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Home » Great Library at Hoeth » Tome of Creation » Scenery » NESS' Terrain workshop: Building your own statue/turn counter.
| NESS' Terrain workshop: Building your own statue/turn counter. |
| by LochNESS |
Ness' Terrain Workshop: Building your own statue/turn counter.
How many times have you lost track of the turn you were playing in? And what do you do to stop yourself from forgetting in which turn you are? Most people keep some note on a piece of paper or lay a dice on the table, often in a piece of scenery to prevent yourself from picking it up. But then again, how many times did you pick that dice up, because your character was also in that regiment or there were so many attacks and that dice so attractive looking you rolled it for “to hit” and lost count again. It is time to stop this, because in this article we’ll build a turn counter that will keep score for you what turn it is, and looks good as well! What else would you want?
In the Warhammer World, there have been many great characters and persons of great renown. Many of these characters that have meant a lot for a race at some time, here the names of Anearion of the High Elves, Magnus the Pious that rid the Empire of the 2nd Chaos incursion and Gilles de Bretton that established Bretonnia. Often these great lords of ancient times have gotten statues trough out their realms. After all, great cities want to show their wealth and power, and their affection to the history of their nation and what better way then to build a statue of your great leader. So why not incorporate your turn counter with a statue, so you will always have your great leader and your turn nearby.
For this project you will need the following bits, most of these are not too hard to find and many players have them laying around somewhere. But here’s a quick summary for what you need to build your own turn counter.
1) Large flying base + the very small stick.
2) Some pieces to make a statue, one of these arms should be a pointing one, be it with a finger or a sword, that’s all up to you.
3) A big bottle cap (I used a “Hero Fruitbreakfast” but anyone bigger than 28mm in diameter is fine)
4) A 25mm round base
5) 6 shields and 1 round Skeleton or Dwarf shield.
7) Wood and plastic glue
 Bird sand (white sand used as filler in a birdcage) and some staticgrass
9) Something to make holes, a pointy file works fine for this.
Now it’s time for the real stuff, building your own counter. First assemble the flying base, be sure to glue the small stick, because you don’t want your statue to fall off when moving it. Then make a hole in the center of the bottle cap. Be sure it’s big enough to fit the flying stick through.
When you place the model at this moment on top, you will notice your model is never going to fit over it, so cut the top of till it’s just a little above the cap and still fits inside the 25mm round base.
Now it’s time to “lock” your cap into place. To do this, make a hole in the round shield so it fits just over the flying pole. Then glue (plastic glue) the small shield to the stick. Be sure you don’t glue the cap to it well. To prevent this from happening I rotated the cap while the glue was drying. This way it can’t for a bond between the two moving parts but the shield will be stuck to the flying pole.
Next step is to bring on the real detailing of the statue, so assemble your statue so it’s a character pointing in one direction (so he points to the numbers below the base) and glue him to the 25mm base. When this has dried you can place it on the center of the bottle cap, over the shield and you’ve created an invisible, movable joint for your turn counter. Again, be sure you don’t glue your model to the joint or else your counter will not work.
 Finally lay the six shields evenly around the base and glue these to their places. The last step is to apply some wood glue between the bases and dip the statue in the bird sand to texture it. Your statue is now finished, but still needs a paintjob.
Before I began with painting I sprayed the complete statue with chaos black. This give a better adhesion of the paint to the material, especially the bottle cap can pose some problems when you do not do this.
After that, I decided that my statue would stand on some sand coloured stone. We High Elves do not use such pesky granite for our statues, we use nicely coloured stone of course. So a warm base colour was selected painted. For this sandstone I started with Snakebite Leather, after that I thoroughly drybrushed the model with first Vomit brown, then a little lighter with Bubonic brown and finally very lightly with Bleached bone. Then I painted on a number of runes (actually all from the back of the HE armybook) around the base.
The statue was first painted with Tin Bitz to create some good, deep dark recesses. Of course the High Elves do not build their statue from bronze, that is an inferior casting from the Humans and Dwarves, but our statues will be gold so there won’t be any weathering to the metal. So after the Tin Bitz a coat of Shining Gold was drybrushed heavily on the model. Afterwards a thinner layer of Burnished Gold was drybrushed onto the model. Then I inked the model with a mix of Brown Ink and Flesh Wash (normally I’d use Chestnut but was too lazy to pack it from a box ready to be given away) to give some more deepness to the model. Finally the model was again drybrushed with first Shining gold and finally very lightly with Mithril silver.
The sand was painted with Scorched brown and drybrushed with Beatial Brown, then more lightly with Snakebite leather and finally lightly with Bleached bone. Finally you could stick some static grass around on the sand by applying some wood glue to it and sprinkle the static grass on top of it.
The shields were given golden trimming and painted with Dark Angels Green to match my army. Finally the numbers were painted on with Bleached Bone, but you could use transfers from the Imperial Guard or Space Marines for this if you are not comfortable with freehanding. The area is rather big though so I suggest you give it a try, it’s the only way you can master it.
I hope I’ve given you inspiration on building your own counter or statue. There are plenty of other ways to build such things (currently I’m thinking about building one for my Empire army as well, but then as a movable church clock) There are many ways you could build this thing and even more ways to paint it. It’s all up to you, but by using these simply techniques, you can create good centerpieces for your table.
Till next time,
Ness
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