Fun With Foam part 2

Following on from part 1, the walls are now assembled with a coping added.  To speed things along I used hot glue rather than PVA. The coping was just a strip of pink foam, textured with a ball of foil, and some gaps cut in to show individual coping stones. 

They were then based on large 'craft sticks'.  These are essentially large lolly sticks 18mm wide and 149mm long. 

The walls  have been primed with a mix of Mod Podge and acrylic paint to both toughen the foam and provide a dark undercoat.

Pink foam, engraved side.

Pink foam embossed side.

Cheap foam board engraved side.

Cheap foam board embossed side

Thicker foam board engraved side.

Thicker foam board embossed side.  For some reason I couldn't get a good coat on this, maybe some of the adhesive from the card was still on the foam?

It's obvious that the engraved side (where I went over the embossed lines with a pencil) gives more depth to the detailing, but will the difference be enough to justify the extra stage?

Next time I'll get them painted up and we will see.

Kings of War: Vanguard

Mantic have just released the test rules for their new skirmish game set in the Kings of War world.  If you check the Mantic blog and sign up for the newsletter you should be able to get it (it might be on their blog by now)

A quick read through suggests that it plays like a combination of Kings of War and Deadzone, in a good way.  This could be great fun, and I'll get some of my Dungeon Saga minis out and put together a force to try the rules out.

The Kickstarter starts on Tuesday november 1st.

Fun With Foam (part 1)

The ruined watchtower textured with Greenstuff World rolling pins seems to have gone down well, on FaceBook at least.  Posting it sparked a lot of suggestions and questions, so I have decided to do a bit of experimental crafting to answer a couple of questions.

The Black Magic Craft video that inspired me suggested that foamboard might take the impressions at least as well as pink or blue foam.  Given that it's generally easier to find, I thought I'd try it out in a comparison test.

I am making three walls, each around 150 mm long, to fit on a wide crafting lolly stick.  Each wall is 20 mm high, though I will add some sort of coping on the top.  One wall is made of two sheets of pink foam, each 5 mm thick, one is made of two sheets of cheap foam board about 3 mm thick, and one is made of two sheets of better quality foam board around 5 mm thick.

Each wall is two sheets thick, partly to avoid the tendency to 'iron out' the pattern on one side when embossing the other, and partly to allow me to treat each side differently.  One side of each wall will simply be embossed with the greenstuff world rolling pin, the other will have the embossing emphasised with a knife and/or sharp pencil.  I am interested to see if merely using the roller gives enough definition when everything is painted up.

The first problem was the thicker foam board.  It was tricky to strip the outer layer off.  even soaking for a couple of hours didn't do the trick.  Perhaps hot water would work?  Or maybe a heat gun?  Eventually I peeled most of it off and had to slice the rest away, leaving a chavelled surface.

The six strips cut to size and embossed.  Cheap foam board at the top, then pink foam and thicker foam board at the bottom.

The six strips after pencil work on three of them.  Again cheap FB at the top.

The samples are currently drying after being glued together ready for the next stage.

Terrain Progress

Yes, I know,  it's been a while. A combination of real life and starting (but failing to complete) many projects has kept me from posting.  But enough excuses.  This blog was supposed to encourage me to finish things, so here goes.

I hope to start a Frostgrave mini campaign soon.  My D&D group have expressed interest, so I've been getting stuff ready, whilst sorting through the myriad boxes of old figures.  This got me to look at older minis with a view to painting up some warbands.  Part of the idea is to have stuff that will do for more than one system, so a Norse themed band was a must to work for Blood Eagle as well.  More on these later, as I am short of a wizard or two.

Terrain is also a big part of both skirmish games and roleplaying.  I have made cardboard ruins (DM Scotty style) before, and even used pink foam with brick carved in.  Then I watched this video from Black Magic Craft.  Soon a couple of rolling pins were winging their way to me, and I am impressed with the results.

This ruined tower or watchpost will make great scenery for Frostgrave, and any other skirmish game I happen to try.  I am still not sure about adding loads of snow to truly 'Frost' it.  That restricts its usefulness.  I'll try to resist adding too much in the way of vegetation though, so it still hints at a cold climate.

In other news, I just got my copy of Ghost Archipelago.  This looks at first scan to be great fun, but I'll concentrate of FG for now.

Also Mantic Games have announced that their Kings of War skirmish game, called Vanguard, will be kickstarted beginning November 1st.  There is more information on their blog (see list below).  One very nice feature is that it is designed to tie in to larger Kings of War battles, so the results of a Vanguard game might affect the resources available for a KoW battle.

I'll get some pictures of the Frostgrave warbands up soon.

Oh, and a 'no-prize' if anyone recognises the inspiration for the watchtower (though I've changed a few details, such as window shape).