This SpongeBob Warhammer army was handmade from ‘cold porcelain’, a DIY modelling material you can create at home with cornstarch and PVA glue. Argentinian wargamer Daniel DeMonte shared photos of the army in the Super Cheap Wargaming Facebook group on Monday.
DeMonte started wargaming “in the middle of the pandemic”. He says it’s very difficult to get original kits from Games Workshop or Mantic Games in Argentina due to the “devaluation of our local currency”. Necessity is the mother of invention, however, and he’s posted many budget creations into the Super Cheap Wargaming group. He estimates he spent three weeks creating the whole SpongeBob army.
DeMonte will use the figures as a Trident Realms army in the Kings of War wargame. Although Kings of War is made by Mantic Games rather than Games Workshop, it is something of a spiritual sibling to the venerable Warhammer Fantasy Battles – both games are about manoeuvring large blocks of fantasy infantry.
The first edition of Kings of War’s rules were written by a former Warhammer designer, Alessio Cavatore, and when GW blew up the original Warhammer The Old World universe, Mantic quickly purloined Warhammer’s motto ‘The Game of Fantasy Battles” to use on Kings of War.
Unlike its older cousin, Kings of War is very quick to play, one reason it’s on our list of the best miniature wargames. It’s also a treat if, like DeMonte, you enjoy converting and painting miniatures, as the game’s community is very accepting of proxies. There are rules to play with models from many Age of Sigmar armies if you have an existing collection.
DeMonte recommends Warhammer 40k: Kill Team and skirmish game Frostgrave to fellow craft fans: “the compelling need for scenery allowed me to dabble in scale architecture”, he says. He adds that post-apocalyptic racing game Gaslands is “an excellent low budget game thanks to the fact that you only need a few cars to start”.
Wargaming remains an expensive hobby, more so for people outside the Anglo-American world. We’ve written previously about one ingenious hobbyist who created a 2mm-scale Napoleonic game using nothing but rice and broken pasta.