came out.
And here he is with the terminator squad. Due to librarians wearing blue armor and my characters having little red toboggans, he came out looking a bit reminiscent of Papa Smurf.
Here is my build of the Firefly class transport ship Serenity from the sci-fi TV show Firefly. The template was created by Jorge A. Garcia from Mexico. You can find the template and instructions I used to build it at:
http://papercraft.firefly-serenity.de/
The model is made using twelve pages of card stock paper. Unfortunately, it’s a nightmare to build, even for a master papercrafter.
Here are the problems:
A lot of the parts simply do not fit together without customization, tinkering, and in some places straight up redesigning. Even after all the fidgeting I had to do to get it to build, there are some large open gaps between the main body and the “neck” of the ship. The panels on the outside of the side engines do not make sense, and must be custom cropped to fit the same radius as the engines themselves. You have to assemble the rear engine sections from back to front and fudge/modify the subsequent parts to go from there, since the radii of the cylinders do not match at all. The collar thing that goes around it is a nightmare to build, has open gaps you will need to make extra sections for, and will more than likely come out warped. The bracing on the underside helps alleviate some of the warping to an extent. My other primary gripe with this thing is that it does not really match the ship from the show (or movie) accurately.
Notice that the angles in the neck are all wrong as well as the overall shape of the rear collar. The “wings connecting the side engines are also far more tapered on the show ship than the paper model. The copied lensflare solar panels are also a bit of an odd choice, but I’ll chalk that up to styling.
One thing I will say on the designer’s behalf, is that it appears as if this model did not use 3d software and conversion (through pepakura or some other method). Seeing as how the model is flawed, this means the whole thing was designed by trial and error instead of vector design and checking the math on the geometry. Each part on this thing was guessed at, drawn up, printed, cut, misaligned, tossed aside, redrawn and attempted again and again until it fit. That takes some hardcore dedication to get a model this complex done in that method. Kudos, sir. I just wish he’d have known the math to get his parts to line up properly.
You can now play MDA with a fifth hero class, the Beastmaster. Beastmasters are aided by their animal companions, the swift falcon, the nimble ferrets, the deadly wolf and the mighty bear. Oh, and that’s a werewolf behind everyone. Werewolves are one of the larger enemies in the Castle of Count Vludd quest, which should be ready shortly.
You can download the expansion pdf with all the extra rules and miniatures (minus the werewolf) here:
http://flipitpapercombat.com/downloads/MDAbeastmasterpage.pdf
I’ll take some better pictures later, but here’s the first of five terminator armor clad squats for my Emperor’s Knuckles space marine army. I have a standard power armor squat and a Dark Vengeance terminator in the pic for scale reference. The squat terminators are made from the second edition plastic terminators with the thigh from the legs chopped down and the shoulders dropped a bit. A single power armor pauldron was used to close the faceplate. While not being that much shorter overall than a standard terminator figure, they do make it seem as if the wearer wouldn’t be that tall due to the lowered arms and hidden face.
Are you into giant monster movies? Are you into Board Games? Are you into papercraft projects? If you answered yes to at least two of these things then Smash Monster Rampage! might be worth your while to take a look at. This is a print & play boardgame developed by Mike Swindall that brings the colossal monsters of classic films to the tabletop via the printer sitting on your very desk.
This game will be reviewed in-depth along with Phantom Capsule for my upcoming article in Games Magazine, so be sure to pick up a copy when it hits.
http://www.gamesmagazine-online.com/
Visit the website for this great gaming project at
http://www.smashmonsterboardgame.com/
I thought I would be done with this template by now, but parts are getting very difficult. The vanes on the front fins went through several revisions (mainly the little humps they connect to) before I found one that had a good balance between simplicity and looking the part. Now the weapons for the upper turret, the underside weapons and antennae and the undercarriage detail are giving me hell. I also have to take breaks on this to finish my articles and build various print & play games to review, so its going to be another week or two before this thing is finalized.
The paper version is on the right in both pics. The model in the left is a plastic kit I assembled and painted that I’m using for reference.
Slowly working my way through painting 23 ork grots/gretchin/snotlings/runtz/whydotheyhavesomanydifferentnames. I don’t even play orks or plan on using them as allies ever, so I’ll probably sell them once I’m done. Thinking about auctioning them off for charity. I usually do something for Toys for Tots every year, so I’ll probably donate the proceeds to that. Heh, “Grots for Tots”, anyone?
Anyway, this little guy is mostly right off the sprue from the kit, minus the extra bits from the base. I drilled out the barrel of the big pistol and swapped out the whackin’ stick for the pointing hand. The base is covered with various grenades, a promethium tank, a small bomb and a meltabomb on a timer currently at 0:03. The gretchin is pointing at his wonderful find of ‘splodey ‘tings and calling out for his buddies to come look. I like making scenes that tell a story.
I do need to get a better camera for macro shots (between papercrafting and gaming its about all I shoot). This was hell to get a steady shot from a borrowed Sanyo X1400. I’m thinking of picking up a Cannon Elph.
So here’s the work I’ve got done on making a paper Eldar Wave Serpent today. There is still a lot of work left, but the basic shape is done. The engine intakes need to be adjusted to look properly round from all angles, then the paneling detail around the edges and the vents behind will be worked into the engines. The troop compartment is done, as is about half of the underside. I still have no clue how I’m going to go about making the weapons options for the turret. Flat weapons wouldn’t work for something this large, though rounded tubes would make the bright lances look more like long barreled lascannons. Oh well, I’ll figure something out. I should have the intake vents and the engines finished tomorrow. If all goes well, the kit will be online before I leave for the beach this weekend.