Hello, everyone! I’m Costin, welcoming you to a brand new blogging section in the greater D-Verse/Nexus board game sphere.
My name looks and sounds funny because I’m Romanian. There’s not much I can do about that, sorry, but you can call me Cozzy. I met Scott and Jay back in 2018 and have been involved with Nexus in multiple capacities ever since. Most notably thus far, I penned the Pit Boss section in the Legacy book. Regardless of any “official” involvement, first and foremost I’m still just a big fan of Nexus and the awesome people driving it forward, with whom I’ve established strong friendships over the years.
I’ll be head honcho for this Nexus-related blog for the foreseeable future. Before getting into the nitty-gritty-crafty stuff, allow me to take a moment and explain what we’re doing here…
Blog Mission
You may expect both heavily descriptive-text-laden posts, as well as medium and short-format videos. The latter will generally accompany the former. The subjects on hand will depend on what projects pop up and how I figure to best split them up in manageable chunks. The main focus will unerringly be the world’s greatest arena-fighting wargame.
I’m of course talking about Nexus, not the US politics presidential elections. Sorry to disappoint.
However, there will be cross-posts that will be usable for more than this particular game. Stuff like pinning, weathering, using pigments, Speedpaints, and all manner of other hobby related goodies. These will hopefully be useful and applicable for a wide swathe of subjects in the general miniature/board/wargaming sphere.
I hope this series will act as an inspiration for many people starting out their conversion/hobby journeys – I’ve not been doing this properly for that long, only starting back up with constant painting and hobbying in late 2022 (I do have a toddler to contend and fight with over the hobby desk at the moment…), and only properly and more constantly experimenting with more advanced materials, such as Green Stuff, in early 2023. More on that in future posts.
Slightly more brush work than with the Nexus dart columns here…
I am a noob when it comes to a lot of this stuff, but I like figuring most of it out as I go, always trying out new techniques or approaches, with minimal regard for the final quality of the product or even my own safety. Strangely enough, it tends to work out, on average.
As far as I’m concerned, if it’s worth thinking about it’s worth doing, whichever the result. Unless that result is jail time. And even then, your mileage may vary.
Anyway, I’ll now be posting regularly on here, and I hope to have as many likeminded companions along for the ride as possible. Let me know in the comments below if you’ve done any conversion/kitbashing work thus far, or if this article has flipped a switch on towards the unlimited possibilities this side of the hobby entails.
For starters, while the Kickstarter is still running, heading into a successful final few days to the campaign, and Kicktraq says we’re doing just bloody awesome, let’s look into making the upcoming Nexus dart columns even f#cking better – starting from the ground up!
Speaking from experience, the columns are a hefty, solid bit of plastic. But, they’re still prone to tipping over if you’ve got a tendency to flail around incessantly while giving your opponent’s helot the reacharound.
So, if you’d like to give them a bit more oomph, stability, and presence, let’s look at a speedy, easy way to do that.
Materials
You’ll need several types of odds and ends for this job, so let’s start with the basics: dust, stationery, and melted horse bones. Nah, but seriously:
- old sprues, wooden pegs, or plastic rods: it doesn’t really matter if they’re round or square, you’ll be beating them up anyway. It’s better if you can get some corners and T intersections out of them.
- various bits of old toys: stuff to act as discarded weaponry, unexploded ordinance, or the chopped bits of other helots.
- sand of various grits: one coarse, one fine should do you here, we’re just trying to create a little bit of variance. Feel free to go crazy, though.
- paperclips/wire of different sizes: perfect for hinting at the inner structure of various poles and bits you’ll be putting down, or even coiled wires.
- a couple types of glue: white glue will help with setting the sand down while super glue can be used for literally everything else.
Risk board game rockets, and some electrical components.
Optional, slightly more complex or expensive, dedicated hobby materials:
- other, dedicated miniature bits, not necessarily to scale: skulls, helmets, and other bodily components work like a charm here and bring the bases of your columns to life.
- air dry clay: helps build up the bases some more and create more levels to work with.
- miniature chains: not used here, but god, now I wish I had, so I ordered some to have handy next time…
Paints
I’m a big fan of The Army Painter in general. Their Speedpaints are my favourite bit of paint to currently slap on miniatures thanks to them being fun and, well, speedy to work with.
- a suitable yellow-green will be needed if you want to get the base to blend in with the other bases’ colours.
- some metallic colours, some sharp, powerful ones, and a grey/black to use for the sand.
I’m also using white here, on account of pre-shading (aka slapchop, aka grisaille) to help the speedpaints shine.
You’ll also noticed I’d already painted the columns themselves – these were the resin variants I’ve now had for years and they were fully done up in acrylics and varnished with a matte lacquer, but I might go back and redo them in the future…
Putting it all together
First, you’ll need some plinths for the giant lumps that are the Nexus dart columns. The fastest way to do that is to just print some out from the D-Verse website: they’re free!
Lacking access to a printer? I gotchu!
Here’s how to make a base in a few quick steps, with a bunch of cheap ass materials, namely chipboard and some strips of pine wood that you’ll need to cut 4.6mm pieces out of and glue them as seen here:
will yield you just about the right size if you squint a bit.
If you’re a real stickler for exact measurements, just use 3mm chipboard paired with the 2mm pine strips and you’ll hit the exact 5mm height of the .stl bases.
The offset of the pine strips allows for you to cut out a single size and run them along the underside of the chipboard/hdf.
After gluing the Nexus dart columns down (I use Bison superglue for pretty much everything these days, miniature work to parenting), you’re probably going to want to weather the base somehow. If you’re working on a 3d-printed base, that’s easy: just cut it up with a scalpel.
As are most of my fingers and my right thumb.
You’re probably going to want to take more care with the DIY variant since wood can easily splinter and result in less of a base and more of a bunch of pieces of a former one.
Now, onto the fun stuff!
What follows is a simple, but thoroughly over-explained, 3-step process:
1. Lay the bits down
So, you have your sprue and related bits handy. Now what?
Easy: chop ’em all up!
And your thumbs’ worst enemy.
When aiming for a look for these, think of girders, broken poles and cages, or the twisted remains of the arena-adjacent paraphernalia – lighting fixtures, camera booms, drones, even the odd, unfortunate crowd participant who slipped on a fresh puddle of Thickspit(TM) and fell into a floor saw, its body splattered every which way as a result.
The more time you spent cutting into and weathering these now, the better they’ll look when they’re ready for paint, later on.
Sprue bits are the workhorse here, but other highlights might include floral wire (the coiled wire in the bottom right picture) and even handmade recasts (one of the more advanced components) I’d made of some bits I don’t want to use the originals of just yet.
Again, I glued these down with ye olde Bison superglue.
Optional step: go really crazy!
Here’s how to make an old miniature look like a chopped up former Helot in a couple quick steps:
Here’s the same idea employed to make something look like more than just a bit of cut-off sprue:
rubber or plastic-coated wire and… bending it. But where’s the fun in that?
Once you’re satisfied with the setup, move on to the next phase…
2. Stones & Sand
Now, it’s time to lather the base in a liberal amount of white glue. Make sure to get into all the nooks and crannies.
It’s not a problem if some of the bits get glue rising up the sides, that will just help them blend into the base more. Alternatively, you can use some air dry clay here and create some volume around the bits before gluing the sand down. But don’t worry, the sand will pretty much take care of that itself with the varying grits.
Start with the coarsest sand, including pebbles and whatever else you might want to plop down at this stage. Then, cover up the remaining stuff in finer sand.
You may repeat the process until satisfied.
It’s a good idea to just put the base into your container of choice and throw sand onto it for the second part. Then, leave it there for a bit so it really absorbs into the glue, helping it dry faster. Turn the column upside down, tap on the base, and shake off any excess back into the container before taking it out. Saves on the mess.
Once this is done and the sand is starting to dry up enough that you can’t accidentally cause it or the pebbles to fall off, thin some white glue with water in a 1:5 ratio (you’re just looking for pretty much hazy, white-ish water) and brush it onto the entire surface of the base. This helps with keeping things glued down and adds an extra layer of protection.
3. Painting
Normally this is when you’d be priming the pieces, but seeing as I’d already painted my columns a few years ago, this wasn’t an option. Instead, what I did was simply drybrush pure white onto the entire base.
Drybrushing is a technique wherein you grab paint with your brush, then wipe most of it off and apply the remainder to your model in order to create underlying highlights that will bring up the colours you’re about to lay down next.
The wiping is preferably done on a dry, non-absorbant surface. Using a tissue or paper for this can take all the moisture and medium out of the brush and leave everything chalky, causing unwanted buildup on your model.
That said, buildup and texture is exactly what I was looking for here, so tissue it was!
After the drybrush is done, it’s time for the actual paint.
Speedpaints have a light-to-dark recommendation from The Army Painter in terms of application order, so I started with the brightest part (the base itself, incidentally) and finished up with the sand (done in black).
The third colour seen tested above is Brownish Decay.
I’ve listed all the colours used below, for easier reference.
But first, a photo dump!
for painting the spikes on my resin Pillars (more on those at a later date…).
in order to add a bit more pop to the gloomy bases.
Speedpaints used:
- Base: Charming Chartreuse
- Metal: Talos Bronze & Broadsword Silver
- Skulls et. al.: Bony matter
- Highlights: Plasmatic Bolt & Carmine Dragon
- Sand & stones: Grim Black (around 5 drops of paint diluted with 2 drops of speedpaint medium)
That’s it!
If you’ve been following along and have reached the finish line, give yourself a pat on the back and admire your handywork. You now have a unique-looking set of Nexus dart columns that are more stable than before, to boot!
In trying the techniques for this one out, the first column took me about an hour to assemble and paint. This is partly because I kept a well documented record of what I did, picture-wise.
The latter three columns took less than an hour of actual batch work to complete (not counting the drying time for the sand), bare base to colour, so this really is a lightning quick process once you know what you’re doing. And thanks to me, now you do!
The results are pretty cool to look at, making an already striking game look even more so when set up.
These are resin copies I’ll detail the painting process of in the future.
An aerial shot best showcases the main value of such a custom job: the Nexus dart columns now seem more of an integral part of the arena itself, further enriching the look of the environment and improving the immersion factor.
The plastic textured board does help a bit, too…
Video aid
I will also put together a step by step video that goes through the above sequences, showcasing them all for those of you who are more tilted towards visual learning. It will be coming soon, so be sure to keep up with D-Verse if it sounds like something you’d be interested in seeing!
The more eagle-eyed ones of you may have noticed some of the pictures here are of a lower, slightly fuzzy quality. This is because they’re screen-grabs from said video content… I promise to do better in the future.
But wait, there’s more!
Speaking of the future, for an upcoming post, I could look into taking these bases even further. An additional painting step, comprised mostly of some fast detailing and weathering, can make the Nexus dart columns pop even more.
Let me know in the comments if this is something you would like to see happen and I’ll do my best to supply the material in a timely, detailed fashion.
Hope it inspires,
Cozzy