Mordheim

Here is another Popsicle stick project I thought up. I don’t really know where I’m going to do with it, but I wanted to make a Mordheim horse cart. I had a picture of a horse cart in my mind that I wanted to recreate at 28mm scale, and I think I did a pretty good job.

This entire cart is made from Popsicle sticks, except for the axle which is made from a thick, tough weed stem from my yard. I haven’t attached the wheels yet, but I want to find a way to make them able to roll. So, if I wanted to, I could actually roll the cart around. Why not?

(Note: Please ignore the paint job on that Mordheim Skaven, it’s from a much younger, rash me.)

More to Come,
-Ashton Sanders

(That is the question…)

I’ve been toying with the idea of adding bases to my buildings. I am almost ready to add a coat of paint to my first Mordheim Building, and I need to decide whether or not I want to add a base to it. Here’s a picture of a Mordheim building with a base, and you can click on the link to my first Mordheim Building above to see a building without a base.

The Pros of adding a base to your Mordheim building:

• When a building has a base, it is much easier to add debris and trash to the floor around the building.
• It also adds a lot of stability to your building. It is much easier to keep your building from falling over from the weight of your Mordheim Models.
• You can use them to add hills and elevation to your Mordheim Board. I can guarantee the City of the Damned is not totally flat.

The Cons of adding a base to your building:

• You get that annoying lip around the edge of the base that can distract from.
• The base can easily end up as a different color than the board you are playing on. (Use a friends board, make a new one, etc.) I’m trying to build these buildings for aesthetics, this will cause them to look very ugly. Here’s an example of Mordheim bases looking ugly.
• Buildings with bases cannot be placed very close together, so if you are playing the “Street Fight” scenario, you will have trouble making a wall of buildings.

Can you think of any other Pros or Cons? I’ll try to update this list.

I think I will end up adding small bases to some of my buildings, but I’ll have to work on camouflaging the bases really well, and I’ll probably need to put together a board first. Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial about how to create a Games Workshop or Mordheim Board (with the sand on it)?

-Ashton Sanders

UPDATE: For a more detailed post on this subject check out my newer post: Adding Bases to Terrain.

I’ve expanded my collection of Mordheim Ladders. I only have one GW ladder. (I think that’s all that comes in the box.) And ladders are extremely useful in Mordheim (not so much for Skaven, but for the other, not so agile warbands =). I’ve decided to make a couple ladders in the different construction styles of the Warbands of Mordheim.

You may remember in my first Mordheim Ladder post, I mentioned that it was a ladder that was definitely made by humans. After I said that, I went on a quest to create a ladder made by my Skaven Warband. I actually made two. Both of these were created from Popsicle sticks, and I think they came out pretty well. I still have to base coat that last ladder. Here are my four Mordheim Ladders:

Read the Rest of the Post >

Over the last couple days, I’ve been trying to be as inventive as I can with my Popsicle sticks. I think I’ve done pretty well. I’ve created a number of Mordheim Terrain pieces. I’ll be posting them over the next couple days.

The first thing I made was a 8′ picket fence. Each fence plank was the normal width of a Popsicle stick, and they came to a point like a normal picket fence. After gluing it all together with Elmer’s Glue, I realized that it wouldn’t fit in at all. Even after I removed planks and make it look as destroyed as possible, it looked way to big, and the planks were too wide. (Sorry, no pictures.)

So I took it all apart, and cut all of the wooden planks in a half. I scraped all of the Elmer’s Glue off of the planks, and lied them all down with the points facing in the same direction. I think this fence came out pretty good. Here’s a picture of my final 10′ Mordheim fence:

That is my Assassin Adept, and my old warband symbol.

I’ll be base coating this, and then pretty soon, I’ll start on the painting stage for all of my base-coated Mordheim terrain and buildings.

Enjoy,
Ashton Sanders

I’ve done a lot of filling and testing with my first Mordheim Building. I’ve tested out cardboard for the 2nd floor’s wood paneling, and have worked on framing the windows, doors and corners. I was having trouble trying to find inexpensive material to use as wood, and Popsicle sticks came to the rescue. But cutting up Popsicle sticks, I’ve been able to get wood of all shapes and sizes for just about any purpose.

After completing the design of my first Mordheim Building and putting all of the wooden accents, I did a base coat with straight black acrylic paint. Here are some pictures taken with Ugh and Squeamish:

As you can see there are still a billion little white specks from the Styrofoam. I hope to have those well disguised by the time I get the final coat of detail paint on this Mordheim Building.

Happy Thanksgiving
-Ashton Sanders

I don’t think there’s a job more tedious than painting Styrofoam. It would be simple to spray paint it all black for the base coat, but it’s Styrofoam, and it will bubble and melt into a soggy pile of acid when it reacts to spray paint. It reacts with just about any painting or gluing material. So the only real solution is to glue it together with Elmer’s Glue and paint it with Acrylic or water based paints. But since Styrofoam has all the holes and cracks between the white balls, you have to go over it again and again with a detail brush painting the inside of the holes with black (acrylic) paint.

I have experimented with multiple things to get the holes to close up, but nothing has worked. I’ve tried heating the Styrofoam over a flame, using the hot-wire foam cutter, etc., all to no avail.

On the subject of painting Styrofoam, I thought I’d discuss paints. I have this old Games Workshop Citadel paint pot (with the screw on lid) which costs anywhere from $2.50-$3.50. The new paint pots cost $3.00 at my local Tabletop gaming store. This is the paint that says “Citadel Colors” on the back. This paint pot has 12ml of paint in it and ends up being $.25/ml.

The next paint pot to discuss I bought at a local hobby shop for two dollars. This is also black and is acrylic paint. This paint pot costs $2.00 and contains 10ml of paint. So it’s less money for a little less paint, but overall a better deal: $.20/ml. I started painting one of my Styrofoam buildings with this pot, and it’s over half gone. I couldn’t feel justified spending $2.00 to paint one corner of a building, so I went out and bought the next bottle.

This large bottle of paint has 236ml of black paint and was $1.99. No matter which way you look at it, it was a good deal. It has a simple pop top, and has worked wonders on my Styrofoam Mordheim building. (I’m almost done with the base coat, and then I’ll post it.)

So yes, obviously the huge bottle of Acrylic paint for under $2.00 is the best deal for painting small and large Mordheim buildings. This ends up costing $.008/ml, and is what I’m looking for when it comes to base coating Styrofoam buildings for Mordheim. I have yet to see how the quality shakes down for miniatures, and only time will tell.

Until then,
-Ashton Sanders

Obviously, the most common building material used to build Mordheim, like most fantasy worlds, is wood. I spent yesterday looking for some ways to create good Mordheim-sized wood for building construction.

I came up with some very rugged wood chips by cutting slivers off of an old, beaten-up 2×4(x8). I cut them to many different thicknesses. some were 2 Mordheim inches thick, but most were like 8-12 inches thick.

Obviously these “slivers” will still need to be cut again to make them thin. It’s hard to tell from this picture, but these pieces of wood are very ruff, and will look great dry-brushed.

I also bought a box of 1000 Popsicle sticks. After cutting off the rounded edges of a Popsicle stick, it ends up being approximately 2×12 Mordheim inches, which is perfect for construction. I have also used these Popsicle sticks for framing my first building. I should finish the base coat today, and I’ll have pictures tomorrow.

I have an illusion of grandeur of actually creating an entire building like a normal wood-framed house.

-Ashton Sanders

Everyone knows that most human and Skaven warbands never sleep within the walls of Mordheim, the City of the Damned. But, where do they eat lunch? It has been an unanswered question until now! The best place to eat in Mordheim is at my tables:

And if you’re ever interrupted by some rival warband, you can throw the table on it’s end and you have instant protection from missile weapons.

These tables are built out of a piece of bark I found in my yard. I’ll probably end up making it a permanent part of a building setup.

-Ashton Sanders

Most Mordheim Boards don’t have any sort of plant life or shrubbery, which is probably from the thick cloud of ash and poison that hangs over the City of the Damned. But I disagree. After the comet crashed into the city of Mordheim, it annihilated a good portion of the inhabitants instantly, and the survivors started mutating and going crazy. I figure this would be about the same process of the plant life.

I have another reason to want plant life on my Mordheim board: I have lots of creepy looking weeds, that could fit in very well to my Mordheim board and add a lot of character.

That said, lets move on to making my second Mordheim plant. This one is going to be a shrub, since my Mordheim Tree was too freaking huge. I started with the same tumble weed that I made my tree with. I clipped off a small group of the branches and stuck them into a piece of cardboard. I soon discovered how horrible this idea was. Below you can see the plant I used, and what it made. I quickly threw away the idea of using that plant for a shrub. Here is my Shrubbery FAILURE:

But I didn’t give up yet. I knew something cool could come from all these creepy weeds I have in my yard. I tried my next weed, which is a noxious weed. This one has creepy pod like flowers that don’t ever wilt away. I cut the pods off and stuck them into a piece of cardboard. I think it may have been too much, but it’s a great start. I added a layer of Elmer’s Glue to the floor to hold the plants in place.

I don’t know if I’ll ever use that shrub, but it was a good start, and I’ll be developing more shrub-like plants soon.

-Ashton Sanders

In my earlier post I described how I had been cutting foam. It was a slow and tiring process.

Yesterday, I went to a couple hobby shops in Kalispell. I purchased my very first Woodland Scenics Hot Wire Foam Cutter.

All you do is plug it into the wall, and press the yellow thumb-trigger forward, and “Voila” You have a pipin’ hot wire that glides through foam like a hot knife through… butter… (I know, that wasn’t much of an analogy, but I couldn’t think of anything else.) It works pretty well too. This foam cutter gives you a little under 4 customary inches of hot wire to cut with. So don’t get a 5″ cube, or you’ll only cut off the corners. Here is the first victim of my new tool:

My Second Mordheim Building (before and after):

Look at that character! Both of the walls had been different sizes (one was almost twice the size of the other). Using this foam cutter, I was able to make both walls the same size, and add a good deal of character with ease. The only problem with cutting foam with a hot utensil, is the toxic fumes, so be sure to always use a hot foam cutter in a well ventilated area.

-Ashton Sanders