Dragonfate Dais - Age of Sigmar Terrain Kit

Just got a quick minute. 

Managed to break open this box for my Malifaux collection and boy I was surprised. 

Everything was pre-cut!

I was expecting to break out my snippers but they were all pre-cut and packed away in plastic to prevent the items from breaking. I was pleasantly surprised. There were minor flashing but it was easy to scrape off.

Glued them in sub-assemblies in no more than 10 minutes from opening the box

Amazed.

GW should really consider doing this for all their terrain kits moving forward! 

Completed: Garden Of Morr

What an excellent kit put of by GW, I got my hands on one a month ago and have been putting off painting it as I knew it would be an arduous undertaking. So with some spare time off work I decided to go ahead and paint it up. What a challenge indeed!

This kit took me approximately 12-15 painting hours. With the help of an airbrush to achieve the ghostly/glowy effect on the stone and roofs.

The details found in this kit is absolutely mind boogling. Majority of my painting time was spent picking out and highlighting every single of the skulls, flowers, skulls, leaves, skulls, you get my point. In fact I honestly think this is the most number of skulls I've ever painted in my life in one sitting! The last time I remembered painting that much skulls was when I was painting up my Undead army back in 5th edition. That was like 60-80 skeleton warriors? I did not count but I'm sure I painted more than 60 skulls in the Garden of Morr kit.

Pull the kit apart them and you can fill about half (or slightly less) of a typical Fantasy table.

And to keep things easy to transport (and my sanity) I made a base out of MDF board and magnetized the pcs on. 

All in all this is definitely one of the greatest kits I've ever worked on, ironically its not a miniature but a terrain piece by GW. I've got/done plenty of 40K terrain kits by GW, but this is my first foray into the Fantasy terrain kits and judging by the other kits out there (Deathknell, Withcfate Tor etc.) I'm definitely going to be getting those to paint up for my collection as well. After all, don't we all have more than enough miniatures already (who am I kidding)? Guess its time to spend some of that hobby money/time into these beautiful terrain kits.

DIY generic gaming board

I am in the process of making more terrain for more games at my place. And I already have two tables. However one of them is just the green GW battle mat and the other is a custom made hard foam modular tiles which is a black base. Making it perfect for fights on Chaos infested planets and urban settings. There are days when our group will want to play just Flames of War or Warhammer fantasy and the black board is slightly out of place as I only have 40k terrain to match it.

So I went to poke around the wood workshop in my school to look for unwanted plywood and I got the technician to cut it into 3 pieces of 2" x 4". Although the boards look a little thin it is very strong and most importantly space saving for storage in my small apartment. As long as no one leans his entire bodyweight on it it should not break!

 I went to my local home fix store and picked up a tub of Wall Putty for $2 Singapore dollars. This would be the main agent to create some irregular basing for what would otherwise be a boring flat space. 

I added a little random ballast while applying the wall putty for instant added texture.

 I did not want to fill the entire board with the texture as it would first be extremely labor intensive, increase in cost as I would have probably needed 10 tubs of putty. And most importantly it would weigh down the boards so much that it would defeat the purpose of having a lightweight and space efficient motive.

 Here are the boards let out to dry outside my apartment.

The next day (do let it cure 24 hrs for maximum hardness) I picked up some cheap acrylic paints from my Art store. I wanted to achieve a scorched brown color so I used Burnt umber mixed with a little burnt sienna. 

Once all the base color was dry I use GW Dwarf Flesh (dried out old bolter design screw top bottle, which coincidentally looks like the new dry paints haha) to dry brush the textured areas. Followed by a lighter dry brush of Vallejo Model Color Pale Flesh.

 Next step was to use the Dwarf flesh again and lightly go over all the flat areas brushing in a circular motion to just create a little uneven look. Then the easy part was to add Woodlands Scenic Green & Dark Green Static grass mixed together.

Here is the boards all ready for games of Warhammer Fantasy, 40K and even Flames of War!

Some Guardsmen eager to lay feet onto virgin soil.

I had a great time making these boards. Although it would have been easy to simply drop a few notes and purchase one. Making your own terrain is a rewarding experience.

Completed Terrain: Rural village table

I've never really put my heart into making so much terrain throughout my hobby life, but since my foray into Flames of War this year I guess my perspective has changed a lot towards realistic and great looking terrain. Somehow making futuristic "gothic buildings" and "magical structures" adorned with a million skulls never gripped me as much as "real" scenics.

Being in 15mm scaled also meant that majority of terrain where reduced by half in size to my usual 28-32mm Games Workshop exploits. This meant that the same 6' x 4' table would have to be properly (and densely!) filled to look good.

I have had much experience making terrain but like I mentioned never really putting in enough commitment to produce anything substantial (usually just the odd building or hill). But this time around I managed to channel all my energy into creating a full on Flames of War table to play my games at home (maybe also due to the fact I am finally living in my own house now).

I won't go into detail of how I made all the terrain. Maybe I'll post them up into simple tutorials when I get the chance (I already took pictures of most steps so that will come in handy). Everything on the table is DIY made by me expect for the buildings which are from PaperTerrain.com. I still had to spend hours cutting and putting them together though.

Enjoy the pictures and let me know what you think.