fantasy – Page 2 – Grimmleigh's Lab

Scratch-Build Fantasy Village, Part 4

The bulk of the first building is done, but it was looking kind of sad on its own. This here project was in pretty dire need of some elevation. Lucky me, there is quite a bit of MDF just hanging out in the garage looking for a project connection!

First things first, I cut some blocks of blue insulation foam with my trusty Proxon foam cutter. Then I cut a deep recess into one of those blocks, and cut up the recess to make some narrow stairs. I used a ballpoint pen to carve in some stone detail.

I place used the building to make sure that the separate blocks were far enough apart, and glued them down to the MDF. Then it was time to use some Celluclay to bulk out the base to make the whole thing look like mounds of earth.

Next, I shaped the MDF with a saw and a small detail sander. Once I got the shape down, it was time to build up some more earthen mounds around the stairs leading to the tower.

Now to wait for everything to dry, and then get some paint down on this!

Miniatures, Workbench

‘Gloomhaven’ Paint Project, Part One

My friend (and Geekshow MVP) Rebecca Frost was talking about Gloomhaven one day, and I kind of lost my mind. I had to paint them. Why? Well, I had never seen them before. Here was a game set in the fantasy genre that I had never seen, let alone painted.

Luckily, Rebecca didn’t call the police, and I was able to get started on the first batch of six figs. I don’t know what they are, who they are, or why they are, but they are a lot of fun to paint!

First up, a badass lady with a couple of axes. She reminds me of a classic orc, but I think her skin is made of stone or bark!

Next up is a bard, but I think she might also be a plant person:

I know a Rogue when I see one!

I think the next two are druid/ranger types. I might also be waaaay off here, but they both fit a nature theme:

The last one in the first batch looks like a Paladin. We’ll have to see!

I have another five of Rebecca’s figs, and I need to get them done soon, too. There are a TON of Gloomhaven minis, so this project should keep me busy a while.

It’s interesting painting board-game miniatures. They still have a lot of detail, but the need to keep the poses static to keep production costs down makes a mini that’s a lot easier to paint. For the simple joy of putting paint to plastic, this has been a pretty fun project!

Miniatures, Workbench

The Shambling Horde is Growing!

I have to admit something– I am allowing myself to go “full geek” on my upcoming Rangers of Shadow Deep campaign. I am also changing a few of the rules I set earlier, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The first scenario that I am going to play involves my Ranger and her crew searching for clues about a missing Ranger… and a town full of missing people. The scenario calls for a load of zombies, so I loaded a set of five into the Mars and got them painted up the next day.

I went with a rough and ready paint scheme with lots of glazes. I wanted the skin to look leathery and mummified, and the metals to look really weathered.

I also lucked out this month since Titan Forge has a bunch of undead up for this month’s Patreon subscribers, so I got some pretty great and pretty fresh minis for the game.

That brings me to the first rule I am “breaking” for my campaign! I was only going to allow minis that I had printed, but printing and painting a whole slew of zombies was going to take forever. Plus, I have a bunch of orc zombies from Zombicide just gathering dust, so I am allowing 32mm figs that I already own for horde groups like zombies. Plus, I love the Zombicide figs, so I’m happy to get them going. I’m going to print some new bases for them so they fit the theme a little better, and I’ll have a post for them up shortly.

I will be posting Sundays and Wednesdays from here on out, so I’ll be back on Wednesday with the nerdiest damned project I’ve taken on yet. See you soon!

Terrain, Workbench

Scratch-Build Fantasy Village, Part 2

Confession time– I just invested in a new FDM printer and a pretty amazing series of files for terrain building, so it’s hard to say how much of this kind of building I will be doing in the future. That being said, I love a good scratch build, so I’m almost certain I’ll keep at it to some capacity.

Plus, western civilization collapsed a few years back. It’s hard to say how long we’ll be able to pick up spools of plastic for printing. You can decide whether I am joking or not, because I sure the hell don’t know anymore.

With the base of the building established, it was time to get to work on some components for the rest of the structure. I am using really cheap foamcore that I picked up at Dollar Tree, because the paper peels off super easy, leaving a dense, easy to carve foam ready to play. For the shingles on the roof sections, I just carved my shapes with a ballpoint pen, then went at it with a blade to get the slopes and shaping.

This technique allows me to do some pretty cool effects, like this dormer that I put in on the lower floor of the tower:

All of the detail is just carved directly into the foam, either with a balloint pen or a good pencil. The ballpoint gives crisper detail, and I think it might be my favorite technique. This is also the first time I assembled a building like this with hot glue, which sped up the whole process incredibly.

It was time to add the next floor up. I opted to go with a full interior at first, but changed my mind as I went along.

I decided to go ahead and do the support beams in foamcore, too, since everything will get a couple of coats of wood glue to seal up the foam and strengthen the sculpt. Wood glue has a bit of resin in it, so it will help toughen stuff up quite a bit.

The whole build took about four hours, and ended up being pretty cool!

I put in a balcony for snipers in a skirmish style game, and plenty of exposed brick and timber to go with the stucco.

The chimney was easier than any that I have ever done before. I used Gorilla Glue to bind to pieces of foamcore together, which is easier to carve into than traditional glue. Plus, the foaming action of the glue really binds the foamcore together. A little hot glue to add the top, and it’s pretty spiffy!

My other favorite detail of this piece is the curved slant in the roof, which throws the “safe” feeling of the building completely out the window. It’s something that I was never able to to with traditional foamcore building, but without the paper holding things in place, the foam form was easy to bend into place. Hot glue just made it stay there once it got there!

Next up, the whole thing gets sealed in a mix of black paint and wood glue, then it’s time to paint!

Miniatures

Warhammer Underworlds: Getting Trapped-up in Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers

When that crystal-clear moment of honesty hits me full on the face, I have to admit to my decades-long love/loath relationship with Games Workshop. They make some good games, and a whole ton of just… okay games. They have some really petty policies when it comes to Indy game stores, because they know full well those stores absolutely rely on geedubs to make the rent every month.

The other thing about honesty, though? I have to admit that they have stepped up a ton when it comes to their sculpts, especially when it comes to fantasy offerings. Warcry has some gorgeous stuff, but Warhammer: Underworlds, especially Beastgrave, has been taking the cake.

Look at Hrothgorn here. He’s a giant slab of ogre, who has a giant bear trap mounted to his harpoon gun. I’m sure the thing gets about ten feet before wind resistance off that trap drops the spear to the ground, but it looks cool.

He comes with a couple of idiot grots, here’s Luggit and Thwak, who double up to try and hit new heights of awesomeness:

Quiv is literally a walking quiver. He carries extra bolts for the boss:

Then there is Bushwakka, he’s the real brain trust of the bunch:

Thrafnir rounds out the warband, and just happens to be a giant kitty. Meow.

The minis are a blast to paint, the gnobblars in particular took about 10 minutes each with Contrast paint, and you can tell. Up close it’s a pretty slap-dash job, but they look fine from over a foot away. I took a little extra time on Hrothgorn and Kitty, and they’re a lot of fun to look at as I wait for quarantine to end so I can get down to Shiv and get a game in.

That’s a joke. I pretend to play games. I really go to Shiv Games to hang out with my friends. I’m a rabid painter at heart, the games that I occasionally get in are just a perk!

Workbench

The Game Changer.

Last week, a purchase I have been wrestling with making arrived on my doorstep. It’s a purchase I have had mixed feelings about for months, but isolation and work stress (I work in the mental health field) from COVID-19 finally won.

I bought an Elegoo Mars resin printer. That model you see up above was my first print, and the reason why I finally gave in. He was, to be frank, too cool not to have in my collection.

I have been conflicted for a long time on this technology. Initial prints that I had seen from extruded printers didn’t really impress me, and resin, until recently, has been really expensive. Now, you can get a good printer with a liter of resin for under $300.

My other big issue has been what I see as a disruption effect on an industry I care a lot about. Good prints made at home could be the death of small game stores, but after all of the printing trials and fine tuning I had to do to get things going, I don’t think we’re there… yet.

There is a lot you have to learn to make resin printing effective, and mistakes can be costly and messy. I messed up the FEP film almost immediately, and my garage was too cold for things to work right. But I am stubborn as hell, so I dove into research mode, and now I’ve been getting amazing prints without fail for a couple of days.

This handsome gent is Gino, and he was one of the awesome models Artisan Guild had available in March. $18 a month, and March had more than half a dozen badass dwarfs, including one mounted on a Griffon. I didn’t really have a choice.

Once I trimmed the supports off, it was time to get Gino primed, and start laying on the paints:

I really had a ton of fun with this model. He’s brawny, puffing on a pipe, and he’s stepping on some poor monster’s head. It wasn’t until I was almost done painting that I realized Gino had knocked a bunch of this dude’s teeth out before chopping off his head. Such a great model, and I think he cost me about .50 cents worth of resin to print out.

The final product is stunning! I’m still working my way through the rest of the offerings for last month, but Gino is ready to kick some ass!

Terrain, Workbench

Scratch-Build Fantasy Village Peoject

We’re self-quarantining through the apocalypse, but I also work in social services. So, I really can’t stay home and completely avoid human contact. So, I’m building a little escape.

My spare time is wide open, so I’ll be building a village to play games in when the End Times are over. And I want to test myself in the process.

I have built a lot of terrain in my life. This time around, I’m going with peeled foam coat as a base, and using hot glue to bind everything. I already love this as an alternative to glue!

I used a pencil to carve in the details, and an emery board to smooth things out. I decided to use wood glue to seal the foam, which I mixed with black paint so I could see if I missed anything.

After getting the test piece done, I decided to paint up the front to see how it looked… and I’m really, really happy!

I airbrushed a light coat of white from an angle, then washed the whole front with a simple glaze made from cheap paint, airbrush thinner, and acrylic floor polish. I went over certain areas with a similar glaze made from green ink to age things up a bit!

Next up I’ll go ahead and finish up the base since the experiment has made me happy!

Workbench

Beastmen for Warcry

Something fantastic happened when I went back into the behavior management field—- I am suddenly in a position to just paint for fun!

When my friend Brody was getting excited about some Beastmen for Warcry, I told him I wanted to paint them. I got to paint some cool minis, and there wasn’t any worry about commission. I was doing this for fun!

The Leader is a lot of fun, it’s just the standard build out of the box.

The Warcry cards have quite a few Ungor options, but the base Beastmen box only has Gors. I kitbashed the spear carrier to match the card, but the unit is a much beefier Gor unit.

The Citadel Contrast line really excell with units like these!

The Warcry cards call for two Ungor options. I took some old plastic bow bits and converted some tougher looking Gor versions.

I just love the facial expressions on these guys. They look like they take things way too seriously, especially for goat dudes. It was also a really great excuse to play with patina and corrosion on the gear!

I’m working on a Nighthaunt Warband for Warcry, too, and I’ll make sure to share the carnage when these two forces face off!

Fantasy Art, monsters

Beastiary: Zombies

The first entry in my Beastiary art for fantasy games, here is a quaint shambler, full of hungry thoughts for thinky bits. I have also included a card for Frostgrave that will allow tracking for up to three slackjaws.

Zombie Stat Card

And here’s a fillable version:

Beastiary Stat Card Fillable

Miniatures, Workbench

Frostgrave Gnolls, Part One

The first set of Frostgrave minis I picked up was the multi-piece plastic kit from Northstar Miniatures. I have always been a sucker for multi part miniatures, and for $35 you get 20 little beasties to build and paint. That’s a really good value, and you get a lot of hobby time for the money!

Gnoll-Sprue-1

My first gnolls just weren’t cutting it for me, though. You can see the paint job on the banner at the top of the page. They look fine, but something was missing. I was watching Planet Earth last week, and it dawned on me; these guys are hyena peeps, and hyenas have masks. I broke out the paints, and after a couple of hours of work and a few washes, this is how my gnolls look:

Now that’s more freaking like it! The big bruiser with the shield and spear is one of those AD&D cheapo pre-paints, but I like the fig and it can be painted up Real Purdy in very little time. The other 5 pups are from the Northstar kit. I have 15 more doggos to paint, but I’m going to get some color variation in there to break up the band visually.

The Frostgrave gnolls can be ordered at just about any FLGS, or you can contact the awesome peeps at my favorite store, Shiv Games here in Salt Lake City.