GW New Releases!, WotR, LotR

Ruins of Osgiliath, New Plastic Terrain Kit

Damn! this just showed up in my mailbox, considering my never ending Osgiliath Project this will definitely flesh it out in its entirety, getting to mesh with what I have already done should be slightly challenging but in the long run save me bunch of time on stuff I have to make. Also coming soon, a expansion book for War of the Ring..and bunch of cool figures including to two set of plastic knights..if GW continues its LotR scale creep in its plastic kits you'll be surely seeing these knights showing up in both VC and Elven and Empire Armies..pretty sweet stuff.

Osgiliath Project: Phase Four, The City Tiles

Back in January, I showed off some recent pieces I created for this. The project has under gone several major changes over time as I slowly figured out what worked and what didn't. I originally planned to make city tiles very early on, before I changed the city walls and ideas on building construction. Organizing and planning the city tiles proved alot more challenging then I had initially thought. too many different sizes was inflexible and I was not happy with experiments I did with plastic card tiles. As I worked on the stuff for the Spanish Main campaign, (several structures of which have cross use for this) I started revisting Hirst Arts..while the initial learning curve turned me off (as well as the mess) Inspired by friends work- I have gotten over it...worked thru the learning issues and have been getting great and most importantly consistent casts. The city tiles will all be of Hirst Arts casts. Similar to what you see here ( courtesy of Shifting Lands and admittedly my inspiration for the Hirst Tiles) While my tiles aren't quite as flexible as therethey will work nicely with the structures I have built.






Example tiles courtesy of www.shiftinglands.com/cityplan.htm

Overall we have 12, 12 X 12 tiles each consisting of one structure, The tiles and buildings are as follows
3 sections of wall, 2 with towers
1 seperate tower wall section,
3 ruin building tiles with ruined building
1 Church (damaged)
1 large plaza (ruined)
1- 4 story tower (intact)
1- private home (intact)
1- administration building (intact)




I think you can about catch most of tiles in this picture. there a couple buildings missing
and some the other details..it will come together very quick once the tiles are complete.


Besides the previous shownt statues...I have miscellaneous rubble and arched walkways, probably a few trees... coming..overall it will be a dynamic and challenging board for skirmish games..if I want to add some new or expand it, just build a new tile or move the whole thing over to a bigger table and expand. If you saw my last Lord the Rings gaming update we played in semi finished configuration of the final just to see how it played..I thought it played great and can use the extra terrain to minimize the effectiveness of calvary models..(after all your in a city)


You can barely make it out but the piece of rubble thrown by a catapult will be represented
in a trench that follows the gap in the broken wall.


Camera Flash on to catch the detail of the some of the finished pieces and the tile layout

I am confident I am on track to get his entire project finished by August..one year after I started it, I still have few challenges to over come with constant changing design ( mainly the tiles are siting on top of the beach..so I need make something to make the transition make sense.
Looking forward to a finished game on the completed project!


Laying out the tiles is labor intensive, there is alot of cutting and filling that needs to be done
to get the nice neat look of the example tiles I've shown above. A friend of mine cast some larger cobblestone pieces making his own molds which lets the cobblestone casting for this
(the majority texture) go a whole lot quicker.

look for a gallery update on the whole project so far soon.

January Project Updates

Sunday night here at Plastic Legions usually mean updates and I didn't want to disappoint.If you haven't heard from me in awhile rest assured I am working. Either at my regular Job or at my second job, heh. I mean hobby. For the remainder of this month I am working on 3 things. Thankfully their use of overlaps a bit so progress is being made quickly. First is getting my 2000pt Daemons of Chaos WFB army ready for my gaming groups upcoming campaign. The 3rd round results of our painting challenge was kind of soft so while I am at a modest 3 color standard I am trying to finish my models to a personal standard that I can enjoy before we begin. This is the 5th time we've run our "house rules" version of Mighty Empires and by this point there is very little remaining of the core rules other than using the map and strategic events , everything else is different. I am building alot of specific terrain for the campaign and thankfully my Osgiliath pieces can double for several locations on the map. So as I continue to work on my Osgiliath table, I am also filling out terrain for the campaign. I also continue to slowly work on my Realm of Battle table..while I am refraining from posting shots until its done You can see pieces in the shots posted here. I spent a good 3 hours today working on making an an actual table for (it was sitting on a sheet of plywood and some sawhorses), I completely finished detail painting and started to add some flock. So there you have it.
1. Daemons of Chaos
2. Terrain for our new Mighty Empires, map tiles, objective markers, etc.
3. Osgiliath and Realm of Battle Tables.

Come February everything else gets put on hold as I get my Empire army up to snuff for Adepticon, That project list includes a new mounted battle standard bearer, painting my Flagellants, working on tuning up my display base and then going thru every unit and touching up the paint, there are couple units that are pretty lacking compared to the rest of the army.
That ought to take me right up to Adepticon, as our Campaign is going on from January 20 thru
mid March, I am sure I will have various things to do for that.

Here are some pictures from today, tomorrow I will update the galleries with the painting challenge photos and numerous pics from today.


My Bloodcrusher musician, I only used the legs from the original rider, the rest of the parts are the standard box, I'm liking the way this guy came out..standing up blowing the horn. In play these guys are rock solid and have the durability of Hero Characters with 2 wounds, 3+ armor save and a 5+ ward save. I my latest game against the Skaven, two of tore up the left side of table...( I really could used them on the other side thou...damn plague monks!)


Osgiliath finished pieces..These plastic kits from Pegasus Hobbies are the perfect alternative for Fantasy players to GW's City Fight sets. While the side pieces are the stock City Ruins kit. The tower is built from the administration building box and it doesn't go together like this stock..I had to do alot of cutting with a razor saw and x-acto knife to get it to work. Pegasus has a cool new kit out as well I picked up which is where those column toppers are from. the skirt on the roof is left over piece of GW movement tray. As I plan on playing Lord of the Rings with these building I put the skirt up top so models could choose to give up cover and shoot straight down at attackers if they wanted. This stuff can double for a couple of locations in our Warhammer campaign..cool terrain always makes the game more fun, IMO.




I want my Osgiliath table to have lots of statues, so I threw this together from some of Hirst casting experiments. The model is an old Grenadier Titan from probably the late 1970's..I went thru my old boxes of Grenadier stuff from when I was a kid and found all kinds of great models, including stuff I painted when I was 10 or so.when testors gloss paints where all the rage! LoL..one these days I will post them up for laughs. While this piece is going to double as the "Monument of Glory" for Warhammer, I found another cool old model I am using for the "Ancient Idol".



I didn't paint this, I just wanted to show it in case anyone was interested. This is a stock piece I bought from Pegasus Hobbies..it was around $20 and is cast from heavy plaster..its not plastic..I didn't realize it was pre painted when I bought it...which is ok, one less thing to paint. For our Warhammer Campaign, you guessed it the Chaos Shrine.

The Osgiliath Project- Phase Three

Phase three- The city construction is the longest and most complicated phase. Its been about 7 weeks since the last update and while I've been working on lots of other things this is always near the top of the list. Figuring out exactly "what" my city was going to be was half the battle. I managed to collect the bulk of models during the month of September and have recently gone to work on them. While nowhere near complete, I have finished a section of wall and the collapsing church centerpiece is ready to be painted, all other buildings are in pieces. I've added alot of photos here so you can get the idea..the next step will be to build and paint everything, the final step will be detailing.



Above you can see a finished section of 0uter wall, the brick facade has be added with the arches clearly visible from the deteriorating wall of a city under siege. There are 3 feet of wall, that is smallest section. I'm thinking about bringing a up another shade in color but need to wait to see some more painted structures before I decide. (walls are Hirst Arts)

Flip side of the same wall, I am going to paint some block detail on the flat unfinished surfaces.



The half ruined church from Armorcast is of resin and the table center piece...they make two versions of this "full" and "totally destroyed", I bought half of each and combined them to a
"half destroyed" version. The roof is plastruct pieces supported by strips of wood.


The Interior of the church, the floor is again Plastruct card stock, the rear section is test paint, again I want to brighten that up more..few more shades to go. Only the front half is fixed to the base, the rear half is completely removable and the roof is removeable so you can get in there an move stuff if you have to.


Front of the church, almost looks whole from this angle.



Here is a long shot, where you can get some idea of length and scale. My celt barbarian stands on the wall vigilant. Eventually everything will be based on hardboard like the church, even the streets.I want it all to fit together, so you don't see much of the green other then near the waters edge and outer walls.

My Empire Warrior priest stands in for Scale purposes.



Church interior, it will be rubble strewn but with plenty of room to fight.


Looking out of the church toward the water, again a scale shot.



Mordor Orcs hitting the beach, my Celt doesn't stand a chance!.

The Osgiliath Project- Phase Two

Phase two has consisted of finishing the table as essentially a nice plot of land on which the city will be built. Looks like a nice piece of real estate in 28mm scale it's about an acre sitting along a river. I finished it in the usual way I've finished all my tables- sand for texture, prime black, then spray with nice mottle of hunter green, leafy green, and two brown shades. The water is "realistic water" by Woodland Scenics The water section is about 1/8" deep at approximately 12 x 48 inches. I used about a bottle and a half (24 ounces) which costs $30.00 to do the water section. (that's vs GW's 8 ounces for $25.00) So far the overall cost of what you see (considering the table base was free) is about $75.00, that's adding about $10.00 for paint costs.



Keeping the table as empty piece of terrain suits a bunch of purposes, since all the city pieces will be modular and on their own base..I can use this table for all kinds of gaming. Just pull off the tiles and there is your piece of land to set up a new design or just have a wide open battlefield.

Plotting the city is an interesting task, while speaking to my pal Bill about this the other night he brought up a great point in that not to make all the tiles the same size because it makes it very easy for any range guessing by looking at the lines on the bases of each piece of terrain. The schematic below shows the proposed layout. I am assuming when they are done I'll have a little bit of more size discrepancy as I make each piece to a custom snug fit.




The next step is to finish the wall which you see portion of in the photo's. I have decided to get rid of the bridge you saw in the phase one...due to the size and how a road leading to such a large structure impacted the overall layout of the city. losing the bridge gives me an opportunity to build more of that cool arched wall, some of it will be covered in block stone, with some totally collapsed and some exposed. Finishing the wall will essentially be phase 3 and the modular tiles themselves will be the later phases. I steered myself away from making the majority of buildings out of Hirst blocks in favor of terrain by a variety of manufactures. Obviously that's going to cost alot more, I'll probably spend a couple hundred on raw plastic and resin terrain over building cheaply with plaster, but the time savings over going the all plaster route is definitely worth it to me.

I am still waiting to get some of these kits in hand to see how they look. when I do, I will certainly go into more detail..needless to say I have something very cool planned for the table as the city centerpiece. I'll talk alot more about the table terrain when I get Phase three posted. Hopefully not before too long....


( I love getting down a getting pics from the models perspective, I can see my Orcs hitting
the beach already! )


(I should add that I caulked the base of the table edge and side with clear caulk so that expensive water solution didn't leak out!!!)

The Osgiliath Project- Phase One

I started on my latest terrain project about a month or so ago, I am calling it the "Osgiliath Project" as the below photo was my inspiration shot. In reality it's going to be a 4 x 4 city-fight table with a gothic/ fantasy theme that can be used for a variety of games. I had originally intended to do the majority of the table in Hirst Art plaster blocks. However after laying out the design it did seem the overall scope was somewhat daunting. After a long weekend of plaster casting and some building attempts I soon realized if I wanted this done this year I was going to have to go with a combination of Hirst structures with plastic and foam models to supplement.

(inspiration shots for the project)


First thing I had to come up with was the table base, thankfully I had one more old table laying around the basement that I only occasionally used as a sawhorse when cutting large objects on my table saw. Building something else for that task was easy..so I immediately snagged the table for the project. after some brief modification I mounted a 4x4 Sheet of 1/2 plywood to the top
then a 4x4 sheet of hardboard (we call it masonite around here) a 4x4 sheet of pink foam insulation, then a 4x 3 sheet of hardboard on top. The pink foam was then cut to resemble the river bank. After a couple hours of work I had this:


(sanding blocks and that fine tooth trim saw are invaluable when cutting and shaping pink foam)


(a bit blurry, but here is a cross section of the assembly)



In the above shot you can see how the arched wall, the beach and the bridge all come together, I laid out paper plans of the other buildings to make sure the city's shape seems logical and playable.



above pics is one of my early Hirst builds..the problem I had with constuction is the time it takes to shape each block when putting stuctures together. As the large amount of casts required for just a single structure( one mold 15-20 times) combined with my lack of experience casting led to many uneven blocks that had to be shaped. I could have built a 1/2 dozen resin or plastic buildings in the time I spent screwing around building with Hirst blocks this weekend.


a long shot of the Riverbank, this portion is coming out fine, the archwall sections are a complete mold I borrowed from Rich at Chicago Terrain Factory. The sections were actually pre cast by rich and I got them for another project that I ended up not needing to do..I just cut the middle block of each arch with a coping saw and glued them together in sections to create the arched wall. I also borrowed the mold so I can cast new pieces as I need.

(detail of the wall section)


I had this Lord of the Rings terrain sitting around and wanted to use it for the project. The walls are too thin to be realistic so I beefed them up with some Hirst Blocks and the results are positive- the full set is twice what you see above so they make some nice moveable ruins for the table.


These pics are just from the first weekend I worked on this project, and I have progressed quite aways since then. I am still struggling with the overall direction and layout of the city and have several Hirst molds on loan to me, and I have also purchased a variety of plastic and resin kits that will supplement things...whatever comes out best in the end will end up on the table. I am making everything modular so I can still use the table for other stuff if need be. This is still away off but expect a "Phase 2" update of my "Osgiliath" before too long.