28 April 2016

World's Edge Wyverns - 02

Still an early WIP, but the colour scheme for this team seems to be coming together nicely.

I've gone for an off-white (the Canvas triad from Foundry) and dusky red (Foundry's British Redcoat triad) for the kit. I'm using Foundry's Moss Green triad for the orcs' skin and plan to use their Spearshaft triad with a spot of chestnut ink for the leather. Other spiky bits will be a dull steel/silver, and I'll use black for anything left over to avoid introducing another colour.



Any suggestions before I crack on with them and then apply it to the rest of the team?

Rab

25 April 2016

Can't see the bloodbowl for the trees

Busy Rab is busy! But at least I've managed to clean up my sprawl of loose flock and random junk after the mammoth terrain building of earlier this month and get access to my painting table again. To celebrate I based, base-weighted, magnetised, and spray undercoated my main roster players for my orc bloodbowl team. I haven't sprayed the stars yet, and I still need to get hold of a non-duplicate blocker and Varag, as well as stripping Morg, a goblin and Fungus, but progress is being made.



22 April 2016

World's Edge Wyverns - 01

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've recently picked up a 2nd Edition team of orcs for Blood Bowl who I think I will call the World's Edge Wyverns and paint them up in a dusky red and canvas-white scheme.

Yesterday the last parcel from swapping duplicated arrived and I have my team (well, almost - more on that later) ready for prepping:


Including this fine Olley troll who I believe was a named starplayer (Grogrut Crunchskull) in an earlier edition of the game.

14 April 2016

Terrain boards - 06

Things I have learned flocking these boards.

  1. You need more scenic cement. No, more than that. 
  2. You don't need as much flock as you think, but you do need variety
Other than that, I'm rather pleased with how they look for their first layer. Some bits need the gaps filling, other bits have a rather stark colour change, the edges need thickening up, and the large "village" bare patch needs to have the edges feathered with some earth blend. Getting there!

The process I've been following is to mix up some flock (Woodland Scenics burnt grass fine turf, weeds fine turf, mixed earth blend, burnt grass coarse turf, Javis bright green meadow scatter, a couple of bits and bobs that I had already but long since lost the labels for) in a tub, brush on some scenic cement, scatter the flock on thickly, let it dry for a couple of hours, stand the board on its side and tap the back firmly, gather up all the flock that falls off, repeat!

The flock:


13 April 2016

Squirrel!

So, there I was, searching for the best product to fill my rivers with (pictures of the first flocking tomorrow, I reckon), when

Squirrel!

9 April 2016

Terrain boards - 05

Another day of holiday, another step closer to being able to play on these boards. This time, the initial drybrushing, followed by the spotting of blue foam that somehow escaped paint, dammit!

I did several layers of drybrushing, all with a cheap 4" brush from Wilkinson's (a quid, I think, grey handle and black bristles). First I used the main base paint I'd used in my board coating mix (Valspar "Norwegian Wood"), then increasingly added some of a sample pot I'd got free with a voucher a couple of years back,


7 April 2016

Terrain boards - 04

Gettin' dirty! I've been looking forward to this stage, the point at which all the splatters of filler, the cork bark and the blue foam get brought together and become a unified surface. In a word, gloop.



5 April 2016

Terrain boards - 03

Today? Bark.


Sorry. Of course I don't mean that bark. Rather, I mean the use of cork bark as rocks in terrain building. Because the free rocks in my garden don't look enough like rock. Apparently... No, tradition insists I hold back on making 28mm cliffs until a parcel (with a clipart lizard jauntily emblazoned across it) arrive suggesting a sudden enthusiasm for the comfortable sleeping of my non-existent gecko...

And who am I to argue with tradition?

4 April 2016

Terrain boards - 02

Hills. Rolling countryside. A realistic landscape over which medieval, fantastical, and futuristic antagonists can pursue their goals. That's what I'm after, anyway. I'm learning that it's just as tricky as one might expect from the preponderance of flat green battlefields that dominate gaming events and internet photographs!

Nevertheless, it was to the internet that I turned once again to help me de-flatten my terrain boards. In particular I referenced three fabulous projects, two of them by the same person:

1 - Captain Blood's French & Indian War board
Anyone who has even accidentally stumbled across the Lead Adventure Forum will be aware of this hobby giant. Not only does he imbue, among others, his War of the Roses miniatures with an almost luminous quality of colour (they've appeared in at least one print magazine as well), but he also produces fabulous and realistic terrain boards.


The full build log can be found here: LAF link

3 April 2016

[GS Review] March



So, how is the 2016 campaign going? March has been rather taken over by family, an overseas trip, and other (mostly pleasant) time consumers. However, some geeking has happened....

The overview:



The pictures:

No completed figures in March, although there are some orc archers nearly done. Honest! I did get on with my gaming table, though.


1 April 2016

Terrain boards - 01

A good spot of holiday geeking today. Last year I built a gaming table, complete with shelves and a sunken surface to hold terrain boards. It has seen some action (Inquisimunda, X-Wing, Knights' Quest, Dragon Rampant, and Blood Bowl), but it hasn't reached its potential yet because it was missing its terrain boards.

Time to do something about that!

My intention, since the start of this project, was to produce four terrain boards that could be rearranged to give multiple configurations of three of them. One would be completely flat, the other three will have more or less river and hill and are shown below.