13 August 2023

Scratchbuilt Medieval house

In recent weeks I've been playing with scratch building some buildings, based on free paper designs.  The process went somewhat freestyle along the way, which has been fun if time consuming - and probably true to the spirit of civil engineering in the period too! 
Reminiscent of the old Warhammer fantasy building templates that White Dwarf published back in the day, I started with this paper model as my design:
  


Using that, exaggerating a few curves here and there for flavour, I decided to add a matching but smaller side structure (kitchens and servants rooms?) to make it more interesting both visually and for gaming with.


The roof base is artists' paper, wetted down and shaped (carefully) to get the sagging appearance. By itself though it is a bit uniform as you can see.  That wasn't the look I was after  


So I added some internal roof framing (visible in the following pics) and reshaped the artists paper around it to get add a wavy look. Trusting that the shingles would (hopefully) hide the bleak edges, I pushed on!


Yes, the roof is indeed made of individual shingles, each clipped from coffee stirrers and glued by hand. maddening work but the results are worth it (and I just glue away while listening to Audible...). It was at this point I decided to make the roof more characterful by using even smaller tiles and placing then in more uneven rows. This added build time but really adds to the character of the building.


Finally I was done with the shingles and got started with the walls. Yes, even MORE coffee stirrers gave their lives for our hobby... 

Again it was a bit of 2 steps forward and 1 backwards and I adjusted the angles and many were glued down only to be pulled of the next day to be flipped and reglued.  Looks much better for it though as it was a bit too symmetrical initially.  I should also have distressed those more fulsomely before sticking them on but, to be honest I was excited to be doing something other than glueing shingles on!
And to complete the build I scratched up some doors and shuttered windows before filling the walls with a mixture of spackle, PVA and water. 



Which shows significnat evolution from the original paper model design I started with as a template!


Not perfect but certainly good enough so that's the build completed, all proudly done with scrap and bits I had to hand. I might leave the painting to another time- upcoming AHPC 14 maybe? :-)

17 July 2023

July Hobby: Valour & Fortitude

British Brigade advances to contact in the centre

Along with Slowpainter John, we were hosted last weekend by Club mate Gavin to enjoy his awesome table and figure collection. We tried out the Valour & Fortitude rules which are from the Perry's website here

Its always a treat to play at Gav's place!




We played a 4 player (2v2) meeting engagement with Division level forces on each side: Brits vs French.

He is some eye candy from the game:

"Present...Fire!"



French Grenadiers go in with the bayonet


CHARGE!!!!


French Brigade assaults the British left flank



A good time for everyone!

I really enjoyed the simplicity of these rules. They also had me thinking about using them for FIW, but scaling them down to play a Regimental Commander with units representing companies, vanguard and flanking units and Indian allies. Hmmm....

30 June 2023

June Hobby Wrap Up

Another month, another busy month including more work travel overseas and time at sea. We did (predictably) succumb to Warhammer 10th edition, but managed to grab somebody's spare book and cards rather than get the new boxed set. Proud of myself!

The very next day we delved into our first game of this edition, and my first game with my Black Templar army. I faced off against Reilly and his new Daemon force. The latter was fun and very different to other armies we've tried, and it was great to finally get my Templars onto the table after building them up this year


The Marshall leads his Crusade onto the field of Vengeance



Bastion of Strength

The Emperor's Champion mets out His Justice

We had a really good time, encouraged by the streamlining of the rules - overall, we found 10th to be an intuitive iteration of the rules rather than a full revolution of the system. Lots of inspiration to paint more Templars, and not just obsess over Turnips. Obviously that will happen too though...



12 June 2023

May Hobby Wrap Up

No games this month - too busy travelling with work, but I did get some painting in between trips on some 40k projects.

First up is Bayard's Revenge, a special Emperor's Champion figure that Reilly kindly gave me for Christmas, depicting a scene from the Black Templar novel "Helsreach".  I played with this over a week and really enjoyed this project.  

I tied a few NMM approaches with the sword, and ended up going with it being true to its name "The Black Sword"...  I did enjoy lavishing attention on the armour to make it look beaten up and scarred without compromised.

And here's how I imagine the last stand of Brother Bayard is depicted in the Halls of Heroes aboard the Battlebarge Eternal Crusader (filters from the 'Snapseed' app)

I also did a Death Guard Kill team, using the lighter colours of the Weeping Legion so that the darker filth and yuck would contrast against it. I used oil washes to darken down the basecoats and overall it worked out well.  

I added rusty things from the bitz box to help the basing come to life amongst the puddles of Nurgle's Rot.

Thats all for now - happy hobbying!