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.

Warboss Grimrak

I recently finished my Orruk Megaboss, Grimrak. He came out surprisingly well for the amount of time I put into him. I've slowly been collecting Ironjawz over the last few months and painting them up. As a lazy blogger I haven't been posting shots up but I hoping to get a few more regular ones up here. Anyway this is just a taster of whats to come with my Ironjawz.

Orcs, Orcs and more Orcs

I have been painting.... honest I have. The thing is I have been painting Orcs, lots of orcs and they pretty much all look the same. So really there hasn't been much point in putting up a post which would show all the same models over and over. Here are soe of my rank and file orcs finished except for shields and basing. I don't want to base them until I know what is up with 9th edition fantasy and I don't have any materials here in Finland to use. I am happy with the results but they take way too long to paint and I have little time to be painting as usual. Getting four done a week is excellent progress for me but basically all my free time at the weekend has to be devoted to painting which is annoying. I also painted another eight not shown here but they are for a different regiment which is much further along than the spear boys. Once I am back in Germany permanently I will base and photograph everything.

I stopped painting the Savage Orcs. They were turning out fine but they were boring as hell to paint. Instead I took out some very old Orcs, I bought them around 1998 I think. I cleaned them up replacing the damaged pieces of which there were few thankfully. I didn't seem to be too dedicated to the removal of all the mould lines back then so clean up took longer than anticipated. The paint job was terrible but not too thick so I could just paint over these guys directly. I hate having to strip models. It takes ages and is never too easy with plastic. I have another twenty eight of these to paint so I will be busy with them for the summer at least. I have the old metal command group that came with them originally too so I will have to get them painted up also. I can always get a few more Savages done as a break from these if I need it.

Laois Masters

I mentioned last week that I am attending a tournament at the end of the year called the Laois Masters. This will be its third year to be run. I can't guess what effect ninth edition will have on the format but the current composition rules are interesting and endeavour to have a lot more core infantry on the table. The scenarios are all based on Blood and Glory, the best scenario in eight edition in my opinion. The games are all 3000pts with no grand armies allowed. On top of that the rare and lord allowances are set at the 2400pt levels. Minimum core is set at 40% so 1200pts. That is a lot of core in any army and should mean that we see a lot more boots on the tabletop. More special also means a lot more possibilities for warmachines and elite troop types but I feel that should balance well with the increased numbers in general.

For my army it means I would definitely have to add at least another core regiment. That would be forty Orcs. That is a lot to paint but I had intended painting it anyway. I don't know if I mentioned it here before but I have one hundred and sixty plastic boyz. Onto that you can add forty Black Orcs and about forty Savage Orcs. The Goblins may be uncountable at this stage but I have one hundred and thirty of them painted and eventual plans to do more. I want to eventually get all of this painted and of course I would also need to add all the support elements needed. This is a monster project but as I have the models I don't really have an excuse not to paint them. The only distractions I see would be Circle Orboros models and to be honest I have enough of them already.

By the end of this year I indend to have a huge chunk of this army painted and bring it with me somehow to the Masters. Now transporting that many models overseas won't be easy but I can cross that bridge once I come to it. I have got to get the models painted first. I have been partaking in a few hobby challenges with some of the other participants especially painting commitments. I exceeded my January target by a good margin but I doubt I will get much done on my February target. I have said I would get another eight Savage Orcs done. I am currently in Germany divorced from any possibility to paint so time will be short this month. Hopefully I can manage it.

More Savages

Here is the progress on my bunch of Savage Orcs. These are slow to paint and it is going to be at least two more months to get them done. The flesh is the problem and a complete lack of time to paint. I am getting an hour late in the evening maybe two if I decide to get less sleep. That really isn't allowing me to make much progress.

I have altered the painting slightly to bring in some more contrast in the skin. It has worked but is subtle. The effort hasn't been much so I am going to keep it up. Green is easily shaded with purple and I have added it to some of the deepest shadows especially on the faces. Beyond that I have brought highlights up a little and with the fur I went with white as the colour where it drapes over the shoulder. It is much better this way. Eight done and that means one fifth of the regiment complete. It doesn't feel like much progress but I am slowly getting there. I haven't considered what to paint next, that will be in the far future sadly. It will also sadly be more Orcs, I have just got to get through them.

Savage Orcs: old vs. new

I thought I might show you my previous painting attempts on these Savage Orcs. Guess which one is the old one? I painted them fairly simply over ten years ago. The skin was something like a Scorpion Green(GW) base coat, then an ink wash and finally a drybrush. The lizard skin cloth didn't have any contrast which it defintely does now. I am quite happy with the contrast between the orcs flesh and the cloth. These are sadly taking a while. It would be great to get them finished by February. I am making a trip back to Germany at the end of the month and I could potentially drop these off and gather some unpainted miniatures to paint. Not that I don't have some here to do but I could forsee getting verything here done and then having nothing at all to do. I am unsure if I want to do tattoos on the Savages. I might experiment a little and see if I can come up with something I like.

First Pair of Savage Orcs

Savage Orcs are next on the list to get painted. I bought these when I lived in England many years ago. There was a good second hand shop for miniatures where you could get some really great deals. A lot of my students paltry income was spent there on projects I still haven't finished. I painted a few of these when I got them but they were shelved relatively quickly in favour of something else. I think in this case my first Hordes miniatures. I painted them rather quickly mainly with some drybrushing on the skin and some tattoos to break it up. I will post some pictures of them before I paint over them.

I am happy enough with these two Orcs, I still think that there is room for improvement but as I have to do forty of these there is only so much I am willing to do

. The skin needs a little more refinement. The colour and tone is fine but getting a better defined muscles and facial features would be good. Aalso the fur is really poor. It doesn't have enough of a paintable texture to do much other than drybrushing and washing. I wanted to transition from a dark fur colour to a lighter one. I did that but I think it could have been done better. A lighter tone on top would give a better contrast. I am not changing it now but I will do on the future versions of these models.I didn't want to go with a grey stone for the weapons so I went with brown. I think that worked out quite well so I will definitely be copying that through the rest of the regiment. Again the bases aren't done. I can worry about that once I know if I need round ones or not. I really hope I dodn't need round bases...

Night Goblins finished?

Finally these sixty models are done. It was quite a slog towards the end but I managed to push through. I have refrained from finishing the bases as I may have to put them on round ones all too soon. Hopefully that doesn't come to pass, it would just feel wrong. Then again who knows? It could be great. I am pretty enthusiastic about ninth edition. While it will be a big change I don't think it will be bad. Warhammer needs a shake up, the fluff needs to progress desperately and be maintained in this progress. The armies are fairly static and boring especially if you have played since third edition. Very little has changed and to be honest it is boring to see the same armies hit the table game after game.

I don't know if I will ever need these sixty models. If the game is becoming smaller then larger regiments will probably be superfluous. Maybe it will be possible amongst veteran players to up the points to a level whereby the number of models are similar to before and the game still plays well. We will just have to wait and see. The next regiment up on the pianting block will be my Savage Orcs. I have about forty of these and I have been putting them on the long finger for quite a while. I don't have much more to do during the long dark evenings here in Finland.

Boarboy conversions

I have loads of Boars and hopefully a load of riders for them. I haven't dug through the bits box to see exactly what I have yet but there should be some. I don't really like the old Boars that much so I have decided to make a few changes. As the heads are what most people will see that is where I have focused my work. Firstly extending the tuft of hair on the head makes the boar look a little bigger. I don't have a rider here to see if I went overboard or not but it should be fine. Then some armour allows me to do some more interesting painting on these guys. A large plate on the front will let me do the check patteren I have done on the rest of the armour. I am debating whether or not I should add a blade or a spike. I probably will. I also have to add some rivets but I will only do that once I am completely finished. I have also added some chainmail. I did this before I stuck the head onto the boar and I managed to get the angle of the fall wrong. I will take the chainmail off and redo it maybe with some plates or even some leather. I would like to improve my chainmail sculpting as I may use it on more models in the future. I also want to add a few smaller details such as spikes along the bottom of the facial armour plate, again this needs to have the angle changed slightly and a rivet added. It worked out decently well though and it looks like I can use it on the other models.

If anyone has spare plastic rider legs from the old Orc regiment box please let me know as I will need some to get a nice sized unit of these done.

Belated Spider Riders

I finished these models a while ago but I forgot to post them here. I am really glad I got them finished as I was not enjoying painting them. I can't say that they were particularly hard to do but they just took so long I got bored. I had intended doing ten or twelve of these but five was the limit. I left the rest of them in Hamburg when I came to Finland. I can revisit the regiment at a later date. I have doubts as to their effectiveness in the game. They are too vulnerable to panic tests, especially small regiments. Also they tend to operate away from the general or battle standard bearer so they can't use their benefits. The biggest problem for a fast mobile and useful regiment of light cavalry such as these is the fact that at least one turn of a standard game they will be sitting around doing nothing due to animosity. I don't know if this is really reflected in the points cost of the regiment. Once I get the rest of them painted up I can test them in a few games and see if they really are worth it. I do have forty of these models and so I could do a rather large single unit. I doubt I would punish myself with that though.

A third of the way done

There would seem to be a lot more Night Goblins in my army in comparison to Orcs. I have brough sixty spearmen with me and now I am almost a third of the way through the regiment. Not bad going for ten days painting. I have absolutely no basing materials so I can't do anything more a this stage with the bases. Having the models done is of paramount importance and as I won't be gaming with them anytime soon I don't have to worry. Hopefully I can keep the pace up over the coming few weeks and knock out the entire regiment before Christmas. I am slowly getting tempted to just continue with Night Goblins and get a large army of them done. It would involve buying and converting a fair few models so we shall see if I get really motivated to do it, I doubt it.

Spider Riders still

Finally some progress on these has been made. I don't think I really like these models much but as I paint them and assemble the regiment they are starting to grow on me. Though I think everyone experiences that as they paint the large regiments in Warhammer these days. Painting the spiders is a chore. I am not sure if it is the sheer volume of the model, the fact I have had to convert almost every spider or that they just take time to do. I like to see a lot of progress on my models and armies but these few seem to have been on the table far beyond their welcome. I had planned to have a regiment of twelve but that number has been slowly diminishing as I continue painting. Just getting five done would be enough I think. I am guessing that they function best in a regiment of twelve or so as they need to outnumber the other light cavalry they will be hunting orat least holding up as long as as is possible considering their quality. The plan for these is to have them operating on a flank where they can intercept light cavalry and hopefully hold them off long enough for them to have little effect on the battle or to drive them off due to the fact that this unit can absorb a few casualties unlike other more expensive light cavalry units. They can also function to hunt down warmachines even though they will be less effective at this. They will probably just occupy the machine for a few turns.

Night Goblin Shaman

While I should have been painting some Spider Riders I instead got distracted with the Battle for Skull Pass Shaman. I don't have much painting time, less than the last time I made the same complaint but I am making some very slow progress on this army. I have recently been browsing the Give'em Lead blog and there have been a few excerpts from old White Dwarfs there. Some of these were fairly influential to me back in the day especially the Stillmania articles. Having read through them I am determined even more than ever to get this army done. I doubt I will hit my christmas deadline but I will make a fair stab at it. Nigel mentioned building the army in blocks or detachments and I will do the same. The first is a 1000pt detachment of Night Goblins. I will stick with the standard force percentages so that it can easily slot into any further developments of the army.

Basically while waiting for washes and glazes to dry on the Spider Riders I managed to complete the shaman. The Spider Riders are easy enough to paint but they can take a while to dry. I found that once I had progressed about half way with Shaman I had the momentum to complete him and so I pushed the Spider Riders to the side. The base needs to be completed much like the rest of the army but that can be done at a later date. I went with a red colour on the staff puppet thing as I thought it would offer a nice contrast to the green. Whie it is fine I don't think it had the effect I wanted. I have two more of these models and I intend eventually to convert them and paint them as a coven to use in a larger battle at some future time. The models are going to be tough to convert but it should be possible.

Forest Goblin Test

Here is my test Forest Goblin, I even managed to do the base. I am not 100% convinced yet on the basing. It is more or less what I usually do but so far so good, eh? As for the model itself I am happy. The green is the same as the Night Goblins. With so much skin exposed it takes a little more concentration to get it looking correct. I went with a neutral scheme overall and avoided too many bright or vibrant colours. The white and black feathers look more natural than say yellow or blue. They still offer a contrast point but don't clash at all. The shield was annoying to paint and I think I shall have to redo it again. The spider motif is poorly defined and as such is hard to paint without it looking like a dark blob. As for the spider mount I stayed with neutral enough colours. The red in the legs and the carapace isn't very vibrant and serves to define the legs a little better. So the first one is done, now to get the next nine finished too.

Horrible Spiders

I think the weirdest thing about the Forest Goblin Spider Rider's mount is that at a distance of two or so feet in a darkened room they look all too convincing.

However I managed to get forty of these models I don't know. Even though it would look awesome on the table I doubt I would ever be that crazy to do it. I will be converting the Spiders in this regiment of ten at least though there are limits to what I can do with the single piece models. Three of the four here have had their legs repositioned. I haven't as yet greenstuffed the joints as I can't find my greenstuff. The difficulty is that when I reposition them they stop ranking up properly. The picture doesn't quite pick it up here. I checked out Psychosis Pc's pictures of his nicely converted Spider Riders and I may get brave and attempt something similar. The miniatures are rather tiny though so I will be limited in what my meagre skills. I would like to try a few feather cloaks though. I guess if you can manage one feather a cloak can't be too much harder right?

Night Goblins done... for now

I finally managed to finish my second regiment of Night Goblins. I manage to snatch about half an hours painting every evening after work and some longer stretches at the weekends. These thirty were easy enough to paint too as the models while excellent are rather simple. There is no extraneous details that need to be painted. I often wonder why Orcs and their ilk need so many pouches when going to battle, what exactly are they carrying?

I want to take a break from Night Goblins for the moment. I don't want to start into the next regiment of sixty spears and end up getting bored or annoyed halfway through. I think that will be my next unit taken from the pile. Its sheer size will be impressive even if I doubt that their performance will be. I have no idea what the new book will bring but I guess Goblins will remain cheap. So instead of a massive horde I am moving on to some Forest Goblins. I used to have an infantry regiment of these once upon a time. I have no clue where they ended up. Now I have forty Spider Riders and I would like to get some of them painted. A regiment of forty would look cool on the table but it might be a little excessive. I am going to convert them a little and I think ten is enough.

Yet More Night Goblins

I am slowly working on my Night Goblin Arrer Boyz at the moment. Work is once again busy and combined with good weather and a few beer festivals I am supplying I really don't have as much time as I would like. I do get to squeeze in about an hour a day however and that allows me to make some progress on the goblins. I don't go into too much detail with them and if I paint six at a time I can usually get one thing done before I have to stop. The face/skin takes the most effort but it is worth it as the most distinctive piece on the model. I have another eighteen to go but with some luck I will have made a decent dent in them by next week. I will have to get back to painting orcs soon. The problem is that they take much longer to do and I can't easily carve out more than an hour a day. To get through four orcs I would need about two hours for each element and a good block of time to get the skin done in one go. I have lots more Goblins to paint but I wouldn't mind taking a break from them at this stage

Nasty Night Goblins

I finally finished the last model in this horde. Forty night goblins can take a while to paint. I would definitely like to have a few more in this regiment but I currently don't have the models. I have a few hundred spear armed models but they aren't that easy to convert into hand weapon armed goblins. I think forty of these are viable as a flanking unit in the current edition of Warhammer. I will be backing them up with some archers eventually too. I have quite a few of them also. I think I ended up with upwards of four sets of Battle for Skull Pass and a few extras too. It is good to be finally doing something with them.



I still have to make sure that I didn't miss any detail on these goblins. There is always something left out I find. I also need to decide what I am doing with their bases. I think I will add tufts, autumnal ones and a few leaves. I would like something distinctive on the bases though and I am not really sure what. I like how the standard came out. I didn't pay enough attention to the check pattern but it is decent enough. The banner flares at the bottom and I didn't accommodate that correctly when lining the pattern in the first place. I was also worried that the moon wouldn't stand out enough but it does seem to.

Bonus Boss

I picked up a few Black Orcs recently on eBay. This miniature was included so I decided to paint him up as a break between the tedium of rank and file. I had to spend a lot of time cleaning him up as he hadn't arrived in a good shape. Mainly the arms needed repositioning and all the

mould lines had to be cleaned.

I painted him up to fit with the rest of boys. I intend making a set of shields similar to the one here for the rest of the orcs. They look really awesome. I saw an article on a blog about making them and it looked fairly simple. Basically just some plasticard as I have a rivet puncher that will work really well for rivets on the shields.

I just need to get the Night Goblins finished first. They are coming along slowly at the moment.  It is mainly the skin that takes the most time.