Adeptus Titanicus scenery tutorial

After building my Legio Ignatum titans I had to make some scenery for them. You can't have your poor titans stomping around an empty field after all. GW offers some pretty nifty kits to build scenery with. But (in my very humble opinion) you don't quite get enough scenery with just one kit. Also simply building ready-to-go plastic terrain doesn't quite scratch my hobby itch. So I went a bit wild with the Manufactorum Imperialis kit and made this.

Now we have something to fight over.

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.

Warhammer Townscape challenge part 2: actually building something (35. Tower)

Oh dear I seem to be stuck in one of those 'tear-off calendar losing it's pages' time-passes shots. This Sunday I realized August is almost over and I had yet to get to building my Townscape Challenge. Missing the deadline is unacceptable of course. Long story short: I powered on the hot-wire cutter and went to work on a bit of high density polystyrene. Here is the (almost) end result. 

The outline of my interpretation of building 35 of the Townscape set.

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...

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...

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.

Prince Imrik rides forth again

A while back I found yet another mystery bag in my box of old miniatures. I upended the contents and out rolled an original Prince Imrik. That was a stroke of fortune (well to be honest I was looking for old High Elves to add to my Lumineth, but lets ignore that bit and focus on the sheer surprise ;) ). Long story short (yes I cut and pasted a too long intro that was originally here): Prince Imrik rides forth again. 

"I walk through the Dreaming Halls and I feel change in the wind. In the rhythm of their slumber, I see omens. Minaithnir tells me that he, too, feels his brethren swimming towards consciousness." <- hint hint GW, please make more dragon riding High Elves Lumineth

Bloodbath at Orruk's Drift test scenario #1 Kachas Pass

As far as I'm concerned the best wargames are narrative games. This year I planned to slap Oldhammer and Age of Sigmar together and reimagine a classic. Unfortunately grandfather Nurgle's 2020 tour made it irresponsible to host a day of group gaming. On the plus side it gave me time to actually polish my scenario. To take it up one notch (and because we can safely have limited contact again) I actually tested the first scenario. Now there's a first. Here's some ramblings about applying old school wargaming to new rulesets. 

With a roar the invading Skaven horde stormed the stockade manned by two units of Dark Elves and their commander. 

Age of Sigmar primer: The Silver Tower, Excelsis, Shadespire and witch hunters

With 8^th edition Warhammer 40K appearing tomorrow I’m getting ready to do a bit of sci-fi wargaming in the near future. Having said that, I’m going to finish my overview of the Age of Sigmar background first. This is the third and (for now) final installment of the background overview. In part one I’ve discussed theRealmgates, the transition from the Old World (the world that was) to the newand some of the other (global) changes to the realms, Slaanesh and other races. My second blog was a condensed version of the Realmgate Wars as described in the five hardcover source books (with a few bonus facts from the Black Library novels). This post will deal with the realms as they are now.