Magnetizing Carry Cases. 

During transport at Adepticon my sentinels had to go in a box as they were too tall, and their antenna broke off. All of them. Time to make up some more carry cases.

• For many years now I've used plastic tubs lined with 26ga steel to carry my magnetized models. I use hot glue to set the metal in place. Though this worked fine on smaller plastic totes, I don't think the hold is good enough for a larger tote - too much weight. I think some kind of construction adhesive might do better. 
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• I line the sides with metal too. I can put death riders and sentinels on the sides and fill up a lot of otherwise unused space. 
• For some bases without a recessed area underneath Green Stuff world sells circle cut magnetic sheets (which I use for a certain WW2 historical turn based wargame). Most of my bases for 40k work ok with a magnet underneath 4x1mm or so, stuck in place with greenstuff or epoxy sculpt. Occasionally I'll order some custom bases, which have no recess underneath. Secret Weapon miniatures used to sell blank bases which allowed pouring of resin or water effects - those ones are best fitted with a circle cut of magnetic sheet. 
• I never bothered magnetizing the bottom of my tanks... now I have to figure that out. I'm thinking of getting some large rectangle magnets. My present idea is to make a plastic piece with magnets on each end, one of which will grab onto the bottom of the tank, and one will grab the carry case. I don't know, maybe there's an easier way to do it. 

Trench Board - Inspiration & Reference 

As spring finally hits castle black here, the snow is melting away. Hit about 60f/15c yesterday. I need to move south. In the final days of prepping and cutting all the foam, I ended up moving into the garage with the proxxon cutter. My garage isn't heated, so this was a subzero affair. I bought a propane heater but even at that it was a bitter February and March here. Not good. Hobby motivation shrivels and dies on the vine when the cost to start is too high. A clean and organized work station is essential. I need to do better at that. Also, fighting the elements of sideways blowing snow as if it were the Lord of the Rings... really not a great start to hobby progress. Of course procrastination was a big factor too, but lots of little things add up.

• Present Recipe. Moving to a dirt recipe of paint, wood glue and sand, eliminating water and plaster where possible gave a better granular texture. Adding tea leaves, or even stamped or paper leaves, and static grass is great for texture too. Over last year's diorama/display board, the texture is much much better.
• Trench & Mud reference. Anyway, with spring comes great reference photos for my trench board. The dogs got very dirty and enjoyed this expedition thoroughly. Once trails open up more there will be much deeper ruts to photograph. The temperature stays high. Snow is melting so fast trails might actually close immediately. For now I've just found some mild mud on the side of the road. A couple of points are immediately clear - varied tone, fiber and texture, and matte/satin/gloss varnish applications. It's always hard to get varying tones just right. More photos are needed. 
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• Vallejo Mud is what I use for bases, as it's very simple and easy to apply. But, a large scale board is going to cost a lot using this, and I also want a lot of varied tones. Its getting painted anyway. In some sense it's not necessary to use such a product. 
• VMS Vantage Modelling Solutions - Smart Mud. The next experiment. Even though I got better dirt texture this year, a big leap for me is to achieve deep tank track prints in the mud. VMS is actually a resin and can achieve this. It's pricey, but to get that detail just right... I've got to try it. They've got great Youtube tutorials.

Goal Setting & Going Forward. I still haven't decided on what exactly I'm looking for going forward. 

• New edition, new army? I'm not terribly happy that I've got a lord solar, Ursula Creed, 3x dorns and a pile of cadians I've never used. I could probably have everybody painted by June if I push it. And, I suspect that's the new edition. I have a hard time keeping track of all the rules, but playing more than one faction might actually help learn the rules much more thoroughly. 
• More Tournaments. I Could do one last tournament in May... but I hesitate on the best use of my time. I suspect new rules articles are going to continue in a steady stream from here on out. And while I'm happy to hear "free to play," and "Free index" this isn't my first edition. Rules may start "free" and even "simplified" but this is never how it ends. For the love of all that's holy, just give me an initiative value instead of flow chart on who fights first that reads like it's written by a 19th century philosopher. Anyway, I might as well get an army ready for the next rules. Painting now will open more tourneys later (well assuming rules don't change too rapidly). The past two years there's been a handful of tourneys that I wanted to attend but really didn't have an army ready for. If we want to do the team tourney again, I mean, like a tournament per month is the minimum to be fluent in the rules and armies. At least a game a week would be needed to get serious about competition (and that's something I don't have time to do). 
• Team Tournament. We've got a real problem in switching to a new army. We'd have to buy it, build it, paint it, read up on it, and play it. I like these new tyranids, but the time sink is going to be astronomical. We've got to figure out a paint scheme. That alone is very difficult on a team level. Also very hard to get passionate about somebody else's passion. I suppose we could come up with some kind of theme to justify 4x hive fleets, or maybe just adaptations. Alternatively, one member could paint the whole army and I could just do the board. This year, even with a mostly painted army, it was a race to the finish line. And, though we didn't win, we actually did come in 5th overall and 3rd in hobby totals. We ranked better than any of our past appearances in almost every category by a wide margin. Even last year we were something like 29th (though we did win best technical display board). 
• Painting Competition. It'd be great to have the time to sit down for 100+ hours on a model. But, I also like the game (sometimes). And realistically, even if I did really slow down my painting, golden demon is way out of my league.  Even Venturella and Trovarion, two of my favorite youtubers, say they can't/won't compete in golden demon anymore. It's not just an hours input. Some of it is learned technique, but some of these freehand paint jobs would take years of practice for me. There are, however, plenty of other scale model shows and 40k tourneys, and (unlike golden demon) have actual engagement with other players and judges. There's a wide hobby world nowadays. Still, the entry that won gold vehicle, the imperial knight, had something like 250+ hours into it. Just incredible. But, for 250 hours is a whole army painted above table top standard. At best I probably get 365 hours in a year. I mean such a challenge would be really interesting as far as pushing my ability and learning new techniques. And avoiding challenges isn't really a great way to go about life. But, my rambling point here is that maybe there is a healthy and positive way for me to go deeper into painting  - like a weekend or long workshop, working with some professional painter over the course of several days. I imagine if I was just working on my own on a projects alone I'd go into a rabbit hole on various irrelevant things, wasting scores of hours. I'd also probably quit at 20 or more hours after dropping it, or screwing up some piece of it. Assuming I did carry through 250 hours, what happens if I don't win? I see myself getting very little peace or satisfaction from chasing an award. I see a lot of non-beneficial criticism and anxiety with negligible benefit. The real question is then what is the goal? What is the benefit of it all? I don't suspect this is a universal rule, but one of personal meaning to each hobbyist. In this hobby I find intrinsic value in artistic expression, a creative outlet. In short, I think the idea is to deconstruct the pre-conceived notions of tournaments, and competitions to find what it is that I enjoy, I am challenged by, and I am engaged in, in a positive direction. Presuppositions on the merits of particular hobby events are nothing more than personal value judgments.