Town Entrance Sign

Inspiration from the latest Wyrd Chronicles issue. Nice addition to my terrain. Super fun project too.

Malifaux Posters

Not a proper update. My life is complete chaos right now due to medical issues. Just saving this link here for future reference.

Really cool Malifaux-style posters for printing and using in terrain making

Terrain: Sign Post

What it is: A Neverborn sign post, warning intruders.

How I made it: Balsa wood, plastic skulls from some ancient skeleton kit, and a random base from my Secret Weapon Bag-o-Crap. I made sure to put a magnet in the resin base so that I can bring it in my small model transport case and add it to whatever game I happen to be playing at. I also drilled a number of holes in the wood in order to accentuate that it's been at the center of battles. There's even an exposed pin painted to look like a nail.

What I learned: It's amazing how a small piece of terrain like this can get done so quickly. This took me maybe 3 hours total effort and that was just because I was enjoying the project rather than trying to rush through it.

Rules for Malifaux: Severe and Soft Cover.

Terrain: Gallows

What it is: A gallows, for hanging criminals.

How I made it: Loads of coffee stirrers, balsa wood, hot glue, and some twine. Also I painted it using P3 Umbral Umber, P3 Beast Hide (drybrushed), and then P3 Hammerfall Khaki (drybrushed).

What I learned: Originally I tried staining the wood, but there was 2 major problems. First, the stain doesn't really work on coffee stirrers and balsa wood. Second, the stain caused some of the hot glue to detach, which meant a lot of fixing. Also, wood stain smells horrible and takes a long time to properly dry.

Rules for Malifaux: Ht 1 models can walk under unimpeded. Ht 2 models can walk under as severe terrain. Walking up the steps requires no additional cost for climbing, but anywhere else must pay 4" to go up before moving onto the platform. The platform is a vantage point. targeting between above and below the platform is not blocked.

Terrain: Water Tower

What it is: A water tower! Shocker!

How I made it: Lots of balsa wood, wooden dowels, coffee stirrers, popsicle sticks, hot glue, and a single empty food can. I also used some simple craft foam to make the bands around the giant barrel.

What I learned: This actually was inspired mostly by a tutorial or youtube video I'd seen a while. I will say though that I learned using hot glue is much easier for this type of construction that normal glue. Shockingly easier.

Rules for Malifaux: Soft Cover while in the ground area contained by the posts. Beginning a Wk action at the base of the ladder allows for getting to the top in a single 1AP.

Terrain: Angel Statue

What it is: A weeping angel status to watch over those about to die.

How I made it: Very simple. I bought a "Doctor Who Angel" statue, hot-glued it to a small empty can, and then painted it. I used some of the ModelMates weathering paints to quickly speed the process as well, which they worked great on.

What I learned: Honestly, this was a super simple project. Mostly I just learned that there are Doctor Who Weeping Angle christmas ornaments.

Rules for Malifaux: Blocking, Impassable, Hard Cover

Terrain: Serene Fountain

Here's the first of a recent surge of terrain building for Malifaux. I've been horrible about taking in-progress pictures, so these are less like tutorials and more like post mortems.

What it is: It's a peaceful looking fountain. It's not meant to be spooky or daemonic or evil or anything like that. Just a nice peaceful centerpiece to a town.

How I made it: I started with a form for the well from a mission kit I got at Michaels. Sorry, no link for it as I can't find it listed anywhere. It came in 2 halves and had the basic stonework pattern to it. I then put it together and attached it to a piece of chipboard, using some clay to attach it down. I then built up some styrofoam blocks and plastic tube to create the fountain part, and added some mixed grain sand around the outside edge. Next I primed and painted it up, putting a little extra effort into the bronze tubes to give them a weathered look. After that I added moss and grass and such, putting a little extra highlighting on all that stuff. The falling water was the tricky part. I used some fishing line and glued it at both ends (inside the tubes and to the bottom of the well), and then applied a liberal amount of gel super glue to the lines and let that dry. Next I poured Envirotex into the well part and let that dry for 24 hours. After that I applied a thin layer of uneven super heavy gloss gel and let that dry overnight to give the water surface a much more uneven look.

What I learned: Here's a really great video tutorial by Terrain Wench of doing pool water effects that I highly recommend. I learned a lot from this. Some key things that I would do differently in the future are as follows: First, I would do a much better job of sealing up the bottom edge of the pool, since a fair amount of Envirotex leaked out and made a mess. I was somewhat prepared for this, but in hindsight I should have just gone the extra mile to make sure. Second, I would change the angle of the water pouring out from the fountain pipes. It just doesn't look quite right unfortunately. Third, I would use Terrain Wench's tip and pour the Envirotex in multiple layers, do a very minor amount of swirling of wash medium to make it look more uneven. Other than that though, I am really quite happy with my first attempt and animated water effects. I'm already dreaming up ideas for more such projects.

Rules for Malifaux: Ht 1.5", Blocking, Impassable, Hard Cover

Terrain: Malifaux Style

In an effort to get our Malifaux games to the next level of awesomeness, I'm embarking on a terrain quest. Terrain is far more important in Malifaux than in any other miniatures game I've ever played. Coming from Warmachine predominantly, but also Dropzone Commander, Warhammer, 40K, and so on, terrain was essentially window-dressing and an afterthought. For Malifaux though, it dramatically swings the balance of the game. After playing the first couple games of our campaign, it became painfully obvious to me that I needed to do some research as well as some terrain building. The first step was to tap into my primary resource for Wyrd stuff: A Wyrd Place, the completely awesome Facebook group of Wyrd players. This is hands down my favorite miniatures game Facebook group due to the positive attitude and helpful nature of everyone on it. In addition to getting several good insights, I got links for some excellent resources. First I'll share the resources, then the remainder of the post will be a summary of all the stuff I took away from all the helpful comments and resources that I read.

Fantastic pinned post on the forums - Has great visuals. Fantastic first place to start.
Terrain is a Big Deal in Malifaux - Great article on Pull My Finger. Incorporates stuff from the forum post along with other great material.
Chronicles of Breach Fighters - Fantastic Facebook page of battle reports, showing lots of table configurations. Perhaps even more fantastic just for the ideas of terrain pieces to build.

What I learned from all this...
* Always discuss the terrain up front before starting the battle to ensure no confusion later on.
* Terrain should cover 30-50% of the table. Test this by collecting it all into one solid section at the start.
* 3 important types: Cover (to curb shooting), LOS blocking (to curb casters), slow/block movement (to curb melee). Balancing these is important.
* Don't use hills, except near the edges of the board. They don't fall into any of the 3 important types and end up introducing elevation. Elevation itself is tricky, and will need house rulings to be workable.
* There should be little to no direct LOS from 1 deployment zone to another. Maybe 1-2 narrow lanes.
* Terrain in the center of the board is good, whereas along the edges is not as useful.


Now it's time to build some terrain! I'm finishing up a bunch of pieces (which I'll post during the coming days), but doing this research was helpful. Next I'm going to take a close look at which of the 3 categories each of my existing terrain supplies fall into, and see how much board coverage capability I have. In the mean time, here's some ideas I have for more terrain projects:
* Sign posts
* Low hedges
* Gravestones / open graves
* Archway opening to a graveyard area
* Large spooky tree

Generators and Console

Finished these up late last night. These are the Secret Weapon Miniatures terrain pieces Imperial Generators. The generators stand about as tall as a normal 30mm model. I painted them in my Cygnar theme colors to match the army and even magnetized them. I've had them for quite some time and it was nice to knock these out real quick.

The pieces themselves are resin and pretty easy to work with. I will say that they have a bit of texture to them that ideally would get sanded down, but I didn't want to mess around with that since it's just terrain. The console was an amusing little piece to add on. Something I like about these pieces is that they offer a lot of flexibility in how they are positioned, and they make for a very clear delineation of what space they take up in terms of being hard cover.

From the Desk: (Long) Weekend Roundup #38

Bonus vacation day today, so it was an extra long weekend!

First up are these terrain fences I finished building. They are made from metal mesh, matchsticks, poster board and floral wire. Nothing particularly complicated, but they took me several days to finish just because of the many steps required. The fences are roughly 2" tall and I tapered the ends of the bases so that they could be easily positioned together at angles. I also applied some damage to half of them. My favorite is the one where it's been cut at the bottom and peeled up as if someone crawled underneath. Thanks to my wife for that idea.

Next up are these objective markers that I'd previously posted about. Nothing fancy here except that I magnetized them so that I could remove them from their 50mm bases if I need 40mm markers instead. I also used some pigments on these to get a bit more practice with them.

And here's the progress on the Harriers so far. Nothing fancy, so moving along...

And finally Miss Terious. I'm still toying with this model but I think I'm about to call it finished. I'm just struggling and not quite feeling like this is an over-the-top project.

And now for sleep!

Simple Outhouse

Just a quick gallery posting. This was the outhouse project I finished. It's nothing fancy but it's a totally valid piece of terrain that adds some amusement. It measures just over 2" square, and a bit over 3" tall. I'm debating adding some special rules to it...

Outhouse:
Provides hard cover.
Special action to enter.
While inside, can aim and take ranged attacks. Also provides bonus armor.
If the outhouse is destroyed by a flaming attack, it explodes, destroying the occupant!

Ok... maybe no special rules...

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #37

Stupid work trip!

I was gone for more than half the week, so progress on actual painting is meager. The Primordial Magic model got finished, but probably before its due time due to my desire to get something done this week. I also got this project done on the Miss Terious model. I did however have a significant "ah ha!" moment late this week...

Having a 3 1/2 year old son has a tendency to constrain my hobby time, however I want him to get familiar with my hobby in general. Most of it (models, paints, glues, sharp tools, etc) are not really suited for having laying around. However I realized that building terrain is a relatively safe activity to be doing around him, and more to the point, he can sometimes even help out if he focuses. So to that end I got my terrain building crate out, sorted through all the materials to keep it contained to the crate, and brought it inside for new projects. I also sketched out a bunch of relatively easy projects and started fooling around. I'm including a bunch of in-progress pictures here, but I'll add some completed project pictures as a part of the gallery as I finish each one.