Hobby time

The yearly event of making scenery took place just after christmas this year. We gathered to create new scenery pieces. As known from this blog we have sets of Hirst Arts Moulds that we pull out each year to create new buildings and ruins to play our games with. All hobbyists from all the corners of the Netherlands came out (actually Rick was the furthest away and the rest could come by bike, but still!). Crates full of plaster bricks and accessories were hauled in to build. MDF bases were at the ready and the day could start. Coffee was provided for and we actually used an agile process to get the architecture right. Not the first time right mind, but we got it in the end. Buildings sprouted aplenty and since we get better every year, the buildings become more complex and interesting. We produced a nice church, a nautical themed inn, another two more undetermined buildings but nonetheless very interesting. In the end fries were brought in to sustain any hunger so we could complete the building madness in the evening hours. To finish stuff off Zombicide was put to the table and the night ended with my house being taken over by zombies. What a great day it was. Now the painting of the buildings is on the way and I actually some finished parts as well, but that's for another post.

Building progress

Tom already posted some messages about our scenery building day, so here's a little follow up about my results.

Lately my paint and modelling works have been a bit delayed by the stream of incoming books of the local library. The current system of online searching the catalogs of several libraries combined and ordering books (for free!) has an increasing impact on my spare time. (Currently I'm reading 'Song of Wrath'). The system however contains a level of unpredictability: Books will arrive, but you never know when. Last weeks several books I ordered months ago all of sudden arrived together, claiming lots of time...

Despite this, I managed to finish two buildings for Mordheim that are showed here below. Other overly ambitious plans concerning Warhammer, Carpathia and above all Flames of War models were delayed...


The first building is a sort of small temple like structure, located on a peninsula. The building has a typical shape that just 'happened to be' when I was playing around with the Hirst Arts blocks.

Perhaps "temple of the A's" is a good name for this piece(?). I hope the construction will prove to be strong enough to withstand all violence that will take place here :-)

The second piece is also on a 'standard' 20 * 20 centimeters square; it's a main road guarded by four small 'towers'. A smaller path crosses the main road in the middle of the board. This path has two doors the sides, that can be opened (or smashed in for that matter).

What I really like is the look of the entrances to the small path from the outside of this building. A nice place for a nice ambush or a daring opportunity for a pick pocket expert...

Enter at your own risk!!

Christmas scenery update

Almost a post a day at the moment after the modeling session! But we must not overdo this of course! What's to show then? Painted buildings that is!
I painted my building and plaza. Also finished the wharf and dock pieces and painted them. Besides that I had some only black coated buildings lying around and decided to paint them as well. I was busy anyway!
This is the current result. My quirky tower building is almost done. Needs some wood finishing only. The flock has ten done to represent the occasional green plants here and there and needs not much aside from some color. I might go for some posters plastered to the walls. Oh I am busy making a half roof as a first experiment. Might go for a red or blue tiled roof here!

Next up is a half temple-ish building that was made by Ludo (a year ago?). I finished the paint job and added some snow for a change.

A picture of well...a plaza... nothing more nothing less but always handy to have lying around for one scenario or another!

THis small derelict shrine was not made by me, but don't know the origin actually. Also from a hobby session ages ago. Finished the paint job and added the greens. Might need some more color in the form of pots and cases or whatever.

Ah yes...the wharf... out of the box wooden wharf, only needed the stone docks and stairs to connect it with the rest of the scenery. A small ramp I added to get those barrels rolling onto the ships was all it needed actually. Painted 4 water sections to go. THey will need the water treatment, but I have to seal the edges first in order to pour the resin I use for water on it and not spill everywhere!

To finish this photo session off, an overview when these pieces are all connected together. THey look good, but will look better when finished and connected to the rest of the scenery waiting in my gamers deny: the attic!

Scenery building day

It is Christmas and the last couple of years I planned a day of building scenery mostly for Mordheim, but now more and more for all our games. THe turnout was a bit less then last years: we were with the 2 of us! Some people have these activities called work they want to attend rather then spend a day with us with our favorite past time: the miniature war-game hobby!
Anyhow we were with the 2 of us and started with a visit to the local garden centre where now all Christmas scenery was for half price! We bought a pile of trees and a great looking harbor deck!
The place was swarming with guys wanting to expand their christmas scenery, but we were looking for war-games terrain. This resulted in some interesting discussion you can imagine. How can you use a set of christmas singers in the scenery? Of how to put the whales blowing water in the harbour of the city of Mordheim? :)
After that we went to the local hardware store for MDF sheets that act as a base. We found out that professional sawing the sheets is for free if you have a customer card. So we asked the guy to make us as much 20x30cm pieces (since these are the "house" measurements of our scenery) and we got a pile cut with so much accuracy it was too much to bear. All these time we were sawing ourselves and always have some half centimeter off here and there and now a nice pile of 12 sheets with exact measurements for only 4 euros! What a bargain!
Off we went to start building. We both stockpiled cast plaster stones and pieces to build some real buildings! We also drink the white stuff as you can see!


Arjan built a nice piece for his dungeon and an intricate piece of "arch"work! I made a quirky building with a lot of tower add ons and stairway pieces. Also built me 4 pieces of water with the wooden docks fitting to a stone part with a nice ramp and stairs. Also one plaza was made as well. Still some painting to do now, but the black and grey highlighting always goes quite fast. This should be possible to finish this holiday week.

Another productive day

It's that time of year again, days off, holidays and whatnot. In no time these days fly by and what did you do? We decided to fill at least one of those days with again some scenery building. More Hirst Arts bricks were cast and the table was set for a day enjoying the hobby!

Arjan and Mr. Flibble turned up for this hobby day and we dove in. Lots of creativity was flying around and the concentration and dedication to work was of a high level straigh away!

Lot's of designs were tried and tested before glueing the stuff together. Here a wizards tower is taking shape bfore our eyes. I believe the current status is that it is painted and all ready to go on the battleground. Good stuff!

My own goal was getting the field plates for my arena painted and painting some roads for our city. Buildings we have but some more roads will add to the playability of the scenery.

I also started with building a sort of balcony tower like structure for the arena and built a small shrine. Also started on a long street as well in the days after this one. These are all the works in progress and will see their finished pictures here very soon!

Arena part 2

A quick update on the arena front. One arena half has been built and now it's been painted as well. Details need to be added as some moss and dirt and such, but the basics are done. This part can already be used in a game of Mordheim. Of course for squig hopper racing this arena needs to be built further and details need to be added. Barrels are being painted, maybe add a discarded food cart for selling rats on a stick? Who knows what will be added. For now the second stage of the arena:

WIP: Arena, squig hopper racing

I'v been busy with the arena concept for some time. It's been done in multiple settings, where the chariot racing arena is the most famous piece of terrain. Mine will of course be a lot different! :) The arena must be modular for transportation and storage and serve multiple functions:
- it must be an arena, circular for use in Mordheim
- it must be an arena for chariot racing (3 chariots abreast should be able to race the length of the arena)
- it must be an arena for squig hopper racing! New rules coming up for this game, and this is the terrain for it.

First stage is done. One half of the arena is now built. following are 4 more tiles that act as the straight part and 2 more tiles with the other half of the arena. That half will be more ruined. The flooring will be part tiles, part sand with tracks in them.
The arena seeting will be filled with all kinds of rubbish left behind, empty cascs of beer, that kind of stuff.

This is my stack of bricks ready for building the rest of the arena tiles. it will be something. Painting is straight forward, black undercoat, with dark gray heavy drybrush and then a light grey drybrush as the other buildings I've done also have. Then add details in with the barrels and the sandy flock grounds.

Hey! Isn't that Loki?

.. or what's his name, the other dead slayer?? :-)

Just added another piece to the 'Dungeon series' that features a 'tomb for yet another dead slayer'. Could not resist to build this one after reading Hans'suggestion. The tomb is in memory for poor Loki who fell at the hand of the Possessed.

Into the dungeons!

After some "Horrors of the Underground" scenario battles and a hilarious Gauntlet slaughterfest I started thinking about building some proper scenery pieces for this type of scenarios.

The pieces should be useful both as 'Dungeon tiles' and as 'normal' Mordheim scenery. That means that the size should be compatible with the Border Town Burning and Dungeon Quest tiles and with our own 'decimal basing' system.

The final inspirational 'straw' which I needed was seeing the beautiful 10mm dungeon made by (fellow EuroGT gamer) Nik Harwood.

So with the help of my former neighbour Gert who provided me with a huge stock of freshly cast tiles (@Gert: THANKS!!! :-)
I started out. So far I made three tiles as shown above. There's a center piece with four entrances and two gangways. One of the gangways has an external staircase, not very useful (or even to be used) in a dungeon setting, but allowing some tactical manoeuvring in Mordheim :-)

The second gangway has a 'wooden' bridge of the type that dungeon masters seem to prefer...

Ideas, tips and suggestions for this or the next set of dungeon pieces are more than welcome! (And also tips on the 'safe storage of scenery pieces' are very welcome :-)

All along the watchtower

Finally (and just in time for todays battle) the watchtower is completed!


Built in 'nerd bricks'it is assembled out of blocks cast out of Hirst Arts molds. Most blocks are from molds 50 and 61, with the floors coming out of mold 281. Additional add ons are stair parts of mold 60 (Thanks Tom!) and several items of mold 282.

The watchtower consists of three separte parts, to accommodate entering and moving inside the tower (at ground level) and transport.

More pictures (courtesy of Anke Bot fotografie ;-) can be found here.

Add some water, place a skeleton on top...

Here are some pix of the fountain which I finished last weekend (big thanks to Anke) :

New graveyard in town

Aside from some heavy duty work in home, changing rooms into gamerooms and making a baby room I found some time to start working on a new large graveyard tile for our Mordheim scenery. It is still work in progress but all the stone is painted already.

Only the mudd and some grass needs to be put on for it to be a good playable part of our scenery. Since the game is this friday I hope I can find some time to finish and it can come along to the gaming table between all other parts of new scenery. I think those undead will be very happy when they will be fielded this friday!

WIP: Wall of Morr

A small update on my progress of this weekend. I worked most of the time on the square where both the fountain and the wall of Morr will be placed. The wall is also built by the same friend that I talked about. In this case I had to finish it by creating a top cover (using Hirst Moulds tiles). Further more I did some little upgrades and paint work.
Most effort went into the basing of the floor plan. I hope the three components, wall, fountain and floor; will be finished for our next game friday.

And now for the images that will say so much more (I hope):

WiP: Fountain of Morr

Years ago a friend of mine made some Mordheim scenery himself, which we used intensively (despite its looks ;-)
The only remaining piece that was still in my possession was a fountain like structure. Recently this guy gave me another home grown Mordheim building (and he does not even play anymore!). This piece is a lot better and I promised to use it in my scenery. This weekend I hope to find the time to finally finish a new Mordheim square to incorporates both the new piece and the old fountain.

The fountain is upgraded and pimped by me using Hirst Moulds pieces and a very peculiar miniature (also given to me, this time by my Czech brother- and sister-in-law ;-)

Some work in progress pictures of the fountain are presented here (and that's it for today):

Van Pix

Van Pix

Van Pix

WIP Graveyard

Finally some new posts, it's been a while. Busy painting that is! So much painting that posting was bit on the slow side. What is going on: a graveyard is born :) First work in progress pic of the graveyard is here:

This is actually a test graveyard, before the BIG graveyard will be made. The nice citadel scenery tree is giving that extra gnarly look to the graveyard and the hirst arts walls are precisely the stone walls you see at the edge of a graveyard, at least that is how I see it. Some more painting on the earth and adding some green moss and grass, and this piece is done!

Prison Tower

And finally the prison tower got a slab of paint. Painting the stone is easy and gives it directly a great and finished look. A plann to give the buildings a more weathered and run down look, but for now this tower is good for playing.
Look at them dwarfs posing around the tower, true dwarven craftmanship of course! :)