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