Gaming table finally looking playable

 Using existing kits and the DIY builds I've thrown myself at in recent months it turns out that I finally have enough terrain for a varied table. I definitely need more scatter terrain however.

There's some obvious scaling issues between various bits of scenery here, but the "Garden of Morr" stuff looks ok if you restrict it to a graveyard type corner.

A Northumbrian Tin Soldier "Goblington" takes the first treasure in this game - and keeps it from what I recall.

I call this terrain building phase of hobbying over for now. I have some Antares stuff that's been waiting forever, and an elf army....

Still not enough

 So I still don't have enough terrain to populate a large table for a game of Frostgrave. Having built a few pieces now I feel a little more confident about sculpting something more complex out of foam.

Carved from foam blocks and glued onto foamboard. Pinned by cocktail sticks and drowned in PVA.

Lots of these ruined sections made in the same way. Improve the look and playability of them with detail and wood sections, ramparts, stairs and ladders.

Once everything is as good as I need it to be, slap the primer out and get the first coats of paint on.

Copius drybrushing and a shredded drybrush for foliage....

Now, with my existing Garden of Morr scenery from GW I should be getting to the point of enough scenery for a big table...

Recycled Wizard's Lair

Who doesn't need a bottle of Arran single malt whisky? A top drawer whisky for the money. Not only that, but for once the superfluous packaging struck me as the ideal basis for a Wizard's Tower.  I just wish it would magically produce the whisky too.

I suppose my thinking is obvious from the first image. I made a mold of some brickwork, and shaped the brickwork of the tower in milliput using that and sculpting tools.

 Carve away at the tower to leave a ruined superstructure and carve a 28mm friendly staircase leading up to a door.

Because the height of the door is tall, it would be nice to leave that playable - most games require a complete move if climbing.

Adding lolly stick and hardwood deta
ils, all sculpted to some extent. Make two floors, prime and slap first coat of paint on.

I also had enough Polystyrene brick strips carved to build extra ruined wall sections.

Trash Scenery

 


The Manner In which these were built was almost identical to the previous bit of scenery. I used a lot of carved up lolly sticks and styrene bricks for this wall. 

The scale of the bricks is pretty huge against 28mm or lower, so a serious construction!

A more naturalistic tor.

Then undercoated grey, with some generic acrylic emulsion.

And finally painted to look like the ruins they're meant to be.

Northumbrian Tin Soldier gobbos populate them in the scenic shot. 

Scenery for my first Frostgrave game

While the intention was to build enough pieces for characters to play around in Frostgrave, one soon learns that terrain is King in this game. After building these first three, rather too large, elements I realised that if you're trying to stop ranged characters having a free run of the game you need a very populated table.

Primarily I wanted to experiment with a lot of building techniques as I'd only ever created small scatter terrain pieces.

I started by sketching out very roughly in packing polystyrene a playable shape of a ruined gate. 

Next, comes the filling in of details  with plaster, grout and milliput. It is mainly polystyrene foam sculpted to fit.

milliput "exposed brickwork" patches.

All followed up with layers of painting and inking.

The end result is pretty robust after being drowned in PVA.

Basing a mini, without removed pre-slotta base.

Rather than destroying the original mini's base - in this case an Alternative Armies Orc character - I use a mould to sculpt a base and squoosh the mini into that. I hate removing them.

The 'mould' in question is a base from the failed(commercially) Fantasy Flight miniatures game "Runewars"

I've not seen anyone else do this and it forms a perfectly useable stable base, that isn't too thick and can be sculpted upon easily enough.

five little Orcs baked in a pie.

 

Establishing a foothold in the Antares universe....

 

Test post.

First time in a long time of no blogging. I hope to keep this blog as an online diary of my re-emergent love affair with war gaming.

...which began with thinking the ruleset for "Bolt Action" sounded cleaner and more interesting than anything I'd previously played....