The Ruined Tower - W.I.P.

To prove Tom isn't the only one at work with the Hirst Arts molds, I'll post some WIP of my own little project: The Ruined Tower (mold #65). It is more or less build, just needs some paint (still have to buy black paint as I have run out...).

Let's start with some overview pictures:

In the background you can see the grinded shells that you put in bird cages which I used on the parts of the base that have no 'stone' on them. It's really cheap stuff (about 90c for 2 kilo!) and has some nice pieces of shell in them to make things more interesting.

In the mean while, Nora the cat is wondering what all the fuzz is about, she doesn't look very impressed...

These parts will be added later, 'cause it's easier to paint them unassembled:


And finally a shot from above:


I'll post more pics once further progress is being made.

Mordheim tower and magice shoppe

It is time to put the pictures online. A week ago 2 new buildings were made for Mordheim. From the Hirst arts round tower mold I've created a nice open tower. The closed tower as described with the mold is less playable for Mordheim, so now it is a tower that suffered from the impact of the meteor.
The second building is "The Magice Shoppe". It is the building of some strange Magister that once had his shop in the once thriving city of Mordheim. Some strange markings remain on the wall and some remaining magic items can be found in this abandoned building.
The first stage was the building of these two pieces of scenery. After some puzzling the following buildings were erected. Notice that from this side the buildings look whole. The other side is open and can be played in. In this way it looks good (it should look from both sides of course) and it is practical.

The following stage is painting and highlighting. As you can see in the following picture also a new piece of street has been made with the cracked floor mold. I put the tower on it but in the game it should be piece of street and the pavement has other texture. The tower has to have a base but that requires more casting of molds! I keep running out of the blocks, this building is addictive!

The buildings need finishing: floors, accessoires, especially the magic shop need some detailing. For now it is playable scenery and I can focus on painting some dwarf slayers.

The inside of the Towers

Due to a lot of circumstances work on the two towers has not progressed that much further. However, since I got a request at Tom's Boring Mordheim forum to show the inside work, I will certainly do so ;-)
The first two pictures show the 'tower with the stairs'. This one has a (custom made, since I accidentally used the parts elsewhere) stairs that leads to the entrance. The first floor is therefor not located at ground level. I'm still not sure whether to seal off the space underneath this floor or to make some sort of dungeon or cellar underneath.

The second tower is featured on the other two pictures. This tower has the first floor on ground level, which means that even a large creature like an Ogre can enter this level. Although it wouldn't be able to use the Heroquest door ;-)

The second floor was allocated a little lower than the one in the other tower, in both cases 'normal' sized miniatures are able to stand inside the tower on the second floor(s).
The floors were made out of balsa wood, the inside walls got some 'plastering' to hide the sterile clean plastic original (lack of) plaster. The outsides of the buildings are out of the box very nicely decorated.
One of the towers was battlemented (if that's the correct word), the other got the little 'observatorium' at the roof. Both are in desperate need for a paint job (If I only had time), but have been used in Mordheim battles already. They make very useful (and nice) scenery.

Modular Mordheim Buildings

Quick overview in the Mordheim Building department. We're building like dwarfs overhere! With the first hirst arts molds I got a lot of 'simple' building blocks. This builds some nice and clean buildings but nothing fancy so far (al though this already looks good in my opinion). I defined some basic bases for building ruined buildings, streets and large items. This results in the following measurements of bases for our modular Mordheim building blocks:

regular building: 100 x 215 mm
street: 100 x 300 mm
large base: 300 x 300 mm

In the following picture you can find the buildings I made until now. Also the new large city centre is visible. With the fountain water has to be added and it is finished as well.

modelling day results

Our modelling session from a week ago was productive as you might have seen. Since then the scenery has been painted and is now ready. More new buildings added for our city of Mordheim! The first one here is the housing Ludo was making. Some nice wooden accents around the house and a very playable piece I might say.

The second building for showing you is the second warehouse I was making. It is number 2 of a set of three. As said in can be used alone or in conjuction with the other warehouses as a block of buildings.

The building Hans is working on (his church like structure) is already painted, but I'm without pics here so that one will show in some of the next posts. For now I will leave you with a small overview of the present Mordheim Scenery. This will look good on the batllefield when we are going to play on friday the 13th.

Last in a quick snapshot of the 3rd warehouse I'm making. The first floor is done and glued together. Now for the second layer and then slap some paint on and the set of 3 is complete!

Modelling day

Autumn is making the days grow shorter, colder and wetter outside. This means we have to entertain ourselves inside with a day of modelling. I've been casting me new Hirst arts moulds to create a big pile of building blocks after the inn project. With this in place Hans and Ludo had time to come over for a day of building buildings. They wanted to get a go at these new building blocks and when it results in more buildings for our Mordheim games, that is a good thing!

I set up the table with all bulding blocks sorted in small boxes, put out the glue, paint, sawed some MDF bases and we were good to go. We started before noon playing around with all the blocks before glueing them into a building

Hans started maybe 3 concept buildings and destroyed them all before really deciding on building a church like ruined building. Ludo was very creative with a mosaic flooring and a nice wooden lid outside that could be an entrance to a basement of some sort.

Myself I started a project for 3 storage houses that can be put next to each other as a block of houses but also apart be separate buildings. The idea is that the centre building has 3 walls and that the left and right wall act as a wall for the other storage houses if put together. The left and right storeage house will have then only 2 major walls and act as real ruins once put by themselves on the battlefield. The 3 buildings will have a small pavement at the front and very small allyway like road at the back. Today it was the centre building I'd be working on.

I made some sketches first so building is easier. Building out of the blue is somewhat difficult because you have to build the entire concept or idea without glue first to check if it will work. And building 'dry' is very unstable :) and will get you started anew some times :).
We were using a goblin shaman as a test miniature to check the buildings sizes, windows position, etc. He will be posing in some of the pictures in this post (a real celebrity you might say :) ).

Hans decided on building a church like structure with some open walls for good playability.

No wooden flooring was needed here, but some wooden benches for this curch were made with the latches from one of the moulds. Ludo also used this concept for putting up some benches against the wall in his building. Cool concept looking good in both buildings I'd say.

My building was coming together nicely and with 3 stories high not a small building. Here you can see the concept with twoo wooden floors and both Hans and Ludo concentrated at work.

Ludo decided it would be a good idea to have nails in the flooring and started hammering away on his paint mixing tile.

The sounds were like he was hitting through the tile but nothing broke and the result is a very nice looking building here.

Some details on the curch benches here. Simple concept but coming together nicely in the church building. Keep in mind when creating these kind of small features for your building not to glue them in place before painting.

It will look like the following picature when finished but you can see here that painting this when everyting is glued together will be a nightmare if not impossible.

We did not get to painting yet after a day playing around with the plaster building blocks but the final result looks good! The concept of modular buildings that fit together (base size wise) is proving to work as you can see in this final picture. This will conclude this post of the modelling day that was relaxing, fun, productive, creative and something we will definitely repeat.
Of course the finished products will be shown here on your Mordheim building scenery blog! :)

Hirts Arts Moulds and Mordheim Buildings part 3

The final stage of the first Mordheim building using the Hirts Arts moulds is done! The building is actually finished and it looks great! What are the final steps towards the final product? Let me reveal you the secrets.
In the last post you could see the actual building finished. Highilghting done and the stony look was there. I finished the wooden flooring and added moss and weeds to the building. Also one of the citadel trees had its place on the building board. The tree can be removed and a simple square can be put over the hole to look like a well if needed. Modulare gaming table building in effect here.
The size of the inn is the biggest square for a game board piece I wanted. The finished building can now be used as a centrepiece of some sort. Other buildings will be a third in size and roads can be made in a similar fashion. I will post on the concept in future posts when new buildings and roads will be built. In that way you can see a gaming table be born :)
Anyway a picture of the final result and this one includes already what are the next projects of which a new post will talk about more.

Hirts Arts Moulds and Mordheim Buildings part 2

The inn layout had originally only one floor and the roof floor. For the Mordheim building I added an extra floor to give it some height. Actually now it became 3 stories high.
I bought some water based paint and diluted the black down with water so it coveres the tiles nicely in all ridges cracks. This took some time and in two sessions I painted the entire piece nice and black.

If you look closely you can still see seems of white of the stones where the paint didn't cover but only so little. I hope this will be covered or out of sight when the stones are highlighted.
Which brings me to the next stage. The first highlight was applied with a dark grey. I'm using large brushes now (size 14 and up and also a large flat broad one). This was done realy quickly actually and a great result directly. I also wanted to apply a second highlight with a light grey to give the stones some depth and wear and tear look.
This was even quicker since only the windows and door and edges were concerned here. I added some more light grey to the flooring as well since that looked better.



The only things to do now is paint the beams dark brown and add flooring. The beams were a bit of a mistake to add directly in this building because painting became very difficult there. On the other hand it gives the building a nice and sound rigidity directly. WIth so high walls this was good to have already. I think for smaller buildings with less beams it wouldn't matter, but it is gooed to keep in mind.
The flooring I will build and fit but not yet glue in place. There painting will also be very difficult. Maybe the flooring will stay loose as an addon, so you can change here with the layout of a building, who knows. Add a couple of ladders and all. It will be good!
New small build projects now have started: small planters, a well, small wall sections, all moveable stuff to putt on the table and to fill our city of Mordheim.

Hirts Arts Moulds and Mordheim Buildings part 1

It's been a month vacation that caused nothing much for me to have produced in the modelling/gaming part and therefore no need for blog posts :) But I have ordered three moulds at Hirst Arts. I ordered the following ones:
#51 Dragon's Inn Mold
#201 Floor Tiles Various Sizes
#40 Basic Block Mold

My idea was to have enough bricks for builidings as well as arches for windows and doors. Floor tiles for flooring of course but also for building streets.

I started casting the moulds with modeling plaster. I found 2 brands: Knauf and Krone.

Knauf is found at the DIY store and Krone I found in a local arts and crafts shop. The Krone is almost half as cheap but they both are not that expensive: Knauf sells at EURO 6,00 per 2,5 kilo and the Krone at EURO 2,00 per 1 kilo or EURO 6,00 per 5 kilo.
I already casted the moulds about 8 times and it seems that is enough for making a tavern or something. Now some lasts casts are done, so I have enough stock to start building.
Of course the buildings will consist of more than plaster blocks alone. I went to the DIY store and got some lengths of 10x10 mm square and 5x20 mm flat pieces of wood. Almost 3 meters in length this should give enough beams and planks for roofs and doors and floors.
Also I got a piece of 4mm MDF that should act as a base for the building. Everything should be modular so I'm going to design 2 or 3 sizes of bases. These can have either a building or a piece of street, square or other scenery for the city of Mordheim that can be built with it. The first building will be the dragons Inn tavern from the Hirst Arts website. I'm going to alter it a bit so it's open to one side and it can be used in Mordheim for fighting in and around. SInce Mordheim is a thrashed and worn down city the buildings should resemble this. The roof will be crashed in, that kind of stuff.
When going out for buying the raw materials I also came acros my local games workshop store. It had a nice boxed set of trees.

I was looking for something like that, because the Mordheim buildings should have some grown over moss, plants and trees in them as well. This box with three large gnarly trees will be just right for the purpose. Also some chains, skulls and signs are in the kit that will fit perfactly in the Mordheim scenery I'm making.

For now some more casting and the building will start! Time for me to take out the saw and cut me some beams and create the MDF base plates.

More will follow in next posts, so keep reading!

Building projects in Mordheim

Inspired by the nice series of battle we played, I've started to (re)construct the Mordheim buildings I collected over the years. The first action was to give each of them a base. Hopefully this will mean they will become a little sturdier.



The results up till now can be found here. Next step will be to paint the bases and enhance them a little with details like gravestones & such ;-)
And last but not least: Find a suitable method to store and transport them...