The new models looks quite nice, and this is the first time we’ve really seen a new troop choice for the Empire in several versions, in the new Demigryph models (it’s usually just new war machines and characters, along with some new knight resculpts).

Another favorite of mine, I made this arcade, or walkway through the jungle during our Lustria campaign for Warhammer fantasy, but it’s equally useful in 40K, or other squad level 28mm games.

Components:

• 1 Bag of mosaic miniature tile (8mm, I think)
• basing particle board (something strong, but thin)
• Square 1/2″ dowels or balsa pieces.
• Moss / plants.
• Grey paint, black or brown wash

Instructions:

Ok, open your bag of Mosaic tile (I got mine at hobby lobby for a few bucks).  You should have a primary color, and a blank side (red / white).

Leaving space to each side for your pillars, arrange the tiles in an alternating pattern as per the photo.  Make as many rows as you can on your basing material.

Add the pillars.  If you want a really weather torn look like mine, break / cut them at different heights.  Make sure the bottoms are in the same place though, because those wouldn’t really have shifted.

Paint up your pillars, and the remainder of the base, if you want it the same grey as the pillars.  You’ll want to do this before you put on the plants, because it’ll be way to hard to do it later.  Don’t worry about the wash, you can do that after the plants are down.

Add plants or moss (my favorite) around the base, and between the pillars.

Paint over EVERYTHING liberally with your wash.  If you don’t have a wash, just water down some regular paint with a 60% paint / 40% water mix.  It’ll give it that aged, beat in look.  Especially make sure you get some dripping down the pillars, leaving some staining like rain would have done over the centuries.

There you go, you have some great terrain for skirmishers / jungle based battlefields.  There is some nice space in there for models, and some good mixes of hard / soft cover for the TLOS games.

Components:

• a couple feet of “Gutter Mesh”, used to keep leave out of gutters
• toothpicks (about 8 per 6″ of fence)
• Foam board or thin insulation foam
• Silver paint, base paint, flocking

Take the gutter mesh, and cut it to length, then to height (I just cut it directly in half for my height).

Cut your foam to length (I like 6″, it makes for good sections, and can easily be removed if “damaged” in game).  Cut the width a little wider than needed, to let it ramp down around the wire, and make it stable.

Jam your toothpicks straight down into the foam, deep enough they can stand on their own.  Weave the mesh over the row of impaled toothpicks (inside the mesh, outside the mesh) to the top.

Leave the toothpicks pointy for a spiky fence, or clip them level at the top for a standard fence.

Paint your fence silver, and the toothpicks, and paint your base and flock as required.  If you’d like to to look more natural, use a hobby knife to slope the base so you don’t have a very abrupt rise in surface.

If you’d like some razorwire for the tops, plenty of places sell brass etched coils fairly cheaply.  Alternatively, use small gauge electrical wire, with the insulation stripped off.  Just twist the wire around a pencil or pen to make the coils.  Then feed the coils through the top of the fence.

You can also have fun, and create some “cut out sections”, as per the picture below, to show the work of commando teams, or recon, before the main body.

I probably initially made these sets over 15 years ago, and they’re very simple, but they’ve worked for us all that time.

Components:

• 1 bag of “Wooden Nickels” from craft store
• toothpicks
• various aquarium plants or potpourri pieces
• Paint & flock
• Elmers or super glue
• It’s very hand to have a drill, but not required

Instructions:

Very simply, drill holes through your wooden nickel bases to fit toothpick halves, floral stems, or whatever you’d like to have on the base.  This will add stability, and make it easy to assemble.

Paint the base!  Flock, if you’re going to flock.  This is important to do BEFORE you add the plants, or it’ll be fairly impossible later.

Add your plants, rocks, whatever else you’d like.  It’s best to work on a LOT of these at once, so you can spread out what you have over lots of bases.  The better variety you have, the nice it’ll look.

Touch up with some paint if needed, otherwise you’re ready to play!

Game Play:

These are great for almost any game system.  For smaller (6-15mm) games, it’s a massive forest.  For hex games like Heroscape or Battletech, they fight right on the hex, and look great.  For full scale wargaming, assemble several on a variety of shaped felt pieces (see below) for a wooded region, with a clear boundary.

I’ve started up a pinterest account to track terrain stuff (among other random things that catch my eye), so I thought it’d be a good time to come back and add some of this stuff.

Without a doubt, the very first thing people notice when they come into the shop, are this set of trees that Greg made.  We’ve had a lot of people ask if we make those to sell, and how we made them, so here’s the walkthrough.

Components:

• a handful (maybe 1/2 inch bundle) of electrical wires about 12-18″ in length
• 1-2′ of small gauge florist wire (for mounting to the base)
• Sculpting Clay, Mache, or Spackle (to create the bark)
• A round or oval base of foamboard or heavy (no warping) stock
• half a bag of Foliage, and base flocking to suit

Instructions:

Start with a good handful of electrical wire about a foot to 18″ in length.  This can be standard internal electronics wire, computer networking cable, old table lamp leads, whatever.  A few smaller gauge wires will probably be good, but the bulk can be fairly large.

Bind it all together.  You can either twist until it holds, or more likely, tape about 4″ from the bottom, and again at some point above (maybe 6″ from your last wrap).

Fan out all the wire below your bottom binding.  This will be the root structure, so you want it to curve, splay, or lay fairly naturally.

Then do the same for the top, but far more gradually.  Break out a wire or two as a branch right away, then start one a separate direction a few inches above, etc.  Feel free to keep binding various sections, or twisting them around each other, to keep it all together.  Don’t worry about over binding, your spackle/paste will hide everything anyway.

Once you’re happy with the shape of the wire, mount it to your base.  To do this, use thin gauge floral wire to go through the bottom of the base, and around roots (see photo on right).  Again, a fairly small gauge floral wire works well here, and the texture will do a lot to hide these anchors.  Think of this part of the process as stapling the tree to the base.

As far as basing material goes, use what you have.  These were done with white foamboard, which we used to use all the time, but does have a tendency to warp, so watch for that.  Things like artists palette are probably too thick to punch a floral wire through, so get something that won’t warp, but you can still push the anchor wire through by hand.

Once you’re well anchored (can’t really be too thorough here, tall pieces of terrain get bumped really easily), ready your paste.  Anything that is thin enough to spread by finger, but will stick to vertical surfaces will work fine.  You can use mache, or clay, or plaster, or any of the many substitutes that any hobby store will have.  If I remember correctly, I think these originals we did with a “clay shay” product, something that spreads like paper mache, but hardens like clay.

Make sure to get into those roots really well.  You don’t want to have wire or insulation peeking through, especially since it’s often very brightly colored.

The same could be said of the branch ends, but you might actually want to keep those “slimmed down”, and just paint them the same color as the final tree, instead of adding another layer.

Ork Biker (for scale)

After you’re suitably happy with your “bark”, and you’ve let it dry as per the instructions, drybrush on an extra color, to highlight parts of the tree, and then glue on some foliage (I prefer the woodland scenics), and paint / flock the base, and you’re ready to play!

Game Play Notes:

Since a lot of games have gone to “true line of sight”, this model doesn’t really block a lot of vision on the game board.  We’ve taken measures in games to make the entire base just block vision, or placed smaller trees all around it’s base, to make it the tallest tree in a forest of trees, or simply left it as is, but made it an objective (easy to see for all players!)

This article is really short on the showing, because these were made several years ago.  I’ll try to find the time to make another (or make Greg make another), and take some pictures this time, to help round out the article.

The Hellcannon and superglue is due out March 17th.  All other releases are for March 3rd.

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Before he could meet his doom, though a clear, resounding horn echoed off the hills.  Turning, Ivan felt the hoofbeats of Bretonnian warhorses before the crested the nearest hill.  The manlings of the south would not let the Scraphammers meet their fate alone.  Ivan took a moment to open his own Book, and scratch off the debts the Duke Orth of Bretonnia owed his people.  

The battle shaped up with my artillery heavy dwarfs and Eric’s almost as artillery heavy Bretonnians faced off against Greg’s massive hoards of chaos marauders and Scott’s equally intimidating waves of Tomb Kings.

The game started out deeply troubling for the Dwarfs as the dice decided that the chaos hellcannons would wipe out 14 of my 17 Longbeards in the first round and our own artillery would managed to do nothing in return.  Things went from bad to worse as the Tomb King’s started to pop up right next to the bulk of the Dwarf war machines (not that they were doing much).

Bretonnia had better luck, though and were able to score some juicy charges in the second round, giving the Dwarfs enough breathing room to recover and take out the chaos general.  By the end of turn three, it had become a grindfest between the TK and the Dwarfs with Bretonnia lining up some sweet charges.  We called the game then as we were out of time, giving victory of the forces of Light as the Tomb King Heirophant had been broken and his forces were crumbling quickly.

In retrospect, it probably would have been more fair for Me and Eric to each take one of the newer 8th Ed players as a team mate, but the fluff dictated otherwise.  Eric’s experience really spelled the victory for us despite my bad dice and my epic skills at being wrong about stuff.  I hope that Greg and Scott will ask for a rematch as I feel that they still could have pulled that game back to their favor if we had played on to turn 6.  Chaos still had an entire hoard of marauders and 2 Hellcannons that with a bit of luck, could have bought a bunch of points from the dwarfs.

All in all, a very fun game!

With a deep boom, the door slammed open, banging off the adjoining wall, and sending the shrike airborne. Grand Maester Jorkal sighed, and held his head in his hands as the young apprentice bounded in with enthusiasm. “Maester! Maester, … oh, were you busy? Why is your window open?”

Jorkal sighed, and turned toward the door. “What is it Mikael? I’m terribly busy.” His eyes pass over the heap of scrolls threatening to escape the top of his desk. Perhaps the shrike would return, so that he could delay reading the next round of reports from Nuln…

“It’s worked! Niko sensed a massive burst of energy, and we heard them! The Skaven!”

“What boy? Start from the beginning.” Jorkal pushed the fur off his lap, and tried to clear a chair to his side for the apprentice to sit.

“It’s the spells from Magister Glaur and Wizard Allain, the Skaven tracking spells! Niko and I have finally matched the parameters to blend the magic as they’ve done, and we found some!” Mikael was literally bouncing from foot to foot, ignoring the mostly cleared chair.

“Are you certain? “ A frown drew a large wrinkle across Jorkal’s bushy brow. “The colleges have been reformulating that process for eight years now, with not a single inkling of success”.

“I’m certain! I’m certain! There was a huge source, just like what Glaur had described, a beacon of sorts, drawing Niko’s scrying directly to a massive church bell, wrapped in warp energies, and even glowing with a green light. Rats stood on the platform, including a giant one that…”

“Slow down boy, slow down. Where was this energy source?”

“South, near the Dark Lands…”