wargaming

Excited about the  Beowulf RPG  (hopefully) coming out at the end of the year, I decided a good project would be to make some sort of Heorot/Valhalla/mead hall building. In my mind it would also be useful for Oathmark, Middle Earth, and at a pinch the Dark Ages. First up some research to get inspiration. I've always like the look of the  Mead Hall  from Zen Terrain (not the price), but I imagine it must be a pretty cold hall without a fire.  Perhaps not the outside, but the interior looks nice and cosy. A bit closer to what I had in mind, rough and ready but still elegant. The size makes you imagine the hold of a local lord, not some imperial palace. An interesting cross section, this hall looks like it could be constructed from an upturned boat. A couple of grades above my current modelling ability, but some nice details. These three are all similar in that the construction is two concentric sets of beams. The middle ‘box’ supporting the roof, and the oute...

  Just checking the size and proportion of the walls. Here's the same three walls with a test coat of paint. I say test coat, I never had any intention of repainting them once I got going with the walls. The doors are laser cut, from Blotz. I had them first and cut all the doorways to size. A WIP shot at the sweat shop. I worked out it doing them in batches of 9/10 was the optimum balance of soul crushing repetition vs actually seeing any progress being made on the project. It's starting to come together. The walls looked a little too clean for a ruined tower that was supposed to have been abandoned 80 years previous, so I decided to mix up a wash to render them with. I watched a couple of videos on Youtube, the best being one by Black Magic Craft, and a strikingly similar video by Lukes APS Halfway through the washing process. I think this was taken a little late in the evening, hence the walls looking a bit darker than in reality. So we didn't have to play on a grassy flo...

In both my campaigns, I'm rapidly approaching the point where I'm going to need something to represent the tower of Tor Varden for the penultimate scenario in the Beacon Tower mission. The tower is described as 3 rooms, each 1.5' square, with the entrance door opening to room A, a door between room A and room B, and a door between room B and room C. In room C there is the start of a staircase leading to the upper level. So how to create something that's not going to take an age, but is going to look half decent. I've been quite happy with how my tables have looked in the first mission, so it would be a shame to let my quality slip just as the scenarios are starting to get more meaty. My first thought was dungeon tiles, Black Magic Craft makes some nifty looking ones on his channel link . But I want my miniatures to look like they're really there when I photograph them, and not just floating on some 2-dimensional astral plane. Ok so I'm going to end up making...

Like the rest of the world, I've been trying to get my hands on a gaming mat over the lockdown period. With most of the stores I know either closed or sold out it looked like I wasn't going to be in luck. However a quick scan on ebay introduced me to a UK company called Artistic Impressions .  They make hard-wearing, digitally printed gaming mats, with over a dozen patterns ranging from frozen wastes, to grasslands, to ruined cities and deep space. They are all available in 3x3, 4x4, 6x3 and 6x4 ft. The style I wanted to try out was called ‘Battleground’ but didn't seem available in 3x3, however after a quick message, Phil popped one on ebay for me the next day. I ordered it and 4 working days later it's with me. So what's it like? Well if you're familiar with oiled tablecloths (the sort you see in France or in Mexican restaurants) it's basically that. The surface is mat and very hard wearing, while being very slim in profile.  The texture I chose initially,...