Yasmina's Secret.

Surely such a mighty warrior as you need not fear a soft female such as me.

Why don't you join me on the pillows and perhaps we can find a more pleasurable way to settle our differences.

Then when our brave hero's back is turned...

 

When I first saw the Hatun Yasmina figure it immediately made me think of the 5e D&D artwork for the Lamia. I still had some lion miniatures sticking in the leadpile so I decided to order two Yasmina's and see if I couldn't make something happen.

The terrain was a test to see if I could make a set of tiles and scatter that better represents the kind of opulent palace that conan likes to sneak into in search of oppertunities😇

I had fun making them so you may expect to see more like these in the future.

Cheers,

Stroezie.

How To Grow a Mushroom Tree.

Ok so, as promised in my previous post, here's a little tutorial for my mushroom trees.

First though, because some people have asked about them and because my trees are based on them, a quick rundown of my basic cavern tiles.

The tiles are cut from 3mm perspex , its a material kind of like foamcore but more dense / sturdy. It doesn't warp as easily but can still be cut with a hobby knife.

The stone texture on top is simply corck tiles with the edges roughed up so the are more of an irregular shape.

And then underneath the tile I stick a square of magnetic paper so the tiles don't slide around on the board.

"Ok, enough about the stupid tiles!"
"We want to know about the mushroom trees!"

Right, lets get cracking...

You start by twisting floral wire into a general tree shape, just like you would while making standard wargame trees.

Then you bulk out the tunk and branches with aluminium foil.
I've found that rolling the foil into a kind of loose sausage makes it a lot easier to wrap it around the armature as the tend to hold their shape better once you compress them down.

Next you glue the tree to the base and then you cover the entire thing in a layer of hotglue.

Once the entire thing is covered in hotglue its time to start texturing it.
You could probably do this with the tip of your hotglue gun but the nozzle on mine proved to be a bit to bulky so I opted to use a sculpting tool with a small round head.
Simply heat it over a candle flame and drag it through the hotglue to create a bark like texture.

Once thats finished you can hit it with a quick blast from a hairdrier to get rid of any hot glue whisps that may have developed ( not to long or you'll melt the texture too)

And finally we come to the more familliar medium of two part epoxy putties.
I chose to do the caps in plumbers putty, because I'm an impatient gith and that stuff sets in five to ten minutes, but you can just use green stuff if that's all you have.

Then its just a matter of sculpting the roots, the nodules on the bark and the spots on the caps. Nothing to complicated, just roll some balls and sausages and stick them on where ever you like.

And now you have your very own mushroom tree, just prime and paint it any way you like...

I hope all of that made at least a bit of sense to you, If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them all in the comments.

Cheers,
Stroezie.

More Caves and Mushrooms.

I managed to make some more progress on my modular cavern terrain.

I wanted a way to add some elevation so I made some simple risers from foamcore and some wall pieces to go in front of them.

I like them, but I will be experimenting some more I think to break up that ruler straight line.

As I was about to paint the last wall piece I suddenly thought to myself "I could paint this blue and have a little waterfall !" and so...

Then, as a change of pace, I decided to try my hand at some more fungus terrain.

I made two mushroom trees.

I really like how these turned out and I'll definately be making more of them.
If people are interested I may even do a little tutorial.

And then of course I couldn't resist building a little encounter, just to see how it all goes together.

Perfect for a big end battle! 😉

And of course a close up of our two heroes about to enter into an epic battle with their fungal opponents.

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Stroezie.

Over the Hills and Far Away...

I had a rather productive week, all the terrain on this board is newly built.

The rocks and hill were made from cork coasters, the bridge is made from coffee stirrers and the bushes are plastic aquarium plants.

I had enough cork coasters for three more hills so now I've finally got some elevated terrain for my games.

Next up is a summoner and his pet demon.
The wizard is a Demonworld figure and the demon is a 28mm Vor growler pup both from Ral Partha.
The braziers are demonworld demons with an upholstery nail glued on top and some green stuff flames. They are nice sculpts but a bit to static for my tastes, this seemed like a good way to still be able to use them.
I also finished the rest of the pillars which you can see in the background.

The rest is a rather mixed bunch as I've largely been paining which ever figure struck my fancy.
So, from left to right we've got, another dark knight, a jailor, my new more spell casting focused ranger, a dwarven man at arms and a dwarven crossbow man who appears to be a bit bugg eyed in this picture.

And, in preparation for Frostgrave 2e. some bronze statues.

Thats it for now.
Tomorrow I'm off to Spiel 2019 in Essen where I'll be spending the rest of the week in boardgame bliss so it may be a while longer till you hear from me again.
Cheers,
Stroezie.

A Crate Full of Goblins?!?

I want to start expanding my dungeon scatter terrain so I decided to try my hand at crafting/ sculpting some crates and chests.

The big crates are just wooden blocks which I scored with a pin and then painted.

The smaller crate was a bit of an experiment, I tried to sculpt the sides seperately and then

assemble them once the had cured.

This turned out to be much to fiddely so the treasure chest got sculpted the traditional way, in one piece over a little armature.

As for painting miniatures , I finished the Goblin Rabble pack from Ral Partha's demonworld/ Blighthaven range.
Lovely figures to paint with lots of character, to bad these haven't made it to their singles collection yet as I'd love to get my hands on some more of the different poses.

I'm going to have to rummage through my lead pile and see which figures strike my fancy .
Also, having done the little treasure chest, I think I might try sculpting a mimic version of it to.

Cheers,
Stroezie.

Stroezie and Fé do Rangers of Shadowdeep.

Now that I've finally got some free time again I've decided to start a game with my 10 year old daughter.

She regularly plays boardgames with us and enjoys things like Zombieside and Mice and Mystics so I think she should have no problem with a co-op miniatures game.

As she really likes the story element of these games I wanted something with a simple but sturdy camaign system

So, after shopping around a bit, I decided we'll give Rangers of Shadowdeep a try.
I have just recieved the print on demand copy of the rules and we'll be statting out our rangers and their companions over the next week.

I'll do my best to share some in game pictures with maybe a broad overview of what happened but don't expect to much because I still suck at AAR's.

Ok, that's enough chatter for now on with the pictures!!!

So first up our as yet unnamed rangers


Some possible companions and npc's (?)



And the first of my own sculpts for this project...



The painted spider was a proof of concept and now I can get on with the sculpting of the rest of the giant spiders we'll need for scenario 2.

And lastly a sneek peak at the setup for the first scenario.


Well that's it for now.
Cheers,
Stroezie.

Micromunda Scatter Terain

I have been told Necromunda needs lots of stuff for gangers to hide behind.

Ok then lets build some scatter terrain 😎 

I started with a classic to get me going,

everybody has done the stack of pipes, quick and easy linear terrain what's not to like?

Next were a set of crates and canisters on pallets from Angel Barracks which I magnetised and put on some magnetic paper disks so they can be used as both scatter terain and loot counters.

The last items in this picture are a form of fungus that explodes when fired upon ideal for placing next to the previous loot counters.😈

Then I decided to recycle some of the offcuts littering my workstation into some rubble baricades.

For some reason only the Emperor knows tyres and cogs are stacked together in the underhive, but I thought it looked cool so...

The other items in this pic are my take on the ubiquitous Necromunda air vents.

Lots of fun/superglued fingers making these.

 And lastly some slime pits to make running across those walkways a more interesting choice.
Oh and I almost forgot, I made two hills/risers, one of which you can see below to. The sides are also magnitic and the ladders are removable. I will be making some other stuff like stairs, ramps, terminals and junction boxes to attach to them to.

As you can see the board is filling up nicely

I have read through the Necromunda rules and have started reading Inquisimunda to.
I think once I've played a few games of Necromunda and gotten the hang of the rules I'll probably be expanding to Inquisimundan simply because there are so many cool minis out there and knowing myself it won't be long before I start looking at ways to bring them into my games.

So next on my to do list:
First make some measuring sticks, because at the reduced scale I'm going to be playing one unit of movement is 7mm so 28mm base move, thats a little finnicky to use a normal tape measure don't you think.
Then templates, again at the reduced scale, don't know if I'm just going to print them out on card or try something a bit more fancy, we'll see.
And of course, stat out my two gangs so we can start to rumble!!!

Cheers,
Stroezie.

I Dreamed A Dream By The Old Canal...

And the sump canal board is done!

Over all I'm quite happy with how it turned out. 

It was a bit of a compromise between weathering it and keeping the thing even enough for the magnetic paper to have enough flat surface to grip onto. 

In the end I decided to sponge paint some rust effects on the tiles and use some washes to dirty it up some more. I'll be adding some more dirt, debris and general litter as scatter terrain later.

Here's the whole board put together

Which seperates into nine modular tiles

Here's a few closer pics of the sump canals so you can see the little details

I also managed to finish two gangs,

The DRM Orlocks from the last post

And some Goliaths (Wasteland Gangers/Warriors from Microworld miniatures)

Ahh nudie pic!😁

and here with some paint on them

The shanties in the background are from Angel Barracks and I have a few vague ideas of making some platforms for them to turn them into a kind of vertical favela, we'll see...

First though I want to do some scatter terrain as Necromunda, and imo skirmish games in general, needs lots of cover for minis to hide behind.
I already have a collection of the usual oil drums, crates and jersy barriers but I'd like to add some things more in character with the setting.
For now I'm planning to do some loot tokens, rubble barricades, exploding mushrooms and heat vents. (feel free to add any cool idea's you may have to this list.)

Ok, time to go stat out those gangs now so I can try to get a game on and who knows maybe we'll even see the ever elusive batrep show up in the future. 😳

Cheers,
Stroezie.

On To The Painting !

I finished building my Nanomunda sump board!

I may have gone a bit overboard detailing the canals 😎

Here are a few more pictures so you can see the build before I blackbomb it.

And now it's time to start thinking about how I'm going to paint all of this.

I'd like to try and go for this look for the decking

Mine won't look nearly as good but hey "aim for perfection, settle for good enough" 😜

If you know of any good tutorials for this kind of thing, please feel free to share, cause at the moment I really don't have a clue how to even start.

I think I'll experiment on a few scrap pieces first and see what's realistic for my skill level.

Hopefully I'll have something more to share with you soon.

Cheers,

Stroezie.