Construction is a complete mix of media and techniques. But primarily it comes down to lots of foam, foamboard and card, a lot of tricks from model railroad layouts, a smidge of forced perspective and a lot of guesswork. I don’t plan, never have. For me half the fun is fumbling my way through.

This is one project that I actually made a conscious effort to document, so we have pretty decent photos of the entire process. I’ve shared them all below for you to wade through!

Big shout out to the various Mordheim channels that served for inspiration. Leif’s Devs & Dice gets a big thank you for the posters and the hint to use plaster for mortar. That did so much to enhance the paintjob. Then I hit it with another wash on top to bring it all together.

I also have a huge folder of images that helped inspire me. One definite source you should go check out if you’re interested in this kind of thing (which I’m sure you are) is The Stonecutters Guild. Their City of Dunbrough was a big inspiration for some of the building shapes.

I designed this to fit my existing buildings, the watchhouse and the two town houses from my now defunct Stadtheim board. There’s also a bell tower on there at the moment which I’m not sure I ever shared.

Here comes the many images, hope you like the Mordheim display board!

The post Mordheim Display Board appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

My current project though found me rummaging through my old White Dwarf magazines trying to find specific articles or Eavy Metal images, and I was getting frustrated. So to solve it I built a tool.

The White Dwarf Archive is an index of all articles in each issue. It means you can search for Orks and get a full listing of all articles mentioning them. or Adrian Wood and find his battle reports. It’s pretty lenient on the searching and so far has been giving me good results.

Just to clarify, there’s no content there, I didn’t fancy trying to outrun the IP mafia. There’s a short description of each article and that’s it.

I haven’t covered every issue. I think I’ve done 1-250, then it’s a bit more piecemeal after that. But since my project is a 2nd edition army that more than covered my needs! I’ll keep adding others over time though.

Feel free to have a play and shout if anything breaks!

The post White Dwarf Archive appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

Here’s to a productive ’25! Happy New Year All.

The post Happy New Year! appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Si Marshall (@simarshall44)

Really happy with the end result. It’s not intended to be any specific Adeptus Mechanicus forge world, uses a bit of inspiration from the Ryza colour scheme, but also one of the Kastellan robot schemes.

The orange took a stupid amount of steps, uses Jokaero base orange, then an Xpress paint used as a glaze, then a shade finally Hot Orange to highlight. But happy with the vibrancy of the result. And a good example of why you should buy your paints in person, the Jokaero orange was nowhere near the brightness I was hoping for!

The post Spider Sentinel appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

After dragging my wife around many pound shops and lots searches destined to confuse Amazon’s algorithm, I found the part I needed. So here I present my first of no doubt many, Binary Bob, the Beadbot.

Made in authentic Bill style, he’s wooden beads at the core, armature wire, then plastic styrene and EVA foam. The backpack is made from constituent parts of a barbecue lighter, and the rivets are all nail art rhinestones. Lots of glue (so much glue), then simple paint job topped off with my first ever oil wash.

This was such good fun to build. The step of going from “this looks crap!” to discovering there might be something there was somehow amplified with this one. Kitbashing is a lot easier to see the finished product. When you have some wire and a pile of beads, all in bright pastel colours you really have to work to see what it could be… a beadbot!

Bob is a LoadBot. Hulking robots built purely for lifting strength, LoadBots serve in the inhospitable northern volcanic wastes. At numerous ports they load and offload goods between the hover skiffs and the waiting starliners. Their programming is limited and their moods tend to monotone. 

Many decades in the harsh climate have weathered not only Bob's outer casing, but also his personality. Bob knows a joke* (learned from a deckhand who should have known better), which he now repeats ad nauseam to his own amusement.

I’ve already started by second one, this time a Junkbot. And I have lots of ideas, finding this genuinely inspiring. It’s why I chose to be a patreon backer of Bill’s!

The post Beadbot appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

Other than an introductory paragraph everything included was created using AI. It’s completely free, and I have to say includes some jaw dropping AI art. A far cry from the deformed creatures it was spitting out just six months ago.

If you want to give it a look then you can find it at https://gtazz.com/kambara Like I say, completely free so if you want to share it around do so (though it’d be great if you pointed people to the link above so they get the context).

Kambara Magazine Issue 1

The post Kambara Magazine appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

So when they launched the Mantic Vault, their 3D subscription service similar to Patreon, I had to jump in. I got the early bird discount too, so it’s cheaper than my One Page Rules patreon. It’ll take time to properly evaluate the value proposition of course, but so far it seems pretty good bang for the buck. A lot of Armada ships have already been released in the first three month’s packs, along with some full kits (halfling balloons!!) and upgrades for existing kits.

I think this is very exciting, it needed a big company like Mantic to take the plunge and try to augment their range with 3D files, we’ll see where it leads. Whatever happens they’re making GW suddenly look very old fashioned.

Here’s what I’ve printed and painted so far, the start of my dwarf fleet. Then I’m going to do an Empire of Dust one, and a Basilean one, then my gaming group can try our first battle and see if it sinks or swims.

Oh and like all good subscription services, the Mantic Vault has an ever growing welcome pack which has an interesting collection including two upgrades for the goblin Giant.

The post Mantic Vault appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

The original RT rules even talked about how the gretchin pilots are so used to being bullied by orks that when they get their hands on a little power they tend to go crazy. First time they get into hand to hand range with an enemy they MUST charge in and let off some steam. Fun, characterful, not a WAAC in site. Love it.

So when I was rummaging around the web, as you do, and I found a rather fantastic looking 3D print version of the now long oop dreadnought I had to get myself a copy. Produced by Fanath Miniatures, it has all the similar components as the original, with clean sharp lines and a couple of fun extras.

Even just seeing the 3D render above makes me grin. Oh and it’s about the same price as a Starbuck’s coffee. Nice.

I printed one out and decided to make the smaller version that appeared on the old Rogue Trader era advert. Painted up in Bad Moon colours of course and here’s the result.

I’m so happy with it. The details are so sharp, miles away from the old lead model. And of course the exuberant pilot is a new twist.

So of course the wonder of 3D printing is you don’t just have to print one. I decided to do one for each of the ork clans. I’ve already started the snakebite and evil sunz ones, full photos to follow. But for direct comparison, the 3D print vs the old lead.

Now I’m as nostalgic as the next middle aged bloke, but for me this is everything great about new technology. The old charm and fun, but far superior quality. I’ve never been one for getting into bidding wars with other middle aged blokes over a small piece of metal. I think my opinion on this is probably why my post was removed from the Oldhammer facebook group!

Oh and I should add, I am most definitely not a fan of the generic ‘space mareen’ 3D models that get churned out by every other hack on Patreon. IP theft is a shady business. But when it comes to something that’s out of print for 20 odd years and the only route is to pay about £50 on ebay (none of which goes to the IP owner), then my pov gets more relaxed. Let your own conscience be your guide.

Rogue Trader Ork Dreadnoughts, gotta love the little egg shaped bastards!

The post Rogue Trader Ork Dreadnought appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

The scouts are from Tyranid Attack, the old boxed game that was kind of like a slimmed down Advanced Space Crusade. Enjoyable enough as I recall, but I bought it back then mainly for the models. As you can probably tell if you’re a regular reader, I get a bit erm, skittish when it comes to holding onto projects. So I like to bounce around wherever my inspiration takes me. As a kid that took me through several space marine chapters. And alas no, I never used to strip the minis before repainting.

Considering how much paint is on these bad boys they don’t look awful. I mean they’re rudimentary and the details on the chests and faces is a little filled in, but still. However no more. Enter the hero of the hour:

Only £4.99 from the local B&M (think slightly upmarket dollar store) I found this stuff through a forum post or possibly facebook a few years ago. It’s great, takes paint off plastic and metal, doesn’t damage the models and doesn’t smell too bad. Erm, disclaimer though, it looks pretty awful….

Eugh. Can’t say you weren’t warned! Drop in the models, leave them for half an hour or so and it’s wicked witch of the west time.

Then five minutes with hot water and an old toothbrush and tada…

You can see the right leg and left armed are stained red (told you, he was a Howling Griffon in a former life). A few stubborn bits in the crevices, but chuck him back in for a second bath and ready for the reveal.

Can’t tell these guys are pushing 30 can you? Very happy with the way they cleaned up.

Finally after a fresh coat of contrast paints the Eagle Warrior Scouts are now ready for get on a table. Or more realistically stand around in a cabinet waiting for the rest of the army to be painted. But still, very happy with the results.

The post Eagle Warrior Scouts appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

As always, the parts were printed on my Elegoo Mars 2 (still loving this little machine), in thankfully the last of my grey Elegoo resin. Holy crap that stuff stinks. Thankfully I got another bottle of Beige/Skin colour and it’s back to sweet smelling printing for me. Lesson learned.

Paint job was pretty straight forward. Needed a reasonably steady hand to get the lines, but after many touch ups I got something I’m happy with. I then did some edge highlighting to pick out the panels a bit more. The windscreen was a random technique I saw on FB, someone had done a female Mad Max character with chromed glasses. I think it works ok, bit more interesting than just black anyway.

I also got myself some Dirty Down Rust for painting all this series, seemed fitting. Going to take some getting used to, but the girder on the back I think works particularly well. Finally a liberal coating of sandy weathering powder and tis done.

Really happy with the completed Mad Max Interceptor, next up is a post apocalyptic VW Campervan/Bus. Already printed and assembled, just needs a spot of gap filling then it’s off to the paint table.

The post Mad Max Interceptor appeared first on BlokeCrafted.