Seasonal Scenery

With Hallowe'en just around the corner the supermarkets have started to fill up with cheap orange and purple plastic and nylon tat. So last week, whilst stocking up on cat food, mung beans and South American Merlot I found myself adding just such an item to my shopping cart with a view to a quick and dirty terrain project.

So here's what  started with:

A one pence piece, an old CD and a plastic skull from ASDA. This little lot set me back the mighty total of £1.01.
Before starting I gave the skull a wash in warm soapy water, then rubbed it all over with a piece of sandpaper to try and reduce mold lines and give the paint and glue to follow a bit of a "key".

Then, taking my usual pleasure in smearing her majesty's fizzog with glue, I used the penny to plug the gap in the centre of the CD.

With a hot glue gun I attached the skull to the CD. I used hot glue as I'm never sure how well superglue will work with this type of plastic and I was too impatient to wait for PVA to dry.

Some spots of superglue were used to attach a few stones and some cat litter (unused. I think).

After that was all dry I used PVA to cover the CD with sand.
I then covered the whole skull with a mix of water, PVA, filler and some very fine sand. I wanted the scenery piece to look like carved stone and the bare plastic was too smooth. Obviously if you were intending to make an obsidian or marble skull you could skip this stage (though I might still cover with thinned PVA to help stop the paint peeling).

I also put a slightly thicker mix of filler and PVA into some of the more obvious mold lines.

Once this was all dry I sprayed it black. I know it looks brown in the pictures, but I used black primer.

As you'll see from the second picture I clearly hadn't been as diligent at filing and filling mold lines as I'd thought, so I added some more filler at this point to the worst of the joins.

Then it was painting time.
The stones were drybrushed up from Charadon Granite via Adeptus Battle Grey and Astronomican Grey to a final dusting of white whilst the base was painted in my usual mix of Wilko tester pots to match the rest of my scenery. Then static grass was added.

I'm pretty pleased with the end result. Not bad for a quid plus a couple of hours toil.
Should work for both Warhammer:

And any H Rider Haggard inspired Darkest African shenanigans:

Another game of Dux Britanniarum

And so we returned the fields of Elmet and this time my mission was to attack a farm. My British chum had just finished basing up some rather splendid trees he'd ordered from e-bay, so it was a heavily wooded battlefield that greeted me.

 Dawn breaks and Saxons sneak into the woods

 This peaceful bucolic scene is about to be shattered

 Alerted by the alarmed mooing the British forces arrive

 Undeterred the S axons start to smash their way in

 Before making off through the woods with booty

 The Saxon rearguard holds firm

The Saxons flee the vengeful Britons

Again my Saxon raiders scored a victory, albeit with their leaders cut down as they made off with their ill-gotten gains.

This game also saw the arrival of movement trays from Warbases

Scenery

A trio of small scatter terrain pieces what I have made recently

Swamp

An irregular MDF shape I had knocking around.
I covered it with some sand and a few pieces of slate and small rocks leaving a few gaps in between for pools of water. Then it was sprayed and painted in appropriate colours (mainly using cheap emulsion pots from Wilkos). The watery areas were given a few coats of yacht varnish to add depth and shiny wateryness and finally static grass and some coarse turf added.

Ploughed field

Another piece of MDF with some corrugated card glued to the top. Then sand added as above (though I sieved it to get finer sand and fewer lumps and bumps) before spraying, painting and flocking the edges.
Ideal for a Saxon farmstead at the start of the Viking raiding season.

Rocks

I actually made two or three of these, but can only locate this one at the moment.
Again, MDF shape - this time with some large stones glued on and some sand applied to the rest of the base. Sprayed grey then the rocks were drybrushed up to almost white and the base painted to match the rest of my terrain.

Ready for the dip

I finished these off soon after my return from the desolate Chaos wastelands otherwise known as Swindon.
This post was supposed to be a before and and after shot of them getting dipped. However matt varnish problems have put a stop to that, so here they are before being coated in dip.

First the archers. I've just been reading She by H Rider Haggard for my book group, which rather inspired the leopard skin loin cloths.
Very basic paintjob - plastikote chocolate brown undercoat, overbrush with Dark Flesh, Iyanden Darksun loincloth with Scorched Brown blotches and pick out the spear tip in Chainmail and the hair Chaos Black. Leather bits Snakebite Leather and the flights in white.

Spearmen painted exactly as above:

Askaris have Deneb Stone clothing and one has a Blood Red hat, while the rifle stocks are Bestial Brown

Meanwhile here are better pictures of the Americans (who needed a little tidying up once I got them away from the hotel room and back into some decent light)

As I say, they've all now been dipped but until I can get some matt varnish I can't make any progress.

Ibn Coldir against the Infidels - a WAB El Cid game

Ibn Coldir, loyal servant of Allah and brave commander of a mighty host of Berber warriors surveyed the land ahead of him. The field was broad and featureless and in the distance he could see sunlight glinting off the spear heads of his enemies. Shielding his eyes from the relentless Spanish sunlight he strained to make out the forces that faced him. However the colours of the enemy were clear, even at this distance, the vivid reds and yellows could mean only one thing - the cursed infidel known as El Scrivs once more confronted him.
Turning to his officers Ibn Coldir barked his orders - this time the Christian dog would get his just deserts

Scrivs and I once more convened at the rather splendid new club venue.
All week I'd been planning to revise my list to give myself a better chance against his Berbers but alas ran out of time. In the end I was glad I hadn't made the effort as Scrivs decided to dig out eh Christians once more.
We decided to play pitched battle and decided to follow the rules from WAB2 for setting up the table. The result  was a featureless plain. Muttering darkly about the influence of tournament players on WAB 2 I got Scrivs to agree to putting some terrain on the table for a more aesthetic appearance. And yes I know ancient battlefields were probably mainly featureless plains, but the visual experience is a big part of playing wargames for me so I like some hills, trees, and rocks scattered about.
With that we were off.

 El Scrivs at the head of his army

 Turncoat Spanish mercenaries in the service of Ibn Coldir

I pushed my skirmishing archers forward on my left and the Berber horse forward on the right. My centre moved a little to get into firing range.

The servants of Allah advance

Some of them are caught in the open

On the right my Berber cavalry launched themselves at the Caballeros - with the aid of the Sayyid in the unit they managed to win the combat (just) which was something of a surprise.

 Oh, a Cantador, eh? Well see how you sing on the end of my spear!

In the centre my mercenary knights launched themselves at El Scrivs and his Caballero Hidalgos. Once again the resulting combat gave Scrivs the opportunity to demonstrate that throwing spears > thrusting spears. "If you miss then you can't kill - even with +1 strength". I know this to be true but the image in my head is of charging christian knights with couched spears, not chucking sticks at people.

El Scrivs demonstrates the correct use of the charging knight.

Back at the game, my spear blocks overwhelmed the Spanish Peones, sending them fleeing from the table, while the Berber cavalry finally saw off their opponents on the hill top.

Eat Berber spear Spaniard!

The endgame saw my cavalry first chase off some light Christian cavalry before succumbing to bow fire while El Scrivs launched his knights at one of my spear blocks. That was a much more favourable match-up for me and eventually Almoravid might saw the Christians routed.

With that the game drew to a close and remarkably the field belonged to Ibn Coldir.

Of course the other view of the game is available over on the Scrivsland blog

A splendid game, with a great opponent and lots of lovely soldiers on the table. That's the way wargaming should be.