More Stones

Completing the stone circle I started recently, here are three more menhirs...

The fallen stone was a happy little accident. Though a tad unconvinced by the size of the thing (that's a 75mm base it's close to spanning), I figured it was better to have and not need than to not have and want - so I started prepping it alongside the smaller stone. Whether I was heavy handed or the print was a bit fragile (or some combination of the two), I managed to snap the stone off its little scenic base. The break was pretty clean, so I decided to make lemonade and sanded one face of the stone flat before gluing it to a base. The hollow stone itself I filled (at least partially) with filler, which also formed the base texture, being built up into a small mound at what used to be the stone's base (at left in the photo above).

Basecoats, various brown and green washes, a smidge of dry-brushing (all as the earlier stones) and a bit of static grass and tufts, and I called it a day.

While these standing (and reclining) stones are hardly a significant work of terrain-building, I have really rather enjoyed working on them and might have caught a bit of the terrain bug. Perhaps not so much in terms of planning my own building projects (yet!), but definitely in the value and impact of having some thematic terrain to accompany an army.

Speaking of which... work on the soldiers of the Old Faith continues - six more spearmen are under the brush right now, with six more in the distance. I had originally thought to focus on a different unit type for a break, but the models I had originally earmarked for that aren't really resonating for me at present... while the simple - but beautiful - Footsore Picts are just screaming "paint me!"...

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Disclaimer: All links to third-party sites are solely for the purposes of sourcing the products I have discussed, if anyone is so inclined. I have simply linked to the original manufacturer or the source I used (but feel free to shop around!) and make no money from people clicking through.

Monolith! What's it called? Monolith!

Alongside the couple of druid-types I painted recently, I decided to produce some themed terrain for the Old Faith army. And what could be more appropriate than some menhirs or standing stones?

These are 3D prints that I found from a company called HeadBunny Games, and were offered in 15mm, 20mm, and 28mm. As my preference is for a slightly lower fantasy tone, I picked up both the 15mm and 20mm options - and I'm glad I did! Even at these smaller scales, the stones are really quite large - I think the 28mm ones would have been huge!

Painting was simple - a range of greys, and a few different brown and green washes. I did consider adding some lichen, similar to what I'd done on the tree-man, but opted for the green ink instead to keep the effect more subtle. I actually wish I'd gone harder on the green, as I think the effect is somewhat lost.

I've got another three based up and ready to get painted, so I should have a nice little stone circle by the time I've finished.

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Disclaimer: All links to third-party sites are solely for the purposes of sourcing the products I have discussed, if anyone is so inclined. I have simply linked to the original manufacturer or the source I used (but feel free to shop around!) and make no money from people clicking through.

Token Effort

With a scenario for the Salute demo game of The Silver Bayonet: Egypt planned, we were missing just a few things - namely, objective tokens and clue markers! With a couple of weeks to go, I knuckled down and produced a few using random bits and pieces from my collection.

The skeletal pieces came from the Oathmark skeleton kit, with a bit of clipping here and there to remove bows and arrows from hands, and the tools from the Oathmark Dwarf Light Infantry. I've had the chests knocking around for a while - I think they're from the Massive Darkness board game. The relic is from a Plague Monks sprue - this is the second time I've used it as a marker (the first being my original Frostgrave treasure tokens - seen here).

As the game is set in Egypt, I thought it'd be fun to model a few things once claimed by the desert sands and wanted to give the impression that some of these are half-buried. One of the chests was clipped at an angle to appear somewhat sunken and a couple of spare sections of sprue were added to provide the framework for various drifts and pits.

The sprue frameworks were, in hindsight, a great addition - Polyfilla (my basing material of choice) is great, but giving it something to hang on made life a lot easier than just trying to sculpt with it!

Painting was fairly quick, and mostly completed over the long Easter weekend. In an effort to make the pieces pop a little more, I went back after the usual all-over brown wash and touched up the sandy areas with a bit more khaki and the bones with a flick of white.

I wouldn't say they're my best work, but I hope they're fun and easy enough to spot on the tabletop! One thing I have absolutely learned - I need a painting handle or something. Trying to keep hold of these was more faff than I really wanted!

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Disclaimer: All links to third-party sites are solely for the purposes of sourcing the products I have discussed, if anyone is so inclined. I have simply linked to the original manufacturer or the source I used (but feel free to shop around!) and make no money from people clicking through.

Dark Hills

My terrain collections is... scattershot. It's generally just enough to accommodate most games, albeit with a bit of squinting and hand-waving. 

Recently, though, I have been on a drive to bulk up my options, with a view to consistency, and now have enough to build a small rural village or farmstead that serves most purposes from Medieval to Fantasy, ruins in the same style, and, recently, even some trees! What I didn't really have were hills (aside from one old GW hill I think I inherited from a friend). Perhaps this is down to living in middle of the Thames Valley, but all my games were taking place on a similarly level playing field.

I decided that it was time to rectify that omission, so I snagged a few of Gale Force 9's 'Battlefield in a Box' rocky hills and escarpments. I am a big fan of the GF9 terrain and have more than a few pieces in my collection. As always, these were largely usable straight out of the box, though the application of the supplied flocks (two different types, which is a really smart inclusion!) and a spray of PVA glue to fix them really added to their impact.

Simple, quick, and effective - exactly what I want from my terrain! If I had any complaint it's that the two larger pieces don't actually sit especially flat - there's a noticeable gap between hill and table on some edges. Unlikely to be an issue in-game, but still a little annoying now that I've noticed it!

With luck, they'll see their first games of Rangers of Shadow Deep very soon...

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Disclaimer: All links to third-party sites are solely for the purposes of sourcing the products I have discussed, if anyone is so inclined. I have simply linked to the original manufacturer or the source I used (but feel free to shop around!) and make no money from people clicking through.

Board!

Now, I'm nothing if not awkward. The moment my colleague, Chris (check out his blog here), finished building a Ghost Archipelago board for shows and conventions, I was struck with a bug to do some terrain building too...

I'd got hold of a load of GF9's Battlefield in a Box badlands terrain a while back (a couple of years, judging by the dust on the boxes), and had never done anything with them. The main reason for this was the colour - a dark brownish-red. It just didn't go with the boards we had at the time, or with the games we were playing. Having been inspired by some of the forthcoming Ghost Archipelago material, I revisited the terrain I had, and looked to finally do something with it.

First stop was my local homewares store, where I found a doormat in what turned out to be almost perfect colours. It's not too fluffy, so figures sit on it perfectly, and has a rubber back, so it lies nice and flat. Sure, it lacks the texture of printed wargaming mats, but it's going to be covered in terrain anyway. Total size is about 2.8ft x 3ft, so not quite square, but bang in the ballpark for the scale of games I like playing.

The various rocks and bluffs from the badlands range had a bit of static grass added, and were then varnished. That's it. There are a few chips in the resin that I should probably have spotted and touched up beforehand, but... meh. They're barely visible from any kind of distance.

All told, it's not bad, even if it needs a lot more jungle terrain to give it some pop before it's finished. The huts are also from GF9, though I'm less keen on them - they're just so big (the largest is about the same height as the tallest of the bluffs!). It'll also work nicely for Wild West, SF or Post-Apoc games with the addition of some appropriate structures.