Warhammer Forests

Forests, all games need them but they've got to be adapted for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. With some games coming up I decided to grab my styrene cut out a base and get started. I have a few factors to consider when making these forests. Number one is that I have to store them at the club and space is limited. I want mine to both look like difficult terrain but to also be practical for gameplay. Finally I want them to look good. The aesthetics  of the game are very important to me, I would be playing boardgames or chess if not. I also want these to be useable for a few different systems so I can't go too wild and just fill the bases with skulls or other very specific Warhammer items, though I snuck a few in here and there!

The most important thing is playability and to that end I bases the trees individually on old flight stands so that they can be removed during the game if units need to access the interior of the forest. The area of the forest is defined by the base of the whole terrain piece so the placement of individual trees doesn't matter as much. The trees are made from the Woodland Scenics kits. I used the small armatures and the olive green foliage. It is really easy system. I use PVA to make sure that the foliage remains on during the rigours of gaming. The benefit of the smaller trees is that they really look like they block line of sight but they are also a lot easier to store at the club. I actually have quite a hodgepodge of trees here. Some were done in the early 2000's while others were done recently. I redid the basing where possible to match but there are some discrepancies.

As forests are so ubiquitous on gaming tables I made two. I will make a few larger ones next. For the bases themselves I added some airdrying clay to the main base to give it some weight and to help balance out the bases as I tend to add a lot of details. I try and get as much texture on these as possible, so rocks, fallen branches and even a few mushrooms. The air drying clay helps embed these in the terrain and also helps even things out so that movement trays aren't sliding around when in the terrain. It also protects some of the little details by offering them some sheltered beside bulkier things.

Fields for Warhammer and other Wargames

It's been a while, a long while. I decided to post here again to document the process of me making some fields for tabletop wargaming simply because there weren't many posts out there that really covered what I wanted in a tutorial. Oh don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good examples I'm sure. Its just that I couldn't find one easily and I can't be bothered looking on YouTube as its just filled with advertisements and clickbait.

The Project:

I want to create a few small to medium sized fields using the Warhammer Walls and Fences kits I've had for over a decade. I want these to really look good on the table but I also want to have removable crops in them so that regiments can be placed inside.

It might not sound too difficult but my friend Steve set the challenge to have the crops removable and that's thrown quite a spanner in the works. Do I have the entire crop lift out at once? Seems the easiest to do but it'll look poor once units are in there and suddenly the field is bare. Maybe it is better to divide the inside into irregular shapes that will fill it and can be lifted out as required though it shouldn't be either too regular or a jigsaw puzzle. I'll need to get a field put together and work with some scraps of paper to decide on what might work. I guess one large irregular piece and then some smaller irregular ones to go around it will probably be the most adaptable.

Then I have to think about what crop. I was going to go with the ubiquitous wheat crop but I'll need to see what the closest DIY shop has on offer, judge its quality and work from there. I could just do something a little different like cabbages but I am really unsure about how to approach that.

My first task therefore is to build the fields by getting a base adding the walls and painting all that up. Then I can look at what'll fit in and how it might look once it is finished. Also if you are reading this: thanks. Let me know in a comment just so I don't get the feeling I am shouting into the void.

Necromunda Bounty Hunter

So while the picture shows off the Bounty Hunter I just painted it is also an experiment with getting a better background for photographing my Necromunda models. She is a little small in this one but I think it worked out fine with the back ground. I'll experiment further I think but so far so good. When I saw the rules for the Venator Gang appear in Gang War I knew that I had to paint some miniatures for one. The first model I found that looked right was an old Escher Ganger. She is a little on the small size in comparison to the current range of models but as she is unlikely to be fielded alongside any of those models I wasn't too worried. I wanted to go with a cold palette for her with some striking contrast in the hair. The photograph doesn't really manage to show off the pale skin very well, It was an old camera and I've never been that good at photographing models anyway. I'm very happy with how she came out and I'm looking forward to painting the next one.

Necromunda Walkway

I showed you my WIP Necromunda building last week and now I'll show you one of the walkways that I mentioned in the article. It isn't totally finished either but it is very close to being so. I reduced the height of the Sector Mechanicum supports that GW make as I felt they were a little too high for the game. I wanted my gang to be able to scale ladders and run for cover in the same move rather than barely get up the ladder in the first place. I also wanted to be able to have more multi-level pieces without having to go really high. I achieved that nicely here with the half level which fits perfectly with this piece I made earlier. Again once this piece is finished I'll make a video and show it off. It doesn't need much more work so you'll see it sooner than last weeks building.

Necromunda Building 1

Sometimes I wonder why I start certain projects, this building is very much one of them. All seemed reasonable as I started but soon the error of my ways was revealed! It is hard to dedicate a lot of time to a single project and it is even harder to keep up motivation once the project is started.
As I have slowly been building up my section of the underhive I felt that I needed a proper building that could occupy a moderate chunk of the table, blocking line of sight, offering cover and give the walkways I have been working on something to connect to. Making a solid building with the Sector Mechanicum pieces just wasn't going to work, the time invested in making the pieces and then painting them was too high and so I turned to the bulkhead walls that come with the base Necromunda set to help me out. I cast the pieces for the ground floor and started painting them up. The repetitive nature of them was fine as I guess this is an industrial building and as such would be made without much thought to pleasing aesthetics.

I painted them ´with a little more weathering than usual, this helped to hide the few mistakes I made in casting the first few bulkheads. It is always a process to learn how to demould these to keep the details intact but also to get the correct amount of plaster into the mould fast enough before it starts to set. That can cause breaks in the piece that seem to only reveal themselves when it comes to getting the piece out of the mould. The heavy weathering also keeps the piece from being too colourful on the gaming table and distracting from the action which should always be in the foreground. The weathering is mainly washes and a little Typhoid Corrosion from GW to give some texture to the rust.

I don't want the building to be too tall as I can't store them as easily then. Also I don't think it benefits game play when the buildings are too tall. It impedes access to certain areas of the board, makes determinations of line of sight difficult and also gives long range weaponry a slight advantage. I don't see the confines of the underhive really containing massively tall structures except in very limited circumstances. I reduced the foot print on the first floor of the building to allow playable access to it. The walkways that go over this level will extend out just as far as the ones below providing some shelter and be at the perfect height to meet the walkways I have started work on.

The painting of these structures takes me an age. I think I put a little too much effort into the first ones I built and now I feel like I have to match it across them all. Don't get me wrong, the effort is definitely worth it in terms of how the finish piece looks on the table. Its just that the sheer volume of the surface alone takes a while to cover solidly in paint and then going in to do the details is a whole other Sisyphean effort. I have cast the final pieces for this piece namely the walkway on the top. I haven't however gotten any further than you see here and it could be a long time before more progress is made. I'll film a video then and show it off. Fingers crossed it is sooner rather than later!

Osgiliath Veterans

As we are playing our campaign in Osgiliath and I am using the Osgiliath Veteran warband for it, I felt that making some Veterans would probably be a good idea as I can upgrade to them in the long run. I didn't want to buy the nice but expensive models that Games Workshop were selling so I made my own. I like the models but only having three poses rather limits their use in my opinion. If there were a few different poses then I may have been tempted. Still the basic Gondor Troops are good enough and converting them turned out to be simple enough. On the front of the models I made small green stuff bags and pouches. These are simple enough to make and I didn't try anything complicated with them. I also added some extra belts to better match the commercially available models.

The finishing touch however was the addition of cloaks. These are taken from an old skaven kit and fit the scale perfectly. I wasn't sure how to best attach them and I only got it right on the final attempt. The first one I just glued on as it came and while its simple it doesn't look overly great. The next two I added some greenstuff to have the cloak come around the front of the neck. Its better but I didn't account for the bulk of where the cloak attaches to the model. After I had painted the model I felt the cloak didn't fall correctly over the shoulders. It looks fine enough and so I didn't correct them. The final model was done with the attachment points removed and this gives a much more natural feel to the cloak.

I don't know if I will need more of these Veterans in the future. I don't really think the spear option or the bow option is that much better than what a ranger or standard warrior would offer in most cases so I haven't made any. Maybe when I get to playing with the army I'll reconsider and get back to doing more.

Old West Tents

I've been working away on some Old West terrain for a while. As I am slowly building a complete town with a friend we need quite a lot of terrain. While buildings are fun to do we also need some more scatter style pieces. As the town represents a rapidly growing gold rush location we felt that some more temporary accommodation might be fitting. Having looked at the Dead Wood series we came to the idea that tents would be a common feature of towns like this as people arrive but can't afford to build a house straight away or live indefinitely in a boarding house. I tried making my own to varied success and finally felt that the effort wasn't worth it for the result and so I went in search of some alternatives online.

Renendra make some very nice generic tent pieces for a very decent price and as luck would have it when I went to order they were running a sale on exactly what I wanted. I think these are called dog tents and as they are very plain and simple they will work in almost any genre that I play. The scale is a little on the small size so for heroic 32mm scale they wouldn't suit but for everything else around the 28mm size these are perfect. I added some crates and barrels to the bases to add a little weight and some variance among the tents. I think I purchased eight in total and as there are only two varieties the additional pieces on the base helps differentiate them. I kept the painting simple with a stippled canvas colour.

Osgiliath: Week One

Last week we kicked off our Battle Companies Osgiliath Campaign. As I think I have said before this is mainly to familiarise ourselves with the rules and also to give us time to build up the armies and terrain we need for the full strategy game. The rules are similar enough to Legends of the Old West and this has caused a little bit of confusion. Still our first two games played out well and we didn't feel like we made too many mistakes. I've since gone through the rules fairly in depth and picked up a few nuances that we missed in the excitement. The purpose of the map for Battle Companies is simply to record who is doing the best in the campaign and records total victories and also territory controlled. Once the total victories of one side reaches the edge of the page the campaign is over and a winner declared. While there are empty territories on the map the players can chose one empty one to occupy for each victory. Once they are all filled they can then only take a territory that is adjacent to one they already occupy or directly across the river from one already occupied. This shouldn't result in the exact same tally as the total victories as territory can end up getting swapped back and forth a few times before an overall victory is declared. You might have a slight advantage in territory but lose the campaign and this could be considered this more of a waste or too high expenditure of resources on behalf of the loser.

The first game featured the men of Gondor trying to hold the Ford of Ranbarad against a marauding band of Orcs. The Gondorians couldn't prevent the Orcs from making the crossing they were just too numerous to hold back for long. The ford itself was bombarded with arrows forcing the defenders to duck for cover while the Orcs crossed in numbers to the North and South. Two forays were sent against them with the Orcs to the North being stopped with a bloody slaughter while those to the south rampaged past the beleaguered defenders to make it to the ruins of Osgiliath and the relative safety of their foul brethern's company.

The second game was a closer affair. The brave men of Rohan were ambushed by marauding Goblins along the Anduin and took to higher ground while awaiting reinforcements. Thinking that their rear was protected by a small river they were quickly surrounded by an unseen force of goblins rapidly crossing the river and charging uphill to take them in the rear. It was a bloody affair but the Goblins scattered the Rohirrim and claimed victory.

Moria Goblin Warband Speed Painting

Here is what I have completed for my Moria Warband, a motley crew if ever there was one. It's small and will probably grow fast but as the models are cheap and readily available I don't mind. I have to still get some captain and lieutenant models for my Battle Company but I am confident enough that I can convert some from what I have. Adding a cloak and some helmets can't be that hard, right...? I did the bases on these to fit in with my standard terrain and I think it works quite well with the models, accentuating them without drawing the eye overly. Now I think next up will be a Balrog...

Here is a WIP shot of the Goblins so you can see just how easy they are to speed paint. I based them up beforehand and then just sprayed them all white. As I warned before, the models have some delicate details on the fact and so you should be careful when it comes to actually spraying them. I then washed the entire model with Agrax Earthshade to define the detail, my old eyes are failing somewhat so every little helps.

In this shot you can see the first washes are laid down before I really build up the colours to be a bit more vibrant. I experimented with various washes, glazes and paints. In the end it was best to go with a dilute paint for the most part as its more defined than using just washes or glazes. Having said that however I used a wash and a glaze for the skin to keep it as pale as possible.

Moria Cave Troll

No Moria force would be complete without a Cave Troll right? Well to that end I picked up one from eBay. I should say rescued one from eBay really as it was in quite a state when I got it. After some quite rehabilitation in Biostrip and a complete disassembly and clean up I managed to get him back to a basic standard. There are a few gaps on the model that I didn't fill but the mould lines are all removed and was the thick layer of paint. In keeping with the speed painted goblins I did this guy very quickly. I have been practising stippling a lot recently and though that this model would be another good way to practice. In the end I really don't know where I am going wrong with the technique. In certain places with certain colours it looks great but in other places it looks terrible. The grey skin here came out well, I'd have liked a little more contrast but its a good solid example of the technique. The lighter skin however just didn't get any contrast over some much darker layers. I'll still continue with the technique but I don't think I'll try it across a whole army just yet.

Boromir

I picked up this model of Boromir for €1 on eBay, a bit of a bargain considering that he is metal. I need some form of character to lead the army heroically against the forces of Mordor and who other than Boromir could do that? I kept him in the grey scheme of the rest of my force who I have started referring to as the 'Grey Watchers'. I'm not sure that this isn't a reference used elsewherebut its what I am using for my Lord of the Rings Gondor force. I see them as a more guerrilla force amongst the ruins of Osgiliath rather than as a force that will stand up and have a pitched battle with the Orcs. He will also be standing in for my Captain until I can either convert (unlikely) or buy a proper captain. The smaller scale of these models plus the lack of alternative parts make these quite a challenge to convert. I can't even do a head swap as any replacement heads that I have are way too large.

Speed Painting: Moria Goblins

This is possibly the fastest that I have ever painted models and well it definitely looks that way. However these are going to be fielded enmasse and as such the individual details aren't all that important. I started with a solid white spray primer, too solid in places. These models have rather fine details so its best to go gently with the spray. Over this I washed a few different colours and well they are done. The only real painting I did was on the black where I wanted to achieve a solid coat. The green is Athonian Camoshade followed by Waywatcher Green, both GW paints. The red was Hull Red from Vajello that has been diluted a lot. The browns were various shades, too numerous to name. Just go with any paint that has been diluted or even just a straight up wash from Agrax Earthshade by GW.

Chainghasts

Progress is still being made on my Nighthaunts. I finally got around to finishing these two models: the Chainghasts. Again this is a sped painting project for me. I want to get the army to the tabletop within a reasonable time frame rather than slogging through these to only give up halfway through like so many other armies. The Chainghasts are a rather vital part of the army extending the buffing range of my Spirit Torment character by 12". This allows re-rolls on all 1's to wound which can be quite significant when you see how I roll dice. Also these are the only shooting troops in the army and so they will also be used for opportunistic character sniping if I can get them into the right position. Sadly the unit isn't finished as I want it to have four models, the maximum. This boosts their survivability and shooting so it's an investment worth making.

Osgiliath Campaign: Introduction

On Thursday we will kick off our lord of the Rings Battle Companies campaign in our local game store in Hamburg. We haven't really planned much with regards to it but to help track how the progress is going I found a map online and made it into something we could use for the purposes. Each victory allows the victor to colour one of the territories shown on the left. Once the map is filled we will use it as a basis for a campaign using larger forces. I have a lot of other things to paint before I get more involved with the lord of the Rings Battle Game and so having a slow grow campaign like this is just perfect. The forces arrayed against each other is slightly nebulous at the moment but we have confirmed that Mordor, Moria, Gondor and Rohan will make an appearance. I intend to keep the map updated with progress reports here every few weeks so that the players can check it out too and see who is winning.

For Gondor

Despite the absolutely tiny scale of these models I persevered and managed to finish twelve of them over the weekend, twice of what I need to play Battle Companies. I knew the miniatures were 25mm scale before I started but I am so used to the larger heroic 32mm of Games Workshops other models I really struggled to paint these. They aren't the most fantastically detailed sculpts, mainly being one piece. They are fun to do however and I discovered a few short cuts to make them much faster to paint, undercoating them grey was a big one. I also sneaked in Boromir with these. It's a quick paint job again but the objective of these is to get them onto the table for two weeks time and not spend an age painting them. I still feel like I did the model justice but I wasn't going to spend a whole day painting him. Two hours was long enough. now that my good warband is done I have to look to the Mines of Moria for my next! I have a bunch of the goblin models that I will be stripping paint off of tonight and then hopefully making quick progress on. They'll possible be my next update here but I have also been making slow progress on the Nighthaunts.

Gondor BattleCompany

What are these I hear you ask. Well they certainly aren't Nighthaunts. I picked up two cheap Lord of the Rings armies a while back and I decided to get some work done on a Gondorian Battle Company as a break from the Nighthaunts. I had thought that these would be fast to paint but even just getting the basecoats onto them took a lot longer than expected. These are still very much WIP but I'll hopefully rectify that over the weekend and continue to make progress with my Grimghast Reapers.

Ironjawz Brute

Even though I wasn't posting much on here over the last while I was still painting. In fact I managed to paint an entire 1500 point Ironjaw army for Age of Sigmar over the last year. I didn't like the yellow scheme that Games Workshop went for but I do like my Orruks in yellow as you will have seen with my 40k Orks. Inspired by them I kept the scheme going and embellished it just a little with some checks and flames. Even a little rust and scratches. These are now my regular army while I am painting up my Nighthaunt models and while the play style can be a little flat and boring I still enjoy charging these across the table and wrecking havoc.

Shardwrack Spines

I am trying to make a set of terrain specifically for Age of Sigmar based around the Runis of Fellan. This is an area of my own devising and is basically a once glorious city ruined at the outset of the Age of Chaos and now overgrown. To that end I picked up some Shardwrack Spines to add to the set so that I could replace my more mundane trees with something a little more fantastical. I wasn't entirely convinced when I got them out of the box that they would be nice. The garish paint scheme that these are shown in might suit a 40k deathworld but it didn't suit the vegetation that I was envisaging for my ruins. I decided to paint these in a more muted and natural scheme to enforce some more realism on what are very unrealistic plants. I think it worked out well.

These are base coated in Skavenblight Dinge (GW). Somehow I managed to pick up two pots of this and in an attempt to use it I've been painting a lot of things with it. Its a very dirty grey and this looks great for trees and plants. I lightly drybrushed this with Sea Grey (VJ) and washed it with Athonian Camoshade (GW). This green brown wash really brought the tree to life as it added a perfect narural bark colour to it. All I had to do then was pickout the pustules/fungi on the surface. These make the model a little too Nurgle looking but I think when they are painted rather more neutral they can look quite natural. Only the big ones ruin the effect I think. These I actually painted yellow and then highlighted them with Bleached Bone (VJ) to wash out the colour a little.

All in all I think the model came out great and I'll slowly be doing more of these over the coming weeks to replace the forest trees I have while I am waiting for the next round of Azyrite Ruins to be released.

WIP Guardian of Souls

I am still making progress on my Nighthaunt army despite a wicked bout of food poisoning. As I am still awaiting the arrival of a few regiments I have been focusing on characters. This lead me to clipping out the Guardian of Souls and making some progress on him over the weekend. He is a gorgeous model and fun to paint. I am almost there with him now just some of the finishing touches to do still. I kept him in the standard scheme of the rest of the army which in this case means no dark blue robe/cowl. I was tempted to do the fade from dark blue to white on his robe but as I have been experimenting and failing with this of late I decided not to. Its an interesting technique and one I will certainly use in the future but I really need to refine it and the glazes I use for it more before I do it on a character model.  I did try it here on the flames somewhat and it has come out a little stark. It's fine but would have been better if I had gone for a traditional blend. Though that would have taken far longer and the point of this army is to get them done quickly rather than expertly. There are currently a lot of projects calling to me to get done and well I can't do them until the Nighthaunt are at a point where I am happy. I don't think that will take too long. I have maybe three regiments to finish off to get me to a playable 2000 points and with one or two additions more I would have an army where I could mix and match to keep the games interesting.

The Shysh Reaper

Swinging into action comes the third of the Endless spells. This one is specific to the Nighthaunt unlike the previous two. I picked up the box for completions sake to be honest as I don't rate any of the spells in it that highly. They are good, don't get me wrong, but I think they are currently out competed by the standard spells from Malign Sorcery. This model is pretty cool though so as a distraction from the Chainrasps I painted it. I wasn't happy with how the Aethervoid Pendulum came out and this is essentially version two. I made the highlighting more extreme and I think this captures the jade colour I was going for better. As for the metal pieces and the wood I didn't want these to be in natural colous so I kept them within the scheme. The metal is mainly blue with some stippled silver to give a metallic impression rather than just being straight up mettalic. My method for doing this could be a little better but as I've only begun experimenting with the technique recently it came out well enough. The flames were another experiment. I have been doing them mainly blue and for this I changed that to green. I think its actually better for magical flames but I am not sure that it would look as good on the ghost models. They definitely look better with a more blue shade, probably as this ties in well with the cowls they have. Next up I'll be painting the Grimghast Reapers and Spirit Torment.