The title is a little bit of a clickbait, but just a little bit… Because what I made lately is really-really quick and easy to make (took me maximum 10 minutes per piece), and its usable not only for different genres, but for different scales too! What could be more versatile than this? But what could this magical terrain piece actually be? Well, the solution is: a rock! Like a real rock!
Last time I wrote about modular ruins, now I want to take a look on my trees and bushes. It might end up being a pretty short post, or like a showcase. Because Im mostly not really satisfied with my results... So to write a tutorial about bad methods may not be very useful. However a "How not to make it" could be edifying...
I think we can agree, that terrain is the second most important (physical, because, You know, the rules...) thing in tabletop games (very closely after the miniatures, and far before banners). Until now, all my terrain was only shown in the background of the photos (except the part 1 and part 2 of the modular wooden fort), but now I'm planning to write some posts about terrain. One obvious choice is making it in chronological order, so lets start with a very versatile terrain pieces: modular ruins.
If you imagine a view of a tabletop wargame, what do you see? I bet, that the first two things, what you think of, are the painted miniatures, and the terrain. Obviously, these are the most important. But what is the third thing? Thats a harder question... At first, but after thinking a while my answer is pretty clear: banners!
Warning! This post can be disturbingly long!
Without a long an meaningless introduction, I just start here: A little after I started painting miniatures, I felt the need to try out sculpting. But as it looks way harder than painting (at least if the result should be more or less acceptable), I had to find something, that’s easy to do. Human figures are obviously not that, because the body proportions has to be correct, the face has to look good, and there are a lot of small details… So actually it’s maybe the worst thing to start with. But I you find the worst case, you just have to invert it, to find the best! So what’s the inverse here? It has to be big, faceless, and with arbitrary proportions. Basically a formless blub… Okay, it would be easy for sure, but I wanted maybe a bit more refined thing… Something humanoid, with hands and legs, but without undefined proportions (and face). Actually an earth elemental (or rock golem) is quite a good start, because its simply some kind of humanoid form, with rocky surface! Like this one (from DevianArt):
Let’s continue last week’s project with building the more complicated parts!
The tower: I made it 1 floor high, and a floor is for 28mm miniatures approximately 50mm. So, for the walls, 100 and 110mm long sticks are needed (50-60mm as for the walls plus 50mm for the floor). But there has to be doors and windows! Placing the doors for the best versatility is according to this example (and sketch):
Back in business! After a short break, last weekend I got back, and finally started doing something. I decided, that I will work through my open projects (hopefully all of them...). The first step was not painting (at least for now), but building terrain. A little time ago I started to build a modular wooden fortress. I had two reasons for it. The first one was that I started to write siege rules for Oathmark, and I need to have something to try them out. The other one was, as I saw a youtube video on the TWS channel, which show a very quick way to build wooden fortifications. I basically built the same with some modifications.
First step was planning (as always), I had to decide the main dimensions. My insulation foam (XPS, extruded polystyrene, but it can be made of the cheaper EPS, expanded polystyrene also) is 30mm thick, so the embankment, where the miniatures will stand, will have that height (by the way, in my siege rules, there will be different walls, depending on their height, material, and number of ranks, that has place on them). The battlement is an additional 20mm and (because of the serrated form) 30mm higher. The width and depth was also not a big question. It will be a pretty small wall (the smallest one according to my rules), so it is enough if a single row of Oathmark unit has place on it. The width is at least 5x25mm, so I went with 130mm to have a bit space.
So a blog… Who knows me personally will be very surprised about this. But not more than I... I´m pretty introverted, not graphoman, and I usually don’t have any urge, to share my life with the world (except with my family and friends, but sometimes neither with them). So this blog more of a documentation (like a web-log, which a blog actually is…) of our/my journey into the tabletop world, because it’s good to live the memories again. And there are not a lot of people around me, who share this passion. So maybe I still want to share and show it somehow… Anyway if you, somehow found it, you are welcome to read it!
