Warhammer Wednesday - Lord of The Rings

Well it just so happens that I have found my Lord of The Rings (LoTR) "Mines of Moria Strategy Battle game play set. This set I bought a while back and even though I assembled all the pieces and had painted most if not all of them, I was surprised that they were still in relatively good condition, given the fact that the box it came in is completely busted and ragged.

So I decided to pull it all out of the box and started to paint the bits of the models that I hadn't gotten round to painting. Sadly my Games Workshop (GW) paints have gone missing and I had a good £100 worth of paints that were in great condition, but ever since my husband's father and his fiance decided to clear up the back room (where the paints were) I have never seen head or tail of them since. My guess is that they must've thrown it out along with all the other junk. So that was a good lot of paints GONE !! So recently last week I proceeeded to buy some acrylic paints at our local Wilkinson shop in town. The paint set only cost £2.29 and you got a good set of 12 paints in metal tubes, I could've gone for the plastic tubes which had more paint in them, but they were 95p each so it would've cost me double the price!

I have always wanted to find a cheaper way of painting warhammer models and to be honest acrylics would be the next best thing as they stick to anything from paper, wood, plastic and even metal. Now don't get me wrong GW paints are great as well, but they cost about £2.20 approx a pot and that's very expensive for a 12ml pot of paint. There is another Spanish brand by the name of "Vallejo Model Color" and they are not as expensive as the GW paints, yet there is no shop in my nearest town that sells them except Glasgow which is much further away!



The Mines of Moria Game

Now being only a painter or "hobbiest"  I have never even played the game or even tried to as i always thought that the rules were too complicated to follow. Yet having read the Pocket rule book and also having read through a few of the scenarios in the other scenario book, the game play doesn't seem to be too difficult, although I think that by having another person to play with and go through the game play will more than likely make things easier as I am more of  a DIY person when it comes to instructions rather than actually reading instructions. So when it comes to it I can hopefully get the hang of it all and how to play and maybe it will get me more interested in playing the Game rather than just painting models and never being able to Play the game itself and who knows maybe I can get my other half interested in it too rather than the PS3 getting used. I have always been in favour of boardgames, card games etc rather than console games.


May the Gods bless you and Keep on Fighting

Warhammer Wednesday - Wargamming Terrain

Its been a long time waiting, but its finally Wednesday and I'm excited coz i wanted to share with you my crafty side of my Warhammer Fantasy Hobby. So what is Warhammer you may think? Warhammer Gaming is the ever growing popular Miniwarmgaming game ever and dare i say it is a very expensive hobby to keep up. This game is where you can collect a miniature plastic resin army of models , paint them up and customise them either by paint, convert or even by magnetising parts of your chosen model or army. There are two main groups of warhammer these being Warhammer 40k , which are the sci-fi models such as Tyranids, Spacemarines, Tau, Necrons etc and the Second is Warhammer Fantasy which is the most mythical and fantasy side , such as High elves, wood elves, Bretonians, Tomb Kings (Egyptians skeletons), Dwarves and Lord of the Rings models (LOTR) .

I would consider myself very nimbled fingered when it comes to arty farty projects and this hobby is no exception. I simply love what you can do with the models in terms of painting them up in different colours, Making terrain such as trees, hills etc and you can even magnetise parts of the model itself, which  involves drilling the miniature, and sticking magnets etc, very fussy stuff, but useful none the less for those of us gamers who like the option of different weapons etc, I personally do not do it as it seems too complicated for me. So i just stick to stuff like painting up and making terrain. So i thought i would share with you some Warhammer  terrain projects that i recently constructed out of corrugated cardboard. Now i know that there are proper plastic terrain pieces which are absolutely marvellous, but if like me you are strapped for cash, making your own is just as rewarding if not more so since its you that had the hands on approach to it. Much of the materials that i used are as follows :

• corrugated box cardboard
• Stanly or craft knife
• PVA glue /(Elmer's glue if in the USA) and "Hard as Nails" which is a tackier glue which i also useful as filler to fill in gaps etc.
• Pencil
• Paints
• Spray primer black and white
• rocks /gravel/sand  (to add some sort of texture to your terrain), bits and bobs ie toothpicks, cotton reel, old necklace chain etc 

A Greek ruined pillar with some Lizard bits and bobs

So here are some example of the terrain that I have been constructing out of cardboard. Some of the terrain pieces are missing Green flocking , but that is only because i didn't have any to hand, but i still think they make a pretty good impact anyway. Another thing about making terrain is the fact that you have to make them in balance with the models. here the miniatures are from a company called Games Workshop, who are the main manufacture of these specific models. 

Elven Weystone

The army that i am collecting now are mainly Lizardmen and LOTR army, which both come form the Warhammer Fantasy Group. So Do you need experience to do these things? in a word NO you don't. As long as you have a good imagination and are creative, you can do whatever you choose to do, the sky is the limit. If you are having some difficulties in coming up with ideas then i would highly recommend the Game workshop book "How to Make Wargaming Terrain", for some very good tips hints and tricks. So i hope that some of these pictures will fuel your imagination and get you into the mood of exciting new projects and crafting ideas.

Space marine captain atop a greek pillar ruin

On the left you can see that I have placed a Spacemarine Captain to show you that although the terrain is slightly larger it is still relative to the model itself so as not to dwarf the model too much, such as In the picture above of the Elven Weystone/ Landmark Oblisk. This obelisk was made using cereal box card as corrugated cardboard was not flexible enough. I also stuck on green gems in teh middle as well as painted some high Elf Runes and stuck some stones at the bottom, to add some weight to the base.

early stages of corrugated Iron Shelter

On te right here you can see the stages of making a "Corrugated Iron" shelter out corrugated cardboard. what i did was to strip one of teh plain sides of teh cardboard to expose teh corrugations , which perfectly mimick what corrugated iron looks like. I then decided that it would look great for a terrain piece and so gotto work building a platform and two windows so that a space marine could be on teh top or teh bottom and shoot through teh window if necessary at teh enemy.  I also put in some "bullet holes" by making small indents and holes with my pencil so that it looked as though it had been shot at a couple of times. I also added some rocks and stones to teh base so as to weigh it down alightly, there is nothing more annoying when playing a  game and you accidentally knock teh gaming terrain. there is a small platform between the top window and bottom window although you may not be able to see it. 

back of shelter 

On the left you can clearly see where i decided to put the platform and yes space marines can jump using a jetpack. There are obviously set rules on how to go about doing this in the Rules Book. To also make the platform say where it is i put barriers on either side so that the soldiers could get full protection form the left and right hand sides if needs be. I primed the whole thing in black first so as the paint would adhere to the surface otherwise you would have a soggy piece of wargaming terrain and no one wants that!!

bottom front of shelter piece

On the right here I have painted the entire shelter in a grey colour and also added a "rust" effect by stippling on a terracotta and red brown mix of paint on the roof and around the bullet holes to make it look as though they had been there for quite a while and the weather had started oxidising it.As you can also see on the rock i painted a Dark red streak to show that a soldier had already been shot and that the blood still hadn't exactly dried out yet so was still quite fresh. I also painted "Cracks" in the corrugated iron to show that it it hadn't bee made form just one piece of corrugated iron just to add some sort of character to the terrain piece. 





Well I hope you enjoyed my terrain pieces and hope it inspires you do some as well. So remember keep those creative juices flowing and who knows , you may even start up your own business making wargaming terrain for yourself or even your friends and have a great time. 


                               Happy Wargamming and Stay in the Fight!