Archaic Abodes 5

 Ok so I haven’t made a blog post in awhile...I’m really bad at this 🙄. I have noticed that many of the Oldhammer guys that used to have active blogs have been slowing down lately. I’m definitely not the only one who has noticed this. Oldhammer staple Golgfag has posted about this trend not only on his blog https://golgfags.blogspot.com/2017/12/is-oldhammer-dying.html?m=1 but also on the Oldhammer forum. http://forum.oldhammer.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28019

One of the things that is probably drawing people away from blogs is the allure of social media. Facebook might be more convenient but it has way too much drama for me. While I may not be good at updating my own blog, I do plan on carrying the torch and doing my part to keep this kind of thing going. Drama free! 

All that being said, I don’t want it to sound like I’m getting a big head or putting myself on some sort of pedestal. I’m just some old school guy, doing his own thing and blogging about it. Really at this point, I’m probably just talking to myself anyway. I don’t have any followers and no one has commented on any of my posts. Whatever.

My buddy is making a table and I offered to help. He is on a deadline and was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. I took on some of the smaller, generic pieces. He didn’t assign me anything that would give away any plot points as it is a themed board built around a campaign and I’ll be a player character this time. The first two are bridges. He requested a stone one and a rickety type wood one.

I took influence for the stone bridge from the ones in Brian Ansell’s collection. http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/2017/08/marcus-ansells-meritorious-posting-of.html?m=1

I used foam board, corrugated cardboard, card stock, sand, drywall compound, Mod Podge and craft paint. The balls on top of the pillars are beads I liberated from my daughter. I hope she doesn’t read this...I’m probably going to be in trouble!

I painted the road part grey at first and hated it. It looked weird. But on the flip side, I’m not totally sold on the brown. Six of one, half dozen of the other I guess.

To me at least it has a Dave Andrews feel to it. Nice and old school stylee.

The wood bridge has more of mid to late’90s GW feel to it with the skulls and spikes. My buddy’s board is undead/Halloween themed so it is fitting. He said it was perfect and better than he would have imagined. He’s happy, I’m happy.

Build with two different size craft sticks from the Dollar Tree, Gorilla wood glue, craft paint  and skulls and spears from Warlord Games plastic skelingtons box.

Not too bad for a bunch of crap glued together and painted. It looks bigger than the stone bridge but they are actually very close to the same size.

I also made some hedges. This time for my table that I haven’t built yet!

Made with green scrubby pads (once again from Dollar Tree) cut to the length of a craft stick. Approximately 110mm. Then cut into strips of 40mm. The strip was then folded over and hot glued together making a 20mm high hedge. This was then hot glued to a craft stick for a base. Sand was glued to the side of the craft stick to hide it. The green part was painted with wood glue mixed with a little brown paint. Then Blended Tuft green blend by JTT Scenery Products was applied when the glue was still wet. The sand was then painted brown. Baboom babam, done!

Once again, thanks for stopping by and checking out my blog. Be strange but don’t be a stranger!

Archaic Abodes 4

Welcome back to another episode of Archaic Abodes. The hopefully long running series of blog articles that I’m using to document my adventures in terrain building. I have grand plans for a town that includes townsfolk, buildings, walls, hedges, trees, and modular table tiles. But more on all that stuff later. 

Today I have, from Townscape building # 10. TALL HOUSE WITH VERANDA. 

I gave this one a blue roof to break up the monotony of terra-cotta that I had done on the first two Townscape houses.

I also experimented with a smaller base to see if I could crowd the houses together in tighter clumps. In hindsight I should have extended the base out the front a little more as this guy can get a bit top heavy with miniatures standing on the veranda.

As with all of my buildings so far it has a lift off roof. This time granting access to the second story.

The house was cut in half during construction to give access to the ground floor. There is a tab of foam board glued to the inside of each wall on the second story to lock it on to the first story. I didn’t get a picture of them this time but this little trick has work well enough that I will be using it again in the future. 

Those of you that know Townscape well will note that I added some extra borderlines around the exterior of the house. The top one is just for show but the bottom border hinds the seem between the first and second stories. Once again, it was something that worked well and will be used again in the future.

Thanks again for stopping by and checking out my blog. If you like what you see please leave a comment or even become a follower of my blog. 

Archaic Abodes 3

Another house from Townscape. This time number 9. House With Veranda.

It’s a pretty straight forward simple box design building. The added details to the doors, chimney, wood grain and weathering make it more than just a boring box.

Once again I did my lift off roof for getting the most out of the structure for game play. I also added an abbreviated second floor for access to the veranda.

In the future I’m going to add a ladder and fireplace to the interior.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my adventures in small scale carpentry!

 

Archaic Abodes 2

I kind of jumped the gun with the first Archaic

Abodes article. I had meant to start out with a brief personal  history and a layout for my plan. Without further ado, here it goes.

I’ve always liked building terrain. Back in the day I was known as the terrain guy. Although me resources and skills weren’t what they are today, I did the best with what I had. My builds didn’t always turn out as planned but I was always building something.

The plan as of now is to make and document the classic fantasy buildings from the Citadel Journals, White Dwarf Modeling Workshop and the venerable Townscape. I’m even working on some village people, erm, I mean townsfolk to populate the town that will eventually pop up. Each townsperson (?) will have their own background and could lead to various mini adventures for murder hobos and dungeon degenerates to participate in. More on that later...Archaic Abodes is more about the buildings themselves. 

This building here is #3. Large House from Townscape 

The last image here is of the interior showing the small loft and that fine wood grain detailing.

Thanks for having a look there’ll be more to come soon!

Archaic Abodes

The first post I guess I’ll do from here is the Fantasy Barn from White Dwarf #140. Here’s my version:

I made it in the traditional way with a foam core type skeleton and craft sticks around the outside. I like to make my roofs out of card stock with the shingles being individually pieces. The roof is made as a separate piece and is not glued down to rest of the structure. That way the roof can be lifted off allows game play inside the barn.

I did notice that I forgot a hat loft. Guess I’ll add that at a later date. 

1 Year Blog-o-versary

 I just realized that I missed my one anniversary of this blog. I started all this really just to document what I get done as far as miniatures and other hobby related stuff. Looking back my output is not all that impressive but I’m definitely having a great time getting back into a hobby that I hadn’t enjoyed for 20 some odd years. I’ve been back in for 3 or 4 years now and I have to say that my painting and terrain building skills have surpassed anything that I did back in the old days. 

The best thing that happened this year is that my 7 year old daughter played her first game with miniatures! We had a great time and hope to have another game soon.

As far as this next year the plan is to finish up my Khorne Beastmen, Mengil Manhide’s Dark Elves, a Marauder Manticore. I also plan on a building a village utilizing my version of Townscape and incorporating townsfolk and other miscellaneous miniatures. Basically the plan is to have a bunch of side missions that an adventuring RPGer would come across in town. 

Influence: Ray Harryhausen

Clash of the Titans, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Star Wars, and Conan the Barbarian were all the business to my pre-teen brain. But I want to dedicate this blog post to one man in particular. I just got done watching the 2012 documentary Ray Herryhausen: Special Effects Titan. It was pretty good and worth the 1 hour 37 minute run time. He had a decades long career creating stop motion special effects models.

Three of his movies made a lasting impression on me as a youth. 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Jason and the Agonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981).

 7 Voyages is ok, basically it’s a build up for what is to come. For Jason and the Agonauts, the fight scenes are bigger and better: the fight with the harpies to free the blind man from their torment begs for a WFB scenario to be built around it. 

And battle with the three guys taking on the seven skeletons is legendary!

 Lots of good stuff there, I don’t want to spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it. What are you waiting for?
Now Clash of the Titans. This was a movie I grew up on. I was 9 years old when it was made but didn’t see it until it came on to cable. When I did see it, my mind was blown. It is in the group of movies that defined for me what fantasy/sci-fi/adventure was all about. 
Gifts from the Gods, taming a Pegasus, fighting a beastman, out smarting three witches, defeating the Gorgon and saving the princess smack of old school rpg to me.

And Ray Harryhausen brought it all to life on the screen. His genius fired my imagination. And it seems to me that I wasn’t the only one. It’s my belief that the models Mr Harryhausen made for these movies had a big influence on the much loved gaming miniatures from the 80’s. Whether the producers of my favorite miniatures sight Ray Harryhausen as an influence or a contemporary doesn’t really matter that much to me. The work that he did is a huge inspiration for me. I also know that I’m not the first Oldhammerer to blog about Ray Harryhausen and I hope that I am not the last. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I stand on the shoulders of giants. 

May Ray Harryhausen’s contributions never be forgotten.