Archive for December, 2007

Dec 28

Adding Bases to Terrain

Since my last post about adding bases to buildings, I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. I’ve compiled more points, and put them below:

Good Things About Using a Base on Your Buildings and Terrain:

  1. Stability: With a base, you don’t even have to worry about the stability of your large building. Just glue it down.
  2. Debris and Junk: Read the Rest of the Post >

Dec 27

Supporting Large Terrain Pieces Without Bases

The building that I am currently working on for my Mordheim Terrain is a four story tower that has fallen over into a pile of rubble. This creates quite a long terrain piece that I am building without a base.

The biggest problem with creating this Mordheim building without a base is support. If I am not careful, after all my work, it will just break in half. There are a couple things I am doing to take care of this:

First, I’ve created, and glued into place, a Popsicle stick brace that supports the building from inside the foam. The idea behind this is similar to having rebar inside of cement walls. Here is a picture of the bottom of my terrain:

Bracing Terrain

The weakest part of my terrain is on the left side of the Popsicle brace. Where the rubble meets the first floor of the building.

Second, I’ve added fallen debris that acts as support beams.

Bracing My Terrain

There are three sticks that look like they have just fallen over in the debris, but are actually embedded deep within the main building and glued securely to the rubble.

Lastly, I am going to create a couple piles of rubble right next to the main floor which will also add support to the weak point on my piece of terrain.

I’ve done a lot of work on the roof of the tower as well. You can see the broken chimney in this picture:

Bracing My Terrain

Merry Christmas,
Ashton Sanders

Dec 25

Merry Christmas 2007

General,Random Bin
Author: Ashton Sanders

I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas.

I hope this year has been prosperous and adventurous for you, and that 2008 will only get better.

Merry Christmas,
Ashton Sanders

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Dec 21

Mordheim Roof Updated

Collapsed Tower,Mordheim Buildings
Author: Ashton Sanders

Over the last week, I’ve been trying to create a system to create small Mordheim roof tiles that look good. Most scratch-built Mordheim buildings these days have 1/2″ to 1″ wide roof tiles which translates to 2.5 – 5 feet wide. Which, by the way, is completely ridiculous. After lots of fiddling with different types of material for my roof tiles, I tore off my old Mordheim Roof and created a new one from card stock.

This is the process I created to make the Mordheim roof tiles:

  1. Cut a strip of card stock 1.1 cm wide.
  2. Cut slits along one side to create the different tiles.
  3. Then I cut off the ends of most of the tiles to give each tile a different length.
  4. Then for to show wear, I bent the tiles and chipped the corners of every other tile.

Here’s an image of the different steps:

Miniature Roof Process

As you can see the completed strip has as much character as I could think of adding (without paint). So I went ahead and cut up almost an entire 8×11″ piece of paper and glued them down on the roof of my competition building:

Miniature Building Roof

Here’s the other side:

Miniature Building Roof

Note the two holes I added to create the leaky roof. I think this came out looking very well. I only have one row of tiles along the peak of the roof to add, and This section of roof should be done.

The only short-coming with using card stock is that it will soak up the paint and become wet. Hopefully it won’t “melt” together and loose it’s shape.

More to come,
Ashton Sanders

Dec 19

New Roofing Tiles

Collapsed Tower,Mordheim Buildings
Author: Ashton Sanders

My latest work has been on my Competition Entry for TerraGenesis.com.

I have a couple of minor details to work out before completing the construction phase of my project and moving on to the painting phase. One of the biggest problems I’ve faced is getting the roofing tiles to work. In almost all pictures of Mordheim roofs that I have seen, the roofing tiles are about 1/2″ wide. Which translates into almost 2 1/2 feet wide in Mordheim size. There is no way that most buildings (even in fantasy) would have roof tiles 2.5 feet wide! So began my quest for smaller roofing tiles.

I got a deck of mini playing cards for Christmas and cut those up into rows of roof tiles. This is where I ran into my problem: The playing cards were so laminated, paint wouldn’t stick to them. I tried everything I could think of, and asked for help at the TerraGenesis forum. Unfortunately nothing could solve my problem until I realized I could find a similar material that wasn’t laminated: Card Stock. I even had a couple sheets in my laptop bag!

I cut up one row of roofing and glued it down tonight. I’ll be adding and update about it tomorrow.

Mordheim Roof

Enjoy,
Ashton Sanders

Dec 17

Warhammer Box Has Arrived!

General,Mordheim Models
Author: Ashton Sanders

After a week of nerve-racking waiting, my Warhammer starter set has arrived! It was apparently too big to fit inside my mail box, so the mailman just had it balanced on top of it. That’s definitely the first time that has happened to me.

I eagerly brought it in and spread out the contents of it. (If you didn’t read from earlier, I’m planning on using these models for my Orc and Human warband.)

Here is a slightly out of focus picture of the back of the Warhammer starter box:

Warhammer Box Set - Back Cover

You can see in this picture sets of 4 regiments of 18 guys. From Left to Right: Orc Warriors, Orc Archers, Human Riflemen and Human Spearmen. This box also includes a Human canon and an Orc War Chariot and a General for each.

Here’s a picture of all of these models still in their sprues:

Warhammer Box Set - Contents

At the top of this picture, you can see two stacks of 4 sprues each. These are the regiments of warriors; one stack for the humans and one for the orcs.

Here’s a close up of the Humans and Orcs Sprues:

Warhammer Human Sprue - Riflemen and Spearmen

Warhammer Orc Sprues - Archers and Warriors

I’m looking at selling or trading some of these sprues as this is more than enough for two warbands of each species, and I’m only putting together 1 of each.

-Ashton Sanders

Dec 16

Mordheim Sprues Ariving Tomorrow!

General
Author: Ashton Sanders

I received a note in my mailbox late on Saturday night saying that they had a box for me at the post office! Which has to be my Warhammer Starter Set that I shopped victoriously for!

I’m very excited to get the box, but since today was Sunday, the post office was closed. So I’m having to wait almost 48 hours before I can get my package. It’s like Christmas; waiting for my presents. But that’s okay. I have patience, and the “Fallen Over Competition” is keeping me very busy/entertained until my package arrives.

I think the first thing I’m going to do, is put together a nice, well-painted Human model to display with my buildings for the sake of scale.

Enjoy,
Ashton Sanders

Dec 15

Mordheim Carpenter

Collapsed Tower,Mordheim Buildings
Author: Ashton Sanders

I’ve been working hard on my Collapsed Tower for Mordheim, and today we had a visit from the Mordheim Carpenter.

This collapsed tower almost completely destroyed one side of the main floor, but the other side of the main floor is still in perfect condition. Today, I had the Mordheim Carpenter out to add wooden framing to the entire house. I added a wooden door and door frame.

Here’s a picture of the wooden framing on my Collapsed Mordheim Tower with “Ugh” the Orc for size comparison:

Mordheim terrain with wooden framing

More on the way,
Ashton Sanders

Dec 13

Mordheim Terrain without a Base

I’ve touched on my thoughts on Adding a Base to Terrain and my last two buildings have not had bases. As I mentioned probably the biggest Con of not having a base is the difficulty of keeping the entire building supported. This is especially true for my entry into the TerraGenesis Fallen Over Competition.

Here is the latest picture of my Entry:

Fallen Mordheim Building

Cutting out a hole for the support sticksAs you can see, I’m going to have to create a lot of supports between the roof of the tower, the rubble and the main building. All I had connecting the two was a thin sheet of Styrofoam, so this is what I came up with: Adding support beams under the foam.

1) I cut out slits under the connecting piece of foam. I cut out enough space for two sticks to be sticking halfway out, and for two sticks to run parallel for extra support. (I did this we a fully extended (flexible) razor blade. The flexible aspect allows me to rub the blade horizontally across the bottom of the foam creating a perfect hole. See picture.

2) I cut out small slits in the bottom of the roof and the bottom of the main building; just big enough to slip in the Popsicle sticks.

3) I glued in all of these supports with Elmer Glue.

4) I am also planning on adding some supports to the top of it, in the form of fallen debris between the separate sections. They will look like they are just leaning on the main building (or roof), but they will actually act as additional support. You can see a good example of this in the first picture above.

Good thing foam is not too heavy. I think these supports will be enough to hold this terrain together.

Here’s a picture of the glued in support beams:

Supporting Mordheim Terrain

Enjoy,
Ashton Sanders

Dec 11

Oger Warbands in Mordheim

Mordheim Warbands,Ogres
Author: Ashton Sanders

I found a couple great links to Oger Warband Rules for Mordheim. Many of them have not been tested, but I’m putting they up because I found them interesting, and they seem pretty fair.

This first link is a post on Games Workshop Specialist Forum entitled Oger Warband, and seems pretty fair to me. You can only have a total of 3 Ogers. My only real problem with it is that you have to shoot or attack the Ogers if you can. You are not allowed to shoot their weak slaves. I would do away with that rule.

Here’s another link on another Games Workshop Forum entitled Ogre Kingdoms Warband. I haven’t evaluated this one yet, but from briefly looking it over, it looks like this one is very unbalanced. Let me know what you think.

Ashton Sanders

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