Cork, all the cork!

This week I have been mostly eating cork.....

I haven't really been eating cork, so nobody needs to panic! I have however been working with cork to get the first layer down for my Armies On Parade board (the board itself is 12mm MDF from B&Q) . Starting with a roll of cork 300mm by 2m (that is 11.8" by 78.7" in old money, from eBay), and rolling out the cork and cutting it into three (two pieces across the board and the third as offcut). Once I had the correct length I stuck the cork down using double sided sticky tape, and started to arrange my blank bases trying to get a feel for where the models should stand. I found an arrangement that I found pleasing, and moved on to the next phase of my plan.

Carefully inserting a new blade in to my craft knife I began to cut around each of the bases and removing the circle/oval piece and putting it in my offcuts box. Once I finished and thoroughly plastered my fingers (!) , it was time to stick the cork down. I started by pulling off the double sided sticky tape and thoroughly covering the board in PVA (just the stuff from your local craft shop), then sliding the cork pieces into place lining any cuts up. After this it was a simple case of flip over the board and weigh it down with assorted bits from around the house. A pan,a half used tub of house paint, a side table flipped over, you know the kind of thing I mean.

Once this was dried I test fitted the bases and found the cork has slightly swelled with the PVA so had to do a little extra cutting to make sure every thing fitted properly.

Next I am planning on building the second level. I have started to dry fit pieces to start to see what I want. I am going to avoid larger lava pools and try to stick to more streams of lava running all over the place.

This week I also played my second game of 8th edition, playing 50 power points of my Adeptus Astartes vs Steve's Craftworld Eldar army. I took:

• 1- Space Marine Captain in Terminator Armour, armed with a relic Blade and a Storm Bolter
• 1- Techmarine with Conversion Beamer, Combi-Grav, and a Power Axe
• 1- Devastator Squad with four Lascannons
• 3- Tactical Squads: One with Plasma Gun, Plasma Cannon, and on the sargent a Plasma Pistol and Chainsword. One with Grav-Gun, Grav-Cannon and Grav Amp, and a sergeant armed with Grav-Pistol and Chainsword. Finally one armed with Meltagun, Multi Melta, and a sergeant armed with  Combi-Melta and Power Fist.

Playing the ONLY WAR Mission from the rule book, we rolled on the primary objectives table and got Domination, meaning the objectives would each grant a point at the end of each turn. Ste was the "Underdog" as he was 1 power point lower than I, so he got the joy of the first turn. We played the game in an hour and half to two hours, with things getting faster as we got though the game and started to remember weapons profiles. There was some unexpected rolls with one of my Tactical squads beating off a squad of Striking Scorpions, and some of Ste's Warlocks exploding after perils of the warp. I learnt to not dismiss Dark Reapers with their missile launches chewing up all of my Devastators in a single round of fire and taking a chunk of a Tactical squad in another round. Dire Avengers can't half put some damage down when they roll those sixes to wound making there Avenger catapults -3 AP! The final result was 6-5 to Ste, but a good game was had by all.

That's been my week, what have you guys been doing? Building, painting, or playing? Looking forward to hearing from you all!

So that's it for this week! See you next time from the table of a Plastic Addict!