A few simple Warhammer/AoS terrain pieces: crumbling earthworks and a rickety tower

Testing the Linden Way scenario, the third skirmish that leads up to Bloodbath at Orruk's Drift, is in my foreseeable future. As I had to speedily rearrange my table the last two test games I decided to actually check if I could feature the Linden Way hamlet on a modern table. It took a bit of shuffling with buildings, but it worked. One thing was missing: some crumbling earthworks to cap off the entrance. No worries, I took some coffee stirrers and polystyrene and went to work. Here's the result.

Karl-Franz junior (no relation) was about to empty the 'morning ablutions' bucket when the silent Skaven killer struck...

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.

Rebasing Skaven and Orcs for Age of Sigmar

For a game that was supposed to do away with bases, I seem te be rebasing very often since Age of Sigmar was released. To be honest it's mostly me, I just want my models to look right (and prefer round bases for that) and I don't mind trying out new things (like multiple models on a single base). The occasional rebasing is just part of the cost for this attitude. As it stands now, AoS plays better if each model has it's own little plastic bit of the world to stand on. Which brings me to my Skaven.

They may not have been expertly painted, but there's a lot of them with color on, so impressive enough for my tastes...

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.

Making your own Typhus Corrosion

I love the Citadel Technical paint called Typhus Corrosion. It adds a grayish brown color to whatever you apply it to while at the same time adding texture. I've used it on tank tracks, Nurgle daemons and various undead models. As an example the sword of this Great Unclean One was painted with Typhus Corrosion then drybrushed with Ryza Rust and Leadbelcher.

All that and halitosis too...

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.

Making paleontologists cry since 2017

Yesterday I had an entire evening to give over to the hobby. And with the bases I made over lunch mostly dry I could take some of my plastic dinosaur bones and rearrange them in interesting new shapes to cover the bases.

Interesting find, I'll call this species the Coversavous Terrificus.

Badlands scatter terrain, aka: sticking sand to wargame terrain bases

If you ask me any good terrain set has a nice selection of scatter terrain to go with it. Just some smaller bases that make te table look interesting and give (AoS) units a +1 cover save if they all manage to fit in it. During my lunch break today I grabbed my power tools and a strip of MDF to make some bases for scatter terrain.

Bosch should consider sponsoring this blog, then again I seem to buy their tools without sponsorship...hmm going commercial is harder than I thought ;)

Age of Sigmar Gifts from the Heavens objective markers

Not every project needs a lot of time and work to complete. The Gifts from the Heaves pitched battle scenario in Age of Sigmar (General's Handbook) requires two meteorites that crash on the table in turn two. After making do with dice, coins and some other improvised markers I recently made these two. I took two 90x52 mm oval bases, added a 'half moon' of cork to make a raised bit that simulates a comet striking the ground. After that I added sand with PVA, waited for the glue to dry and added more sand and PVA to the outside edges of the cork (to smooth it down). The comets themselves are strangely shaped rocks I bought at an after Christmas discount  sale. A bit of drybrushing and some washes and this is the result. Time for another pitched battle...

Now these look like meteors worth fighting over.

Basing your miniatures for Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40K

A nice base makes your miniatures look cool and can be used to tie your army together visually. Now you can hop over to GW and get some texture paint (and that is fine), but I prefer to go a bit further. I do this for three reasons:

1. It looks cool.
2. It gives me a chance to practice modelling.
3. It gives purpose to excess bits.

Not featured: Lord Harkon (excepting his feet).

Age of Sigmar Terrain: Blood geysers for the Brimstone Peninsula time of war

Last year I started planning new terrain projects based on the battles and time of war missions in the Age of Sigmar Realmgate Wars books. As my first project I picked the three opening missions of Mighty Battles... that take place on the Brimstone Peninsula in Aqshy. The realm of fire has been thoroughly corrupted by the influence of the blood god Khorne and battlefield on the Brimstone Peninsula feature geysers that spew boiling blood (queue Raining Blood by Slayer). The rules tell you to use six markers, numbered one through six and place these on the battlefield. At the start of each hero phase the player whose turn it is rolls a die and at the number he rolls blood spews forth and all units within 6" suffer D3 mortal wounds. To put this in the game, I decided I would make bloody geysers on a 6" radius MDF base with a move-able marker. The end result looks like this.

That's D3 mortal wounds for you mister!

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.

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.