Scenery: Super-Kallistra-fragalocious Hills

31/10/2014 2 Comments

The King got some hills for his b’day, a bit late due to issues. I’d previously bought some escarpments from Kallistra at Colours year before last and knew they did plain hills as well.

Kallistra mostly do hex terrain pieces as part of their game system, but they do some non hex terrain pieces as well.

They come in fairly hard plastic pieces and are quite large. As they are plain, you can do them up in your chosen lock and grass style.

I worked out that I need to do about 15 or so hills, split between BoB and AVBCW styles for the Big Games JP & I are putting on in february and March next year.

They got painted in my basic biscuit base colour that also helped ensure any release oils/greases were covered up.

For the BoB flock, I used a lot of the builders sand I bought year before last to bulk out the GW sand and railway flocks I had mixed up.

because of the surface area, the sand seemed to soak up the moisture and contract leaving rivulets of unflocked glue, so I had to pour on excess flock and just leave it there for an hour or so so that the surface was fully flocked.

When dry, I sprayed the flocked hills with hairspray to ensure the flock stayed in situ.

We are currently getting take-outs from a curry house that serves jup its dishes in handy plastic tubs, I went through half such a tub pictured above for these three hills.

And then half a tub of GW “Grass” static grass -so be warned these items will take a lot of material, but look good in the end. they’re being varnished currently to ensure the flock and static grass stays put.

I then did an experiment, coating the inside of the hills with PVA.

Why ?

The large hill even though its a fairly hard piece of plastic gets a bit wobbly because of its sheer size, so I’m waiting for the PVA to cure to see if this helps stranghten it.

More hills have been ordered for AVBCW flocking.

Filed under RCW / BoB, Scenery Tagged with ,

Mordheim: Renovating some scenery

23/10/2014 1 Comment

The latest game of Mordheim highlighted a few pieces of scenery could do with a bit of a revamp.

So I started off with a simple one, one of the small ruins in the original Mordheim box set that I put together in about 1999 !

I’d based it on artists card, added some token thin card paving slabs, a chopped up skeleton, some chopped up sprue and a piece from the very old WH40K scenery, and then flocked and painted the base.

So I started out by giving it all a wash with Agrax Earthsade (a GW wash).

Then I added camo wash to the mud to make it more than just tones of brown. The bones got highlighted, and I also washed all the grey plastic windows/corner pieces.

then they got highlighted.

I now have a much better piece of scenery.

Filed under Mordheim, Scenery

AGW: Personal Opinion

21/10/2014

Frazzled after chairing our Parish Council meeting following the sacking of the clerk, I was pleased that our plans for hiking the council precept now we have found the black holes in the finances, i was pleased that all the council are on board and didn’t decide their opinions were more important than financial reality.

OPINION

It’s a pity the Climate Change Deniers are not so amenable to addressing scientific reality.

Until they do, derision will be reward.

Filed under AGW

AVBCW: Dismounted Cavalry & Outcomes

20/10/2014

For the last Big Game, I’d been asked to paint some dismounted BUF cavalry which by coincidence I had already bought from Musketeer Miniatures who are currently migrating to the Rebel Colonies.

So I did paint them up…and they didn’t get used. Here they are anyway. There is one additional figure that has gone AWOL, who is a kneeling figure holding the standard. I’ll find him seconds after posting this !

In the meantime, JP has been busy on his blog and posted an update on the allegiances of the parishes of Herefordshire in 1938:

JP & I are already planning for another set of games in the near future and a Big Game in march (14th) 2015.

Other versions of events have also been issued over the wireless:

I’ll add more shortly…

Filed under AVBCW

WHFB: Cold One Knights

19/10/2014 1 Comment

Totally uninspired this week, and have finally got round to doing some figures and scenery.

I’d just accumulated enough of the old metal Cold One Knights on the battle cattle cold ones, and then the new plastic versions came out.

The plastic CoK afre great, but the spears are very delicate and I can imagine them breaking. So after creating a hero on cold one, I decided to revisit the CoK unit I did as I know the old metal riders fit onto the new plastic cold ones.

However, I knew that the lances of the metal CoK, being only glued on on a very small contact area were likely to be easily snapped off.

And as you can see from the photo, they were indeed snapped off, even the sword arm of the champion (middle with dragonette) was missing.

So I took them off to Rich’s for pinning.

Then the weather closed in, and my plan to post the dismounted BUF cavalry troopers and Motor-Quadricycle of DEATH went by the by, so maybe I’ll have to seize the moment tomorrow for those two items. In the meantime I’lll edit the WHFB pictures I took from about 3 weeks ago !!!

In rummaging around for the CoK bits, I decided tow rite down all the missing bits from my DE army, and having taken a photo of the CoK on battle cattle when I got home, have decided to write it up for the blog as a sort of project management plan of things to do to finish off finally, after 8 years my DE army, so I can move onto doing the Dwarves, or Hobgoblins, or Amazons…err….

– Finish 10 CoK half started
– Finish 20 CoK metal, not started
– Finish 20 Witch Elves (raging Heroes)
– Finish 10-15 Sisters of Slaughter (GW)
– Finish 40 Dark swords (GW)
– CoB/Blood rack shrine
– 2 CoK Chariots
– 1 Scourge Runner
– 10 Black Guard
– 10 Executioners
– 10 Shades
– 10 Dark Riders

Should keep me busy until Xmashammer. I am determined to finish the army off, once and for all.
Then I can clear a lot of extraneous stuff out of the way.

Filed under Warhammer Tagged with ,

Mordheim: Still in the Boar’s Nest

12/10/2014 3 Comments

By now Byakhee Richard had turned up, so we had a fourth warband on the table and we basically teamed up two per side.

While my Marienburgers took the high ground…

Anthony’s Dwarves took the low ground under the raised market hall.

Against the Pirates !

And Averlanders.

All after the Warpstone loot counters…
I’d hoped to have got to Hobbycraft or similar and got some glowing green gems to repalce the rather sad looking card counters.

The dwarves close in on “their” warpstone (Claes von Geld regards all such designations as temporary until wealth is redistributed, to him).

Spot the many classic Citadel minatures !

Who goes up may come down…DEAD. A stand off between the Pirates and Marienburgers.

We had a third game (barely photo’d), and my really poor dice rolling meant I scarpered early….

Still a good day had by all and we have the startings of a return to an old game that is great.

Filed under Mordheim, Scenery, Warhammer

Mordheim: Into the Boar’s Nest

12/10/2014 1 Comment

The Boar’s Nest is a small area of Mordheim rarely visited by warbands for many years and contains many treasures unheard of. yesterday, four warbands ventured into the area in search of fame and fortune.

Well ok, I named it the Boar’s Nest, because I served up pizza with boar steak topping (boar steak lightly fired, finely chopped red onion, and fresh parsley). It went down well with the Byakhees.

I dug out my Mordheim scenery, not used much for the last decade, and there was an unfinished piece of scenery ! Good job a couple of the Byakhees were late as I painted the underside of the base and the top of the base just in time.

We started deploying our warbands. (Jim’s pirates bottom left)

And Anthony’s Dwarf Slayer Pirates (Long Drong’s) not as painted.

And my own Claes Von Geld’s Wealth Redistribution Agents in spectacular ORANGE…makes a change to black, dark green and or khaki…

the first game was hunting the treasure chest, and my warband got crushed between Jim and Anthony’s warbands rolled badly and died horribly.

Even though we did try and get stuck in…

Filed under Mordheim, Scenery, Warhammer Tagged with , , ,

Friday Film: The Walking Dead Season 4

10/10/2014 2 Comments

My latest DVD boxed set is The Walking Dead, Season 4.

The first few episodes felt like a bit of a re-run of the thrid season on the first viewing but they built up wonderfully to the (not) Governor having a major set to with Rick et al in the prison.

Carol, whom I commented on previously really went for the survivalist mode indoctrinating the kids in knife craft before being kicked out, but then re-surfacing in the later episodes and being on full survivalist mode.

The second half of the season seems a bit bitty at first, but slowly the threads gather together at Terminus.

LONG PIG

Its an excellent programme and worth every penny to buy on DVD and watch again and again. Chock full of ideas for scenarios for RPGs and skirmish games.

As commented, this programme is relatively free of profanity, the DVD final episode breaks with that:

Also, the final line of the season is uncensored, with Rick saying “They’re fucking with the wrong people.”

These are the things that were and shall be again…

Filed under Film Tagged with ,

Mordheim: Revisiting a new Level

09/10/2014 2 Comments

About 14 years ago, I built a load of scenery for Mordheim which was a regular game my then group of gaming friends played weekly. Taking a leaf out of GW’s book, I added in a second level to the gaming table.

I made a carcass out of foamboard with a top of artists card, to which I added A4 sized sheets of textured cobblestone from railway modelling sources.

This gave another level to the basic board – the entire thing is about 20 inches square, so not to be ignored, but really disrupts the playing area.

That was 14 years ago, and the passing years haven’t been kind. So in preparation for this weekends gaming session which is going to be Mordheim, I decided to drag it out and renovate it.

It had warped over time, and due to the various glues used, and the foamboard carcass had never been exact.

And it had never seen a lick of paint – we were using bare chipboard pieces as a table back then !

A lot of glue later, to make it all stick together, I left it overnight, weighed down by two boxes of lead figures (AVBCW actually), to flatten it all out.

I then used a new sheet of artists card to make a base for it – and you can see in the ophoto that even fresh out of the packaging the corners are frayed, which is why I round them off.

This was then painted black on the back, to start to straighten it out – the card will warp one way, and then the paint on the other side will warp it back to almost flat.

The corners and joins of the railway arches were greenstuffed to make them blend in a bit better.

The entire edifice was then painted, again using the tester paint pots I’ve had done up previously – this is a seriously large area to cover so doing this scenery necessitates these large paint pots.

Then highlighted with light grey and then my basing biscuit colour.

Again, with a large amount of glue, the base was added to the edifice, weighed down and left overnight.

A much more robust piece of kit. Later today, I’ll be at work at a few Marienburger mercenaries, and then tomorrow doing some renovations on the buildings I have to deploy on to this level and the main level (boards).

I have a building acting as a staircase up onto this extra level and a very rickety bridge, that could probably also do with renovation.

Filed under Scenery, Warhammer Tagged with ,

AVBCW: The Final Table

05/10/2014

This was the road bridge just outside Titley, and featured the edifice that Roo had created, a truely stupendous effort of scenery making. This was fought over long and hard by the Royalists (JP), their Empire allies (Roo), against the combined Welsh and socialist allies of Mark, Jim and Tom.

The bridge.

The Royalists man the klarger hill, whilst the Hereford Hunt (JP) prance around waiting to go into battle.

The Empire Loyalists man the bridge and smaller hill.

More Royalists wait below the crest of the hill.

Whilst the Welsh (mochyn y fan) swarm across the other side of the board attempting assault the Royalists and cut the railway line in the Golden Valley.

mark’s Welsh with their armoured contraptions surge forward past the cows. There was a lot of livestock on this board, noner seemingly carnivorous or spooked by the loud bangs etc that the stupid humans were making. 😉

Jim’s forces surged down the banks of the river to attack the smaller hill on the opposite flank, under fire by the Royalists.

In stark contrast to the slow going on Table 3 due to the mud, Mark’s Welsh contraptionsdid well going up the hill.

Welsh & Royalists clash at the crest of the hill, with the Welsh finally gaining ground.

Meanwhile, Jim’s forces had nearly reached the bridge and the Empire loyalists were wavering.

Tom’s Welsh cleared the last Royalists off as the Hereford Hunt after dithering retreated.

The Empire Loyalists had one last shot with their artillery, and Room using his son to roll the dice…

…managed to score a direct hit on the Welsh, before they conceded defeat the left the field of battle.

Filed under AVBCW

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