Living in a fantasy world

As regular readers of this blog know, I enjoy the trappings of power that being a famous blogger brings such as the money, the international travel and the constant requests for public appearances (I’m afraid I couldn’t make it to the Oscars this year as the organisers had already met their ‘British People’ quota).

The only drawback to my fame is that I now hate to give the oxygen of publicity to any other bloggers out there as I fear they may steal my precious followers (I love you all, please don’t leave me...).

However, I often see a blog that I feel needs a little bit more internet attention than it is currently receiving, in which case I’m happy to direct some of my fanbase over to it.  I was planning to recommend DJKs Fantasy blog, after it was brought to my attention a couple of weeks ago.  However, as DJKs blog is so good and I’m so lazy, within a few weeks (the first post on the blog was in February) the blog already has loads of followers.  So my idea of bestowing fame on one of the little people has failed. 

So, there’s no need for me to talk about the excellent work that DJK is doing on his blog, but I’m going to do it anyway.  As I say there have only been a handful of posts but each one is chock full of goodness.  Each is a detailed account of scratchbuilding wooden buildings suitable for fantasy, medieval or even old west gaming and he’s been using my favourite of materials, the wooden coffee stirrer.  DKJ gets his for free and they need washing so I’m not sure what he’s up to.  I hope he works in Starbucks.

DJK seems to have the polar opposite approach to me for terrain building, I like to draw detailed plans and measure everything as accurately as I can (I’m an engineer, it’s not my fault) whereas DJK seems to have a more rustic style, as he says himself:

I don't set out with detailed plans of what I intend to build, quite often I have an idea for the type of building I want or a feature I want to include and then see what happens.

I like his approach and it gives the pieces real character.  I hope I don’t sound like I’m damning with faint praise here; these models are fantastic and I felt inspired to try some of my own.  As a Frugal Gamer these buildings really appealed to me, they’re really cheap to make and look great when finished.

There are a lot of gaming blogs, that try to be funny (hello!), that show fantastically painted miniatures, or that teach you how to build gaming boards bigger than a swimming pool, but DJKs blog really appeals to me, it’s the kind of feature you’d expect to find in an old copy of White Dwarf.  It’s not only useful and very well presented, it also doesn’t try to hard to show off or be too clever.    In an age when everyone has to have a great new novel idea it’s heartwarming to see someone doing something simple and doing it so well.  I look forward to seeing what DJK comes up with next.

So in other words, I can highly recommend this site to you all, get over there now and check it out.

Happy gaming!

A Budget Battlefield

Evenin' all.

I recently acquired a digital camera, and intend to spend at least part of this weekend clearing the backlog of hobby posts I've been meaning to make since.. actually since I left Plymouth last year.  To start with, here's a series of reliable images of some terrain, which I'm having enormous fun building and which, through a combination of thrift, hoarding, careful selection of supplies, re-use of old project materials and above all getting someone else to spend money for me, I am not actually paying for.

This is what happens when two art-and-craft types move in together.

Allow me to explain.  Much of what you see on this board is being constructed not on my dime, for my own purposes, but for the greater good of Dice and Decks, proud hosts of (ahem)

and therefore being paid for by the club - that's the stuff that isn't made out of stuff I was hoarding anyway.

Joining a club is frankly great for this sort of thing; it's a way of doing something which I really enjoy (building terrain) without the usual opportunity cost (having to spend my miniatures/rules/entry-fee/bus fare on materials for it) - and there's a certain warm glowing feeling which comes from knowing that I'm making something which other people will play on and derive enjoyment from, even in my absence.

Taking a closer look at a few pieces now, we have the Troll-sized adobe huts -

Squint and you'll see the Trollblood I used to test the doors' scale.

- which are basically soup pots covered in modelling clay, which is pummelled into a suitable texture before a rim is added and carved into to create the appearance of crudely hewn stone blocks.  I bought the modelling clay from Hobbycraft, which was a mistake when there are places like the Gloucestershire Resource Centre in the world.  Incidentally, that's another great reason to join a club; a non-profit organisation running an all-in community activity is well positioned to take advantages of opportunities which simply aren't available to private individuals.

We also see the return of the Wire Trees, which I cover in a black-brown ink over the green-grey Milliput for a more sort of blighted, nasty, industrial-waste-tainted kind of look (seriously, brown trees always look like a children's drawing).  Witness these half-finished ones and marvel!

Hark textured one in the time it took me to do five.  She's a Proper Artist, you see...

I also have a collection of stirrers, which are going to be made into plank fences, and am under orders to produce some linear obstacles (that's 'lines of sandbags' to non-Warmachine types) out of more modelling clay when I can be bothered to pick some up.  Best get a move on - this is the last weekend before the tournament!

Oh My Gob!

I feel that I've passed a milestone this last week or so.  As many of you know I’ve been working on my Goblin army for Warhammer for over a year now, and progress has at times been slow.  However, over Christmas I made a big push to get it all finished and I’m now pretty much there.  I’ve got 2400pts worth of greenskins, about 95% of which are painted to some degree.
Now I’m not making any great claims to my painting or modelling skills, but there are a couple of bits and pieces that I’m quite happy with.

Night Goblin Big Boss on Gigantic Spider

Squig (Maggot) Hoppers

Fanatics

Squig Herd

Rock Lobber Crew

Rock Lobber

There's still a few little bits to get finished, like basing and a couple of coats of matt varnish.  But, like the semifinals of a TV talent show, the pain and suffering is almost over.

When I started assembling the army, my intention was to build a full Night Goblin Army.  I didn’t do this for a couple of reasons, the first was that in the job lot of gobbos I bought there were a load of orcs that needed using.  Secondly, after getting spanked numerous times, the addition of a few bigger meaner warriors couldn’t hurt.  I’m still losing games, but at least I’m taking a few of the enemy with me.

I’ve played about a dozen games with my army and found it to be fantastic fun.  Magic is pretty powerful; the greenskins have their own miscast table, and the infamous 'Staff of Sneaky Stealin' which adds one of your opponents power dice to your dispel pool.  The animosity rule does mean that units can go running off on their own or just plain refuse to do what you ask which can be like herding cats, but then I like cats, so that’s okay.

From a Frugal point of view, I think I've managed to put together a good, fun army for a reasonable price (about £100 in total).  I've already had a year's worth of fun painting and modelling it and I'm sure I'll have many more years of entertainment (and disappointment) playing the army.  Well worth the investment.

Happy Gaming (and don't forget to follow me on twitter)

Making Ladders

This week I have been mostly making... ladders. Both wooden and metallic effect.

Necromunda is best played on a number of heights and Matt and I are now building a large amount of scenery with a lot of platforms on. We have been playing without any ladders and simply allowing characters to move between levels wherever seems appropriate. I thought that it was about time to actually get some ladders onto the scenery, whether we actually use them or not!

I have bought scale plastic ladders in the past and I remember them not being cheap. A quick check on the internet shows that for a 1:50 scale ladder (the rungs are 11mm wide), the price is £2.50 per 380mm, this works out at over £6.50 per meter!

I had a look around on the internet and couldn’t find any good articles on making ladders so I decided to write one of my own.

Metal Effect Ladder
This ladder is made from plastic rod, both available from your local model shop. It isn’t cheap, but it gives an excellent finish and is far cheaper than buying pre-made ladders. Two types of rod are used:

• 3mm x 1.5mm rectangular rod
• 1mm diameter circular rod

The rectangular rod is used as the upright, with the circular rod used as the rungs. Cut the rectangular strip to the required length, approximately 90mm long is a reasonable length. Mark lines 10mm apart on the uprights (on the wider side) and then use these to drill 1mm diameter holes using a pin vice or dremel/mini drill. If you wish, you can drill only partly way through, to give an even better final effect, though this can be very tricky in practice.
When both uprights have holes drilled along their length, cut the circular rod to 12mm lengths and slot them into the holes in the uprights, using a little polystyrene cement to hold them in place.

It is best to stick all the rungs into one of the uprights first and allowing it to dry before adding the second upright.
When the ladder is dry, all that remains is to paint it, I undercoat with black and drybrush silver, though any colours you wish could be used as these ladders are often painted to match their surroundings or to be highly visible in the case of emergency escape ladders.

Wooden Ladder
The wooden ladder is made, unsurprisingly, from wood. I can’t take credit for this method as I saw it in this month’s Wargames Illustrated, and thought it would be fine to use for scavenged ladders.

This is a remarkably cheap and easy way to build ladders, the only materials you need are:

• Flat wooden stirrers, from your local coffee shop
• Cocktail sticks, from your local wedding reception

The first rung is to split the stirrer in two along it’s length to give approximately 2mm wide strips. Draw a line along the middle of its length and then use this to cut the wood with a sharp blade. These will form the uprights of the ladder and should be cut to the desired length, again, 90mm is a good length. The two uprights should then be taped at each end onto your work surface, approximately 12mm apart.

The rungs are made from the cocktail sticks, cut these into 20mm lengths, these need to be wider than the gap between uprights as they should protrude over the sides. Glue these rungs onto the uprights using PVA, spacing them approximately 10mm apart. Allow to fully dry before removing the ladder from the tape.
At this point, you could wrap some fine cotton around the joins between the rungs and uprights to represent the primitive nature of their construction, though this would add a lot of time to the build.

Paint as normal, I used snakebite leather (I was running a bit low on bestial brown!) and drybrushed using a mix of snakebite leather and bleached bone.
As an alternative method, you could make the wooden ladder using the method for the metal effect ladder; drilling holes to slot the cocktail sticks into. I haven’t tried this method, but I imagine that it would be quite tricky to drill the holes without splitting the uprights, I also really like the rough and ready effect of the wooden ladder. If you try this method, please drop me a line to let me know how you get on.

I hope you find these methods useful, as always, I appreciate any comments or suggestions. Happy gaming!