Budgets and budget aids! (The Gamers curse)

So very many temptations this week as my Company bonus looms. There's a Mechanicum tank of spindly death (finally a decent Chaos proxy for a Destroyer Tank hunter), the beautiful new Horus Heresy rulebook, some new Mechanicum thralls that seem to be everywhere, and various Chinese counterfeiters adverts that are trying to convince me of the benefits of using their services.

(Knowing someone that has purchased Warhammer models from these places without a problem definitely doesn't help)

Aargh! Resist!

Thus far, nothing has been purchased! In fact, nothing gaming wise has been purchased for at least a month since I picked up some Sentinels on Ebay.

Incredibly, the main reason that I've resisted buying anything is the as-yet unreleased Guard Codex and the promise of its luxurious paper potential. When that gets a release date, the purchases may pick up. Until then, I'm biding my time to see what comes. 

If  you hadn't already guessed, I do 40k to a finite budget of; 

NEVER PAY FULL PRICE

Its nice and simple, and it means I never get too annoyed at GW for their high prices. Let me give you an example of the budgetary trade off's from this weeks work on the Sentinels.

Firstly, the Sentinels themselves. The Forgeworld Drop Sentinels are bad-ass. They are small, compact and look mean. So I wanted some for the Sons of Sek and my thought process was thus;

Do I buy three of the shiny Drop Sentinels from Forgeworld? 
Approximate Cost: £70
No, too expensive. 

Ok then, how about purchasing the standard Sentinel from a reseller and converting it into a Drop Sentinel
Approximate Cost: £49.51 
Nicer, but still rather pricey

Do I buy three good quality knock-off's from a questionable counterfeiter?
Approximate Cost: £40
No, too dubious on the morality stakes.

Do I buy Ebay and convert? 
Actual cost = £21.99
Yes of course!

For that price I got these;

Now onto working on them and some more budgetary wins.

This is my paintbox which I store my kit in; an old wine box;

This is one of the boxes that I carry most of my things from storage to gaming table in;

This is what I use to photograph the miniatures in; that's an Ikea acrylic material box used for clothes storage that cost around £5, which works as a great diffuser of light.

See?

And this, this is a golden one that I advise everyone to take note of; Knives! I know that this one should be shouted from the rooftops. 

This is my scalpel and its Amazon listing price.

These are 10 of the 100 blades and their Amazon listing. They still cost less than the 10 or so oddly shaped ones that come in a generic craft knife pack from a hobby store.

Total price; £10.26 WHICH WILL LAST FOR THE REST OF MY NATURAL GAMING LIFE!

I know that if budgets were not an issue, none of this would be relevant, we'd pick the best every time and use the best on them. But for the realists in all of us, we know that we have other parts of our lives that money should really be going to. All of this is , is a little nod from us to them that reminds us what is important.

For now, the conversions on the Sentinels seems to have gone well.  Firstly the armour from the lone armoured Sentinel had to go with gentle force. I repositioned the legs (I was able) to their lowest extension, and then adjusted the feet appropriately to match. 

Then from the centre 'pivot' of the Sentinel I removed around half a centimetre of plastic, to allow the cockpit to sit much lower on its mount. I took away the exhaust cowling from each and then the rearmost machinery, and took around half a centimetre from the cockpit's armour, to keep the profile ever lower. 

Enjoyable pink

The tubing that made up the bullbars on the only two I was able to add it to was made from the inside cartidges from some old BIC biros that were drained, pierced, held in place with toothpicks and then joined with a paper-clip. As I needed some glue that would hold well I used some car resin that had enough 'tack' to hold the items in place till it set. Superglue wouldn't have bonded as well.  

The pilots were sunk into their seats with the eventual intent to add camouflage netting over all three. Some Chaos gubbins were added, Autocannons and some hunter killer missiles were magnetised and then all were glued them to their bases ready for painting.

And this is the pre-paint result. I think this looks a lot closer to the Drop Sentinel than its previous incarnation. Budgets for the win! Time to get these painted;