Thursday, December 23, 2010

What to get the hobbyist who has everything?

I was struck with this dilemma this Christmas season when trying to figure out something hobby related to give to my best Warhammer buddy for Christmas.  Whilst wandering my local Home Depot searching for furniture pads and poinsettias I was struck by holiday inspiration.  I saw a set of six battery powered tea light candles and I remembered the Santa Cruz Warhammer article about making wrecked vehicle markers with them!  If I can't purchase something for the gamer who has everything, then I can make something!


The only thing I can add to the Santa Cruz article is that if you use a hot glue gun to make these, make sure you protect your fingers when affixing the cotton to the tea light, lest you burn your fingers.

The markers make emergency disembarking a bit more urgent

After making these, I realized that these tea lights are super awesome and have some other uses in your games.  Stick some inside a building, ruins etc. during a game for a cool torch effect.  You could also use the same technique for the wrecked vehicle markers, but perhaps use a different color spray paint, to create some cool spell effects markers for Warhammer. 

I was also going to follow Ron's Dark Eldar web way portal tutorial to make some more gifts, but it's been raining for about week now and I can't spray paint.  My local store sold out of these the day they were released.  Apparently some guy bought 8 of them - 8, seriously?  Jerk.

So if your need some last minute gifts for that special hobbyist on you Christmas list and you can't think of what to buy, make something!  Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

6 comments:

  1. You know, this is a really good idea. I can't imagine many gamers actually owning these, but they would make the board look that much better. By the way, great work on the smoking wreck markers!

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  2. Happy Christmas to you too!

    Your markers look great, it's good to see someone following a guide published elsewhere. It gives others confidence. If you can do it, perhaps we can too.

    Now, all I need is some flickering tea lights!

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  3. It's really easy to follow the tutorial and it produces some great results. They also look much better that the plastic counters GW sells. Go check out the tutorial and give it a try!

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  4. They have a very nice effect! Thanks for the tutorial!

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  5. Hey, I really enjoyed this article. I very rarely play 40K so these are that necessary to me but I have dabbled in making some before, however, not with the tea lights. This article has given me some inspiration to go back and make some changes to my marker. Thanks for this!

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