Frostgrave Scenery Project Part 07

Part 01, Part 02, Part 03, Part 04, Part 05, Part 06

I feel I am ready to start slapping some paint on now..

I have decided to paint the tower a dark grey and the flanking buildings in more pastel tones.

Firstly, I paint the tower with a coat of black household emulsion paint. This gives a good base coat to work with and hides some minor gaps.

I also painted most of the rubble around the base of the tower with the black emulsion. After all it is supposed to be part of the fallen tower.

The two building at either side also got a coat of emulsion, but this time in a creamy colour.

At this point I painted the base with a Burnt Umber acrylic. I will probably tone it down and add some grey over it to add to the required cold feel later on. I also painted any areas of sand on the rubble piles with the same Burnt Umber.

For the tower, I worked into it with various greys, sometimes mixed through with a little Burnt Sienna, just to warm it up a little. I added above and below the windows and doors to suggest smoke and watermarks.

I painted one of the buildings with Burnt Sienna and the other with a pale mint green colour. Actually a pretty ghastly colour, but once I have aged it and distressed it, it should be OK. Door and window frames also got a coat of Burnt Sienna. I am trying to complete the project with as little fuss as possible, so using the same colours simplifies and reduces the stages involved.

The tiles on the roof also got a quick coat of dark grey.

The paint job is very crude so far, but with some aging/distressing and the addition of frost, snow and ice it should all tie in together...

New 28mm Laser Cut Long Shipping Containers

It has been suggested that I could add long (40 foot instead of the standard 20 foot ones) shipping containers to the range I produce. So I have been playing around with the idea. I have done a couple of test builds and I just need to tweak a few things before they are finalized!

They will be available in both 28mm scale and 20mm, like the standard 20 foot containers.

Frostgrave Scenery Project 06

Part 01, Part 02, Part 03, Part 04, Part 05

Nearly finished the detailing.

I need to add a few more sets of ladders  to the tower and I haven't decided how figures will get up to the first floor of one of the houses yet...

The ladders are a bit fiddly to make, but as they are rough, old ones I really don't want them to look too neat anyway!

 Once the glue had dried on the ladders I popped them into the tower and the seem to fit just right!

Moving along, I need to add some tiles to the roof of one of the houses. I found a carton in our recycling that is made of fairly strong board. I cut it into strips and then started to cut random looking tiles from one edge. This was very time consuming and took me a couple of hours to get the effect I was after

 I glued them on in overlapping strips until they were about half way up the roof. Fortunately, being a ruin, I didn't have to go right to the top as that would have driven me round the bend, with all the time it took.

To disguise the top edges of the exposed strips I cut some individual tiles. 

Once stuck on they finish off the roof just right!

 I am nearly ready to start painting now!

Frostgrave Scenery Project 05

Part 01, Part 02, Part 03, Part 04

With the rubble pile finally set (the grout and PVA took a while to go off), I have given the base and rubble a coating of sand.

I spread PVA glue evenly over the base, but added it in a much more patchy way over the rubble, hiding most of the grout but leaving patches of the polystyrene exposed.

The exposed polystyrene will be painted up as stone.

I added some sand to a few other places on the model too. To help give the aged, ruined effect it breaks up the even surfaces nicely. It also hides seems and joints quite well.

In this photo you can see the wrecked door of the tower. I made this with a piece of balsa wood that I scored planking lines into and then cut away pieces at each end to show where the wood has rotted!

In the final photo you can see where I have marked the boundary between the inside of the buildings and the outside. The sand stops on the door step. I should probably have raised the floor height above ground level a little and added a door step. I will remember to do this with the next ruin I do...

Star Trek Attack Wing Terrain Making

While we prepare for our Fostgrave campaign we have been playing Star Trek: Attack Wing. It makes a good filler between bigger games and then pre-painted models make it even easier to get up and running.
However, I still needed some terrain for the game. Firstly I wanted a gaming mat to play on. I spent some time searching around the internet for a suitable space photo and found plenty of really high quality photos that would give good definition on large scale print. I  had the photo printed out an 3 feet square as this gives a good playing area and also just fits on our dining table. Once printed I had the whole thing laminated with a matt finish. This really makes the image stand out and, of course, protects it from damage.

I am really pleased with the results and we have used the matt quite few times now!

 I felt that the flat planet templates that are supplied with the game left a bit to be desired so I bought a large Christmas decoration ball on Ebay and have painted it up to be our planet.

I had to cut off the hanging tab which was simple enough, with a piercing saw.

 Then I painted the inside of the two halves of the sphere with swirling blue, silver and gold patterns.

Once the two halves are together I am very happy with the results and I think it achieves suitably Star Trek like planet look!

The final part of this build was to mount the planet on a clear acrylic ring, to stop it rolling around the table. Just as an after thought, it has been pointed out that I could have used the two haves of the clear ball as two separate planets. This might have been nice, as I could have painted them a different colour!

I wanted to add a few asteroids to my deep space hazards too. So I bought a bag of various sized polystyrene balls. Rather than spend any time carving them into irregular shapes I simply sprayed them with several very heavy coats of grey primer. The paint ate into the polystyrene and gave quite a nice random shape. I think if I do any more I will carve into the balls a little before spraying them, but otherwise I am happy with the results.

 I have also had half a dozen other asteroids given to me, I have a quite a good collection of terrain for my space battles now.

Frostgrave Scenery Project 04

Part 01, Part 02, Part 03

 I am aiming for reasonably detailed  but playable, rather than highly detailed diorama quality. So with that in mind I have left the timber detailing and moved on to building the rubble piles around the ruined parts of the buildings.

For most of the bulk of the rubble I have used roughly cut chunks of blue insulation foam (styrofoam). I hacked them up very roughly and in some cases just broke pieces apart, as this gave a nice rubble like effect.

I used a PVA based woodglue to stick the chunks of styrofoam down, and slowly built up the piles. Once the glue had set I used some grey tiling grout to fill in gaps and give a more cohesive look to the piles.

 I added one or two bits to the upper floors of the tower, although I didn't want to limit the floor space too much, as it is important that there is enough space for the figures to be placed.

On the subject of placing figures, the rubble piles are laid out in a purely representative way. If the these buildings had really collapsed there would be a lot more rubble and placing figures would be a lot more difficult. This is a compromise that should means the model looks good but is still usable on the gaming table.

While I have the grout out I used it to fill some of the joins where there were unsightly gaps.

Once again I have not been too neat with the grout as the ruined buildings will need quite a rough finish anyway.

While taking these photos I have noticed that there is one (damaged) window that I have missed adding a timber frame to. So that will be my next job. Then I will be adding some sand to the model.

Frostgrave Scenery Project 03

Part 01, Part 02

 Added a little more timber detail to the Wizard's Tower.

Beams underneath the floors...

Some detailing around the doors. I also finished of the stairs to the main front door, hiding the sides of the foam core steps...

Some simple framing for the windows, which tidies them up nicely.

I finished off the roof structure. I will be adding a few loose tiles to this later on...

I didn't want them to look to perfect so this door frame has decayed over the centuries...

I don't want to spend too long on the detailing as this is supposed to be a fast project. So I will be moving on to adding some rubble and masonry work next time.