Oldhammer-style 'basing with flock' tutorial (featuring a bunch of re-rebased Orcs)

This weekend I decided to go crazy and rebase my old Orcs on new-fangled big 30x30 squares. To be quite honest, I promised myself I would only rebase Ruglud's Ladz, knowing full well I would get carried away doing that. Besides, I figured, rebasing a bunch of Orcs should only take a Saturday morning's worth of time (for me, starting any task requires a complete miscalculation of the time required to actually do it). So a full weekend and a few mid-week evenings later, here's a bunch of rebased Greenskins, ready to take on The Old World in style.

These ancient Orcs have always been based, now they have also been rebased!

How old-school can you go? Drastik Plastik Orcs old maybe? (with old school basing tutorial)

People occasionally wonder why I spent time painting ancient models. After all I could also use it to paint the newer, better looking kits. Most of the time I point out I like Oldhammer's unique style just as much (sometimes even more) than the newer models. Sometimes its just pure nostalgia. The Drastik Plastik Orcs of 'yore fall completely in the nostalgia category.

Never fear, the Drastik Plastik Orcs are here....wait up, that should be: Cower in Fear, the Drastik Plastik Orcs are here!

Tutorial: flock basing around buildings and painting rivers for Warhammer and Age of Sigmar

Building the Townscape gives me ample opportunity to make some pictures for tutorials. Let's start off with a double feature: Flock basing around buildings and painting rivers for Warhammer and Age of Sigmar (and any other wargame as well for that matter). Followed up with some bonus content about adding signs to buildings. To follow along you'll need some appropriate bases (I prefer MDF), a few colors of flock, grass tufts, instant filler and (optionally) plaster and molds. Let's get started.

We start with the end result, this is what I'm aiming for here.

Jungle ruins and realm gate (aka messing around with polystyrene)

The recent completion of the Mighty Fortress got me rather enthusiastic about messing around with polystyrene. So between other projects I made a few random bits of terrain. With the Skaven sneaking in, Eldar shenanigans and recently Gaslands/Dark Future, this project has kind of fallen through the cracks. As I did not bring a lot of things to completion this weekend, I thought 'lets throw them into the spotlight right now'. So without further ado: here's some random ruins made from polystyrene, Ikea plants, flock and bits.

Meanwhile in the valley of mist...

The Mighty Fortress is ready for battle

After the epoxy resin disaster last week I decided to redouble my efforts to complete the Mighty Fortress. It paid off as the old polystyrene model now stands ready for battle. Lets start off with a few pictures of the completed set.

The Mighty Fortress is an epic piece of scenery to put on a gaming table.

Disaster strikes the Mighty Fortress

Let's start this post with a quote from the latest AoS rulebook: "One of the greatest joys of collecting Citadel Miniatures can be found in the modelling and painting of your collection as you assemble and recreate all of the great heroes, terrifying monsters and amazing landscapes of the Age of Sigmar." I'll be keeping that in mind as I continue posting on the Mighty Fortress project. It took a slight turn this week and ended up in 'horror show county'.

I still think it's a fine looking moat.

Building and painting my Mighty Fortress (and about time too)

Way back in 1988 (when people still yelled at me to get off their lawn instead of vice versa) the Warhammer Siege expansion appeared for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. This 140 page book has rules for everything you'd ever want to do to take or hold fortifications. Alongside the book GW released a new terrain kit called Mighty Fortress. This is a polystyrene set of towers and walls to use in games of siege (and general battles of course). I got my hands on one almost thirty years ago. As it (often) goes with miniature (related) purchases it did not get painted as quick as I imagined when I got it. Long story short: just before Christmas last year (2018) I got this box out of the to-do pile and started planning.

The Mighty Fortress came in a big pretty box that has been sitting around looking big and pretty for long enough now.

Painting Malign Sorcery AoS models

The new AoS edition promised to iron out some oddities in the original ruleset (suicidal archers ignoring the monsters in front of them to shoot at some target in the back). And that's nice. But the true fun starts with the expansion of the magic rules. A system geared towards cinematic moments and dramatic play needs some things that go boom with panache. After briefly considering scratch building, I finally caved and bought the box. To be quite honest I was planning to buy the Core Rule Book and the new General's Handbook and leave it there, but I caved so badly in the store, my wallet is still crying... Anyway between too many other projects I've started painting the Malign Sorcery models and here is the first batch.

Presenting some persistent spell effects that remind me of the classic 'vortex of chaos' that is just begging to be reintroduced now.

Tutorial: building a ruined bridge base

Yesterday I completed my Orruk Warboss on Wyvern that included the fancy base you can see below. It is supposed to look like a ruined bridge or highway (or something similar). As it was rather easy and fun to build I thought people might like a tutorial on this. Luckily I actually remembered to take some pictures while scratch-building.

Never mind true line of sight and hiding behind terrain: a big model needs a big base, it just looks right.

Badlands scatter terrain for Age of Sigmar

With the sun up and the glue (mostly) dry, I had a chance to make a few pictures of the new bone terrain. Here it is. If you want to replicate this project click on the Badlands terrain set link to the top right of this page (or beneath the second home button if you're using a mobile device). I've added some models to give a better sense of scale.

Painting and flocking badlands scatter terrain

Thursday over lunch I remembered I had a small dropper bottle of the Vallejo Wash I was waiting for. So why not use that and refill the bottle from the big tub when it arrives. Well done me! And it only took me a week to get to think of that... Anyway that gave me the chance to wash the bones and let them dry making it possible to finish this terrain project last night. Without further ado here are the bones for my Badlands Terrain set.

Now these are some bones to cower between. Or was that to take cover between? However you wish to use it, it is a finished set of badlands scatter terrain.