I had originally planned my Temple Guard banner to be modular. This was mostly because I didn’t have a plan for making one until after I’d finished the unit, but once I was done my original one I realized that I could easily make a new one for it.
The Thursday night before OFCC I scrambled to use some Sculpey to create a big slug of a banner and pin it so that it would fit into my banner-bearers hands. I primed it Thursday night and planned on painting it at the tournament. I usually eschew last-minute painting, priding myself on being good at time management, but this was a special case.
The tank weathering takes a small break (I have another 3-4 tanks to go through before the end of August…), before the flyers come out (ZOMFG, want!) to do some touch-ups on a model I’ve been slowly working on for a little bit now.
It was a few months ago that I realized that I really wasn’t enjoying playing my Slann list. I don’t like the magic phase in Fantasy, and I prefer to boycott it whenever possible. Game balance makes this difficult, and so I had been playing a magic heavy list since Throne of Skulls last year. A random comment on our way back from GottaCon made me realize where my heart truly is – DINOSAUR! (you can see him in the title banner for this blog!)
BSBs are pretty much mandatory in 8th Ed, even for an army typically known for not needing a LD bonus, so I set about making a list that worked for my playstyle and desires.
Enter – the dinobus! The center piece of this 1500 point army, the dinobus is roughly 530 points of 14 Cold one Cavalry, and 135 points of Cold One riding Scar Vet banner bearer! (yes, the dinobus is roughly half of my total army, and isn’t very hard to kill. I don’t care – it’s awesome!)
I wanted to do a conversion for the BSB, and so here we have it. This is draft 2. Draft one was about 20% less awesome – with the base being very plain and the cold one mouth closed and not at all ready for battle. RAWR!
The headdress that came with this model was a hideous lightning bolt thing.
I recommend not following my steps exactly. This process could have been done better.
So, last we spoke I had assembled the banner and was moving onto painting it. I laid the fabric flat and started painting. You can see the result below – not spectacular, but not bad.
Someone commented that it wasn’t bright enough, in the sea of my bright yellow spotted saurus, which this is definitely a flaw. The issue here is that it is relatively difficult to get a bright colour down, as it just soaks in and diffuses into the black fabric.
I finished painting it and went to give it a wave…and discovered that white glue doesn’t set immediately. >.> Whoops. I lucked out, in that the multiple layers of paint gave it a bendable quality, so I bent it as much as I could without cracking the paint and then watered down some white glue and painted it on. I repeated that process 3 times before I could get a wave on it that looked any good.
Some people at the tournament recommended:
Paper. Actually, the person I was talking to was complaining about how his banner ripped. So he didn’t recommend it, but it’s an option.
Pop can aluminum. Warning: You must ensure that you file down the edges, lest you lose flesh one day.
Tin foil. I thought this would rip as well, but apparently you use layers of it and super glue them together to create a relatively thick piece of tin foil cardboard that won’t rip. Pretty smart, assuming you don’t wrinkle it in the process.
A tournament update to follow in a day or two. Later!
I mentioned that the banner for my Temple Guard snapped off in the process of transporting them around. I also mentioned that I took it as a sign. There’s a reason for that.
Last year sometime I had another brilliant idea. I would make a custom banner for one of my units (not the Temple Guard at the time) – I had a book of mythical creatures, I had a computer drawing tablet, I had the ability, I could do this!
Unfortunately, reality set in. I couldn’t figure out how to get a drawing from a computer into reality. Paper was a bad idea, and any sort of plastic/laminate I’d need to see a specialized printer to get done, and none I looked at would do anything quite so small!
So I gave up on the idea, after having some some effort into drawing something that looked pretty good. A year (or so, time flies…) later, banner snaps off and it’s time to bring the idea back.
I have some fabric lying around that I used to make my Ork hut. I cut up a regular Saurus banner pole, stuck a spearhead on top of it, and then puttied the fabric onto the pole. A paper clip pin on both ends, and we’re ready to go.
I did a few sketches, after measuring out about how much space I was going to have, and managed to drawing something that vaguely resembled a Quetzalcoatl – a mythical South American creature that apparently taught the Aztecs how to do agriculture. Who knew? It’s a snake with wings, essentially.
After I’ve painted the image on it, I’m going to use white glue to stick it into a more dynamic, waving position. But for now I’m happy that it’s flat and relatively stiff, so I can paint on it.
