Review Age of Sigmar: Skull Keep - A Curate's Egg

Chaos Dreadhold: Skull Keep is a Games Workshop plastic kit retailing for £45.

First Impressions: when you open the box are of a typical Games Workshop terrain piece made of chunky bits of plastic.

Manufacturing Quality: Pretty crummy, as I've come to expect from GW Terrain pieces. Nothing fits together properly. If you blow up my photos you will see that the walls almost touch. I deliberately didn't use plastic filler on this build.

Design Quality: Very good, there is nothing quite like this in plastic from any one else. It looks great with lots of nobbly bits. An imaginative piece to act as a great centre piece in a variety of scenarios.

Suitability For Wargaming: Excellent, it is tough, light and has plenty of room to get models on. And it breaks down into halves to put models on the first floor. All this makes it easy to store and transport.

Value For Money: Sigh, about average. £45 is a great deal of moolah for a cheaply produced,  simple kit of dubious manufacturing quality, even if it is nicely designed and well thought out as a wargame piece.

Recommended?: Hmm, depends. If you really, really fancy it then go ahead but be prepared for a lousy build and a hole in your wallet.

Note: I used the 'Red' (second from left) Humbrol multi spray to get a shimmer effect on the model. It doesn't really show up in still photos but the colour changes depending on the angle at which sunlight reflects off the surface. I assume this is a variant of a 'structural colouration' effect - like a butterfly's wing.

The painting technique is simple: Spray with black primer, coat with black gloss, and then spray on the multi-effect.

Kent Medieval Wealden Hall House in 28mm

Timeline Miniatures make a very nice lasercut kit of a traditional Kent Medieval Wealden Building. A number of these are still around, albeit altered and rebuilt to a greater of lesser extent.In fact, Kent has the highest number of original timber-framed buildings in Europe.

The kit is dead easy to put together but I recommend you use a branded wood cement rather than simple 'white glue' as the former sets more quickly. All I did was slap on some textured Tamiya paint on the infills, which would originally have been whitewashed wattle and daub, and a thin brick wash on the tiles - the original roof would have been thatched. The jutting top bays are typical.

Inside, showing the central two-story hall with central hearth. By the 16th C., this would have been replaced by a fireplace and chimney. In its original form the high ceiling allowed smoke to accumulate at the top and leak slowly out through the thatch.

The two top floors off the kit come off if you want to use the rooms underneath.

This version does have the latest in sanitation, the drop-it-outside privy.

Ah the luxury.

A real one.


Great model: Recommended.

Bolt Action: Jungle Terrain

Had a dig out of whatever jungle terrain I can put together for Bolt Action Burma.

Getting there but a way to go.

Some Basic Terrain

Basic terrain is the unloved and essential part of wargaming. Decent basic terrain greatly improves the look of a game and hence the suspension of belief as well as offering greater tactical challenges. And it doesn't have to be expensive.

The river section is from Amera and costs £2 a section. The bridge is manufactured by Renadra and can be built as above or as a pontoon bridge. It costs £8.

Buildings in 28 mm

I have been assembling some new buildings for my 28 ml armies.

First up a resin model of a traditrional timber framed two story house from Frontline in resin. Excellent model, very detailed and of a good size. It paints really well.

Next an Anglo-Danish Dark Age 'wooden' hovel from 4Ground that I will use both for Saga and for a Russian peasant hovel.

Again, very nice model.

Price wise, nothing to choose between them.

Comparing the advantages of the two:

Frontline: Detailed. Unpainted so you can choose your own scheme.
4Ground: Light, tough and easy to store. Painted so you don't have to.

My recommendation:
4Ground for fast production of useful, very functional, decent looking wargame scenery.
Frontline for model making, dioramas etc.

As the old saying goes: you pays your money and you takes your choice.

4Ground: Damaged Mid-Terraced House

I was given a voucher for the Rochester Wargame Centre as a present this Xmas and used it to buy a prepainted 4Ground 28 ml lasercut kit for a Damaged Mid-Terraced House.

The above pic shows the assembled model. It is straight out of the box apart from some Tamiya 'concrete' textured paint on the sides in case I want to use it as a stand alone terrain feature.

The kit comes apart to place 28 mm models inside and is beautifully detailed.

I really like these laser cut kits. They are more expensive than resin but they are light, rigid, do not shatter if you drop them and are prepainted.

I used standard white glue to stick it together.

Great stuff.

The Giant Rat of Sumatra

"Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson, ... It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."
Sherlock Holmes

From: The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.



Actually, it's not really the giant rat of Sumatra, it's really George the one-toothed hamster, the JTS marketing director, inspecting the jungle terrain.

Jungle Plants

I've been making jungle plants for 28 mm wargaming. They are made from a variety of aquarium plants. You cut 'em up and stick 'em in Milliput epoxy resin clay. The clay is stuck on a plastic base and Citadel textured paint completes the model.

Suitable for SF, Fantasy and, at a pinch, Bolt Action in the far east.

Fortress of the Imperium

The clear up of almost finished models goes on. I have had this fortress for a couple of years and had given it a quick spray of Tamiya Tank Grey for a game then - nothing.

I decided to just weather and wash the gray and to only add a handfull of other colours. This model is so big that it tends to distract from the models if too obtrusive. The Vulture is there for scae.

It aso looks a bit like a leggo kit if you paint all the details. So I went for a simple brooding, knocked-around-the-universe-a-bit look.

Energy-Matter Converter

This is the second Warmill kit I bought at Broadsword. It is labelled as a Satlink Array but could equally represent a planetary defence laser or any energy-matter converter such as a solar power collector.

Warmill Warp Gate

I picked up some Warmill terrain at Broadside 2013.

Warmill terrain a little difficult to get hold of as their shop online seems to be, er, offline.
It's one of those lasercut kits so is light and inexpensive.

The photos below were taken at Warmill's display stand at Broadside. I just love those Hab-Pods.

Zone Mortalis: Free Scenario Rules

 Forge World has a new range of interiors for 'interior'' combat that look very nice and are reasonably priced (£12 for the stuff above).

They also offer a set of scenario rules for free here that are well worth looking at. Fighting within the hives, spacecraft, fortresses is such a component of 40K that  am surprised we don't see it more often.

Doubt that I will buy the floor tiles at £25 each but I like the scenary.

Calling Col Corbane

Here is the scale comparison of 1/72 wrecked buildings. On the left is the Airfix Field HQ in a wrecked building, on the right the Italeri model.

The figures from left to right:
28 ml Warlord
Heroic 40K
1/72 Plastic Soldier

Hope this is useful.

Fortified Ruined House

A ruined house fortified as a strongpoint. Suitable for C20th or modern wargaming. It is based on a 1/72 Airfix kit.

I plastered it with different layers of paint and wash to get a 'churned' appearance. I am quite pleased with the result and can see this place defended by Panzer Grenadiers in my West Front '44 games.

We Have Thatch

   It is very difficult to wash or drybrush teddy bear fur, even when PVA-fixed. However I used a dilute layer of Coot d'Arms negro-brown to shade the colours a bit to make it look less 'model-like' and more 'natural' and weather worn.

   This is as good as I can do.

A Bit 'O Brylcream

Have just plastered down the teddy bear hide with dilute PVA. It's still wet but definitely an improvement. Maybe Donald should try it with his syrup?

Bad Hair Day

   Part of my loot from Broadsword is this laser diecut, prepainted, 28 ml wooden kit from 4Ground.  The bits punch out and fit together perfectly using PVA glue. The thatch is teddy bear hair. It looks like the 'syrup' on top of Donald Trump's head. However, it has yet to be combed down with white PVA glue.

   Great value at £14. It is strong and light, as well. I just hope I can get control of that damn syrup fig.

British Hill Fort - Finished

And here is the finished fort.

I undercoated it with white acrylic spray and then Tamira olive green spray.

Mud was put on with Winsor & Newton acrylics. The rocks were painted Citadel granite acrylic and then layered with dilute light grey. Finally, static grass was sprinkled on top of diluted white glue to give a grass effect.

Job done.

British Hill Fort

There are more than ten thousand Celtic  "hill forts" in England and Wales. They are somewhat misnamed because most are not forts and many are not on hills. They served as restricted areas for livestock, grain storage, religious centres and aristocratic strongholds. They presented only a minor obstacle to am organised army and were captured by the Romans by direct assault with artillery support, not siege works.

I built this example for Hail Caesar games. I am not the world's greatest modeller so I kept it simple. I bought an Amera plastic 'large hill' with a flat top for the princely sum of a fiver. This is 33cm by 29cm and has a flat top. It is robust and has a central support underneath so you can stand metal models on it without disaster.

Three packs of two part epoxy putty for seven fifty provided the earthworks and three pieces of North downs flint from my back garden completed it. The gate barriers are from a Warlord Plastic Scorpion Box.

Total cost so far: £12.50

It is designed to be representational, rather than literal. Under the Hail Caesar rules it counts as a 'building' with no rules modifications except that it is garrisoned by one standard infantry unit (a warband) and one small infantry unit (slingers).

Trench Foot

I bought some Amera trenches for my Siege of Vraks Army and have ony just got around to painting them. The set above was painted in various sprays from Tamira, Army Painter and Humbrol to give a churned ground appearance and then finished with Citadel matt varnish. The later is vicious so is useful for blurring in paint graduations. There is also a potential problem with thin plastic of paint flake so I am hoping that the varnish will stiffen it up a bit.

Another set of trenches with some ruined buildings. I coated these in B&Q stained wood varnish, recoated with Citadel matt to take off the shine. This gives a more muddy appearance. I added a few chipped stone decorations to represent broken up masonry.

On a piece not shown here I painted on a veneer of white glue. This worked well at rigidising the plastic. Add rigidising to refudiate and misunderestimate in the dictionary of dog-English. Dog-English is like dog-Latin only without the class.

We will have to see how durable these paint jobs are.

Amera are very good value for money and offer a reliable service. The advantage of polystyrene plastic over resin is cost and ease of storage (lightness). Disadvantage is that the paint can be subject to flaking off.

The trenches are nicely wide so suitable for 28mm models. The daisy gives an idea of scaleThere are additional pieces avalable such as 'T' pieces and bunkers.

Recommended.