Frostgrave Scenery Project - The Mausoleum Part 04

The I finish off the construction of the Mausoleum I have decided that I need a little more decoration on in. In particular, the pediment needs something to make it stand out.

I hunted around on Google for a few photos of pediments. Found one or two that I liked and adjusted the dimensions to fit my building. I played around with the contrast, to hopefully make the figures stand out a little, and then laser cut them. As you can see from the following photo, the results are mixed. The figures look OK, but they are still very two dimensional.

I ran the file again, doing the engraving twice and also cutting out around the edge of the figures. I am much happier with this so I went ahead and glued it in place.

Once that was done I gave the whole roof a coating of thinned down tiling grout, as I had done with the rest of the building.

Next step, give the whole thing a very light sanding.

Then it is on to the painting!

Frostgrave Scenery Project - The Mausoleum Part 3

Time to fit the 3D printed columns to he front of the building. These add the character that this build really needed.

As this is quite a small building there is not much room on the base. I have tried to leave enough room for a figure to fit in behind the columns (line of site being so import...), however, if any of use the lipped bases I doubt they will fit in there.

I settled in to build the roof last night. Unfortunately my phone was charging, so I couldn't take any "in progress" shots. It wasn't a complex build though st these photos should be pretty self explanatory. Firstly, I cut a plate of foamcore the size of the whole roof. I then stuck the piece I had removed from the top of the building to the plate, so that it will locate the roof and make it easy to remove.

I cut three triangular pieces to give the shape and support of the roof.
Then I stuck the two sides of the roof in place.

To hide all the edges I simply cut 5mm strips of grey card and glued them over the edges. I then took a thin dowel and stuck that on the apex, just to add a little more detail.

I am looking for something ornamental to add to the pediment (the triangular bit in the roof), as I feel it is a little plain at the moment.

Winterdale - 3D Printable Fantasy Scenery!

I have just come across the Winterdale Kickstarter campaign.

The rewards for the campaign will be downloadable files that can be printed off as many times as you like and assembled to produce various different building.

It sounds like a great way to assemble sturdy characterful scenery, assuming you have access to a 3D printer of course! These seem like a perfect solution for Frostgrave players.

The basic reward is a versatile cottage or fantasy house and bridge.

Second up is a tower and three trees.

The third level reward are components for a city or castle wall.

Finally the castle upgrade gives a gatehouse, draw bridge and more bits and bobs to finish off the castle.

There are several very interesting stretch goals, but to my mind the goals have been set very high and my not be achievable, although I hope they they are as I am a backer...

Check out the campaign here!

Frostgrave Scenery Project - The Mausoleum Part 02

With the main structure of the building in place I have moved on to so detailing now.

I spent an evening gluing bricks on to the base and defining edges. I think these add a nice bit of character to the building. On a practical level they also hide the joins and give a bit of extra strength to the whole structure.

On the sides you can see I have added some fine brickwork around the drain/skylights.

The bricks are stuck on in a fairly crude and sometime uneven way. This is intentional and will settle down once I get to the next stage.

I glued the bricks on with a "Hi-Tack" glue, which is similar to PVA but grabs and holds very quickly. This proved great for the brickwork as the bricks stayed where I put them straight away, with no slipping at all.

Once the bricks had dried in place I brushed on a good layer of watered down tiling grout.

This is deal for filling gaps between the bricks (which is more or less what it is designed for anyway). It has a slightly gritty texture which also helps to give a masonry feel to the structure.

Once, dry I will give the whole model a light sanding down with 400grit wet and dry paper, just to even out the texture a little.
I also need to build the stairs for the back door. For a bit of variation I am considering building a slightly rotted wooden stair.

The inside of the mausoleum will be left fairly plain. I may not fix the actual tomb inside, so that i can use the building for more than one purpose, once it is complete.

Next up I will start work on the roof.

Frostgrave Scenery Project - The Mausoleum Part 01

Now that the Wizard's Tower is finally finished I am moving on to some of the other scenario specific terrain pieces. My aim is to keep most of these pieces generic enough that they can be used for other games, as well as non-scenario Frostgrave games too.

The Mausoleum is a six inch square building with doors, or in this case, "exit points" on all four sides. Most mausoleums I know of only need one entrance (how many doors do they really need), so to make this work I decided that the side entrances could be either drains or skylights, built into the base of the building.

I also wanted a monumental look for the the building and so I decided there should be a platform and columns on the front. Finding the columns proved trickier than I first intended. I have used wedding cake columns before, but I couldn't get hold of any locally, so I was considering using pieces of dowel and working them up from there. Fortunately, a colleague at work suggest I 3D print them and with a quick hunt around I found some nice fluted columns and Corinthian capitals to sit on top of them. I scaled them and then printed 4 of each.

Time to start building.

As I mentioned, back at the beginning of this project, I am basing the buildings on 200mm square MDF bases. I sanded down the edges to merge with the table and this was just right for the 6" square building. 

Firstly I cut a 25mm slab of polystyrene. 

I marked the polystyrene with a line for where the front wall will sit. In front of that will be a set of stairs and the columns. The green square at the front is where the stairs will be cut into.

I used a hot wire cutter to cut a cube of polystyrene out. I then cut the steps into the cube and glued it back in place.

To differentiate between the floor inside and outside I scored into the polystyrene to give a flagstone effect inside the mausoleum. This is about as far as i can go with the plinth that the building stands on. Time to look at the walls.

The height of the walls has to be matched to the height of the columns. This is a little higher than I would like, but it does make for an imposing building.

I cut four pieces of 5mm foamcore overlapping the edges to the foam. In the front and the back i cut doorways. 50mm x 30mm for the front door and 40mm x 20mm for the rear door. I will need to add an external stair at the back, but that can wait until later.

To make access to the model easier during construction I have left the columns off of the model. I have added a first layer of the roof. This hides the top of the foamcore and will give structural support for the columns once they are fixed in place. I will build the roof separately so that there will still be access to the interior.

The next stage is to start adding some detail to the exterior of the building...

TARGE 2015 Wargames Show Report

I finally managed to get to a Wargames Show (the first one this year)! Having missed four shows that I had hoped to get to (Salute, Carronade, Claymore and the cancelled SKELP), I was determined to get to the final show of the year, TARGE in Kirriemuir. The weather was not looking favourable, as when I got up on Saturday morning there was a scattering of snow on the ground, but the forecast looked reasonable for the day so we set out. 

I will add, I also have been suffering with an annoying cold this weekend, and that might have put me off if my show visits had been a little more successful this year.

My plan for the show was to put quite a lot of stuff in to the Bring and Buy sale and enter three items into the painting competition (two of which were the Warbear and the Stag Rider from the current Dead Earth Games Kickstarter). Beyond that, I just wanted to absorb the ambiance of attending a show, chat to a few people and hopefully get into a participation game with my sons. All of this was achieved, so all in all it was a successful day.

I didn't go with any great purchasing plans, other than possibly picking up a box of Fireforge Miniatures Templar Knights, which I need to complete my planned retinue for Lion Rampant.

The display of wonderful tables was up to it's usual standard and I have tried to capture most of them here (apologies to the owners of the North West Frontier game, my photos all turned out blurry and had to be abandoned).

Excuse my ignorance on the subject of some of these games. Trying to keep my two boys interested for the day generally meant I didn't get time to linger at that many tables to get details:-

Commands and Colours Ancients.

A nice WW2 game.

This Bolt Action game looked great, with a nice mix of laser cut buildings and a scattering of palm trees.

I was very impressed with this Piquet game, Not my period, but very attractive!

This was the best photo I could salvage of Old Meldrum Wargames Club's Quatre Bras game.

Another attractive Napoleonic game, this time with a winter theme. Very well done!

I shall be using this one for inspiration for my own Ronin game. I would be more than happy to have to table set up at home!

This Renaissance naval game was gloriously colourful and the sea table worked really well!

 Laser cut terrain certainly is featuring on a lot of tables now. As much as this table looks spectacular, I think i would like to see a little more work in making these buildings more "lived in".

I struggle to get enthusiastic about WW1 games, but this table certainly looked interesting.

A more modern naval game this time, and just as successful as the the other one.

Finally we have the Glasgow Gaming Group's A Picnic in  Jurassic Park  game. Based on a very slimmed down version of Saurian Safari. My sons had a go at this one and thoroughly enjoyed it, one bagging a pack of raptors and a stegosaurus with a flame thrower, and the other taking down a charging T-Rex!

I did OK in the painting competition, getting a 3rd place for my Celtos bust. Unfortunately the Dead Earth Warbear and Stag Rider didn't win anything, but they were attracting a fair bit of attention, so hopefully that will get people looking at the Kickstarter...

As for my purchases of the day, this was based on how well my stuff sold at the Bring and Buy. As it happens I did very well and made enough profit to fund my pre-ordering 7TV second edition as well as the Army Starter cast from Crooked Dice. I also picked up their new Otherworldly Invader and The Weed (which is huge...).

I also got a box of the Fireforge Templar Knights.

My prize for 3rd place in the painting competition was a £15 voucher to use with Reiver Castings. Spending this proved a little tricky, as they don't produce any periods that I have gamed in before. However, I was very taken with their Border Reivers range, and ending getting some of them. So I guess I have moved into a new period (a chance to use my Peel Tower...).

Finally, I also had a small win on the raffle.

All in all a good day out and great to break my wargames show fast...

Warbears and Stagriders - Painting a couple of new Minis (Part 06) - Finished!

Part 01, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Finishing off the two Warbears and Stag Riders Kickstarter figures.

To finish off the basing of the two figures I wanted to add some interesting scenic work.

At the base of the rocks on the Stag Riders base I felt it would add a nice bit of depth to have some pools of water. suggesting either a stream or melted snow.

The first step was to paint the areas a very dark green. I also glued some tall grass at the pool edges.

The grass I used was Woodland Scenics, Field Grass, Light green.  Why this colour, this is the only colour I have at the moment.

Once that had set I applied some Z-Poxy epoxy adhesive. This dries clear (at least if you have fresh bottles - see my Frostgrave scenery post for the consequences of using old epoxy), and is a nice fast alternative for such small pools...

Once the epoxy had set (5 minutes) I move on to the plant life. In these photos you can see the different scatter materials that I used. For most of the bases I covered them with a dark scatter from Gale Force Nine. I used a slightly different one for the area in front of the pools on the Stag Rider's base, as I wanted it to look a little swampy there. The Woodland Scenics bushes were used to break up the flat ground a little. The pot of orange coloured scatter (Gale Force Nine) was used to add  a bit of variety to the bushes, aswas the grey colour, which I hoped would give a hint of dying foliage or even frost.

In these two photos, the effect is starting to come together.

To add some dead leaves I resorted to the kitchen herb rack. I find that a nice dead leaf effect can be achieved with some old marjoram.

At this stage I wanted to add some areas of soft, melting, snow. I was fairly pleased with the effect on the bases so far so I went at this stage with some trepidation. Adding big blobs of white modelling paste to the bases could have ruined the whole thing...

I used the modelling paste as I planned to use Woodland Scenics Soft Flake Snow and I have found in previous projects that it needs a white mass underneath it to add depth and bring out the snow effect.

The final task was to add some gloss varnish to the area in front of the water pools. this soaked into the scatter material and gave a nice swampy effect.

Following are some photos of the finished pieces. My photography is not perfect, but I hope they give an idea of the final look of the figures...