Druids!

 Back in an Ancient/Fantasy vein now - the three venerable gentlemen above are from Warlord Games.

The chap in the centre is Susages (or 'Snags', as Cory likes to call him), a holy man and adviser to King Decebalus of Dacia. He came as part of a box of resin figures of Dacian and Sarmatian heroes for the SPQR skirmish game. He looks all windswept and interesting with that robe billowing in the breeze.

 

The other two are Druids from Warlord's Hail Caesar Celtic range. Suitably grumpy old men to see off those pesky Romans!

"Get off my lawn sacred grove!"

"And that will be the fate of all sinners, sinners just like you, sir!"

Have to say, that group shot looks like the yearly argument over who's got the knobbliest staff...

So what will these fellows be used for? I'm thinking NPCs in my RPG of choice, RuneQuest, which abounds with assorted shamans and holy recluses who can impart wisdom and teach spells. They'll make a nice accompaniment to my Bronze Age folk from the last Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

On to some more warriors next, I'm thinking - stay tuned!

Ev

Old Dog Learns New (Terrain) Tricks - Part the Last (At Last)

My modest terrain project has been languishing in obscurity for the last three months while real life does its damndest to upset my personal applecart, but I'm going to draw a line under the blasted thing and blog it.

OK, the last we saw of the piece, it was awaiting paint and groundwork. The plaster rocks had been hot glued into place, the gaps filled with Sculptamold, and the MDF base smoothed over with more of that excellent product.

Painting was next, using the "leopard-spotting" technique I picked up from Mel the Terrain Tutor and Luke at Geek Gaming Scenics (both channels are an absolute must for aspiring scenery builders). No, it doesn't mean taking a pair of binoculars out on the savannah. It's a technique for painting rocky surfaces more realistically than the old "three shades of grey plus a drybrush" that many of us cut our terrain painting teeth on.

I splashed a thin wash of yellow ochre acrylic (the cheap stuff from the $2 shop) over about a third of the rock faces and ruins, following that with burnt sienna and umber in similar quantities. These soak into the plaster and give a realistic mottled effect. Leaving some of the plaster in its natural white will give some nice contrasts for the final wash.

Once dry, a thin wash of black is applied over all. Have plenty of paper towel ready to soak up the excess. The flatter areas were going to be flocked, so I painted them in basic burnt sienna to prevent any white plaster showing through.

I used foam flocks for the ground covers, spraying with diluted PVA glue as I went to build up layers of progressively lighter-coloured flock. I'd never worked with foam flocks prior to this, but I was delighted to find that once they're dry, they harden up a treat, providing a realistically textured surface without sacrificing durability. 

Most of the work was done down in the garage out of consideration for the cleanliness of our kitchen, so I didn't end up documenting the whole process step by step, but I can at least share pics of the finished product.

The slopes of the hill and flat areas are finished with assorted foam flocks, plus Tajima's wild grass tufts and Moorland diorama effects. More tufts were placed in recesses in the rock faces. Small rocks, twigs, and sand were scattered around and hit with liquid super glue to fix them immediately in place.

More offcuts from my mother-in-law's garden were pressed into service to make a dead tree, because this tower has been a ruin for a long time. This was painted with GW Dryad Bark and drybrushed with GW Gorthor Brown and a light dusting of Vallejo Game Colour Cold Grey. Geek Gaming Scenics Forest Floor flock was scattered around the tower's interior.

Add a few tufts growing out from between the stones, and a raven perched in the tree (courtesy of the Warhammer Giant kit, the best source of fantasy set dressing materials for my money) and voila, it's done!

So what lessons have I taken away from this? 

Firstly, Sculptamold doesn't take up the washes used in the leopard-spotting technique as readily as plain plaster, so use it sparingly when building rocky surfaces. It's best as a simple gap filler in this situation. I used a bit too much on this piece and had to go over the affected areas a couple of times to ensure coverage.

Be sure to mop up excess washes quickly - MDF REALLY doesn't like to get wet.

When spraying diluted PVA from a spray bottle, sooner or later you'll get blockages. A squeeze bottle with a fine nozzle can do just as well when wetting down flocked surfaces. It can be messy, but as I said above, keep plenty of paper towels on hand and you should be right.

Working with washes and successive sprays of PVA glue means a fair bit of waiting time between steps, and the completed piece can take a while to dry, so patience is a virtue.

I'm quite pleased with the results, and this little project has definitely given me some more ideas to go on with. Considerations of space probably mean that I won't be building any huge modular gaming tables in the near future, but if ever I get a shed, watch out!

What's next? Maybe some more Frostgrave, or maybe a detour to the Bronze Age?

Stay tuned...

Ev

A Song of Frost and Gravy - Chapter 6, "The Millsy Imperative"

My friend and blolleague Millsy emailed me a while back about our progress (or lack of) with Frostgrave;

Now, as we picked up Frostgrave back in 2015, and the second edition has just been released, that was an uncomfortable assessment. A pretty poor show on my part!

So what to do? All very well for me to faff about with terrain, but if we never play a game, what's it all for?

Remember these guys?

This is the warband as it had been for many a long year; Vaino the Enchanter, Ilmar the Apprentice, a Ranger, an Infantryman, and Doctor Lividus de Bruse, Apothecary-at-Large to the Court of Duke Delius of Marchmont (deceased).

Well, they have some new friends;

A Crossbowman, two Thugs, and an Archer; while this brings the numbers up to a more playable level, the limited funds for a starting warband mean that the Apothecary will need to be sidelined until after we accumulate a few extra spondulicks.

But in the meantime, the new missile capability will hopefully give the warband a chance of survival in the snow-bound ruins of Felstad.

And for heavy lifting and general expendability, the two Thugs; not by any means elegant, but they come cheap.

Finally, a complete warband, and it only took five years! Truly, all good things come to those who wait, but poor Millsy has had to wait longer than most...

What now? Stay tuned...

Ev

Old Dog Learns New (Terrain) Tricks - A Minor Detour

Remember when I said I'd be getting more of those excellent textured rollers from Green Stuff World?

They got here last week! Yay! Together with the round cutters I ordered earlier, I have sorted my pre-industrial urban figure basing needs.

Naturally, I couldn't resist a road test at the earliest opportunity, so I rolled out some DAS and gave them a shot. I can definitely say they do what it says on the tin.

That's a Warbases 40mm MDF base at the left, and the results of the test are to the right. Clockwise from the top left, Cobblestone, Small Cobblestone, the Brick roller (as used on my ruined tower piece from the last post), and Flagstone. No buyer's remorse here!

Of course, that now means that I have to get back to work on my Frostgrave warband, which had kind of stalled at the 'wizards plus two other guys' stage when last we looked...

So six more figures and I'll have a functioning warband. Only taken nearly four years...

What's up next then? Stay tuned!

Ev

Old Dog Learns New (Terrain) Tricks - Part the First

It all started innocently enough.

Like so many of us in lockdown, my e-commerce activity has shown a bit of a spike lately. 150 or so MDF rounds from Warbases, some assorted Hellenistic figs from Warlord and Polemarch, and this thingy below;

It's a textured roller from Green Stuff World, and it has opened a veritable tin of terrain worms here at Chez Ev.

Of course, I had to test it out straight away, so it was off to the shops for a pound of Das air-drying clay. Grabbed a cardboard tube from the stash in the garage, rolled out a couple of sheets of the Das with the brickwork roller, stuck it to the tube with PVA glue, and left it to dry. This last step took longer than anticipated. Like a week longer.

But here's the result;

That worked well, thinks I, but what am I going to do with it? Why, make a piece of SAGA or fantasy skirmish terrain, of course! I drag out a Warbases terrain base and get to work with some extruded polystyrene foam and the hot glue gun. Oh, did I not mention the new glue gun...?

"This is the DeWalt Ceramic Glue Gun, the most powerful hot glue gun in the world..."

So yeah, things were escalating quickly...

Adding to the mayhem, I started looking for hints and tips on building realistic rocky terrain, and stumbled upon some YouTube channels which were to prove my downfall; Boulder Creek Railroad, The Terrain Tutor and Luke's APS. I admit it. I was hooked. What these guys can't do with foam, plaster and glue isn't worth doing.

Several days and a few dozen hours of viewing later, I'd grabbed some Woodland Scenics Rock Moulds, some Sculptamold Modelling Compound, and went a little bit crazy.

The rocks were cast in plaster of Paris and hot-glued on and around the edges of the foam, and blended into the piece with Sculptamold. Sculptamold is a mix of shredded tissue paper and plaster of Paris. It dries as hard as plaster, but weighs less and can be sculpted as it dries. In retrospect, I'd probably use less of it in future and leave more of the plaster rocks exposed. You'll see why later.

So where is this going? Somewhere potentially quite expensive and with a very steep learning curve!

Stay tuned...

Ev