Scenery Week (?!) Pt. 3: Forge World Barricades, Or, Freenery... Free Scenery

Forge World are very generous in the excess resin that they send out with their kits. Having gathered a few of their lovely models over the last couple of years I had a bag of the off-cuts sitting around because I wasn't keen on just chucking the stuff away. So I decided to create some bespoke 'Forge World Barricades' as part of my scenery project... which is certainly now more than a scenery week!

Here they are in their original state, just stuck on some spare bases:

And here they are now, in the midst of painting and weathering:

Not a bad little freebie really and they'll fit right in with the whole abandoned toxic factory complex that this is all beginning to come together as. Frenery!

Scenery Week Pt. 2, Going Old School With Plastic Cups And Boxes

I must've watched a lot of Blue Peter when I was a child, something that clearly instilled a spirit of creativity within me that has bubbled to the surface this week. Although none of these pieces involve the classic 'washing up bottle' they do draw on the same home-made ethos. Or perhaps home-bought, as all of these things come from IKEA, with the addition of things found-around-the-house, plenty of glue, and finally some metallic paint and washes. Here are a few 'before' and 'after' photos, though I should note that the 'afters' are still works in progress, as there's plenty more weathering to attend to.

Scenery Week Pt. 1, GW Moonscape Craters WIP

Sometimes I just feel like I've lost my painting mojo, sit in front of a model and have no idea where to start or even which end of a brush is which. Long breaks don't help. When this happens I try to look for alternative hobby jobs to get my hand in and confidence back. This past week I've been working on a scenery project for 40k with just this aim. And here's some of the first examples. 

I've had this moonscape for a while. It's now OOP, which is a shame because it was great value. I like the new Quake Cannon craters too - they have tons of detail - but they don't cover even half the area of these older scenics. Here I've simply primed in Army Painter Necrotic Green and then given them a liberal coating of 50/50 Antelope Green and Paynes Grey inks from DR. Next up will be a light dry brush with a mid-grey then a couple of lighter colours, some washes into the recesses and static grass around the edges. Nothing revolutionary yet very psychologically soothing. It does remind me that I need to finish Castle Davenheim sometime though... Oops. 

A Day At The Beach Means...

Another big bag of basing materials!

Holiday In The Countryside Means...

Big bag of basing materials!

Davenheim Castle, Thus Far...

Even with a simple colour scheme, painting a castle is a lengthy process. It's very enjoyable though, perhaps because of the sheer scale of a project like this and the knowledge that there's going to be a sizable, undeniably tangible output at the end of all this. 

Ordinarily I don't use metallic paint. Here though it makes sense to employ the old pot of Tin Bitz that lurks at the bottom of my paint case. As a metallic base for statues and the like it's perfect. The lighter grey is GW Celestra Grey and the darker, greenish grey is P3 Cryx Bane Highlight. Wood tones and weathering to follow.

Castle Building And Child-Like Joy

A Citadel Fortress that I'd bought from eBay has finally arrived, meaning the final construction phases for Davenheim Castle have begun. I'm overwhelmed with child-like joy as I work on this project. Castle building is one of those cultural tropes of children's play that gets deeply embedded in many of us. It's like making dens and forts, either for ourselves or our action figures. For me the smell of tall grass or the perfume of poly cement are the scents of adventure.

The Ruins Of Davenheim (Courtesy Of Amera Plastic Mouldings)

As Davenheim has been the site of many battles, it should come as no surprise that there are ruins here and there. These two pieces come courtesy of Amera Plastic Mouldings and were astonishingly good value for money, particularly considering their size. On the left is the F209 ruined building and on the right is the F201 castle ruins - the watchtower is for size comparison.

These white polystyrene mouldings are pretty robust and take paint and other decorations very easily. The detail is rather slight as you might expect from the medium, but that seems to be easily overcome with a thorough paint job. I'm about 40% done with these at the moment and it's taken a couple of hours to get the basic shading and texture on there. Once these are done I'm going to put in an order for the river sections as I've always wanted a waterway on the tabletop.

Welcome To Davenheim! A Fantasy Medieval Town Plagued By Misfortunate

Being a fan of narratives in gaming I've decided to extend this in some small part to my scenery. I'm going through a construction phase at the moment, with buildings popping up all over the place, so why not give this place a name and perhaps a bit of a story? And Davenheim was born! 

Davenheim is idilic in many respects, although - as residents will tell you - it has the misfortune to be plagued by armed conflicts. Oddly, no matter which armies are facing off, they always seem to clash in the surrounds of Davenheim. This really impacts on property values.

So far I have a chapel, watchtower, and the beginnings of Davenheim Castle, which is incorporating parts from several GW kits and is waiting for a Citadel Fortress that I bought from eBay to arrive so that I can finish the basic construction. This is a really fun project that's giving me a little 'constructive space' to think about how to paint my other summer projects - also, my wife actually admitted she was quite interested in the buildings, so that's a supplementary minor victory!

Just Say NO To GW Skullz!

Undertaking a few modifications to the Skullporn Mahmahmah or whatever it's called ;-)

It's The Scenery Stupid!

Is how I might rudely reply to someone asking me to pick one, absolutely key, aspect to enjoyable gaming*. There needs to be characterful scenery and plenty of it. An open battlefield simply won't do. Players of skirmish gamers know this very well. But there's an odd situation at present with WFB, where 8e calls for (demands even) hordes, but GW also provide some excellent and reasonably inexpensive scenery. 

Until recently I had depended on old card buildings to provide the scene for games. However, having amassed so many miniatures I don't know what to do with them all, I reasoned I ought to turn my compulsive buying in the direction of some buildings of substance. Here is a Chapel I've had knocking around for a while, and a new Watchtower, both WIPs:

Pretty standard stuff at the moment. Yet I've noticed how easily these can be combined to make a whole range of great looking buildings. Hence, that's my new obsession. I may try something with the SKULLZ GW buildings if I think I might be able to make them look half as silly. That's a long shot though...

* Luckily I'm a jolly nice fellow and would never be so disrespectful ;-)

Free Wargames Scenery

No, this isn't a joke. If you follow this link then you'll find a batch of free-to-print modular buildings. Here are a couple of examples and as you can see, they're not half bad! 

Thanks to Battle Reporter for the original post with the link.

Scratch-Built Scenery and Bases

At the end of last year I went through a phase of throwing together scratch-built scenery and bases for use in Warhammer, 40K and - if I ever get around to it - Mordheim. With my DIY light box fired up I thought I'd take some better pictures to show what can be achieved with the following basic materials: card from old boxes; decorating filler; newspaper; PVA glue; polystyrene trays; pieces of slate and stone and gravel; static grass and other mini-foliage; paint (obviously); a rummage in the bits box; some plastic moulded sheets from the model shop; and the secret ingredient... two small children, meaning you never have anywhere to go on weekend evenings! 

Completed Garden of Morr base plus extra custom terrain

The buildings from the Garden of Morr now have a finished base to sit on, which can also be used as a separate piece of terrain - I like the idea of doubling up and maximising usage. Using the same techniques of card, paper, wood filler and bits of junk I found scattered around the house, I've also taken the time to knock up some additional terrain pieces. First, two bases of ruins, and secondly a 'modular' barrow hill.

The buildings in place - finishing these is the next job

A small bit of added detail

Two bases of ruins - always useful terrain pieces

Some detail from the ruins

The 'modular' hill - I decided to make this in the style of a barrow, with
the suggestion of a ruined entrance at one end

The top section removed for ease of placing troops

A detail from the hillside - perhaps the doorway to an ancient barrow is
hidden beneath the ruins and foliage?  

I'm rather pleased to have got all this finished this weekend, especially as I spent most of my time painting something completely different...

My latest masterpiece in high-shine gloss ;-)

Garden of Morr - Custom Base

With the aim of maximising the usage of all the parts in the Garden of Morr I've been working on a custom base for the buildings. These are too good to use covering up the graves and the graves are too good to be covered up! With the buildings, walls and fences, and the graveyard, this is certainly the best value terrain kit that GW produce. 

Garden of Morr WIP

With my daughter due to 'drop' next Tuesday I've not had as much time for painting in the last week as I would've liked. Saturday night is always a good one for a long painting session though (oh, the exciting life of the parents of young children!) and I managed to get started on the Garden of Morr. Something that I'm trying to do with my Warhammer scenery is inject a good dose of colour. The box pictures of this set show a rather drab cluster of buildings - rather fitting for a graveyard one might think - but not the look I'm going for at all. After priming everything in Skeletal Bone (better than dull old black) I decided to start with the statue, as this is straightforward in design and model terms. 

As you can see I'm working with a range of greys, greens, and good old rotten flesh for the paving and stones. The statue itself is fun to work on because it's one place where dry brushing is effective and appropriate - it's nice to use this looser method with greys, whites and greens, alongside washes with Devlan Mud and various greens in order to achieve a weathered look.

For the buildings I'm adding the colour with the roofing. Greens come into play again, but so does the amazingly vibrant Warlock Purple, which is quickly becoming my favourite Citadel colour. I'm looking forward to working on the roses this week: these are the neatest design touch in this particular kit. Hopefully all these bright elements will detract from all those skulls...

More Skulls! Garden of Morr - Out of the Box

The roses growing up this statue
a really wonderful
additional detail - something
GW are very good at including
in many of the miniatures,
scenery, and as extras on sprues

It was my birthday over the weekend and I received a number of gaming related presents, which I'm going to write short reviews for over this week. The first of these is the Garden of Morr scenery from Games Workshop.

Regular readers will know that I'm a big fan of scenery, particularly well sculpted buildings, and now that I've amassed a huge number of miniatures I'm going to be increasingly turing my attention to purchasing all kinds of wonderful scenery in order to bring character and atmosphere to all my  games at home - as a fluff-and-scenario driven player I really need lots of scenery for games to 'come alive'.

A recurrent jibe about the design team at GW is that when they look at a model that they're working on and come to an agreement that it needs something more, the answer is always "more skulls!" I've seen this criticism levelled at the Garden of Morr and I have to say that it's not really justified.

Did I mention it had skulls?

Yes, this is a very skull heavy set, but then, it's entirely within the culture of the setting. When I was at university I studied a course on the sociology of death and dying, where we looked at rituals from across the globe associated with death, remembrance, and celebration. These included, for example, Día de los Muertos in Mexico, and Dia de Finados in Brazil, where skulls, skeletal imagery and cemetery celebrations are commonplace.

I know the Empire in warhammer terms is loosely/historically based on a unified Prussian states sort of model, so wouldn't be expected to have influences from Central or Southern American cultures. But when the widespread (some might say over-) use of skulls and skeletal imagery is seen through the perspective of ancestry and the eternal, inescapable cycle of birth and decay, I think it makes a lot more sense - this also works with the way that Morr is understood as a deity.

Of course, the GW design team might just really like skulls.

Plenty in the box to work with. The only part I'm not that keen on is
the gate, which has a massive skull detail - that's a few too many skulls
even for me! Loads here to use as objective markers, walls and fences,
small buildings, and so on. Very pleased to add this to the collection. 

Tabletop World - Merchant's House

As a player who loves the fluff of any army as much (if not more) than the way they actually play, I dream of one day having a range of sets of fluff-appropriate scenery to fit all the forces I have. In this vein, I've been looking rather longingly at the amazing buildings made by the company Tabletop World.  I'd be glad to own any of them, but I think my current favourite - and this would fit with the Marienburg theme - is the merchant's house: it's so simply gorgeous, I'll let the picture as it all...