Getting On Base

I’ve already talked about picking up the Dojo Assault set from Warlord Games’ Test of Honour game.  I had a chance this week to put some things together and progress towards getting this game off the ground.

I was able to assemble the figures easily.  I’d complained about the core set box being more of a modeller’s kit for miniatures (something I’m really not into) but Warlord’s metal line of the game super easy.  A lot of the figures are one or two piece figures with an occasional three piece for harder poses. Unlike Knight Models metal figures, I’m not seeing any three-point, triangular assembly configurations that usually give me fits.  A little green stuff to fill in the occasional gap and I super glued the modes to their bases.

The only issue I ran into was the metal that spanned the feet seemed solid enough that I didn’t want to weaken the model by removing it.  When this was glued to the base, it looked awkward so I knew I would have to create a base for the model.  Since this is something I rarely do, I looked up some quick techniques and got to work.

First, I laid down some green stuff to hide the large metal piece.  After that was cured for a couple of hours (fully cured takes a day or two), I grabbed some white PVA glue and some sand from a fill bag that my dog decided to rip up in the backyard.

I smeared it all on the base with a toothpick, trying to avoid the model’s feet.

Then I dip the whole thing in a cup of sand and knock it around, getting off the loose pieces.

Repeating that with all the figures was easy.  Next, I forgot to wait for the first layer of PVA to dry and went forward with sealing the bases with the next layer.  I recommend waiting or risk having to repair things later.

Next (after waiting, unlike me), I watered down the PVA glue with water at about 1:1, maybe 2:1.  When that gloop mixes I took a crappy paint brush and dabbed it on.  It went on thick for me so I just cleaned the brush in water, dried it off a little and had the brush soak up the existing mess on the model and move is around. You’ll want to dab because brushing it on make knock pieces loose.  You can see in the picture that I knocked things loose in the little green spot near the center, mainly because I forgot to let the base dry.  I sprinkled more sand on in that spot and add a little bit more of the watered down concoction.

Repeat again with all the models and really let them dry again. At this point, I went ahead and also cleaned up all the sides of the base.  It’s easier now then wait until all that stuff dries and then you have to scrape and file it off.

I waited a few days for everything to be dry then primed them in grey to get them ready for my monochrome technique.  Hi. Yaah.