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Six months is a lot of time to gather material for another project related article, and thus The Colony Special Project is back with entire new installment about this Infinity gaming board. I just couldn’t leave this project unattended for much longer.
Let me start by telling you this: I love my gaming board. That being said, at some point I felt like something didn’t quite bangt right. The board was finished, I got a lot of awesome, positive feedback about it, still deep down I felt something is off. There’s always place for improvement so my inner artist raged while being unable to pinpoint the exact reason of my discomfort. It took a while for me to understand that the board looked too chaotic to absorb. All the yellow, blue and deep clear-red did not work well with White-Sand-Orange-Green colour scheme.
I started introducing changes by dumping the obvious source of unfitting colours – the Holo Ads, and adding more green to the board with brand new set of Antenocitis Ad Stands. It partially worked but I wasn’t fully satisfied with the result…
The real change sweeped throughout The Colony quite suddenly. Everything, and I can’t stress this enough, because of the Gingermane Studio and it’s scenery. Long story short – there is this guy for whom I paint some Infinity miniatures, and one day he is like ‘I’m designing some scenery pieces, what you think?’ and I’m like ‘OMG I love this shit!’ and he’s like ‘Wanna grab some?’ and I’m like ‘Duuh! Shut up and take my money!’… All of the sudden I find myself knee deep in Gingermane’s scenery pieces which not only look amazing, but also fit right into my gaming board’s theme. They seem to be plucked straight out of my deepest desires – both in case of looks and playability.
This was the exact point at which I decided to finally ‘repair the damage’ I done to my gaming board and contain the colour palette of all the stuff that appears on it…
The final decision was made: Coloured Plexi Ads adorning the buildings had to go. Upon reaching this conclusion I instantly contacted my besties from Micro Art Studio and ordered a huge pile of replacement pieces. I’ve figured that a bigger version of ’rounded orange piece’ would work the best for the theme and overall looks. Soon after, I got a delivery of more than a hundred pieces necessary to finalize the ‘grand change’…
Preparing these was harsh. Had to clean them all of soot leftovers and remove small pieces left inside some of the laser-cut holes. Once done I painted all the pieces in a single go, then swaped Plexi Ads with them. The result is exactly how I hoped for.
The road to perfect gaming table streches before me and it’ll take some time till I get there, but I can see the destination. What’s left for me to do is to add dots of Vallejo’s Sandy Yellow here and there to tone down the Gingermane’s white a bit. Afterwards The Colony should be finally complete… at least for some time. I promis to bring you more of The Colony in next installment – probably six months from now :P.
“Three gargantuan spaceships endlessly traverse the Sphere, doing what others cannot or will not do, sticking it to ‘the Man’ and contesting ordinary definitions of normalcy and acceptability. Do you prefer to think for yourself? Do you want to travel? Then you might have a Nomad spirit.”
The idea behind “Nomad Zonds” was born as a child of necessity and inspirational spark. What drove me to Infinity the Game and then to Nomads faction was a bunch of awesome looking miniatures. For me this aspect of the game is so important, that I literally ignored Infinity untill first 3d sculpted miniatures appeared and revolutionized the range. That does not mean all of the oldschool miniatures are bad – let’s just say that back in the day there were not enough awesome looking miniatures to sway me. Now, with all of the newly released, sweet looking, stuff – Infinity range looks insane and the game became an important part of my hobby. What holds me back from acquiring entire Nomads range are those few leftovers of the times long past aka #LetsMakeMoranGreatAgain. Due to rescaling and high quality detail of new miniatures, some of the old ones look out of place among all the goodie goodie stuff that Corvus Belli provides for us on monthly basis. Here’s where ‘necessity’ comes in. Instead of waiting for CB to fulfill my hobby’iest desires, I decided to go ahead and do it myself. So the main concept of this project was to avoid original Nomad Zons at all cost and create something that would match the current quality of the range…
My goal was to create an entire set of silhouette 3 Nomad Zonds to fill all availability once and for all and be able to pick a right tool for a right task at a whim. At the same time I wanted to keep the Zonds somewhat in the boundries of usual four legs, rounded ‘head’ etc. design, to fit the Nomad army and afterwards my Colour Scheme.
All the required stuff prepared, what was left for me to do at this point was to build this grand new line of Zonds. Lunokhod/Tsyklon legs and axis as a base was an obvious choice. The most Nomad set of legs possible, so I decided to go for it. Legs had to be reposed slightly to match the size of a 40mm base, but otherwise no grand changes required…
Zond’s body is it’s key feature. For this I have picked Haqqislam Bike’s engine. It has the right size, is finely detailed and interresting. I had my eye on this one for a long time now – knowing deep inside it might come in handy at some point. A small cut with hobby cutters between engine and saddle was required to separate these to parts. Afterwards I drilled a hole in the center of upper cannister to mount it on the legs axis…
Another important piece – the head. This one was made out of ALEPH Rebot ‘butt-piece’. Fortunatelly a spare butt-piece is thrown into each Rebots box, so it is obtainable for a low price in the long run. Mounted it on a piece of green-stuff and pushed in the excess of greenstuff on the sides to fill the gaps. Drilled a small hole to mount weaponry/lenses underneath…
The main difference between Transductor Zonds and Total Reaktion Zonds is the weaponry. Transductors have a Lunokhod front lense mounted and both side weapond cut off, while Reaktion Zonds maintain both weapons, one of which was extended with a Warhammer 40k Tau bitz…
Warhammer 40k Tau bitz… In my opinion these work best as fillers for Infinity conversions. Slightly bulky, still futuristic enough to match the theme. Used many different random pieces to improove the differences between certain types of Zonds, still the key piece was a XV8 Crisis Battlesuits arm shield. These were used for nice, round top pieces on all of my Zonds…
One Zond was meant to fill the roll of a Meteor Zond, or serve as the good old Stempler Zond in times of need. To create a look of futuristic hover engines that would allow the Meteor Zond to Combat Jump I used four front wheels of Haqqislam bikes. Already had plenty of these at my disposal – seemed like a perfect match. I had also mounted a round frontal ‘sensor’ piece instead of the usual Lunokhod lenses and weapons…
Not much about this part. Painting went pretty fast and easy. I used the standard Nomad Colour Scheme slightly improoved throughout the years of constant practice. Main change is a total abandonment of Metallic colours and using Black-Grey-White Infinity Black instead. In this particular scheme I use airbrush just for the light effects. Drawbacks of using old colour scheme – a lot of regular brush work 🙂
Silhouette 3 Zonds set complete. Let’s call them ‘type: Fireant’. They are ready to be unleashed on countless fields of battle (At this point they already seen some action). You can visit the “NOMAD ZONDS” SPECIAL PROJECT GALLERY for more pictures, and GALLERY: NOMADS to see the rest of this army. Next step would be to design and convert two Baggage Salyut Zonds. What you say about an idea of eight legged, spider like Lunokhods with Fireant bodies? I already see the result in my mind’s eye. See you in next Special Project then…
“Fear not Human Sphere – Dong Peyote is here!”
The story of the ‘Dong Peyote’ character begun in Strikezone: Wotan, an online campaign of Infinity the Game, launched by Beasts of War may 2017. The whole idea was inspired by an abrupt appearance of the ‘Don Peyote Repurposed Freighter’, a Nomad vessel shaped like… well – it looks like a dong. Throughout the first stage of the campaign Nomad players had their share of laugh about this peculiar fact and the name of the ship evolved to ‘Dong Peyote’ pretty fast. ‘Plunged balls deep into the enemy lines’ and ‘He’s a hero we deserve’ are just some of the standard lines used in the Nomad Briefing Room and in the hidden command facebook groups. This positive hype about the joke inspired me to turn the ‘Dong Peyote’ into an ingame character – a symbol for the Bromad players to relate to. In terms of fluff, the Nomads are a rather diverse bunch, a group where it is certain for some not entirely sane individuals to be found at times. I bet that there’s plenty among the Nomad to simply follow the idea, adorn the Nomad symbol mask and rampage throuugh the battlefield with a ‘Don Peyote’ shaped dongs strapped to their belts just for the thrill of doing it. These individuals will probably go full commando just to die in a blaze of utter glory soon after…
The entire idea of the ‘Dong Peyote’ miniature was to provide a mighty look and a heroic pose plus all the important features like the mask and the actual ‘dong’. I chose to use a Nomad Morlock miniature, as it already had most of what I expected for. The newest Morlock is a badass looking, huge, muscled chunk of a miniature in a dynamic pose and with a lot of great details. It looks so mighty that I had real problems using it to represent a puny Morlock. A perfect candidate for the ‘Dong Peyote’, even in terms of fluff – as Morlocks would be the first to follow the trend end adorn the Nomad mask.
Plunged balls deep into the enemy lines, the Dong Peyote is a sight to behold! His incredible feats of manliness are well known in the entire Human Sphere! This is a hero the Nomads deserve!
The proud prow of the ‘Dong Peyote’ was a real challenge. The picture provided by Corvus Belli is insanely hard to bring to life in such a tiny scale. I used some Warhammer 40,000 bitz to create something akin to the Don Peyote Freighter. This one took most of the work, but in the end looks mighty enough 🙂
A single miniature is not enough to fully support the concept, of an urban legend incarnate. With all the videos in which I used the image of the Dong Peyote character I wanted to follow the colour scheme and the background idea. I used plasticard and a wooden cube to build a simple background scenic base. I then painted the entire thing throughout few hours. I tried hard to merge the initial colour scheme with the looks of the rest of my Nomad miniatures, so that both the character and his base would not stand out too much…
The final product of my labour exceeded my expectations. I now have a fully playable ‘Dong Peyote’ miniature and a scenic base to proudly display it. As I filled the “DONG PEYOTE” SPECIAL PROJECT GALLERY with pictures and presented them to my fellow Bromads – only one more thing was missing…
This mighty character required a set of playable stats and off course a point cost to be used in game. Some of my brethren had the idea of how this character should work, among them Del S was the closest to create a playable statline for the ‘Dong Peyote’, but as in case of every miniature game – players should not be allowed to tinker too much with stats for the miniatures of their own factions. Trying to introduce the character to my gaming group was not easy – some of my friends considered the proposed stats to be not entirely balanced. I asked one of them (Narrator) to create his own version for the ‘Dong’ and he actually managed to come up with a really nice and what looks like a well balanced statline…
Thus the ‘Mighty Dong Peyote’ was born. I gave him a try just next day in a Strikezone: Wotan game of Infinity against one of my friends. I do hope that this Special Project inspires some of my Nomad brethren to use the character in their own games and thus lead to the ‘Dong Peyote’ being a part of the lore – even if only as a recognisable unnoficial part…
“In the fictional multiverse of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, Modrons are creatures native to the outer plane of Mechanus. Modrons resemble geometric shapes with humanoid limbs and represent a living, physical manifestation of law without regard to good or evil. They follow a strict hierarchy, with each rank reporting to the rank directly above it, and issuing commands to the ones ranking beneath it. For example, a quadrone modron will report to a pentadrone, and command several tridrones.”
This Special Project is a part of the ever growing Thomas’s Peculiar Collection. With new D&D adventure just being released and the Modrons playing an important role in it – Thomas have asked me to prepare a set of Modrons of different shapes and sizes – to fill eventual requirements of his Game Master needs. He then provided some fantastic and imaginative materials to base my work on.
Thomas knew very well how to support his favorite Arcane Artificer for the grand task of creating an entire collection of Modrons. He ordered a variety of awesome hobby (and not entirely hobby) materials that were meant to bolster my own collection of ‘scrap’. With the concept already implanted in my mind and a magnificent drop of loot delivered by a courier – I spent half a day just segregating and preparing bitz and usable stuff for later use.
The project was then put on hold, due to other projects standing in the way (schedules must be met). Fortunatelly it did not took long and about a month later I reignited the spark of the arcane – sat down and started working on the Clockwork Modrons.
First a test subject, and then – upon it being accepted by my master – I worked day and night to bring more such magical creatures into being. Bodies invoked with use of wooden balls and smooth dice of many shapes. Sockets, joints and detail forged with decorative beads. Limbs created with toothpicks, bases cut of plasticard, weapons stolen from the Warhammer 40,000 miniatures… A wast production line was set up on my workbench and I was at the same time the coordinator, concept supervisor and the working force…
Some time passed, before totally exhausted and with fingers covered in a layer of hardened super glue, I reached the goal of creating vessels for souls of the Modrons to occupy. I then put a lot of effort to bolster them against the forces of gravity and potential stress they might suffer during games to come.
For the Modrons to truly come alive I obviously had to do my magic and paint them. The entire process was long and not without challenges. Modrons are mechanical constructs so I decided to go ‘metal’ with a trusted Five Layer Technique: Metal. I then added more and more layers of different effects like rust streaks, smears, patina, splatters of stippled metal and some edges. In this the ‘AK Interactive’ paints became a vital factor. Slowly, steadily the Modrons came alive at my desk.
Finally I’ve reached the goal and reported a success to my master. His bidding done I can now present to you the fruits of my arcane labour in the “CLOCKWORK MODRONS” Special Project gallery…
It has been six months of peace for The Colony Special Project. I’ve mentioned before that such grand projects are never fully complete – so here I am, adding even more stuff to the already vast collection of scenery. The reason for this is obviously the restless muse, but also I grew up to a decision to expand my scenery collection. On top of more variety I will be able to cover two gaming boards and that might come in handy from time to time…
Not so long ago I have attended a big Infinity the Game event. About 40 participating players, including some of my friends. As a co-organizer I took The Colony with me, so that along with Micro Art Studio, Zen Terrain and After Hours Workshop, there were more fully painted tables at the event. I even streched my terrain set to cover two gaming tables, thus was hyped by the vision of creeping onto another 48×48″ board. At that point I already had some new stuff purchased at Antenocitis, so it’s not like I was ever going to stop anyway 😛
Still, once the dust settled and I had a moment to thik about it, I realized that more terrain was inevitable if I was to do it again in the future…
The idea was to build more interresting stuff to fill all the empty spaces between buildings. At that point more buildings were rather out of question as I’d rather produced terrain pieces to improove single gaming table, with an option to allow me to eliminate vast empty spaces if I went double…
The obvious choice was to produce more sculptures, as these look nice, are awesome LOF blockers and work pretty well with the theme of The Colony.
For this purpose I used a hard box and some random leftovers provided by friendly Terrain making companies and my wife.
This one was a totally new approach to the ‘sculpture’ idea. The exclusive Winsor & Newton brush box was an inspiration on it’s own and summed with my newly acquired experience in using clear resin – a fountain or a pond was a must go. I decided to use wooden balls as a sculpture to compliment the water theme with their smooth oval shapes. Now I feel like a second Winsor & Newton box is soon to follow…
Plant compartments from THE COLONY – part seven: BEYOND are by far one of the best Infinity scenery pieces I have created. They have the looks but are also very playable, providing a lot of cover and breaking long shooting corridors. Yves Saint Laurent cosmetics plug and couple more drill covers, that I received from a friend, and an I was ready to build another Plant compartment. This time tho I lacked some of the MDF pieces, necessary to build an exact copy of the previous template. I decided to do some magic and tinker a bit with the design – using materials I actually had.
I also redesigned the plant to add variety on the table. These were made using a method from THIS TUTORIAL. It is simple and very effective and can be used to create many awesome shapes and textures. It took me around ten minutes to prepare three of these, so if you ever wandered if you should try the tutorial out – just go for it 😉
These three were inspired by boredom and awesome looking Orbit Gum pendants. Upon seeing the pendants I grabbed a bunch of them, knowing well that they will come in handy in the future. Did not took much time to try and use them for Infinity scenery and a set of Food Mashines (closed and secured cause ‘Nomads are in town’) are now complete. On top of three Orbit pendants I mostly used trash and leftovers, but there also are some special MDF pieces which you probably reckognize by now.
Another weekend well spent. Now I can’t stop to think about other ways of using clear resin, wooden balls, basing-super glue made plants and all the new stuff. Might also want to shift my attention to designing the actual MDF scenery as recently I’ve entered into an arrangement with Every Little War which will tweak some of my stuff, including Objective Room and provide it in the online offer. A lot of stuff to wait for XD
“It is a Dark Time.
The might of the Empire is dust, their crown is lost to them and their glory forgotten.
The promise of an age of peace and prosperity is drowned in blood.
This is your time. For the ruins of Mordheim hold prize beyond imagination: stones of power which can grant all your wishes.
But beware of your enemies.
Fear the Possessed, the Beasts of the Pit which roam the night.
Watch for the thieves of the Rat men, the Skaven of the Underworld.
Dread the corpses who walk like the living: the foul Vampires and their rotting minions.
This is Mordheim, the city of the Damned. This is the home of all your hopes. Be wary or it will be your grave as well.”
Mordheim rb.s.124
It all started with a single idea that came to me one day. I installed “Mordheim: City of the Damned” on a PC and played for the first time. It took me back on a memory trip through all the campaigns played throughout the years and further – as for the first time I saw Mordheim in it’s dark glory! It looked so effective. I figured to make myself a gaming board based on this…
You see – terrain making is similar to PC map building. You take base shapes, you texturize them and then color them. If you happen to plan it beforehand, you will have just that: base shapes, texture pieces and paints – to work with. So , the idea was totally within my reach. Not a priority – just ‘an idea’. One to haunt me throughout my everyday life from then on. Sometimes it stayed dormant for couple of weeks just to emerge from the depth of imagination without any warning. Many times I was on the verge of realizing it into existence, then just hid it deeper within me like “meh, takes up too much time, I don’t need it right now”. But the right moment finally came. I was gaming in a local hobby store, where I saw an inspiring collection of Mordheim scenery. This was too much – I couldn’t resist. There was just too much inspiration to walk by. I broke that invisible mental barrier – took this like a man – a day later I went to construction store, purchased all necessary materials and started working on this project…
I already had a Mordheim Gaming Board along with all the terrain that might come in handy throughout a vast campaign. The old scenery set was rather solid but lacked some key features in terms of theme and most importantly – texture. Back in the days I praised short construction time and playability over looks and strong theme. I produced terrain pieces really fast, but at a cost of visuals. This time around I set off for looks and theme as the highest priority with playability a bit lower, followed by durability and other usual stuff. Due to current Nomad’ish way of life I also wanted for this gaming board to be transportation friendly and rather light. To achieve that I had to fulfill these assumptions:
As with most terrain projects, I started by preparing a simple visualisation of how much space the foundations will take up on the gaming board. By ‘the foundations’ I mean simple terrain pieces that will take up most space, creating different levels on the gaming board. In case of “The Colony” gaming board these would be buildings, but this time I’ve decided to use urban hills for the job. This was just a formality, but as usual I wanted to be prepared for what’s to come…
The base concept was to create four urban hills, that might be combined in many different ways to create a large elevated space, or set up individually. Along with these, two small urban hills and two platforms were to be made. While small hills might be used for shape diversity and to link the bigger ones, platforms were to provide easy access to elevated positions on the map…
One of the most important things in terrain building is choosing the right materials. Let’s say that I wanted to provide a lot of texture and detail, keeping gaming board/scenery durable, easy to setup and easy to transport (Not to mention – wallet friendly), at the same time. Plaster was obviously a bad choice as it’s heavy and tends to get damaged all the time. Personally I try to avoid it. Any type of Resin or Hardfoam might do but these are extremely expensive and in case of a project on such a scale, they would require professional equipment to be fully implemented. So I decided to go for styrofoam for base shapes and wallpaper for texture. I personally hate light terrain pieces, that tend to fly all over the table, but in this case – solid buildings could keep the rest pinned to the table, thus following all the assumptions of my initial idea at the same time.
I had all the materials needed along with the concept. The only thing left was to start working on the project. I started with the most simple task – preparing a ‘cobblestone’ gameboard. It took like half an hour with me just applying a lot of basing glue onto the board and then cutting large pieces of wallpaper to be gluedon top of the board. The picture looks nothing special, but once painted – small cobblestone could be seen all over the game board…
As soon as I took on the platforms, an idea of additional items appeared. Having in mind that the upper level should be rather accessible for all the miniatures I added four sets of stairs to the fold. Started with base shape cut out of rough pieces of styrofoam, then added texture on the sides to finally cover certain places with handmade stones. The stones (or just ‘huge bricks’) were made by cutting the base rectangular shape out of styrofoam and then rolling droves of these in my hands so that all the hard angles became nicely rounded.
Along with all the platforms and stairways I also prepared a set of urban hills. I used ‘Legend of the five rings ccg’ boxes to gain access to base shapes of a similar height. The best method to texturise them was to cover entirety of them with glue and then use wallpaper all over it. Once glue dried out I added styrofoam pieces cut out of the fridge protecting casing ( I like to keep such stuff in case it’ll come in handy – and guess what – it did…). Just like with stairs and platforms, I texturized urban hills with styrofoam bricks/blocks of stone.
Usually at this point I would have spent a lot of time correcting small imperfections, but I’ve figured out to cover them with a finishing touch of fake autumn leaves, once the paint job is done. This way I wanted to strengthen the mood of the entire table while having all the small holes and defects covered.
One of the things I usually mess up aree bridges. Up to now I can’t recall any of these that would actually turn out to look good. Having excess materials I decided to give it a try, this time though I used the same concept as in case of urban hills. I tweaked the design a little to better suit the gaming board and added two short bridges to the set.
Once undercoated I set up couple of different battlefields to take proper pictures. I was able to confront the idea of a modular table with what I’ve created. Checked out different layouts but also made mental notes of what and how many buildings I would require in the future…
Paint job followed soon after. I used entire 200ml of Vallejo Black Surface Primer mixedwith gray and white to provide different layers of both wet paint job and drybrush. After that I also edged all corner stones with GW’s Pale Wych Flesh and added some extras in form of broken skulls, torches and Wyrdstone Shards. I also covered some spots with Autumn Leaves made out of Birch-tree seeds. This set a strong, dark mood to the scenery and comboed nicely with already painted ‘Toad Fountain’ and ‘Dead Tree’ pieces…
More than happy with the visual results I put the project on hold until end of the year in hope to get back to it with some cool looking buildings later on. We’ll see how it goes once 2017th hits the callendar…
“It is a Dark Time.
The might of the Empire is dust, their crown is lost to them and their glory forgotten.
The promise of an age of peace and prosperity is drowned in blood.
This is your time. For the ruins of Mordheim hold prize beyond imagination: stones of power which can grant all your wishes.
But beware of your enemies.
Fear the Possessed, the Beasts of the Pit which roam the night.
Watch for the thieves of the Rat men, the Skaven of the Underworld.
Dread the corpses who walk like the living: the foul Vampires and their rotting minions.
This is Mordheim, the city of the Damned. This is the home of all your hopes. Be wary or it will be your grave as well.”
Mordheim rb.s.124
Following the previous Mordheim article I would like to present the “Toad Fountain” – another addition to my Mordheim scenery collection. The same night I started to work on “Dead Tree” I encountered difficulties with falling asleep. My imagination bombarded me with countless visions of cool Mordheim scenery pieces, ruined bridges, fallen temples and overturned carts. Among many otheres was a diamond in for of a big, eye catching fountain…
At first I approached this project from many different angles. Wasn’t entirely sure how to handle the main body of the fountain and even what to actually put on top of it. I only knew how I would like it to look in the end. I considered building entire fountain out of MDF pieces or even plasticard. In the end I decided to use a GW’s Tower of Sorcery bottom piece to base the construction at. With that behind me I could have predicted the size and role this scenery piece would fill in my newly developed gaming board. Be it a plaza filler or top piece of an urban hill – I was sure this one will bring a lot of dark and strange mood to my City of the Damned.
I started the project with cutting out the entire inner surface of the Tower of Sorcery’s base. I had to use a heated knife to do this, cause the plastic was really thick. Once done I cut a huge chunk of plasticard, mounted the construction on it and cut it to match the base of the fountain. I filled two canals in the base with skulls and bricks picked from scratch, then used modelling putty to fill any remaining holes. Having a firm floor in place I then used strips of plasticard to form the inner wall of the fountain. Smoothed the edges with modelling putty and mounted the inner feature, made out of GW’s scenery piece…
I then started to figure out which miniatures to put around the pool and on the main plinth. Had real problems with that, due to not enough statue looking miniatures. I had some old Sisters of Sigmar, but each one was a different piece. Any other stuff except Stormcast Ethereals was too diverse to be even considered, and the Space Marine like guys looked just ridiculous, and uber epic’ish to be mounted. Totally out of place which you can see below…
Salvation came in form of Talisman the board game, where four awesome looking frogs can be found. Frogs totally fit into Mordheim’s unhealthy, dark mood – so I decided to ultimately break down the Talisman set and use these four creatures as statues. But what to do with a center piece? I considered leaving it empty or building an altar on top of it. Nothing seemed fitting the space so in the end I decided to take a risk and try to sculpt my own Toad. To do so I picked a smooth, flat egg-like rock and used it as main body. Then I just built the texture around it, mounted it on the plinth and added arms, leggs and facial features. I used small crystal balls on the back of the main Toad so that it fit to the rest of the herd…
I was really happy with the result of my sculpting, especially while I am not at all that good of a sculptor. Usually I just use random stuff instead of making it myself. Still – this turned out pretty cool so a win for me. I even used the excess of the modelling putty to make more fish and creatures, mixed them with the ones created during the “Dead Tree” Special Project and mounted all on a piece of plasticard to be easily painted outside of the fountain. The scenery piece was ready for another step…
This one was painted side by side with the previous Special Project. I had a strong Mordheim fever back then and was so deep in trance as not to take any mid-paint pictures except for one. Real shame, but what’s done is done. What’s worth saying is that I airbrushed a lot, covering entire Fountain with Dark Sea Green from Vallejo and then moving up with Light Grey Green and other colours. Purple and brown points were added to the fray before entire fountain was drybrushed softly with Pale Wych Flesh. I then washed the interior of the pool with some of Vallejo washes and mounted all the newly painted fish on top of tiny translucent pieces of plastic cut out of a coca-cola bottle. After the paint and glue dried I just filled the basin with Crystalline 940 resin halfway up and let it rest for a day. I also cut thin lines of translucent plastic and modelled them to look like falling water using heat. Added them to the construction the next day and had to pack entire thing for transportation to a new home, along with all my stuff…
Something around two weeks later I finally got to work on the “Toad Fountain” once more. I added some streaks and soft glow to the frogs, filled the basin with resin up to the brim and added some leaves inside. I also applied leaves all around the fountain to keep it visually coherent with the rest of the terrain I’m planning to make.
You can see the finished piece below, while more pictures can be found in the “MORDHEIM TOAD FOUNTAIN” Special Project gallery…
This piece can also be found at CoolMiniOrNot, where you can vote for it.
I hope you like this piece. I have big plans for Mordheim, wish to bring even more Mordheim scenery pieces to life in the future. Right now I’m working on a complete redesign of my previous Mordheim gaming board. Have a lot of ideas, but due to lack of free time I plan to take small steps. If you want to see more of the upcomming Mordheim related articles, just stick around and they will certainly pop up from time to time.
“It is a Dark Time.
The might of the Empire is dust, their crown is lost to them and their glory forgotten.
The promise of an age of peace and prosperity is drowned in blood.
This is your time. For the ruins of Mordheim hold prize beyond imagination: stones of power which can grant all your wishes.
But beware of your enemies.
Fear the Possessed, the Beasts of the Pit which roam the night.
Watch for the thieves of the Rat men, the Skaven of the Underworld.
Dread the corpses who walk like the living: the foul Vampires and their rotting minions.
This is Mordheim, the city of the Damned. This is the home of all your hopes. Be wary or it will be your grave as well.”
Mordheim rb.s.124
Working with some awesome Tabbletop World terrain bringed back memories of Mordheim and how I used to create fantasy scenery for my own gaming table. The idea to revitalize entire gameboard surfaced in my mind on more than one occasion but such a feat was somehow beyond my reach. To satisfy the muse and pacify my deepest Mordheim desires I decided to go one small step at a time. My attention focused on a piece I wanted to create since the earliest days of Mordheim – a creepy, dead tree. I already made an attempt to bring life to this piece couple of years ago, but the overall effect was rather poor and I ditched the project. This time I was much more experienced and much more hyped, but most of all I have acquired a lot of new skills and got to know new techniques during these last few years. I was ready to take on this Special Project head-on.
The idea was to make a sickly looking tree, hung some stuff on it then compose the surroundings so that the entire piece of scenery would create a nice visual effect. It was supposed to be a cool looking, mood providing centerpiece. The most important features were to be looks and being totally impassable so that the terrain piece won’t cause any placement problems during the game. Along with the tree there supposed to be some sort of eye-candies in form of small detail like a hidden treasure, bones, animals etc. Also I wanted to include either a small crypt or a monument somewhere on the base to provide a stronger mood to the piece.
After selecting most of the initial materials and bitz for the project I started with the tree. I thought long and hard about where to get a long wire to base the tree upon, but in the end was able to get my hands on an old Ethernet cable. At that point I knew that I will have to strenghten the entire construction, but for the time being I concentrated on the base shape. I cut the cable into pieces, removed the excess of the outer layer and reshaped the inner wires into branches/roots on both ends of each piece. Then I grouped the pieces in twos and threes, taping them around the main trunk with a paper-tape. In the next step I composed the tree out of the newly created pieces and taped them together…
Having a tree I concentrated on basing it. Used a piece of PCV to cut the basic shape and glued a bottom piece of the statue I was going to add to the composition. I then cut the excess of PCV and modelled it a bit around the newly aded piece. I based the tree and added a huge natural rock to the base to serve as a sort of a sacrificial altar or something related to occultism (And to add weight to a base that was supposed to hold a big tree). I then used a basing glue on the entire trunk of the tree and taped it around with pieces of moisted paper towel. Left the entire thing to dry out for the night…
Upon waking up I started to add texture to the tree. There were two possible ways to achieve a durable and good looking effect. The first one was to use Green Stuff along with other sculpting putties to provide a nice texture. This one would take up a lot of time and cash so I ditched it in favor of the more simple and quicker way. Once again I used basing glue, but this time I covered entire tree. Once it was hard enough I added another layer and used a dryer to help it harden. I also applied a lot of Mourn Mountain Snow – texture paint from GW. Modelled a bit and then finished with a lot of Super Glue to harden the entire surface and strenghten the construction. This way I ended up with a nice looking, durable and highly textured tree…
Next step was to add more stones onto the base and provide a more natural shape to it. I used Green Stuff and some other modelling putties to create the base shape. It was a bit expensive, but I hadn’t had plaster around and wanted to progress without any delays. I even used up excess of the putty to quick-sculpt some fish and mutated creatures for another Special Project going on beside this one. Somewhere on the way I also started to add bitz to the tree so that it looked more Mordheim-like with hooks, nails, a dead body hunging by the neck etc…
Detailing took some time as I wanted to bring life to the piece. A short line of running rats here, A bird interrested with the candles there and a half burried treasure chest somewhere else. The work moved steadily forward and with each new feature the ‘Dead Tree’ look much more alive.
Once everything was in place I covered the entirety of the base with Stirland Mud – tecxture paint from GW. Usually I just use basing glue and sand, but this time I wanted to create something more detailed. ‘No shortcuts’ I told myself when applying the texture. Ended up with a complete piece looking like this:
What can I say – I was totally in the mood. Once I sat to paint this thing I couldn’t take a break even if only to take a work in progress picture. Just couldn’t stop. Took couple of hours to complete with me testing new recipes – wanting this one to look superior to all my previous Mordheim scenery. It turned out to be a concept foundation on which I intend to build my new Mordheim gaming board terrain series.
One thing that I can say about the paint job is that most of it is made using Vallejo Air paints and actually airbrushed. Some surfaces were drybrushed just to be lined with Flayed One Flesh. What is unusual for me is that I almost used no washes, which usually are the main source of highlights in my works. This time tho I decided to go in the direction of a proper airbrushing, rather than risk unpredictability of a wash. Either way – I finished the project by applying Birch-tree seeds to imitate leaves all around the base and in particular small spots over the altar and monumet. This complimented the entire colour scheme and deepened the mood of the scenery piece.
Here is a picture of the finished piece, but theres a lot more in the “MORDHEIM DEAD TREE” Special Project gallery…
Some pictures can be also found at CoolMiniOrNot, where you can leave your votes for this one if you like.
“Dead Tree” is not my last word when it comes to Mordheim Terrain. Even now I’m working on a brand new pieces, not to mention the ‘Toad Fountain” which was completed in the same time as this one. Hope you like this piece and will enjoy the entire series. I encourage you to leave feedback, especially in case of any questions related to the project.
Every once in a while I encounter a visionary customer ending up head to toe in a ‘Special Project’ of someone else’s design. Such event occured just recently when I met Thomas, who is both a miniatures collector of grand magnitude and a great fan of Geckos. So, Thomas had an interresting idea of converting a Newt Warrior from Dark Sword Miniatures into a ‘Gecko Mage’. He was very specific about all the details for this particular project. He even drawn some concept arts to point out his expectations which is a rare thing. I was pretty much consumed by the idea and started to think about how I would proceed with it…
Alongside typical Gecko tail I was asked to create a torch and a book for the miniature to stand out as a ‘gecko mage’. Torch and tail were a matter of some time spent with green stuff and it went pretty smooth, but the book was a totally different thing. First of all I had to remove the miniature’s left arm, almost entirely covered by a shield. Taking that into consideration I decided not to rebuild this practically ‘obliterated’ limb but rather mask the damage and use a proxy hand to hold the book. Sculpting a new hand was out of question, as this would consume a lot of time and is on a verge of the limit of my skills. I used a Warhammer Ghoul’s hand instead and cut off one of it’s fingers to mark the other hand. Then I used some green stuff to fill the space left after previous ‘operation’ and masked the ‘wound’ using a book on the one side and a scroll-like bookmark on the other.
The base was yet another interresting idea. It was meant to be partially submerged with fish, plants and river bank being clearly visible. Alongside the mage, some books were to be added on the coast. Also three rats were to accompany the Gecko, being it’s familiar pets. As it happened, I had an old Micro Art Studio base with a tree trunk all over it. I decided to modify and use it as a major feature of the coast. Once it was prepared and placed on the base, I just added detail all around it and positioned the Gecko miniature in a slightly more dynamic pose. It looked well so I got a green light from Thomas and proceeded to painting…
The overall concept for the paint job was to use the original colour scheme of light green with underbelly creme and add a red pattern to the tail and back. I also got some specifics on the eyes and armour. Otherwise I had a free will to choose colours and their depth so I just did my best, providing a nice ‘Heroes Never Die!’ lvl 6 paint job.
I actually started painting with the base. While the Gecko paint job proceeded, the base was already prepared to get submerged. I used Fantasygames awesome tutorial to prepare the base then poured the resin in. As with all things – mistakes happen, and my first attempt ended up with a mess, resing pouring all over the desk, me trying to block it with blue tac and other stuff… I failed and restarted the process after clearing the base of resin. Second attempt was a success and after 24 hours I was ready to add a finishing touch to the base…
I had a lot of fun with this Special Project, mostly because I would have never had an idea like this on my own. Thomas not only provided the concept but also entrusted me with his vision. He had a great impact on the project and it makes it even sweeter. If only I could produce two identical pieces so that one would adorn my own collection 😛
View complete Gallery… Like/Don’t like? Vote at CoolMiniOrNot…
It’s been almost four months since I have ‘finished’ The Colony Special Project. Such grand endavours are the reason I’m into painting and miniatures wargaming. That wondrous feel of completion once a huge project hits the finish line. It always comes with a great satisfaction but once the dust settles, a void starts to grow inside my heart. I’m happy with results, yet long for the ‘process of creation’. That is why I consider every major project to be alive for at least as long as I am. In case of The Colony – well, a gaming table could always be improoved or use some more scenery. That is the exact way of thinking which led me to writing another part of this article…
That being said I must confess that I wasn’t able to invest much time into The Colony in the last few months. Other artistic projects fell on me from all around the globe and I lived a prosperous life by lending my brush to all those in need of decent painting. Still, once in a while I stumbled upon some cool looking items that just screamed to be unleashed onto my gaming board in form of some sweet looking terrain. Many sources provided me with items of great value, among them my girlfriend (cosmetics), my friend Garran (his personal collection of ‘cool stuff’) and even some of befriended companies like Micro Art Studio, or Ekograf, who (knowing my tastes) sent me some of their leftovers. I sincerly thank all of you, my beloved providers, and proudly announce that I couldn’t resist the temptation and used all the items, you so willingly parted with, to further expand my scenery collection and bring The Colony’s theme beyond the bounds of my early predictions.
Anyone remembers that picture? It was published at the end of “THE COLONY” SPECIAL PROJECT part six article. Some of this stuff still awaits being used, but more than half of it has already reincarnated in a form of these scenery pieces:
A futuristic sculpture made out of a Maybelline eyelashes mascara. Once I stole this precious item from my GF’s secret stash I had a real wrinkle with how to use it. So many ideas, including an antenna, a column, a laser tube – in the end I couldn’t decide so I got back into a well known territory of futuristic sculpures. It is only fair to use items stolen from my GF as pieces of art, otherwise she might not be swayed to turn a blind eye on my theft 😛
I got that awesome Dactari from my Girlfriend somewhere along two years of gaming. Untill now I hadn’t had use for it, as I was more into Corregidor-like miniatures, but finally I got the idea, made up what MDF pieces I will need to ‘cage’ this chick and ordered them from a friendly company. Once I got the stuff I just build the cage and here’s the result. It makes foir a nice rooftop piece or a great standalone scenery piece.
These can be used as objectives or just some random scenery pieces. I made them out of HDF pieces, leftovers and small plastic tubes* filled with shower gell. The tubes were given to me by Garran with which I tend to play Infinity, but also exchange concepts during our long painting/modelling talks. The guy is so nice as to share some of his stuff with me and I try hard not to let this gesture go to waste.
This is another source of endless inspiration. These are some throwbacks from Micro Art Studio’s production. MAS is very serious about their products – each and every one is checked for defects before it proceeds to packing. Once a defect is discovered, all imperfect products are kept as samples to avoid same kind of mistake in the future. In case of large quantities tho – some items may be sent to a friendly modeller to be used for awesome scenery building! One might even say that these can be used in a variety of crazy ways…
Six bridges are a bit too much on a 48×48″ table so I designed these scenery pieces to help me setup and then keep the gaming board in order. Simple yet effective, adding depth to streets and a nice futuristic note to the overall visual effect.
Made with playability in mind, these low planters are perfect to fill my choosen theme of white/orange/green scenery. They fit both at the ground level and in the rooftops. I made these using pleksi rulers to provide detail, while the rest is just plasticard cut to fit the empty spaces. The visuals vere enchanced by plants and HDF ‘orange’ pieces.
This plant compartment module is a pearl among the scenery pieces I’ve created lately. I’m really happy with how it came out. To think that I struggled for almost a year before I decided how to use two Yves Saint Laurent caps. But let’s get to the way these items (there are actually two identical scenery pieces) came to life. Some time ago I got a set of used up cutter casings from Ekograf to use in my quest of bringing imagination to reality. My friend Garran was the one to dig these out specially with me in mind (Once again thanks mate!). Once I layed my hands on these fine pieces I knew that something wondrous will come out of them. So I started planning and was quickly drawn to still unused Yves Saint Lauren caps. Their hexagonal shape fit perfectly to The Colony’s theme so I based the entire construction on them. After adding couple of PCV pieces to make the construction higher I used plexi rulers to add detail, then used cutter casings and some HDF leftovers to build particular compartments and mounted them around the central column. For the plants I used a fake Bonsai tree made out of gum. It was to fragile to be used as a standalone scenery piece, but inside the compartments it could easily outlive all the other terrain pieces. So I used glue and some tricks of my own to enchance the vicualts of tree stupms, added fake greenery and mounted these fine looking plants inside the compartments. ‘Orange’ elements followed and themed paint job done the rest. Now I have two LOF blocking pieces of scenery, that provide a lot of cover, fill empty spaces between the buildings and go along with the theme.
One thing still stood out of The Colony’s theme. The Micro Art Studio’s gaming mat (which I just love and don’t want to ever switch for anything else) was screwing with my colour scheme too much. I’ve figured to try and paint it, using sprays and airbrush. For this purpose I’ve airbrushed the entire mat with Vallejo’s German Red Brown, then used Vallejo’s white primer to lighten some spots and finished with Games Workshop’s Zandri Dust primer spray. Once the last layer was dry I moisted the gaming mat and used a piece of cloth on it to ensure that no paint will leave marks on my terrain, miniatures and accessories. Must say that MAS’s gaming mat holds the paint perfectly, while keeping it’s previous properties. The picture does not entirely cover the hue but rest assured that now the gaming mat fits perfectly to The Colony.
Last four months might not seen me The Colony-centered, still I’ve managed to improove the inicial concept of this gaming table. I’m really glad to be able to transform this:
Into this:
Are more upgrades incomming? As long as I live and am into Infinity – that’s not a matter of if, but when. Stay tuned for more of The Colony.
You want to learn more about The Colony? Check out the entire series using THIS TAG
