Huggable Cactus

My Daughter started her first blog today, she's a very talented painter, so her talents don't fall far from the tree. She's possibly a better painter than me. Her blog is Huggable Cactus and she's doing some commission work for Matt @ printable scenery whilst my son is learning about 3d printing.

This is a Ruined Porthouse from Printable Scenery painted by her with some Warhammer miniatures painted by me. For more pics head here

Yes, I'm painting Bretonnians again. Mostly for D&D though as they suck for Age of Sigmar, I'll use my Maggotkin for playing that.

Super Munchkin Dungeon Explore Quest, + a Hobby update

So we got a couple of games for the family for christmas as well as novels, card game addons (Munchkin) etc. These were Super Dungeon Explore and Munchkin Quest.

Mucnhkin Quest is great fun and very dynamic in it's exploration of Dungeons. The core mechanic from the card game remains the same but the exploration of rooms (random rooms and doors) is quite fun and we've already had lengthy multiple hour games with lots of partying together and the inevitable backstabbing. If you're not decisive in your fighting of Monsters early on you can get left behind fast so it helps to pair up with other players to defeat monsters early on.

I've spent a good 15 hours assembling and cleaning flash from the Super Dungeon Explore Miniatures. Having just primed all the miniatures white and selected all my brightest colours last night as my wife has challenged me saying I cannot paint them in bright colours. I'm probably going to end up painting more of it than playing as I'm stuck at work whilst the kids and the missus are busily playing it at home.

I did get a good 16 bit game in last night and had masses of fun with the Claw Tribe Barbarian. Starfire the Dragon had no chance. My oldest three are getting old enough that I didn't need to run as the DM, or in this case, the Consul.

Masses of Chibi fun.

As to Warhammer: I haven't touched the few Nurgle models I've assembled since christmas; 3 Plague drones, Blight kings and Morbidex are waiting to be primed and I still have to assemble 10 Plaguebearers and 10 Bestigors and 3 stands of Nurglings . I did however strip a Khorne lord on Jugger in metal and 10 Pestigors and a few extra ol' skool plaguebearers. Given the Expanded Khorne rules that are rumoured in the 5th end times book, I can't wait.

As to Warmahordes: I haven't done much other than add another lay of flock to my display board, I'm thinking of reseating the hinges close together on the weekend and picking up some water effects. My trollbloods haven't seen any paint for a month now so have been quite lazy there. Contemplating Mulg and Earthborn Dire Troll as next addons as well as Kriel warriors and various addons.

Flames of War Russians sit there gathering dust. I have M.W.A.D.D. (Miniature Wargaming Attention Deficit Disorder)

Other Miniatures: see above sentence +5.

Napoleonics: Thinking about Perry Miniatures French...hangon don't go there yet.

My hobby space saw a massive tidy up last weekend in time for our terrain workshop and we ordered a whole bunch of new terrain for the club which has just arrived today.

Battlefield in a Box Rivers for the club and Battlezone Ruined Sector.

Some assembly maybe required. Looks like another terrain day is required.

Rivers, both front and back.

Tributaries for a bit of variety

River Fords are quite nice.

Nurgle versus Dwarfs in the ruins

Matt is an up and coming Dorf player just joined our club. He has some awesome painting skills and we've been running some games. I got invited over to his place on the weekend to have a look at his basement gaming setup. He also has some scenery printing business on the side he's trying to promote.

http://instagram.com/printablescenery

The Dorfs stare nervously across the battlefield. The walls and castles are printed scenery. Only the tower isn't.

Top down view of the action.

Nurgle in all it's glory; Blood and pestilence spread by the grandpap of disease.

The stalwart dorfs.

Pincer movement of Epidemius, Furies and GUO to avoid unfortunate cannon accidents in first turn.

Iron drakes and Cannon defend the hill.

Beast has the flank all to himself. These guys can handle themselves, I've had single beasts kill Orc warlords, Unkilleable Chaos BSBs, Stonehorns. Daemon Princes, and countless infantry.

Nurglings in the forest. These Varmint aint your normal woodland creatures.

Kill pile at end of second turn. Both generals killed each other. Stupid daemonslaying rune.

Beasts are fast. I had one unit of 6 of them chewing though the thunderers. The rest of the Plaguebearers walking through the forest after the

Gyrobomber hits beast twice without scattering and the Beast saves both much to Mark's chagrin. He then charges and gets cutdown by the Iron Drakes.

Epidemius and Plaguebearers eat into the Hammerers. Tzeentch's will had taken off more daemons than the hamerrers had at this point.

Plague Drones start eating the longbeards, the cannon crew are overrun by beasts after the beasts chew through the thunderers. The big unit of plaguebearers faces down the other unit of hamerers.

Nurgle Cleaning up what's left.

At the end of the battle only the Gyrobomber and 8 Iron drakes survived the pestilent massacre, I'd lost my GUO, all my furies and a handful of casualties from every unit to double 1 result on reigns of chaos table. We ended up talking about more effective dwarf tactics after the game and how he possibly should have castled in on of the corners and provided better support as I was able to take on his guys one at a time.

Portable Fenn's Table

So I've started to build a portable Trollblood's Fenns Table. Ideally this will be suited to Warmahordes, small games fo Warhammer, Malifaux, Wrath of Kings and any other Fantasy styled skirmish game. I've used 5mm ply and 19mmx65mm pine for support and surrounding framework. A couple of hinges, handles and catches and voila. Now I've made the structure I've just got to do the scenic base and stain the framework and backside.

Display table with cork and my special 50/50 crushed pumic beach sand mix and 1 bottle of PVA later.

Path of Hirst Arts molded pavestones ends in the middle, there will be a small stream probably running through the middle.

And the other side. Corkboard jutting up against the path.

This is going to be a marshy area. I will likely add some more sand and paint before adding some water effects clear resin.

Hinge support and nice strong hinges.

Most likely have nice grassy expanses in these areas. The cork will be grey slate.

Another top down view of the road.

And the other side

The whole table contained and locked. Looks good if I don't say so myself.

And a picture of the whole thing, can be put away for use and carried in the car boot.

The underside. Contemplating adding some material to cap the end to make it look pretty.

Basing Ogres and unfinished Warrior project.

It's been a while since my last update and I've been playing trollbloods for Warmahordes and giving my Ogres a bit of a run with Warhammer Fantasy.Lost most of my games so far. Yay!

Firebelly = Reaper Fire Elemental.

Basing my ogres in cork and PVS+Sand. Have to wait for a week to get more primer.

Basing the rest of my trolls for my Warriors/Orcs & Goblins... and need even more primer.

My boy decided to organise how much Chaos warriors stuff I have. So I took some pictures. There is a giant, a daemon prince, a chimera and 20+ trolls missing at the moment from those pictures. Too many Chaos warriors (80+)

Chaos 1

Chaos 2

Chaos 3

And then there are a couple of towers I'm working on using my Hirst Arts Molds.

Large tower

Smaller tower.

Finished mass casting molds

So finished some of the molds and some of them are awesome the ones on the left are the best because they add rigidity to the mold so it doesn't flex when casting. More latex rubber layers the better, the ones on the far right are the best and tend to warp when cast. 2 or more molds in the same piece of rubber so they can give overall support. the others I have created some plaster beds for the molds to sit in but I think I will stick with the method I used for the 2 molds on the left.

All molds I made up with approximately 7-8 layers and 2 layers of cheescloth.

First cast worked out brilliantly

Now all I have to do is buy some more bags of plaster of paris and cast, cast, cast. I will be getting more of this stuff plus the silcone rubber as well.

Mold making, Warhammer and Having fun with Mordheim

So I've been fairly busy over the last few weeks. Playing lots of games of Warhammer and introducing the kids to Mordheim and D&D. The first session we had with D&D (Pathfinder Rules) was a blast as we were running through a conversion of Warlock of Firetop Mountain (Myriador).

As to Mordheim its proving even more popular than warhammer with the kids and they get to use some of the miniatures from their armies to play their warbands. Some of the experimental and unofficial warbands are fairly overpowered though.

I've been making some latex rubber molds to make my scenry casting go faster for mordheim and warhammer. the mold making takes a fair few days to dry but am looking forward to the results. I will be making a LOT of towers and probably even a CASTLE at some point.

Using some of the Woodland Scenics Latex rubber to speed up my hirst arts casts.

One of the many many many games I've played against Hamish's Skaven or Chaos Warrior list in anticipation for the teams event.

My terrain adds to itself. Authentic spiderwebs under the stairs on one of my Arcane fulcrums.

Zoom in on spider webs.

Mordheim map we've been using recently with a bridge in the middle. Makes for deadly sniping on the bridge.

Battling across the bridge. My outlaws of Stirwood forest versus the missus's Undead Warband.

View from mordheim central park across the city.