Tag Archives: HMLS Bodger

All Quiet on the Martian Front (Swindon)

There was a massive All Quiet game planned for the 19th January at Andy’s house in his ‘garage’.  Unfortunately I was child sitting so wasn’t able to make it but did send my troops along so that I could at least participate in spirit.  Andy has now posted the pictures onto the sadwargamers website.

http://www.sadwargamers.com/aqotmf-game-saturday-10th-jan/

I’m unsure how many points made it to the table in the end but as our collections are now starting to come together it was a great site to see as the photos will attest.  My HMLS Bodger even made it to the table though I’m unsure whether it was a game piece or a scenery piece.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make it to the next one.

All Quiet on the Martian Front – HMLS Bodger gets it’s first coating

I gave the landslip it’s first undercoat and base paint layer.  A Pritt Stick funnel has been added.  I’ve used it upside down so that the lid can be glued to the ships hull but allows the majority of the ‘funnel’ to be removed for storage.

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The landslip was sprayed with a generic car grey undercoat, and then given an Armour Green top coat using the Plastic Soldiers Company Armour Green spray paint.

There is still a fair bit of detail required along with weathering.  Here the stairs and railings are being added.  Windows still need to be added.

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All Quiet on the Martian Front – HMLS Bodger

HMLS Bodger has slowly taken shape.

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The side sponson turrets are based around the top of the old GW hexagon paint pot lids.  I used the hinge as the gun attachment as it looked like something which swivelled up and down.  There are two of these on each side of the land ship.

The wheels were liberated from a broken Playmobil crane.

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The two main turrets were made slightly differently.  The main turret is a cream jar which is screwed into a hole cut into the hull.  This allows the turret to turn simply by screwing/unscrewing the turret slightly.  The turret at the front is a hazelnut spread jar lid.  It was originally constructed with a card sleeve which went around the lid and allowed the gun to rotate.  Unfortunately it became stuck during the painting so no longer rotates (something to correct in future incarnations)

Early pictures with a tripod to give some sense of scale.  the surplus parts from the US tanks were put to good use as doorways and panels, as well as additional small gun ports around the side and front of the ship.

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The central tower takes shape.  This dismantles to fit into the storage box.  The gun barrels were made from either plastic toy arrows cut up, biro tubes, or biro casings.

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Confirmation of the landslip at home within a 9 litre Really Useful Box.

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I’ll try and get the templates for the hull and tower up shortly as a Powerpoint slide or pdf.

All Quiet – Something Big this way comes

With our foray into All Quiet on the Martian Front we are now beginning to get sight online of the various larger toys available for the game.  Unfortunately as I don’t partake of the offer to buy these at the big discount during the Kickstarter I’ve pretty much resigned myself to not buying into these given the recently revealed prices.  The new American Land Ship is currently retailing at £150 through North Star!  I appreciate that given the propensity of on-line retailers to discount this will be available more cheaply, but even at 20% discount the land ship will still come in at £120, still too rich for my blood.

It was with this in mind that I decided to have a go at making one for myself using my junk box and copious amounts of card, foam board, tape, and glue.  Whilst I’d love the finished product to have the same fines as the commercial model I do have to be realistic about my own talents, and the limits to which empty paint pots and gaffer tape can be presented.

So I set out to make my own land ship, the HMLS Bodger.  My desire was to get the model to look as close as possible given my material constraints to the commercial model, whilst meeting some of my own design requirements.  The main one of these was that it had to fit into a 9 litre Really Useful storage box so that it would conveniently fit within my limited storage.  The second was that the model had to be robust enough to be handled as a game piece so that I didn’t become too precious about it.  The third was that the model was to be as light as possible (having previously made some beautiful Greek city walls with the help of Simon from Blotz I am now well aware of the issue of  carrying significant amounts of heavy resin around to shows!)

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I started out with a paper model which gave me the rough shape and dimensions to test the principle and simple aesthetics of the model.  I then used the paper model to design changes by simply marking out adjustments to the paper ready for the next card model.

Once I was happy with the size and shape I marked out the design onto some heavy mount board.  I also created a template for the bottom and top of the main hull for future modelling opportunities (or simply to make another if the first was a complete cock-up).

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