Scratch building the Grudge of Drong Bierlager

In between taking a brush to my High Elves and giving them a few test rides with the Age of Sigmar ruleset I've been working on the buildings needed for the Grudge of Drong campaign. This campaign is (I just read) notable for being the last to feature cardboard buildings to use with the scenario's. But why use cardboard when you can scratch build. Over the past few weeks I've been learning how not to use my new polystyrene cutting tools by attempting Das Bierlager (my guide to building the buildings is in German, it enhances the appeal of Dwarves immeasurably in my opinion). Here's a quick list of things I've learned the hard way about polystyrene cutting:

• Make sure the angle between two walls is 90 degrees before cutting the lot, 100+ degree angles lead to very strange geometry (unusable buildings unless you're a great old one).
• Put the texture on the walls before cutting the 90 degree corners, <1 mm polystyrene is not known as 'the strongest material in the world' for a reason.
• Don't glue with PVA glue, it dries way too slow, use transparant 'everything' glue (just as with foamboard).
• Don't push cocktail sticks in neatly cut polystyrene buildings, it makes the walls crack.
• Check your supply of 1mm cardboard, you may have just used all of it to make tiles for Armageddon buildings...

So there was a bit of a learning curve here. In the end my first building is standing (almost fully) primed and ready for paint. 

Front side of Das Bierlager, I wonder what the top floor is used for...

Second hand high-elves join me for the Grudge of Drong

With the first game of Armageddon behind me and the first Age of Sigmar tournament I've organised in our region coming up, I decided to put a bit more focus on my High Elves for the Grudge of Drong. Getting every single model in the original armies poses a challenge as Games Workshop has silently canceled a large part of the plastic High Elf line. Luckily I had some models in the plastic/resin/lead pile in the shed. So let's start with some finished models.

Quite a satisfying addition to my glittering High Elf/Aelf Highborn force.

Dakkastomp, first test game of Shadow War: Armageddon

I played my first Shadow War: Armageddon game this week, and though it mostly consisted of frantically paging through the manual as we tried to get to grips with the rules (it looks like 40K but handles some things quite differently). Also we forgot to coordinate so we had an Ork vs. Ork battle (which was rather appropriate). It was a lot of fun. First off a few quick observations:

• The melee system is great fun and gives all participants a chance to shine.
• Power Klaws hurt (a lot).
• Shooting felt really Orky with a lot of misses, almost malfunctions and the incidental devastating hit.
• Movement was quick and easy although GW seems to have forgotten a rule for climbing up (will steal that from Mordheim). 
• This game desperately needs an equipment and warband expansion (where are my burna's!!!).

Building Games Workshop's Shadow War: Armageddon terrain

Over Easter weekend I got to play around with the new Shadow War: Armageddon terrain that was released in the boxed set with the same name on April 8th. Insert some griping about lack of stock here and keep it at that. The terrain itself is wonderful stuff, highly detailed, completely modular and easy to integrate with other kits and your own scratch build terrain. GW has announced it will be releasing the contents of this box as separate kits soon and that we can expect more variant that add to this terrain as well (including apparently cranes). Also AoS terrain is to follow soon after. That sounds good, although I have to admit the current range of GW terrain is priced just above what I'm willing to spend. We'll have to wait and see if I'm going to invest in more of these terrain sets. On to the finished building first.

The new terrain will probably turn out to be very expensive as separate sets, but man it looks good.

A handful of happy Dwarves

With my rather massive sets of builds for Shadow Wars, ambitions to make a new warband for the game and of course my work on getting everything I need to play elves in the correct terrain for Grudge  of Drong it was high time for a 'Squirrel!' moment. The arrival of a band of Dwarves from Ral Partha provided just that. I joined a Kickstarter campaign to have these guys made, especially as there are Dwarf wizards in the set (still in basecoat over here) and a Dwarf on Ski's (greybeards will know why this is extra special). So between a massive built and paint I will blog about soon and another massive built I will blog about much later I started working on a bunch of Dwarves. These are the first four.

Cheers! Now let's go kill some Greenskins.

A Dragonlord, flowers on bases and Grudge of Drong planning

As 'rust fatigue' was setting in I took a quick detour back to my high elves. Recently I ordered purple and pink flowers from Gamers Grass as a test. The one thing I regret about this is not ordering yellow and white flowers as well. Will have to do that at a later date. I used these to finish the bases of my (recently rebased) High Elf (Aelf)  army. I also dropped the rattlecans and picked up my brushes to paint a second Dragonlord. This one I found half assembled in the bottom of an 'I'm quiting Warhammer' box I purchased second hand. A nice find and now added to my army.

Flowers just add that little something extra to an Aelf army.

Continuing with the Shadow Wars: Armageddon terrain

My hobby time slowed down a bit last week as regular life (and a quick digital visit to The Commonwealth wasteland) caught up with me. Also a bit of project fatigue is setting in, worsened by Games Workshop's botched launch of Shadow Wars: Armageddon. I was not aware it was going to be a limited edition game and its anemic supply sold out before I got a chance to order a copy. Luckily I managed to secure one through a friend. Apparently there is a rulebook in the works now that makes me wonder if I should've bought the box. That is not how I usually spend my hobby money. I will try to be more careful about getting hyped up on announced products before they show up (GW seems to be slightly off form this year, with the rather disappointing Shadows over Hammerhal (compared to Silver Tower) first and now this and to be honest what I've seen of Shadespire is not fueling my enthusiasm). I'm considering trying Test of Honour by Warlord Games because the rules look interesting and the game looks awesome (but it is also sold out, what's up with wargames manufacturing?).

But enough whining and on to hobby time. The second set of buildings has been built, including my first attempt at a polystyrene building with the new tools.

Another three rusty buildings are waiting a drybrush of metallic, a dab of grey and color (and a lot of Ryza rust) to be ready for use in Shadow Wars.

New tools to cut polystyrene with a hot-wire cutter

Although half the hobby from a terrain building perspective is keeping an eye out for discarded toys, boxes and other shapes to build with, the other half is translating an idea into something tangible. The material that would be most useful for this is polystyrene, not the shitty expanded kind (with the little balls that keeping break off even years after sealing painting and pouring holy machine oil on it) but the solid extruded sort. It is reasonable solid, lightweight and with a few easy measures quite durable. One thing it is not, is easy to cut. As with its cousin foam board I keep spare blades at the ready and an average build tends to eat up a full set of spare blades because polystyrene is dull (pro-tip: when given a last request at the guillotine, ask for polystyrene, quickly dull the blade and walk away with a sore neck ;) ).

Add to this problem that it is hard to keep cut edges straight a tool is needed. So a few years back I decided to invest in a hot wire polystyrene cutter. At first I attempted a few 'home-build' projects that all failed and finally I just forked over the cash for a 'real' machine. This is the one.

My hot-wire cutter, als known as my rather expensive mistake...