Warhammer – Page 2 – Grimmleigh's Lab

Scratch-Build Fantasy Village, Part 3

After the tower was sealed in a couple of coats of wood glue and black paint, it was time to get some color on the tower!

I blocked in most of the major color areas with my airbrush, then went to town with a cheap wash made of equal parts black acrylic, brown acrylic, and clear acrylic medium.

After the first coat of wash dried, I went through with a light dry brush over the whole model. This helped bring out a lot of the raised details.

Then I picked out some individual stones to paint lighter colors, and added some wood grain to the timbers. Then everything got another series of washes, with either a moss green with clear acrylic, or Payne’s Grey with clear acrylic. This aged everything up a bit, and added a more lived-in feeling to the model.

Something this big and cool looking needs a base to tie it all together, so that will be the next step in the project!

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

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!