Fimir - Swampy Pools

I decided to take a little tiny break from the cult in order to paint up some fimir themed scenery. Partially for my army display board, and partially for the fimir terrain set. I had ordered a pile of these from Wargamma, where they are listed as lava pools. Like a lot of gamers, I have a dearth of water scenery. Pools, rivers etc. These were quick to paint up, and filled a hole in the terrain set. I have another two sets, and with nine of these and some dead trees and the odd menhir I reckon that'll do nicely to represent the bleakmoors of Albion.

Hobby Filters and Unlikely Ruins

I was out doing some work about the house the other day, and while I was getting some stuff ready for the bin, my hobby filter kicked in and brought a halt to the work while I scrutinised a piece of broken plastic. Mine is probably on any time I'm not asleep. You most likely have one too if you're reading this. That little voice in the back of your head that evaluates almost everything for hobby value. Allow me to elaborate.

• You're walking along the beach and you notice some shells. You think: "They'd look great on the base of my daemon prince."
• You're picking out tiles for a new bathroom and you pause and think: "I must hold onto the offcuts for smashing into nice basing material." (You can tell I like basing.)
• You can never walk past a pet store in case they have some fish tank plants or decorations that can be used as scenery. 
• Every plastic take out container is cleaned and pressed into service as a miniature box. 
• You can't visit a hardware store without looking at glues, blue foam, cork sheeting and filler, but not for DIY. 
• Every time you see a movie with knights/lasers/Roman soldiers you're looking at it in terms of a painting guide/next army inspiration. 

If you're with me still, you know the score. Anyhow, back to scrutinised broken plastic. I held this up for a good two or three minutes.

The more I stared, the more I could see, with a good mdf base, come cutting and a couple of little additions, I'd have me a pretty good ruined building. Extra floors could be added too. These plastic baskets are in almost every hardware store, and you could easily make 3 or 4 big ruins sections with them. You'd have that ruined cityscape up in no time.

H&A Castle - Update 1

I've finished the first wall section for the Hudson & Allen Castle. It's a nice kit with a fair dose of detail. I'm assembling and painting it as is with no conversion, which for me is a little weird. There are a few interiors too, from a simple tower interior you see here to a large house interior for a more complex section, which I'll show later on down the road. I'm hoping to have this done pretty sharpish, though with 3 more identical wall sections to this one to do before I get to the more interesting parts, the next update won't be for a week or so.

It'll be a super sweet castle for sieges, which we're hoping to do once it's ready! Another mate of mine is taking care of the siege equipment so that we have a fully painted set done for sieges. I do have a siege tower I might paint up too if I have time...

Scenery - Tower Keep Finished

Well, the keep is finished. Not much to it really. I added some slight weathering along the base of the tower just to break up the grey stone a little, and I finally tried out some spray matt varnish. There's no way I was brush varnishing this thing. I used Windsor & Newton all purpose matt varnish, and it went on a treat, so happy days. I've all the paints and techniques I need for the main event, the enormous Hudson & Allen castle, which I'll start on next week, so be prepared for some serious masonry on the mumblings for the next while.

Scenery - Hudson & Allen Tower Keep

I'm taking a brief break from the fimir to finish up a scenery project for a friend. It's a castle, the rather groovy Hudson & Allen six section one. First though, I'm going to test out my castle painting mojo on the tower keep. You can see the work in shot progress here. It's a big bugger too, 8.5" in diameter and 8.75" tall, plenty big for a war machine, monster or sun lounger. The watchtower scenario will have a tower worth fighting over from now on...

Scenery - Sinister Statue

Here's a little side-project I've been working on between other stuff. It's a scenery piece that's been conspicuously absent from my terrain set, so after nabbing it on for almost nowt on ebay, I painted it up in stops and starts over a few evenings. No more proxy statues for me!

Scenery: Graveyard

This is one of my new terrain pieces, an ancient graveyard. The stones lift away to allow units to move through it. I've had the resin tombs for about fifteen years, but only got to painting them this year. Many of my figures waiting to be painted are nearly as old as I am.

Scenery: Bane Stone

This fellow, as the outhouse, is an ancient terrain piece given a new lease on life. The mushrooms originally had that John Blanche red with white spots thing going on. The poor mammal who gave his cranium for wargaming is perhaps a rabbit? Suffice to say the creature was not hunted down and slain for terrain components.

Scenery: Haunted Outhouse

This outhouse has been in my terrain set for decades. recently I took a notion to give it a facelift, complete with orc skull in a bucket. It's an old card-stock building that was given away with white dwarf around a thousand years ago. I'm very fond of it.