Revisiting a failed project. Cork Dungeon Tiles.

I made some cork dungeon tiles a few months ago using cork tiles.  I "printed" the stone floor pattern with a stamp I made from cheap Dollar Tree foam core.  The results on the left looked pretty harsh.  I never posted them here because I wasn't very happy with them.  I kept thinking about dry brushing them with a light grey so that the black shadow lines were less harsh but I kept putting it off.  Last week I went ahead and did the dry brushing shown on the right.  They really look a lot better and I can still see the lines for grid play. 
I don't know why I let these sit around for several months without fixing the problem.  Sometimes I guess you have to give projects space for a bit and revisit them later.  It only took me a few hours to fix the problem and now I have a nicer set of tiles. 

Here they are pictured with some Wizkids dungeon doors and other dungeon dressing.  I finished the doors this week though I still have four unfinished.  They really make my dungeon layout much nicer. 

Frostgrave treasure tokens!

Our Frostgrave project is moving right along I got a set of treasure chest done yesterday for treasure tokens.  I have had these lying around for a couple of years from the first time I dipped my toe into Frostgrave.  Unfortunately my work schedule didn't allow me a lot of gaming time back then and my group wanted to play D&D so these got boxed.  I have a few other treasure tokens I have been using from D&D dungeon dressings but I wanted a nice set of chest so here they are.  Four of these are from a Mordenheim accessory kit, One is a Reaper Bones chest and treasure pile, the other is an old chest I had from a box of random minis with a book and scroll from the Mordenheim kit.  I really like the size of the smaller chest better but for now the Games Workshop chest will do. 

Pictures of my new Frostgrave terrain being used in game.

 The Black Magic Craft inspired walls project has spiraled into a whole new set of terrain for Frostgrave and other fantasy games. 

 We made several simple ruined corner structures that could be assembled into ruined structures.  These are made from cork tiles.  At first we were going to make very basic walls but they ended up looking too simple so we decided to add block structures to the corners which made them look a lot better. 

We made a large number of rubble piles from torn and cut pieces of cork tile.  A lot of these were made from the off cuts and odd pieces from the other projects.  Cork works extremely well for this type of construction.  It takes several types of glue well and it paints very easily.  

We also added some play sand to the rubble piles to give some more texture.  You can see some of the cork showing through on the rubble piles in particular but because it is a natural product it works well.  The warm tones look pretty good and help add some character to the cool grey rubble. 

We've done a lot of building with cork tile in the past but I think this has been one of the more successful projects.  We used tacky glue of the rubble walls and arched wall setions but hot glue on the corner ruins and simple ruined buildings.   

We played this particular game on a 4x4 foot table but I hope to make a 3x3 and 2x2 foot play surface.  I plan to build those surfaces with at least 2 inch sides and add arched details to the sides so I can use them as raised sections of the city on the 4x4 table.  We will also be building staircases out of cork tiles to place alongside the platform sections when they are used in that fashion.

This is just the start of the Frostgrave ruins project for us.  Next we plan to build some of the specific buildings for the scenarios in the core books.  After that we will build some more multi level ruins and some more intact structures.  Eventually we hope to start on terrain for the various scenarios in the supplements.  

Since we have a decent collection of painted Fantasy figures we don't have to worry as much about having miniatures for warbands but we do plan to build some specific warbands in the future.  We also need to address of few of the "Creature" need that we don't have covered but like the warbands we have a pretty good jump of those issues as well.  

My wife and friends and I have been very impressed with Frostgrave and other games by Osprey Games.  The miniature agnostic nature of their games is a great draw for people with a collection like ours.  The potential to bring back figures from dead games is also a major boon.  We've had the game for a couple of years not but we have only played it off and on.  I think after a couple of test games we will be kicking off a campaign and I will be posting more battle reports.  We may even start streaming the games and posting edited game videos on Youtube.  

Black Magic Craft Ruins Painted.

 I got the Black Magic Craft style modular ruins I made from cork tile painted up.  I've had them painted for about a week now but I kept forgetting to post the results. 

 I based coated them with a Rustoleum Deep Forest Green then I sprayed them down with a medium grey from the top at a 45 degree angle.  This kept the cooler green color in the shadowed areas.  After the medium grey I dry brushed on Apple Barrel Granite Grey for the high lights.
 

 I'm really happy with the way these turned out.  My wife has finished another set and we hope to have another set and a set of accessory pieces to go along with them. 

Although we are building these walls as part of our Frostgrave ruins set they will be useful for a number of role playing games and table top miniature games.  I have several other projects in progress for our Frostgrave ruins so I will be posting more about those soon.  

Black Magic Craft inspired Modular Ruins.

 I recently moved and when I did I moved into a much smaller home than the one I was living in.  I ended up keeping most of my miniature collection but I gave most of my terrain to my daughter and her boyfriend to use in their D&D games.  As luck would have it I was able to rent some studio space in the town I moved to for an insanely low rate so I decided since I had crafting space and playing space again it was high time to start re-building my terrain collection.

One of the YouTube channels I follow is "Black Magic Craft"  which is an excellent DIY terrain making and gaming channel that details projects with both advanced and beginner techniques.  A while back I saw him do a set of simple ruined walls which he could also use and Dungeon walls and I though it would be a good first project for my new studio.  You can find the Video here: 

 The guy at "Black Magic Crafts" does a lot of his building with XPS foam and a hot wire cutting table.  I don't have this kind of tool but I do have my trusty cork tiles and Xacto knives.  I made my first set of ruins out of one 12x12 inch cork tile.  You can get these for about $7.00 a pack at Walmart here in the U.S. and about $9.00 at Hobby Lobby or Lowles.  I find it to be a good material to work with for numerous projects.  I usually use either hot glue or tacky glue as my primary adhesive for this material.  For this project I choose tacky glue because it allowed me to adjust and even remove sections of the wall as I was building them.

The most tedious part of course was cutting the bricks out of the tile.  I chose to make my bricks 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch.  The tiles are not quite 1/4 inch thick so you need to keep that in mind when laying the brick patterns or it will throw your build off.  

My wife also made a set using similar methods.  Here she is laying the bricks out.  I would say our bricks are around 20% smaller than the foam bricks used in the original project but because the cork already has a natural texture we were able to skip the steps involved in adding texture.  It's also okay if some of your bricks are slightly thicker from side to side than others because they actually improves the texture of the wall.  I felt like this was not exactly a speedy project but I have done much more tedious builds.

I have perhaps 6 hours in this build so far and I feel like I can probably stop once I have used up one package of four tiles.  Our primary interest in making these walls is to get some terrain together for Frostgrave which is usually played on a 3x3 foot table.  We also plan to make some static ruin buildings and other features so we don't need to cover the entire space with these ruins.  I also feel like that will give me enough walls that if I ever want to use them as Dungeon walls I'll have enough for the amount of Dungeon I normally place on the table.

I'm pretty excited to get these painted.  I still need to add a bit of sand texture to the bases and some of the wall areas.  I think I may make three tiles worth of sets like this one then make some interest pieces out of the last tile in the pack.

Based on the amount of time I have in on these I estimate I'll have the build finished in another six hours at most with probably three hours of painting time.  That's a bit of a long build but it will produce a large amount of terrain so I think it will be worth the time investment.

July Painting with Games Workshop Contrast Paints and Reaper Miniatures.

I finally accomplished one of those hobby goals that every painter swears they are going to start doing.  I finally finished a batch of miniatures I ordered before making my next order.  I got this order of Reaper Miniatures at the end of June and I just finished painting them before the end of July which was my goal.  It's only 17 miniatures but that's pretty good with my schedule. 

I used the new Games Workshop contrast paints over a dry brushed under painting like I did on my Death Guard Plague Marines. I like the contrast paints but they are really expensive.  They work well for this technique but they take some getting used to.  I don't think they make good paints for beginners because of the amount of brush control they require and that fact that you need to think about layers in reverse like you do when painting with watercolors.  You can't just fix a problem by painting over it unless you paint your primer layer back first.  In that respect they are very unforgiving for a new painter but they are very similar to the glazing technique I have been using a lot lately so for me they work.  It's convenient not to have to mix up the glazes before painting and the have a better pigment ratio than my own glazing technique.  They do require some getting used to but I think I'm getting better with them. 

I did paint a batch of minis with Contrast paint in June.  About 8 mostly Wizkids unpainted minis for D&D and Pathfinder.  I never got around to posting them but some of them turned out really nice. 

 I really like these two new Bones Black minis from Reaper.  They are the Crimson Herald and the Dreadmere Wight. I think I would like to get some Zombies and paint them up with the Nurgle flesh green color I used here to make some minions for this pair. 

I knew when I saw the Herald figure how I wanted to paint him and I'm really happy with the way he turned out.  I was able to use the GW contrast paints to pretty good effect by glazing the pink color over the green color where the tentacles transitioned from green to pink.  I also added some pink stippling which I think really gave the model some atmosphere. 

These are some old Reaper lizard men but I really like these sculpts.  For some reason they just give off a classic lizard man vibe. 

I like the way the contrast paints worked on these as well.  They seem to really shine on creatures and other organic models.  I tried to stick with the classic lizard man green look here.  

This was the free promo figure for the month of June Garghuk the Ogre.  This mini was an awesome sculpt and a lot of fun to paint.  He's simple but still looks really nice and his details are well defined.  The pose was not complicated so it was easy to get a brush around the model.  If I was doing a "learn to paint" class I would strongly consider using this model. 

I had a little trouble using the contrast paint on the skin tones because of the large surface but it wasn't too hard to get the problems worked out.  I really like the way the Snake Bite Leather and Gor Guntha Fur turned out in particular. 

 These are a combination of the Bones Black Dreadmere Mercenaries, the Dreadmere Ranger, and Fruella Dreadmere mercenary packs.  The later two are metal minis.  Of course these all have a similar style so I thought I would paint them up as an irregular unit.  I think they would make a good Sheriff and Posse or a Ranger and Woodsmen.  Some group of NPCs that might be encountered in a dark forest. 
 

 I did have a little trouble with the contrast paints rubbing off the coats on these minis while I was painting them.  I've had this problem with other glazing techniques as well. 
   

These are a couple of metal Reaper figures from the Dark Heaven line.  Brother Roberto, cleric and Erick Paladin Initiate.  I liked the medieval fantasy feel of both of these minis.  They looked like they would make good companion pieces.  The cleric is really quite well dressed.  I painted him up to look a bit like a traveling Jesuate but he could be done us as more of a cardinal.    

The priest was the hardest to paint with the contrast paints.  The bottom parts of his over robe got really dark because I tend to do my dry brushing lighter at the top and darker at the bottom.  I had to go back in a paint in highlights then glaze them again with the grey contrast paint to get the details.  I really enjoyed painting the armor on the paladin but it didn't photograph very well.  In fact both of these models look a lot better in person but that happens some time.  I think they are quite worthy of my tabletop however so over all they were a success.  

I still have pretty mixed feelings about the GW contrast paints.  I feel like they play to my style pretty well and I have enough experience to handle them but I think a lot of new painters will be frustrated by them.  A lot of the darker tones really need to be thinned down and it's really hard to tell the difference between the browns in particular until you use them a while.  Some of the colors shift quite a bit when you thin them as well.  You really have to be able to block in large areas on a mini in one go to make these work which takes good control and if you are not careful they rub off pretty easily.  The skin tones are also kind of hard to work with.  I was fine to use my dry brush technique on the male models that I wanted to look ruff but I had to paint light grey back onto the face of the one female model I did this month to avoid giving her a five o'clock shadow.  Since I've been using similar techniques for a while I was able to predict this.  All in all I'm happy with them but buyer beware for those unfamiliar with using glazing techniques.