30 January 2023

Terrain: Overview of the 3'x3' city

This is kind of a summary post. I've finished up a full 3'x3' board of painted city terrain. This areas is what Guilders: A Life In Shadows is written for, so it's a nice accomplishment to actually getting around to finishing it. Now it's all just about getting more clutter, more life and variation onto it. 

Here's a youtube video going over the different stuff. 


I have collected all the different blog posts about this project on this page right here: Fantasy City Board hub. 

When doing terrain I always take lots of photos and write step-by-step guides for it. My style is always simple and cheap techniques for huge upgrades. 




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25 January 2023

Slugde: Shock Troopers and Cannon

Time for some more Sludge. For Sludge I got myself one box of Wargames Atlantic french ww1 troops, because it had so many masked heads. I also got a buch of Napoleonics (for hats) and Perry knights for armor. 

Shock Troopers

Shock Troopers are cool elite troops. They don't have bayonettes, they have melee weapons for storming trenches and can equip greanades. I decided to give them bear skin hats (and masks) to show their elite status. 

They have more armor than regular line infantry. I used Perry knight bodies (armor on torso and legs), but used a knife to could the leg armor into pants. The shock troopers are not fully armored. 

I assebled them with a mix of close combat weapons and carbine rifles. They carry the other set as gear. 

Cloaks added as on all the army with toilet paper / super glue. 

For story in the army, I've made sergeants on the command bases for the Line Infantry. These guys have the same gear as the Shock Troopers, to show that these can be put in command of line infantry. I used the ww1 frech sergent bodies for these (same defence as line infantry, so no armor plating on these). 

I made the hats/helmets/masks. Cut the helmet part of the ww1 head (so only the mask and brim remain). Cut face of a french napoleon soldier. Glue together. 


I went with the same color scheme for these. Yellow, grey, black, red. Heavy wash and drybrush. So all seems dirty, dusty, muddy. 



Artillery

I was gifted two cool little pieces of cannon. 3d resin prints, but not fitting the style of the first guy who got them. So they were passed to me. I made the crew from bits I had. Some ww1 sergeant bodies, some napoleonic bodies (the command frame had a carpenter in apron). Found some suitable bits in the bit box. Small axes, hammers, torch, made that 'clean the cannon' thing from a spear and a bit of greenstuff. Made cannon balls with green stuff and did some hand switching. 

The metal masks, whatever they are, are also from the ww1 french. Don't know what it's meant to be. Haven't seen them in real life. 





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If you want to try Sludge, then go and check it out from Wargames Vault. Blaster also contains all manner of other cool stuff. 

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18 January 2023

Dragonlance - The Heroes of the Chronicles

 I love the old Dragonlance books. It's some of the first fantasy I read as a child, I've read them again as a grown up. And for a period in elementary school I read lots of Dragonlance series. I've always wanted this old set of pewter miniatures, from sometime back in the 80s. 

I've seen the set go for insane amounts of money, when they are complete. I obviously never spend that amount of cash on miniatures, so I've collected them over many years. Getting an extra miniature here and there in job lots, aution bits and so on. 

Over on the Discord Community, we have quarterly hobby challanges. One of them was to make something that had been in your pile of potential for a long time, so I went with these guys. 

Looking at photos on the internet, old book covers and wikipedia articles, I've tried to hit the 'right' colors for all parts of the miniatures. 

I'm glad to have these in the glass cabinet, despite them never going to see any action on a board. I made 2nd place in the hobby challange. 

These are all done in army painter speed paint, with some prewashing in different washes. They've had some drybrushing and highlights after a layer of varnish. 

Goldmoon and Riverwind

Gave Goldmoon a blue crystal staff, because it's cool when magical. I wondered about the lute, but that comes from the very first pages in the first book at the inn in Solace. I can't recall her ever playing again.





Tikka and Tasselhof
Tikka was easy to find on a front cover. Tasselholf is actually painted on multiple diffrent covers, so went for some colors that wasn't used on the other heroes. The sculpts is a bit weird, especially in the face. Tasselhof looks very grim and not childlike in the sculpting, that's a bit of a shame. 


Sturm Brightblade and Flint Fireforge

Flint is not depicted greatly in the old front pages, so I took more artistic freedom on him. Sturm is spot on from front covers. Sturm has a really nicely sculpted plate armor. That worked well with a gun metal, wash, silver drybrush.  


Laurana and Tanis
Laurana originally have a huge pewter dragonlance, but that has been lost. So the only conversion done is finding her a replacement. Since these are meant to be wielded from dragon back, I found a long high elf spear, I think it has a size fitting. 



Caramon and Raistlin
The only thing I still find missing in this collection is a dublicate of the Raistlin miniature, I want to paint a black version of him as well at some point. 

I had trouble finding a photo of the front of Caramons shield. So in the end I went with a cool red bull, I find it fitting for the character. It's part of the excellent series of decal sheets done by Wiegraff / Carthage Must Be Destroyed. 





All the heroes together. 


9 January 2023

Terrain: TTC Houses

 More TTCombat mdf houses for the Fantasy City board, used for Guilders: A Life In Shadows

So far I've build an entire 3'x3' board worth of buildings. These are more of the super cheap "25mm" WW2 house from TTC. The size fits well for both 28mm and 32mm miniatures. 

For a full ste-by-step tutorial on how I upgrade these houses to something nicer, you can check out this previous blog post

I also talk about the upgrades and show the buildings in this video: 


The Swedish House
I try to mix up the colors for all my buildings, so I have as many different combinations of colors as possible. All houses colors are also some I've found doing research online. Another way to change them up, is I've placed chimneys differently and the board ledges as well.




The furnace is from Terrain Crate by Mantic Games. It was a quick little piece to do, but adds some nice life to the city board. Will fit equally will in a dungeon. 

Shop
The other little building is a shop. I found some checkered fabric pieces and just for awnings. The buildings come with grey board, but a quick upgrade to real fabric does so much for the life of the building. I've used the online Coat of Arms maker, to make some signs for the buildings - that I'll get around to adding at some point... in some future. 






Whenever I build some terrain I make sure to cover the build process with a blog post and step-by-step guide. So follow the different SoMe platforms, if you want to make sure to catch them.