Mordheim

Today was a great day for Mordheim.

First, I finally got to play an actual game of Mordheim (except the after-game advancements). A neighbor’s kid has been begging me to play, so I finally made some time, and set up my board. I played as Orcs and Goblins, while he played with my Skaven Warband. We played the Chance Encounter scenario. At the end of the Skaven’s third turn, the orcs had lost 3 of their 8 players, and the Skaven had 4 stunned models on the board, but none out of action. I (the Orcs) was about to destroy the Skaven, but I failed my Rout test…
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As I’ve been trying to get more and more detailed with my Mordheim terrain, I have found myself trying to create what would equate to a .5″ x 2″ plank of wood, which in real life is a cm wide and a couple millimeters thick. I’ve tried carving down a larger piece of wood, but I could never get the sides to be straight. Then I had an epiphany. The answer was in front of me the entire time.

it’s really quite simple. Take a Popsicle stick and a sharp razor blade or Exacto knife, and cut a thin silver off the side of the stick.

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It’s been almost a week since I created Mordheim Stone Wall v1.0, and I have finally gotten around to creating the next version. (Thank you for all your ideas.)

Here’s what I did:

First I grabbed the worst piece of Styrofoam I could find to become my test piece for my Mordheim Stone Wall v2.0. It just happened to be a little over 3.5″ tall, so it was a perfect height. (Here’s a picture with my newly-painted Orc Archer.)

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I spent a little more time on my Mordheim terrain bits and created two more modular fences. I created these two the exact same way I made the last ones, except I haven’t added any pink foam to them. I’m going to make a couple more fences, and then add details to all of them.

I did however, fortify one of these new modular terrain fences. The idea is that someone wanted to create a good defense from ranged attackers, so they nailed a bunch of spare boards to this section of fence:

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Today, I started on a couple small sections of modular fences. My original purpose for creating these small bits of fence is to show that you don’t have to have a base on your small bits of terrain. These sections of fence will be pretty destroyed, and then re-fortified in sections.

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I’ve finally gotten around to painting my first two models since I grew up

Orc Warband Storyline:
I haven’t settled on a complete storyline for my Orc Warband yet, but these Orcs’ homeland has a odd, orange stone that when smashed into powder and rubbed on skin with water creates a great Orange Dye. This is why they have Orange warpaint all of themselves, kind of like Scottish Orcs with orange (instead of blue) woad… *stolen from Tom* I have yet to do the face painting, but I have decided that two orange stripes is this warbands signature.

I also wouldn’t normally take such up-close pictures, as it shows too many flaws ;}, but I’m still on a learning curve. =] Here’s a picture that isn’t too close:

And without further ado, Here’s the close-ups: Read the Rest of the Post >

When I based my two orcs, I used PVA glue to glue down the sand, wood, etc. What’s wrong with that?

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Here is the progress on my first models I have painted in a long time. The pictures describe it best, so I’m not going to type much for this post:

First pictures is a very dark beginning coat of Green and Brown. At this stage, if you took these models out of the bright light, they would still look pitch black.

Then repetitive drybrushing of lighter and lighter colors. The teeth are extremely hard, which may be the result of cheap paint + cheap brushes:

Things left to do:

• Paint the Base (I probably should have done this before anything else.)
• Paint the metal (Sword, Bow tips, studs in the studded leather, etc.)
• Orange War painting
• Mouth and teeth
• Muscle Highlighting

I’m sure there’s more,
-Ashton Sanders

Since I acquired my latest piece of packing foam, I have been trying to figure out the most believable way to create this large section of elevation. I have decided to make all of the edges of the foam look like it was created with a wall of stone, like a retaining wall. Then the rest of the elevated section of ground can be dirt ground like a normal Mordheim board.

I grabbed a spare piece of packing foam as a test piece and through some ideas together. Let me know what you think:

First, I started with my piece of packing Styrofoam about 3.5″ tall:

Second, I spackled the left half of the foam (for testing purposes) and cut out 20 different-sized stones from a sheet of business-card-thickness card stock. I glued them to the wall:

Third, I painted everything black, and highlighted the rocks (goblin fanatic for scale):
(You can see in this picture how much better the side with the spackle (left side) turned out. I definitely recommend spackling/texturing Styrofoam before using.)

Finally, I took a thick-bristle brush with very little paint on it, and added some speckling and texture to the rocks. Since I was so sloppy painting the stones, I had to take paint over the black again with a thin paint brush:

“Voila!” (Or in the words of Ness: “Tadi-UMP!”) Instant Rock Wall.

I’m pretty happy with how it came out. I’ll update this if I come up with any other good ideas.
-Ashton Sanders

How to keep dice from getting stuck in a funnel

While creating my Mordheim Dice Tower, I ran into a small problem. Since I wanted my dice tower to look like a normal Mordheim Building, and not look like a dice tower, I had to make my Dice Tower’s exit hole the size of a normal 28mm door. This presented a problem, because only one dice at a time would be able to exit the dice tower at once.

You can see in the next picture the final ramp/funnel, and how thin it gets before dice “exit the building.”

After hours of testing and fiddling with my ramps, I came up with a very simple solution to keep dice from getting stuck in my dice tower. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any good pictures of what I created, so I will demonstrate below. Read the Rest of the Post >