Spiders, spiders everywhere!

I have a hard to shake habit of buying unwanted lots of Warhammer miniatures of second hand websites. A result of this is that I have two full sets of the Battle For Skull Pass, the Warhammer Fantasy Battles starter set for 7th edition. This set contained ten Goblin Spider Riders each making me the proud owner of twenty Grot Spider Riders.

No giggling! Our spiders are decidedly poisonous.

Another Grot war machine is ready for action

This Goblin Grot Spear Chukka has been lying around half painted for almost two years now. I finally decided to just go ahead, slap some paint on it and use it to start gaming.

Ready, aim, fire!

A Troll Hag appears, nudity abounds!

I am making slow but sure progress on my Age of Sigmar terrain, but I am getting delayed by my rediscovery of the Orcs&Goblins (Orruks&Grots) project box. This week I took out my Troll Hag and finally gave her a paint job.

This model is huge, filled with character and utterly disgusting.

Bloody hell! It's a Slaughter Priest!!

Who can say no to a free model (with the purchase of a venerable magazine). Although I thought the new White Dwarf managed to come just short of what I was looking for, the model was much appreciated albeit unpainted. That changed over the course of this week. I started experimenting with some new skin painting techniques that work quite nicely in my very humble opinion.

Following the blood god seems to work fantastically as an alternative to joining a local gym.

Azhag the Slaugterer is ready to despoil the Mortal Realms

While working on my Age of Sigmar terrain I spotted Azhags dragon standing alone, forgotten and abandoned between some tools in the hobby shed. I started on this model and never got around to finishing it. So over the course of this weekend I painted Azhag himself, finished up the dragon and put some color to the banners. It does fit nicely with my other rediscovered Orc and Goblin models.

Watch it, Azhag is ready to despoil the Realms.

Three tips for organising and designing an Age of Sigmar (or any other wargame) campaign

With the release of the Age of Sigmar General's Handbook we have been given some really nice guidelines on playing campaigns. This (at least to me) has always been one of the things that would truly make warhammer work. But from the old school pen and paper campaigns on hex maps (that tended to bleed to death), to the campaign books like Sanctus Reach (that tend to putter out after a few games) it is hard to get a campaign right. With the many forms on offer in the General's Handbook I decided to give the ladder campaign a try at my local gaming club. The result was the Conquest of Crawling Swamp. 

Don't release all the fanatics at once you gits! This is a campaign!

Building buildings for Age of Sigmar Mighty Battles battleplans

As a rabid collector I couldn't resist buying the amazing hard cover Age of Sigmar books. Since then I've been toying with the idea of playing through all the missions from the books one by one, campaign style.

Big linked campaign battles are awesome, even when fighting against unpainted troops.

The Conquest of Crawling Swap, part 3

Recently we concluded the Conquest of Crawling swamp campaign. This is the final installment of the campaign. As with the other parts, you can Download Conquest of Crawling Swap part 3.

Moonclan goblin squig hoppers attack! (AKA how to fix hobby fatigue)

I spend the last month working on a variety of chaos models, especially my Silver Tower set when suddenly the dreaded hobby fatigue set in. For me it is that point where the time needed to finish a painting project seems like real work instead of a hobby and I just don't feel like it anymore. I still completed the Grot Scuttlings but the results where poor enough to put the project on a temporary hold. So how do you fix hobby fatigue?

Add DJ Silverado's Boing song here....

The Conquest of Crawling Swamp, Part 2

Yesterday we played part 2 of the Conquest of Crawling Swamp at my local gaming club Sword Brethren Eindhoven. You can also download this comic on pdf format by clicking this link.

Quick quick send more Skryre and Moulder war machines will send many many warp tokens

While working on a project I tend to get distracted by the next one in line (lets talk about dwarves....oh no later after my Dark Elves...shut up now!). Age of Sigmar divides the forces in four alliances making distraction easier to deal with, after all Skaven are Chaos too so it does not really count as a full distraction ;)

Skaven Skryre war machines, Moulder Rat Oggors and an actual member of the council of thirteen. My army is growing in strength.

The Conquest of Crawling Swamp, Part 1

With the help of the new General's Handbook I've set-up a three- (or four-) part Age of Sigmar campaign where the forces of Order&Death fight those of Chaos&Destruction. Our opening battle was based on one of the missions in the Age of Sigmar Realmgate Wars books wherein both sides want to push a storm of magic to the opponents table half. This mission can be helped by bringing priest type characters to the fight and most of all by wounding or killing the enemy general. We played this mission with ten players in total (five to each side). To find out who won, just read the comic here (or download the pdf).

The Leper Messiahs join my Nurgle warbandI II

For me the trouble with Chaos is making decisions. I actually would like to have five armies, one dedicated to each of the major gods (with daemonic support of course) and a group of undivided Slaves to Darkness. As I also have ambitions to paint just about every other army in Age of Sigmar and 40K this will probably not happen for quite some time. For now though I have a group of ten warriors ready to fight for Grandfather Nurgle.

*wheeze* *wheeze* Plagues for the *cough* <damn flies> Plague God! (It's not easy being a Chaos Warrior).

Enter the Putrid Blight Kings

This weekend I finished painting my unit of Putrid Blight Kings. I should say first unit because after painting these models I really want another set of them. So much fun, so many option, so incredibly disgusting. As an extra honorary member of the unit I also painted a Plague Lord. This guy and the plastic Cairn Wraith are two of my favorite miniatures launched by GW in the past ten years. I really want another one, just to do some interesting conversions on it.

We heard the tea was ready and thought we should drop in.

Ebolax the Great marches for Rotwater Blight

With a last few finishing touches complete Ebolax the Great, sorcerer of Nurgle is ready to march to Rotwater Blight.

It's over there, everyone!

It came from the (hell) pit...

Skaven and Nurgle mix so nicely it is a wonder they haven't been formally joined as forces earlier (aside from some random rolls on the warband table in Realm of Chaos). Over the weekend I got started on painting my putrid blight kings and daemon prince, but finished this Hell Pit Abomination.

So many heads, so few victims....

Lord Slimegulp, Tyrant of the Wastes, Daemon Price of Nurgle (and some friends)

The second model for my Nurgle warband will be Lord Slimegulp the self-proclaimed Tyrant of the Wastes. He is a Daemon Price of Nurgle that I'm building out of bits and a second hand plastic daemon prince I bought as part of one of those 'I quit the hobby' lots. The front of the model has been build by cutting leftover bits from the cannibalized Maggot Lord set I used for the Nurgle Realmgate earlier this year.

Lord Simegulp always gets a close-up view of the meals he's chewing on. I bet they never mentioned that possibility in the Join a Merry Nurgle Warband recruitment flyers.

All praises to Nurgle, our grandfather of plagues, here are the Blight Kings

I have been meaning to build a chaos army for quite some time now. Having grown up with the Realm of Chaos books I know nothing offers quite as much opportunities for wild conversions and interesting riotous units.

What has delayed me for all this time was an inability to decide on my chosen power to worship. I have a few older metal models for Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle and Tzeentch. And as a temporary fix I painted up an old school pantheon a few years back:

The great four powers of Chaos band together to destroy La Maisontaal

Realmgate of Nurgle and the Sylvaneth Realmgate finished

The paint job on the two realmgates is finished (well it has been finished since last Thursday, but I did not find the time for a write-up until today. First of the Nurgle Realmgate. It was base coated in Chaos Black, followed by a second base coat of Zandri Dust (both from GW rattlecans).

A 'do not enter' sign seems redundant on this realmgate.

Sylvaneth realmgate construction

Almost no time to paint this weekend as I had to construct a second realmgate for the upcoming campaign and time is short. I had a free hand (and a lot of plastic Citadel trees) although the concept of a giant tree was given as a starting point. For the curious after the first stage it looked like this.

More leaves were added later on.

Realmgate to the Garden of Nurgle

The local Warhammer store has asked me to build some extra terrain for the grand Games Workshop campaign this summer. I don't have a lot of information to go on other than that the campaign is set in Ghyran, the realm of life. I have been asked to build two Realmgates, one for Nurgle and one with a Sylvaneth team. I'll also be repainting (or re-using) some of the store's older terrain and I get to use a few brand new kits to hack to pieces. Always a nice bonus. For my first Realmgate I decided to go for Nurgle. Time being a bit short I used the Realmgate Wars Battle Tome for inspiration and then started building. I want this Realmgate to have a diseased theme (of course) and give it a completely corrupted by daemons look. You should not want to get near it. I started out with the old base of a Witchfate Tor. I made an MDF base and added a 4cm layer of polystyrene to get some extra height. The Realm Gate has to be imposing!

The work space looks relatively clean, it must be the start of a new project!

Painting the Vampire Castle

This weekend I painted the castle to a point where I am reasonably satisfied with it. I will be visiting it later to rework some of the finer details, but for now I need a different subject. This is the finished result, photograph was lit using sunlight (how very inappropriate ;) ).

I put the ramp up in a long configuration for this shot. The central bridge is a seperate part so I can shrink its profile by removing the bridge and the central pillar or by bending the ramp a different way.

An Age of Sigmar graveyard using the Garden of Morr

With a bit of luck I got my hands on a used Garden of Morr kit. As I had already prepared some bases and green stuffed some gravestones I was ready to make an interesting graveyard to surround my Vampire Counts castle with.

Graveyard covered in dirt and ready for a last layer of PVA and a base coat.

Vampire Counts castle, finishing touches

With the weekend over, I can look back at finishing the last bits of the castle. Next step is waiting for it to dry and base coating everything. At the start of the weekend I decided to keep the second bridge simple, and now it easily connects the two hills leading up to the castle.

A bridge and a drawbridge lead up tot the castle. The middle hill and the simple bridge can be removed to decrease the size of the castle on the table, or I can make a long line filling an entire table with the castle.

Building a castle roof and more details

Detailing a large project is important and time consuming. The castle stands on the living room table and I try to put a few hours work in every day to get it to the point where I can start painting it (almost there). I put up a few more corpses.

You decorate your home with my friend, you'd better be a vampire! Oh you are...oh oh....

Detailing my wargaming castle

As for all things in wargaming terrain the devil is in the details. So I expect to be spending quite a number of hobby hours on detailing the shape of the castle I have built. First thing was making a gate wall between the two large towers that form the entrance.

Sealing terrain with PVA

Only a short update on this project today. Yesterday evenings work is more or less dry so I could hold the castle and the other bits upside down today to remove excess sand. After that I covered everything in a mix of about 9 parts water, 1 part PVA. This helps seal sand and other things and makes it stick to the model. The bits of polystyrene that are not covered after this (and there always are) will still melt on spray painting the primer, but that will usually just make it look cooler (IMHO). I took everything inside hoping it will dry somewhere in my lifetime (hopefully by Sunday).

Sand and mud on Age of Sigmar terrain

Another evening dawned, it was raining outside and I was working in the shed getting ready to toss a bucket-load of insta-filler and pva glue (both mercifully cheap at the local Action) at my work in progress. I want to spray paint my polystyrene and that means it needs to be well sealed off. You can do this by covering it in PVA glue cut with water (a 50/50 mix will do). But as I also wanted to make my cliffs look like cliffs instead of haphazardly glued polystyrene I need some insta-filler too It gives a nice texture and if you mix it with PVA it becomes rather strong and easy to paint. I made a mix consisting of about equal parts of water (for ease of applying), PVA and insta-filler and threw in a bit of beach sand because I was feeling creative and adventurous. I covered deep gaps and seriously sloppy work with a bit of pure insta-filler and covered it with my mix later.

Building a polystyrene wargaming hill or cliff

With the bases ready and the plan in place it is time to build up the cliff and the castle. The proces for this is quite simple. I have a few large blocks of dense polystyrene (never ever ever ever use the white bubbly stuff! In my experience it will destroy itself during gaming no matter how well you seal it off with glue and insta-filler). Just grab a very sharp knife cut of a (~10 cm) wide strip of polystyrene, and divide it into smaller chunks (~10cm x 10cm). Cut a few smaller bits of and make sure to always cut of the edges and points of each block. Then get your hot glue gun ready and start fixing the block to the table (yes hot glue melts polystyrene but not by enough to make me care and its almost instant drying time allows you to work at speed).

First of was the upper cliff bit for the keep itself. I made it first because the workbench was still empty at that point. Next up were the the ascend piece and the cliff bit, also because of workspace consideration. Last up was the big cliff and the castle.

I marked of the ascend in the corners by gluing a few 10x10cm blocks atop each other (2 for the start and first corner, and 3 for the second corner).  and I cut one larger piece diagonally to make the ascend out of one piece. That prepared I let my mind wander as I glued pieces of polystyrene on top of other pieces. I marked out space for a large mysterious cave entrance to one side and made sure to glue supports for the building on the inside. Here are a few work in progress shots.

Making MDF bases for terrain and green stuff details

So enough time has been spent daydreaming and planning. This week I actually started on the build. Step #1 sculpting some gravestones over lunch because my castle will need to be surrounded by a large (huge) graveyard.

Planning wargame terraing and mood board

Last post was about some general consideration, today it is time to talk about planning and my mood board. First I have just started sketching in a nice sketchbook I bought for the purpose. It will serve as my collection of blank paper to scribble on and if all goes well I can actually find older inspiration when there's time to build a new project (Aqshy gaming table plan, I'm looking at you!).

Anyway here are my first castle scribbles. If you can't follow along, don't worry, I sometimes can't follow myself. It basically consists of some possible designs integrating parts of a castle I found in the thrift store.

The notes:

4 questions to ask if you want playable wargames terrain

My Vampire Counts are in dire need of a castle to (un)live in. Also with Armies on Parade still four months away I actually have time to get a head plan and build a nice big centerpiece of terrain. With all terrain I make, I aim for things that a) look cool and b) are playable.

a) Look cool
Getting point a) takes a bit of creativity with stuff found in thrift stores and cheap stuff outlets like the local Action store here. Getting a few bits with interesting looking textures goes a long way if you want to transform polystyrene and dirt into miniature terrain.In preparation I always scout around the internet to make my own personal 'mood board' for new terrain. Just google a general term for whatever you're trying to build and pull a number of nice pictures of the internet for reference. For my upcoming project the search will be 'vampire castle'. Yeah searching is not a very difficult activity.

b) Playable 
Making playable terrain is often overlooked by enthusiast terrain builders.  For instance this manufactorum I build a few years ago looks (imho) quite nice.

Here we go

Let's attempt to make a nice irregular blog with updates on my painting and scenery building skills with a few battle reports added in where possible. For now here is a quick snap of Arbaal the Undefeated, painted up about a year ago:

If possible I will be adding some back-dated articles of older projects.

Chaos Dreadhold with huge Realmgate

I recently got a chance to work with a few of the Age of Sigmar scenery kits for the local gaming store. The request was to make something cool for an event. We chose a nice looking portal building from Age of Sigmar Balance of Power and I got to test a bunch of Chaos Dreadhold buildings, a Baleful Realmgate and a parts of the older Storm of Magic kits.

Let's start off with the end result:

Vampire Counts

Around Christmas 2015 I bought a big lot of second hand vampire counts stuff for a low price. As my second project for this year I've been painting a lot of it. Here is a quick impression of some of the models from the lot. Me being me, after the cheap first second hand batch I will be expanding with a number of newer kits to get a serious vampire vibe going for Age of Sigmar.

Banshees, Fell Bats, a few Black Knights and a Winged Vampire Lord

Swamp terrain

Terrain is important in all wargames, but especially in Age of Sigmar. One of my ambitions was making a swamp terrain table to play around with in the Realm of Life. I finally managed to build one over the course of a few weeks and paint it all up on a glorious Sunday. Here are the results. For those interested I included the (very few) work in progress shots I have at the end of this post. As I'm planning to visit a few more of the Mortal Realms this year, I might actually take enough photos to create a few tutorials. For now, just a lot of pictures.

Orcs, orcs, orcs, orcs, orcs

I started the year (and ended last year) painting a lot of orcs, goblins, trolls and other models. I got all of these second hand or from a very old box out of storage. I should expand this army, and not everything I have is painted, but I got a bit tired of painting green, so maybe at a later point in time.

A Stone Troll 

Sanctus Reach part II - The Knights Strike Back

This is a battle report from the second battle in the Sanctus Reach campaign book. You can also download this as a pdf file.