The remains of Stormcast Liberator Dathalus, who led the first Free People reclamation expedition into the city of Suncastle. The entire expedition was lost, and my players will start the campaign by searching for Dathalus, along with his journal and reports. The city must be made safe once more in the name of Sigmar...
I dismembered a Stormcast and used my dremel on the parts in order to make it look like an empty suit of armour. I imagine that when a Stormcast dies their body is dematerialised - so they do not leave a corpse. I have no idea what the official fluff says on the matter, but I do see parts of Stormcast armour as trophies on Citadel miniatures - so I guess the armour at least does stay behind.
The base for this piece came from Alien Lab Miniatures. I knew it would be cool as a base for an objective. I painted it very subtly, same colour over everything. This way the miniature doesn't get lost in it, but the large area of the base is still interesting to look at because of all the sculpted detail.
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I've cleaned up, assembled and primed my Warcry terrain set. Done a bit of brushing on some of it as well. I'll be needing it for a game in a few weeks...
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I have this small round table in my gaming room, which I use as a side table for keeping cards, dice, extra minis etc. while playing. The room is not really much to look at right now, but I want to gradually equip it with details that will improve the ambiance. It's part of the
experience. So to that end, when I saw this super occult doily for sale I knew I had to have it:
It's lovely, and the packaging and presentation are just as delightful - fantastic job, Blial Cabal! I got some extras: stickers etc., one of which immediately ended up on my trusty brush case.
Alien Lab Miniatures recently sent me some nice resin stuff to work with. For now, I painted a number of treasure chests and barrels for my AoS28 collection, to be used as objectives and/or scatter terrain. Thanks, Alien Lab!
Barrels come six per pack, all pretty much identical. They're hollow inside, but only the top half; with options to make them open or closed (lid is separate).
Treasure chests come eight per pack. Large, small, open, closed...
There are actually three different skull sets pictured here. One can never have too many skulls in their bits box.
80mm skull base. I'm planning to turn this into an objective/terrain feature for my AoS28 games.
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The chests have sculpted woodgrain, wich responds well to my wash + glaze painting method. They look hand-sculpted: no perfect right angles and dull syimmetry.
The barrels don't really have texture, so it needed to be added with paint. They look good! I made all but one closed. The open one got filled with clear resin to simulate water.
On the first of this month, Gardens of Hecate had its sixth birthday. It's been another good year, so I thought I'd celebrate by sharing some interesting non-miniature stuff I accumulated through the past months. If you've been following the blog for a while, you'll know that besides miniatures I like to make and collect other attractive game-related objects.
DICE
A selection from my modest collection of dice. I obviously favour bone/ivory coloured ones. I regret never buying the Maelstrom Dice GW released not a long time ago; pretty basic, skulls in place of 1s, but gothic numbers instead of pips. If anyone has them in ivory colour and wants to trade off a few, do let me know. [Edit: got the Maelstrom dice. Thanks WarbossKurgan!]
For carrying them to games, I find mint tins are a good solution. Also fits my AoS 3'' combat gauge.
INQUISITOR'S DISPLAY AND TRANSPORT CASE
A
new wooden box; you've seen it in the Cerulean Gate photos. It was made
for Morbray & co. INQ28 warband. There are slots for nine figures,
so I think I'll make that many. Since they will be all plastic or resin,
magnets were a viable option. Learning from my past mistakes, I
installed the magnets in the box rather than under the models' bases. The bases have small ferromagnetic coins glued underneath.
The slots inside the box were built using balsa wood. The box is not quite finished yet, as I
plan to add some artwork and other paper stuff inside and outside on the
lid. And, obviously, the names of the future warband members to label
their slots.
FOLDING RULER
These wooden measuring devices are iconic in the INQ28 crowd, I'd say. Though they may not be as functional as a tape measure in many cases, they sure are way prettier to look at and handle. After some hunting on ebay, I finally found one that was suitable.
EMPEROR'S TAROT
Blanche-illustrated 21-card deck, printed years ago for an event game at Warhammer World. A pretty rad thing to have; came back from Nottingham with my Tor Megiddo warband the time they went for their White Dwarf photo shoot.
VOX POPULI DECK
A poker deck illustrated by Moritz Krebs. Each card has a unique character on it. Krebs' style is very 'Mordheim', so I'm a fan. So much so that I bought an original to hang on my wall:
I love the fact that the envelope the drawing came in even had a little doodle on it, and was sealed with a black wax seal. Inevitably, now I'm considering having my own seal made...
If you're not familiar with Krebs' artwork, do yourself a favour and check him out on Instagram: @blackcrabart.
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The first issue of 28, a magazine that focuses on unique and personal projects of the Warhammer hobby, is almost upon us. We've put out a few teasers of the content in the past couple weeks. If you don't want to miss updates and the eventual release of volume one, you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook and our own website28-mag.com. The magazine will be a free-to-download digital publication.
Those of you who follow me on Facebook may remember that back in February I shared a photo of my first printed deck. The printing was done in collaboration with Jesús, the author of El Soldado Tranquilo. This generated plenty of response, people expressing interest in getting a copy for themselves. Though pretty cool, I felt the deck wasn't good enough to offer it as a product, so I decided to do some editing to bring it up to an acceptable level of quality.
This deck was first painted back in 2014/15, and its creation is discussed in these two posts:LXVII. and LXXIV. There was another, older version from 2013. This was when I came up with my custom suits, but it did not put any graphics on the cards other than suit symbols and numbers: XLIV.
The biggest problem when we got to having this printed was the format. The original cards were completely handmade, with no prior intention to be turned into a printed deck. They did not have rounded corners, so part of the card would get cut off to fit the standard poker card template. In that first print, this was solved by adding a solid colour 'frame' around the scanned card. I wanted to avoid that issue this time around, by constructing the cards digitally, within a poker card template.
Another bit that bothered me was the card numbers. They looked... meh. Their glaring imperfection is passable on the handmade item, but on a printed, neatly cut card it just sticks out. So this got replaced by something more professional-looking. The suit symbols got the same treatment. Basically, the only thing kept from the original deck scans was the artwork from the face cards, but they also got tidied up a bit before scanning.
The handmade original has minimalistic Jokers: gold foil for Red Joker and a blank card for Black Joker. This was because of the way they function in the rules system I use: the Red Joker is the best card in the deck, and the Black Joker the absolute worst. Gold foil was not an option, so I made some actual Joker artwork for this printed release:
Finally, the design for the backs. The handmade original just has blank backs. I went for a version of the Gardens of Hecate banner for this; seemed the most fitting.
When I finished the editing, I ordered a test copy to see how it comes out. And now I finally have it in my hands. I'm happy to say it looks quite good, and I am perfectly comfortable offering this as a product. Pretty exciting!
This is how it compares to the hand-painted original (left) and the 'Jesús edition' (centre):
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If you like it, you can purchase the deck on MakePlayingCards.com, following this link: MPC.
Got this little guy as a prize at the Black Queen painting comp. If anyone's interested in seeing WIP photos, I wrote a brief article about the painting process on this mini for my club's website (in English): HERE. Samouse is a part of a whole series of mouse versions of LOTR characters from Cartoon Miniatures. They're all lovely, and I'm fighting the temptation to collect the rest of the Fellowship, starting with Boromouse. Oh, and they don't have Gollum yet, but I can totally see them basing him on a naked mole-rat, with spectacular results...
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As I mentioned above, a couple days ago I visited another miniatures show here in Zagreb. The show in question was Zagreb Scale Model Cup CK 2017, organized by the Croatian Association of Military Miniaturists, hereabouts known as HUVM. This one is larger than UMS "Agram"'s Black Queen I wrote about back in July, but focuses on model warships, tanks, airplanes and other historical-themed and/or vehicle models and dioramas. There are, hower, a handful of categories open for Fantasy and SF pieces. In addition to manning my club's presentation booth with my colleagues, I entered some of my works from the past year in the competition. This time the organizer brought Mig Jimenez to the event, to do a free workshop/demonstration of weathering techniques, among other things. It would have been silly to miss the opportunity to learn something from the guy; things like that are terribly rare in my corner of the world. Anyway, I brought home some trophies and had a nice time.
My entries and spoils.
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Since I've finally confirmed that I'll be attending Tor Megiddo in Helsinki in person, I thought I could use a container to safely transport my warband all the way there. What I needed was a small box, light but sturdy, that fit all the models, their stats and maybe a few dice and a measuring device. And, naturally, it also had to look nice. This is what I came up with:
It was an unpainted wooden box. I padded the interior with sponge from
blisters, forming a slot to size for each particular member of the
warband. There was space left for six dice, but sadly I can't fit a tape
measure. The stat cards (still not made) have their slot in the left
half of the lid.
After painting the box, I made a paper stencil of the Tor
Megiddo logo and sprayed it on. This didn't turn out quite as planned, but the
result was ok enough to keep. I'll hopefully compensate with really
nice stat cards.
The blog had a month-long hiatus, but now I'm back with reports of what occurred in the meantime.
Black Queen
Hobby and Miniature Painting Competition
UMS "Agram"'s annual painting comp was held during the second weekend of the Arena, parallel with a Warhammer 40k tournament. I bring some new work to the contest every year. This time I managed to take home five medals and a bag of prizes kindly provided by the event's sponsors.
My entries that placed in the comp - the Tor Megiddo technobarbarians, the stag beetle duel, Space Marine Terminator Librarian (painted as a birthday gift for my brother) and the Moss Monster (not in the picture). And these are most of the prizes that came with my medals. Looks like I'll be painting some busts in the future.
Space Marine Librarian. I haven't shown him here before. A nice figure, even though I don't find Space Marines particularly attractive.
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AAS'17 Malifaux tournament
The third and final weekend if the Agram Arena Summer event we had a Malifaux tournament. I was happy that I managed to finish my entire Swampfiends crew in time for the tourney, complete with its display base and markers and tokens. The updates on that are included further below.
Along with the local players, this year we received participants from Austria and Poland, who came for the first time, and a party from Bulgaria that has been visiting the Arena for three years now. The tourney consists of six games played over two days, and traditionally begins with a pre-tournament get-together in a pub the evening before. The weather that weekend was not too great - I am not fond of summer heat, but we all pulled through successfully. The Austrians dominated the tourney, taking the first five places. I was in the lower middle of the chart, but my Swampfiends took home the Best Painted Crew award. They had tough competition to beat.
A pleasant Arena once more, had a good time.
Above photos courtesy of UMS "Agram".
If you're interested in a more extensive report of the tourney, written from the perspective of our Polish guest, you can find it on his blog here: What The Faux.
I played a few friendly games in the comfort of my own home, too. Pictured here: Zoraida's Swampfiends versus Rasputina's blue popsicles. The amount of forest scenery I put on the table worked too much in my favour. I need to add more variety in terms of terrain types when hosting games of regular Malifaux.
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Before the Arena I needed to come up with Scheme
markers and Tree markers for my Swampfiends. Originally I intended
these to be hand-painted, but my deadline was approaching and I was
running out of time. Rather than rushing the painting, I came up with a
quicker and easier solution that still looks good.
30mm Scheme Markers.
50mm Tree
Markers. These are placed by the Waldgeists' Germinate action. If there
is more than one Waldgeist in play it is important to keep track which
pair of trees belongs to which Waldgeist. This is why I marked them with
their faces and numbers, which match the ones on their respective stat
cards.
The
markers were made out of the figures' packaging. I cut out the parts of
the boxes that had artwork on them and glued the cut-outs on MDF bases.
I distressed the edges to cover up the imperfections of my cut.
Hoarding those boxes has finally payed off...
The final set of models I was missing were the Gupp swarms. The
official Gupps are rather cute, but too cartoony for my version of
this crew. Once more I turn to the Hobbit goblin kit for bodies. The
fish heads are copies of the fish familliar's head from WHQ Silver
Tower. The number of heads poking out of the water indicates whether it
is swarm 1, 2 or 3.
The display base I made is rather basic; not impressive in itself. But it does
serve its twofold purpose well. It enhances the crew's presentation by
framing it, and during a tournament I can use it as a tray to carry my
models to the next table. Since it is flat it was not difficult to
transport the base itself to and from the tourney.
The
base is actually a picture frame. I used MDF base extensions as slots
for the minis' bases. This didn't work perfectly because MDF expanded
slightly due to moisture from clay, glue and painting. The tight fitting
bases no longer fit, so they needed filing down. I don't think my next
display base will have slots at all. I had the display base in mind long
before, so in advance I dressed the minis' bases according to their
planned position on the display.
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Trakošćan
The weekend after the tournament I went to see Trakošćan - a castle in northern Croatia. I had been there at least twice before, but that was 15+ years ago, so it seemed it was time to revisit the place. It left a lasting impression on me as a child; I was curious how I would perceive it now.
The castle stands atop a small hill, and the estate that surrounds it includes a park, a forest and a lake. It dates back to 13th century, when it was a small fortress. It was later upgraded with towers and improved defences, to sustain the fire of Turkish guns. Once it lost its strategic significance, Trakošćan was converted into a residence. For a long period of its existence the castle was in possession of the Drašković family. The name of the castle is thought to be a warped combination of Latin "draco" and German "Stein", which would translate to Dragonstone. Nowadays it is open to the public as a museum.
It was not much different than I remembered it. There are plenty of rooms to explore, filled with furniture, paintings, arms and armour, trophies and other useful reference material for Castle Wayvode. However, photography is prohibited...
Since I was not allowed to photograph the rooms, I was hoping to be able to buy a monograph about the castle or a catalogue of the museum exhibits, but I found no such thing at the site. I'll have to search elsewhere, it seems. The museum's website is nice enough, though. The EXHIBITION section gives a few lines about each of the rooms, and one can even take a 360 virtual tour.
