Hello again.
I haven't painted much lately but there is still something to show that I....actually, we (thanks darling) did last week, and no, it is not anything dirty.
It's all about templates. Most wargames use templates to see what models are affected by area damage, be it explosions, flamethrowers or any other nastiness that can kill several models at once. Pictured above is the set of templates that Warmachine and Hordes use. It is in fact a must to play the game. You can opt for the free version, photocopying the page in the manual that shows the templates but having the acrylic ones is way better. These templates and how many different ones are there, their rules and so on will differ from game to game but usually there is at least one spray/flamer kind of template with a tear drop shape and one or more circular templates for explosions.
In Warmachine/Hordes there are circular blast templates of 3",4" and 5" diameter and a spray template that is more an elongated triangle than a tear drop, more angular and less rounded. For most situations, you just purchase the official template pack pictured above and you are good to go, but this particular game has another quirk: there are a lot of effects that last for a whole round. This means, you put them in place during your turn but they will be in play and have a certain effect during your opponent's turn. Examples of this are explosions that leave a crater that is then considered rough terrain, areas that someone is constantly firing upon and will damage any enemy models that cross the area, models that use smoke grenades to provide a cloud effect as cover for friendly models and things like that.
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| Example of templates in play, image from http://mageknightkevin.blogspot.co.uk/ |
What that means is that there are a lot of situations where you really need to put something in the table to represent the area of these persisting effects. If you have few of these effects and you don't use them often you could probably just put your existing template in place, but as soon as you need it for another shot you have to resort to mark the area with dice, removing the template and putting it back when you are finished, and that kind of shenanigans.
Introduce the blast markers. Several companies produce game aids like tokens and templates for different games in a variety of materials: laser cut MDF and acrylics, resin, even metal. The only problem with those is that they usually don't come cheap and if you are in a budget you would probably prefer to spend your bucks into new shiny models to use than in gaming miscellanea.
I had seen a lot of people in video reports using very simple metal rings to just mark the border of the effects instead of the whole area. That has an advantage in that the process of placing and removing them is less disruptive as you can usually leave the models where they are instead of removing them from the table and sliding the template under them before returning them to their previous positions.
So, with that in mind and looking for something relatively cheap I had been searching all over the interwebs for that kind of metal rings. So far, I hadn't had any luck, finding some overpriced websites, others that didn't really provide any reliable measurements (a must for this hobby, the templates need to be exactly their supposed size to avoid discussions during the game) until I finally found a craft shop that had exactly what I was looking for. They sold them for people that wanted to create their own lamp shades. Each of them was less than a pound and they had a lot of different sizes, including the required 3", 4" and 5".
And now, the tutorial part on how to personalise those metal rings to fit better with the army.
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| Before... |
On inspection it was very clear that the soldering on the rings was a bit rough so I decided to use my dremel to fix it.
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| ... and after |
As the main colour of the army was going to be red (or as explained in the previous entry it will still contain a lot of red) I decided I wanted to have them on that colour. I could just paint them but I decided to go with a different approach and cover them with electrical insulation tape. This serves another purpose in that it would provide a softer surface so there are less chances of chipping paint on the models when placing or removing them.
Some photos of the process, courtesy of my girlfriend who is more skilled than me in this sort of crafts and arts processes.
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| Beginning of the process |
The tape was to wide and was leaving some wrinkles because of that so it was cut to half width with scissors. Then the tape was carefully stretched around the outside of the ring, which proved to be a mistake, more on that later.
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| Placement of the tape is finished |
Now carefully twist the tape around the inside of the ring, pressing with your fingers until it is completely round and hopefully without any wrinkles.
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| And finally this is the finished product |
In total I decided to do 7 of the 3", 3 of the 4" and 3 of the 5", just in case.
The day after finishing we discovered that it was a bad idea to stretch the tape so much along the edge while placing it. Electrical insulation tape is somewhat elastic and it has shrunk in size a bit leaving small gaps where the bare metal is still showing. Nothing that cannot be fixed by just applying a bit more of tape but could have been prevented for a smoother finish.
That's all folks, hoping to get a good game next bank holiday and hopefully put a battle report if I manage to take some pictures.
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