Game-Swap

I offered to demo Warmachine to a local 40K player, and in return he offered to demo Killteam. So we did both.


GAME 1: KILLTEAM
Pre-Game:
I brought out my old Space Marine collection and picked some proxies for Angels of Death:
Space Marine Captain
Assault Intercessor Warrior
Eliminator Sniper
Heavy Intercessor Gunner
Intercessor Warrior (Bolt Rifle)
Intercessor Warrior (Bolt Rifle)

Attila had Legionnaires:
Legionary Shrivetalon
Legionary Chosen
Legionary Anointed
Legionary Baleful Acolyte
Legionary Butcher
Legionary Warrior


Round 1&2:
I was learning the movement and combat. I pulled ahead by a point in the first couple of turns.

Round 3:
I had done more damage in the earlier rounds, but wasn't able to finish off some models that I was in melee with. I had decided to take a risk with my heavy; instead of walking away and shooting the model engaging it (that would go down to a single hit), I figured I could kill it in melee, score the objective, and then use his ranged attack to finish off another model, but I whiffed HARD in melee and just died without costing Attila a single activation instead.

Round 4:
With very few activations left, the score remained even while Attila was ahead by one living model. However, having the numerical advantage allowed my an extra action with my sniper, who managed to finish off one more Legionnaire, drawing the game.

Post-Mortem:
It's a quick game to pick up and play. The movement and action system seemed to be simple but fairly well done. The combat resolution system took a little getting used to, but I can see how it creates the opportunity to make meaningful decisions while giving the attacker an advantage. The "stealth" system felt unintuitive to me, but I guess it makes sense as a way to balance melee and ranged combat. The action point system seems to allow most activations to follow the standard "move and attack" format, but with some flexibility (moving further and attacking, or scoring an objective without sacrificing movement and combat) while still remaining quite simple. I have had issues with small model count games in the past, where sometimes models would die too easily, or there was too much of a binary difference between the model getting hit and dying, and never getting hit and not taking damage, making attacking feel unsatisfying. Killteam's system of wounds and saves might be the best health/damage system I've played in a small-model-count game.

The basic game did feel very simple, without too much difference between different models and weapons, and very few special rules outside of basic attack/defend combat rules. Of course this was an intro game where we didn't use all the rules so it's not a fair comparison, but I will say there was a stark difference between the model profiles, which were mainly just base stats with a few special rules on the weapons, and the incredibly rule-dense model cards in Warmachine. Which is not a knock on Killteam, I believe it's supposed to be a quick and easy-to-pick-up little skirmish game, so the simplicity seems like a feature. I don't know how much depth the game has when played at a higher level by experienced players, I imagine there's a fair bit of strategy in positioning etc. when you understand the game better.

From this one experience, I felt it was a fairly quick and clean game that's an easy way to put some cool 40K models on the table, that can be enjoyed in a very casual way. I wouldn't mind playing it again, though I don't expect it to replace Warmachine or Monsterpocalypse for me. It might replace Zone Raiders sadly; the core rules in that game are probably just too crunchy for me.


GAME 2: WARMACHINE
Pre-Game:
I wanted to write a couple of 30 point lists that prioritised using actually painted models for the demo, with at least one jack, unit, and solo. I chose Butcher1 for Attila; he's relatively straight-forwards (or at least he used to be) and wrecking face with him is great fun. Ruin is the best jack for Butcher and would help demonstrate command cards (Grave Robbing) and internal synergies/interactions through his bond with Butcher. The Legion of Lost Souls was freshly painted and synergised with Alexia2. The Koldun Lord filled out the points and brings a great debuff.
Butcher 1
-Ruin (proxied by Juggernaut)
-Sylys Wyshnalyrr
Legion of Lost Souls
Alexia 2
Koldun Lord
*Blessing of the Gods
*Grave Robbing
*Infiltration
*Old Faithful
*Power Swell

I chose Harkevich for myself as he's a relatively simple warcaster, and Black Ivan could show off some synergies and movement tricks with him. The Drakhun and War Dog are painted. I didn't want to run a mirror with my second unit of Legion of Lost Souls, so I just grabbed the Cutthroats.
Harkevich 1
-Black Ivan
-War Dog
Croe's Cutthroats
Man-O-War Drakhun
*Break Through
*Careful Reconnaissance
*High Alert
*Hit & Run
*Put The Fires Out

I know demo games are usually played without a scenario, but again I didn't feel that was a good representation of the game, and Attila was not new to wargames so I figured he could handle it. So I just threw a 12" zone in the center of the board and said that any model could score it if no enemy models were in the zone, starting from the second player's second turn. First to five points - or to kill the enemy warcaster of course - would win. I said I'd go first so I could demonstrate the turn order etc.


Deployment:
I deployed centerally, with Harkevich ready to run into the forest. We discussed his deployment and I suggested that some models wanted to stay further back.

Round 1: I forgot about Escort and moved Black Ivan before activating Harkevich. Everything basically just ran up and spread out.

Attila moved the Legion towards the trench and ran Alexia into the forest. Butcher cast Deceleration and put Vengeful on Ruin.

Round 2:
The Drakhun was almost exactly 13" away from Ruin; too far to charge, but just close enough to walk and shoot, repositioning away afterwards. I think he might have done a couple of points of damage; in retrospect this would have been an opportunity for Ruin to trigger Hyper Agressive and Vengeful (singe the Drakhun was almost exactly 6" away so Ruin could walk 4" and attack 2"), but I completely forgot about those rules. Also that would have allowed the Drakhun to hit Ruin, and I don't remember if Black Ivan had activated yet, so it probably wouldn't have been a good idea. But I should have remembered it and discussed it.

Hark and Black Ivan did a bit of shooting, but didn't do much damage. The Cutthroats charged the Legion of Lost Souls; I killed one but that left two of my models without a target in range. Croe and the last Cutthroat missed their attacks.

Butcher cast Decelaration and moved around a bit, respecting my threat ranges. Alexia moved up in the forest. Ruin dismounted then killed the Drakhun, allowing Alexia to replace him with a Thrall, who moved behind Ruin to be able to Shield Guard for him. The Legion of Lost Souls completely wiped out the Cutthroats, resurrecting their lost brother in the process. Attila scored one point.

Round 3:
I allocated to Black Ivan and charged him in to Ruin, but wasn't able to finish him so I had to finish the job with Harkevich. Worth mentioning is that Black Ivan's Dual Attack shot hit even though he doesn't have the Pistol advantage, but the Thrall took the shot. Also I once again forgot that Ruin had Vengeful and should have been able to take a swing at Black Ivan. I scored a point.

The Koldun Lord cast Brittle Frost on Black Ivan and Alexia did a few points of damage with a Hellfire. The Legion of Lost Souls charged Black Ivan; they were doing a couple of points of damage each, except for on who REALLY cranked the dice and did two whole columns by himself:

This left Black Ivan on twelve boxes. Butcher Feated and charged, swinging over the heads of the Legion where it would be harder for Harkevich to reach him. With five damage dice on his charge attack, he rolled 16 damage, taking out my jack while sitting on 6 Focus. I just went ahead and conceded.

Post-Mortem:
I find it amusing that Attila played a Legion and Butcher in both games. Playing Warmachine right after Killteam reminded me just how complex Warmachine is these days; every model on the table had a multitude of special rules. Butcher1 used to be one of the simplest Khador casters; the back of his card used to be blank, but now he has Hyper-Agressive on himself and his warjacks; I feel that's a rule that takes a fairly high skill level to use effectively. Perhaps Vlad1 is a better starter caster now; he's strong but pretty straight forwards, with great buffs and crazy threat range on his jacks. Guess I need to get mine painted up.

Still, Attila seemed to enjoy it, and didn't seem to have any trouble with the rules (other than both of us forgetting about Vengeful...). It was fun to play some Warmachine, it's been a while. As much as I love the game, it has no local presence and I don't really want to try to push it. I was trying to bring people into Monsterpocalypse, but that game is pretty much dead right now, at least in terms of support. As is Warcaster. People seem to be enjoying 40K and related GW games, at this point I don't think I'd be doing them any favours trying to get them into other games. So maybe I should be playing more Killteam...

You Can't Kill What's Already Dead

I played a 1000 point game of 40K the other day. I didn't take photos and I'm not going to write a proper battle report as it probably wouldn't be a very interesting read (plus I don't exactly things in great detail as I was busy trying to understand the rules), but it was fun so I'm just going to give a quick summary.

I was running some old Marines I had lying around (mainly Black Reach models) under the old Raven Guard chapter tactics (which apparently no longer exist):

Chaplain in Terminator armour (Storm bolter)

10 Tactical Marines (bolt pistol & chainsword on the sarge, rocket launcher)

6 Scouts (sniper rifles, rocket launcher)

5 Vanguard Veterans (thunder hammer & storm shield on the sarge)

7 Terminators

2 Venerable Dreadnoughts (twin lascannon, twin autocannon)

I played against Gru, who had a beautiful fully painted Necron army with two units of basic troops, one unit of guys with slighter stronger guns, two characters, and three Wraiths.

Basically we stood and shot at each other for five turns. I brought down my Terminators and Vets around his units; the Vets failed a charge, got shot at, then got charged right through a building by Wraiths. The grunts were wiped out almost immediately, but the Sarge killed two Wraiths over the course of several rounds and would have killed the third if Gru hadn't saved him by rerolling a save with a command point. The Terminators did a lot of shooting, eventually got into melee, then got wiped out. The Tac Marines eventually got gunned down. The Snipers did almost nothing all game and were completely ignored. The Dreads killed a few Necron grunts.

I killed a few Necrons each turn, but they kept coming back; I think by the end there only six or seven dead Necron grunts (certainly less than 10). Thankfully the Wraiths stayed dead, but not before they cleared one of my objectives. This left me scoring one objective and Gru scoring two, for his win.

So yeah, not a hell of a lot of maneuvering or anything, just a lot of rolling dice. I'm pretty sure I messed up a lot of rules (I think I repeatedly forgot to add negative hit modifiers for thunder hammers and moving with heavy weapons etc, but I may also have forgotten to reroll failed wound rolls with the Chaplain, so maybe it all balances out), but hey, it was a learning experience. I didn't enjoy it as much Warmachine, but it was still fun to hang out with friends, throw dice around, and (occasionally) push some toy soldiers around.

They forced my hand...

So I've posted before about my illuminated models. The thing is I've actually had a few models ready (or close to ready) for painting for a good long while, but for various reasons (mainly life and the desire to build up my Khador army) I've neglected them. However, now that PoweredPlay Gaming have successfully launched a Kickstarter for powered bases, the results of all my hard work will soon be somewhat obsolete. This has spurred me to refocus my efforts on finishing my lit models. To be honest, it would be nice to get photos of them out before the "market gets flooded", as it where. Therefore, I will be doing something today that I normally don't do: post pictures of unfinished models. I sincerely hope that these will all be painted soon.

To infinity, and beyond!

I originally planned this guy as a joke, but I got caught up trying to make him as ridiculous as possible and ended up successfully adding LEDs to the base and sword. He was actually the first of my current style of battery holding base. In fact he predated my Cortana - it was the lessons I learned on him that let me successfully fit all the components in her base.

A look at the base. The 50mm PP bases are nice and roomy underneath.

The problem with him is... I don't know how to paint horses. So, since I had finished Cortana - who was more technically impressive and therefore kinda made him obsolete - I put him on hold until I could get some more practice in on painting animals. And then I ended up putting all my time into other models and Warmachine.

The next model that I managed to finish was quite an ordeal. This was my first good 25mm base, and it was not easy to make.

There's a lot more custom work in this guy than you might realise.

And it was all totally worth it!

I cannot tell you how much work this model was or how many times I had to go back and add something I had forgotten or fix something after it broke - I've already written about how his spear broke after he was done, but I didn't mention before how the switch turned out to be broken after I had epoxied it in to the base, and I had to carefully carve it out and replace it (NOT and easy task at all!). Anyway, I finally managed to replace his spear tip. I used a lighter piece of plastic this time, as I found that this way it looks more like the spear itself is glowing rather than being lit from the base. I will probably darken it with glazes after painting though, as right now it looks too light for my tastes when not lit.

I had a lot more trouble than I expected replacing the spear tip.

Having said that, I actually think it looks better when lit now.

A look at the base - the smallest "nice" base I've managed yet.

Even though he was now finished, I still couldn't paint him. Why? Because I didn't have any primer. There is no spray primer around here. I have some GW brush-on primer but it doesn't work very well - I don't know if there's something wrong with it or it's settled out and won't mix back properly or something, but it's basically completely unusable. I ordered some spray primer online around four months ago (perhaps even earlier), but because it has to be sent by surface mail it took forever - I only just received it less than a week ago. In the meantime I worked on some other designs.

One thing I noticed with the base under the unicorn was that attaching LEDs to the bottom of the clear resin just created a spotlight-like effect rather than lighting up the whole thing. So my next move was to try to solve that. My first experiment was to put some distance between the LED and the bottom of the base, and put a little paint on the bottom to help diffuse the light. The resulting base looked better, but still not perfect.

I mounted a larger LED in an enclosure...

... to try to suspend the LED away from the resin base insert.

Better, but still looks like a single spotlight underneath the base.

Strakhov's pose (and status) made him the most suitable model for the base.

After that I hit on the idea of pointing the LED away from the base and reflecting the light upwards by creating a sort of diffusion chamber. While not as bright perhaps, it looks much more like a solid area of the base is glowing. I also discovered that the piece of metal I was using to hold the battery in was too weak, and by switching to a stronger component I had I was able to make the base more reliable, so that solved one of the final big problems I was having. Just wish I'd figured that out a couple of models ago... ah well, hindsight and all that.

The desired part of the base was brushed with PVA before priming.

With the PVA removed the glow comes through nicely.

It may not be obvious in this photo, but the light here is much more diffuse and "glowy".

The problem is that you can't light up the whole base since there isn't enough room underneath, which fortunately is perfect for this swamp base.

You can see the LED pointing sideways in this photo.

Adding a thin sheet of plasticard underneath served to diffuse the light upwards.

You can see here how important it is to precisely plan where the model will be pinned to the base.

I wanted to do the same thing for Alexia, which was a real exercise in compressing the components as far as possible and making efficient use of the space, as well as soldering in tight spaces.

I think I screwed up the LED angle somehow because the front is much brighter.

Careful planning was required to leave as much empty space as possible.

BOOM! Let there be lights!

Which brings us up to the present. Now that my primer is here I can finally start painting these fellows, but I'm just so painfully slow...

Currently I have plans for another way of lighting up the entire base that I think could work; I have a several models that I'd like to do if it works. I'm also halfway through a Space Marine with a light-up hammer that I've been wanting to do for ages, but I've had some problem with that one so he's on hold for the foreseeable future.

The good news (for me) is that PowerdPlay powered bases start at 40mm and up, and add a bit of height to the base. That means my completely-normal-sized 30mm and only-slightly-high 25mm bases are still somewhat unique. I've actually seen several illuminated models on 25mm bases (or smaller; I've seen an entire WFB army that lit up), so not that unique, though I think I add less height to mine than most (in theory I only need to add about 1mm depending on the model, though my only good 25mm base right now has about 2mm extra). I take some pride from that.

Seasick Sanguinary Guard

I painted this model for a friend. I took it as an opportunity to experiment a bit, and the results are... interesting. I don't think it really suits the model, but painting gold this way might work for, say, an undead model or something like that.

I've nicknamed him "Seasick Steve" after the singer of the same name, simply because the name seems to fit. I was in a bit of a hurry to finish the model so I didn't spend as much time as I might otherwise have, but I think it still came out well except for the colour not really working for the model. Basically I painted it in normal golds and bronzes, then applied a green glaze, then drybrushed with gold. This turned out very greenish and not shaded enough, so I used Armypainter Quickshade strong tone on top of that, which reduced the green-ness by covering the deepest areas and generally adding a bit of brown.

The base was interesting; I was trying something new, the results are much more subtle than I expected, though still quite cool:

Basically after priming the model I stuck some little "battlefield rocks" on to match the rock that's part of the model's foot, then covered it all with a layer of Agrellan Earth. Once that had dried and cracked, I painted watered down orange into the cracks (it took several coats to get it to build up in some areas, seems it kept getting "wicked" into hidden hollows), then brushed on black, then drybrushed it with dark grey to avoid overpowering the orange. While the black looks quite flat and the orange isn't bright enough and the cracks are too small to be easily visible from more than a few inches away, it looks pretty good up close...


While I'm not satisfied with the model overall, I think it looks pretty good considering how much less time I spent on it than usual. It makes me feel that there is actually hope for me to paint a small army if I use a simple colour scheme and don't spend too much time on highlights, and use shortcuts like army painter. Maybe someday I actually will have a fully painted force on the table. Maybe. Hey, it could happen, right?

The long overdue light-up Marine

I actually finished assembling this guy almost a year ago (according to the dates on the photos), in fact I primed him at the same time as my first light-up model. I guess I was a little burned out on Space Marines as I haven't painted any since these scouts, and they don't really count as they aren't even wearing power armour. I was pretty burned out on trying to put lights in my models too, as I'd been working on it for ages by that point.

But as I mentioned in a previous post, I've made great strides in making powered bases recently, so I thought I'd finish off the last of my old prototypes. Plus I really liked the model as I put a fair bit of work into the conversion, so I thought I might as well paint it. Fair warning, this is going to be a REALLY long post as a LOT of work and experimentation went into this guy - if you count this then I've been looking at lighting up my minis for well over three years now - and I wanted to write about it for my own benefit.

I was building an assault squad back in 5th when vehicles were everywhere and it was traditional to put a "hidden fist" in every squad to give it punch. As I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetics of power fists, I opted for a hammer instead. And just to give him that truly heroic resilience, I added a shield as well. The way wound allocation went back in fifth, I could have allocated any low AP attacks to him instead of regular attacks, meaning I could allocate wounds in such a way that his survive-ability wouldn't be affected but that of his squad would be greatly enhanced. I reckon it's still how I'd run an assault sergeant in sixth to give him some punch in challenges.

I call him Daedalus. When you say "Icarus" people think "Flew too close to the sun: wings melted, died". Well, Daedalus was his father, he built the wings, and he didn't fly too close to the sun and didn't die. In other words, he was the one who knew what he was doing.

I tried to put an LED in his hammer, but I just couldn't fit two cables down the shaft without taking out too much material and compromising the strength. In the end I decided to leave that for another model and just put an LED in his jump pack.

However, just to make things harder on myself, I decided to make the jump pack removable. Well, OK, it was to increase his versatility and it also didn't sound much harder at the time, but it turned out to be quite frustrating to get it to work. Still, the result is a more versatile model.

To do this I used two magnets which served to attach the jump pack and carry the current. Now, you can't really solder a wire to a magnet without destroying, or at least weakening, it's magnetism. So what I did was solder wires to magnets, then let that stick itself to the back of the actual magnet that formed the connection. Even without magnetism of it's own, it would still be ferromagnetic allowing the second magnet to attach to it. The second magnet would then be glued in place in the model, and the same arrangement would be repeated on the other piece.

I wanted the pose to be very dynamic, with his whole body twisted back and his arm drawn back to deliver a crushing blow with the hammer, his other arm holding up the shield to block incoming fire until the last moment. It took a little work to pose the arms (Space Marine arms aren't usually posed held too far out from the body as it can interfere with the pauldrons on the shoulders (let's face it, those things aren't designed for letting the wearer do anything as unnecessary as raising his arms), but it came out OK in the end.

I don't like the two-piece GW thunder hammers, I just wanted a single massive block of hammer (like the Coteaz or the Master of the Fleet), so I made one out of greenstuff. The arm/shaft was a Sanguinary Guard axe arm (I may have had to file some gems off, not really sure). The shield was a Celtic Shield from Scibor Miniatures.

What with the big old hammer and decorative shield, I wanted him to look "knightly" and gothic. However I also wanted to keep his armour as utilitarian as possible - on planes and race cars every ounce counts, I figured a guy who goes flying through the air for the Emperor would value every bit of speed and range over ostentatious un-aerodynamic decoration. And purity seals? Flappy bits of paper that would get torn off in the rushing air or sucked into an air intake or something? Forget about it! So I used the simplest, plainest parts I could - the weapons being the exception.

I was using Black Templar heads on the rest of the squad, so I wanted his head to look a little different. I took a Grey Knight head and filed the front down to make it less pronounced, then filed some new "air" holes in the front left side. The result looks about halfway between a Grey Knight and a Black Templar helmet. This model was from the first batch using my new shoulder pads; I take plain shoulder pads, file off the rims to make them a little smaller, and fill any details. I did give him a slightly more "archaic" torso than the standard assault marine, and greenstuffed a shield across the front to replace the existing symbol (I think it may have been a Black Templar symbol). Of course I sculpted the Sentinels Eternal symbol on his left pauldron. A standard jump pack would not have left room for his hammer and would have blocked his view, plus I would have had to use 2 LEDs instead of one, so I used a Sanguinary Guard jump pack (sans wings) instead.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the model except that I wanted to paint him in metallics. I've already got a Grey Knight and I'm hoping to paint a bunch more eventually, and I already have a bronze marine, so I decided to go darker on the body with bright details for contrast. I basecoated him in Calthan Brown then Tin Bitz. Some details were painted up to Dwarf Bronze, and most of the decorations were brought up to gold. I washed him with Devlan Mud, but that just dulled the Tin Bitz without adding any shading or contrast, so next time I won't bother. I then edge highlighted with one shade higher so Tin Bitz was highlighted with Dwarf Bronze, Dwarf Bronze with gold, and gold with a mix of gold and Mithril Silver.

At this point there wasn't any contrast on the brighter metals, so I carefully painted Army Painter Quickshade strong tone onto the bronze and gold areas. I ended up giving the shield a couple of layers to really create contrast, then carefully touched up the gold on the raised areas.

I hadn't sculpted anything onto his right pauldron as I didn't have any ideas, so I decided to leave it smooth and paint something on. While painting I came up with the idea of putting lines of "text" across it to make it look like he had scripture engraved into his armour. The thing is, once I had done that (in Mithril Silver for maximum brightness), the rest of his armour looked really boring. I think it might have been fine if he was in brighter colours, like gold or silver, but as it was my original plan to keep it plain was backfiring. So I went ahead and just painted "scripture"across every bit of armour large enough for me to scribble a line across.

I think that turned out quite well actually; it makes him look very devoted as the only decoration on his armour is his chapter symbol and his holy texts, plus it's a rather unique effect (I don't remember seeing it used to this extent before anyway). The size and quality of the "text" is highly inconsistent, but it's the best I could do over so many different hard-to-reach areas, so I'm happy with it.

I originally considered painting the hammer head in gold to match the shield, but I wanted it to stand out, and the idea of white marble really appealed to me. I found a tutorial written by Abaroth on how to paint various shades of marble, and while there's still room for improvement in my technique, I think it came out reasonably well in the end.

I used this piece of wall to practice painting marble; each section is slightly different.

I varnished him in 'Ardcoat as it brightens the colours a bit and I figured he would look good shiny. I used a Vallejo brush on matt varnish for the base and hammer shaft. It's the only brush-on matt varnish I've found that actually works, and it works really well and dries quickly.


Of course, it was always the lights that took the most work. After trying a number of different approaches, I settled on making a completely new base from breadboard and plasticard. This allowed me to make it a bit more spacious by not sloping the sides, create cut-outs in the sides for the battery and switch, and to save room by not needing wires. Soldering was a whole lot easier, and it made it much easier to fashion a terminal / battery retaining "spring" from a paperclip soldered into the existing holes. On the down side, I was still figuring out liquid greenstuff at the time and I didn't to a very good job of filling the holes in the top to a smooth finish, but luckily a thick layer of paint and good matt varnish seem to have done a good job of hiding the problem.

I tried using a disc cutting saw on a pillar drill to cut the breadboard disc, but it created a large hole in the middle, which was a problem. I found I could get a smaller hole when I just snapped a roughly circular disc out of breadboard, attached a small screw through the middle, and used the drill to file away the outside against a large file until it was the right size. You can see it on top of a standard base in the third photo:

I used a circle cutter to cut plasticard discs. When I tried to cut into the plasticard using the blade in the typical fashion it took half an hour of finger-blistering effort to cut out a disc. I mean that literally; it took half an hour and I had blisters afterwards. And the edge was a bit of a mess too. The problem is that the blade got wedged into the the thick plastic and it was very difficult to continue to exert downwards force. However, when I tried spinning it the other way, I found that the back of the blade carved neat little strips of plastic off the top, and within five minutes I had a clean disc of plasticard in my hand.

After assembling the inner components of the base, I put a ring of plasticard around the outside (with channels cut right through for the battery and switch), filled it with milliput for strength and weight, and capped it with another thin disc (with cutouts around the magnet and "spring" in order to keep the thickness down). The result is a functional powered base of the same diameter as a standard GW 25mm base, and only a millimetre or two thicker.

I forgot to take a WIP picture of the components, but here's the finished base.

This base took a lot of effort to make, with careful positioning of component on the breadboard, scratching off sections of copper, and shaping of breadboard and plasticard necessary. The result is not the same shape as a standard base, it looks a little rough, and the switch and battery slot are visible from the outside. It's also very vulnerable to scratches around the switch and battery slot. My new bases are much better and I'm finding them easier to make, but more on that in my next post.

As a parting shot, here's a picture of my first successful lit model, but with a new battery (unfortunately it seems the battery I used when taking pictures for the old post was a little run down and the pictures didn't end up as impressive as a result):