Battle Report - Frostgrave: Dark Alchemy-2 - Skeleton Run

Sheppard's Chronomancer, Bubba Time-Hopper, continues his escape from the collapsing Alchemical Factory!

Click on this picture for the slide show, stats are at the end!

Weekly Workbench 29 October 2017

    Missed a post last week, not due to lack of progress as I had plenty of that, but due to not having time to get pictures taken and a post up.  So we will cover the last two week's worth of work in this post.  First though, I have to thank everyone for the overwhelming response to the Birdhouse Towers post, 1399 views, which is almost double my next highest view post!

     First up is Shep's war band, all finished and based and ready for the Skeleton Run!  From Left to Right: John the Archer, Bill the Infantryman, Gu'ard the War-Hound, Sam the Thief, Bubba Timehopper the Chronomancer, Clara the Apprentice, Robin the Thief, Captain Harkness, and Bob the Crossbowman.

    Next was Duncan's war band, finished and based as well.  From Left to Right: Soul Launcher the Archer, Viper the Infantryman, Thief 1, Bob the War-Hound, Zombie 1, Bone Crusher the Summoner, Zombie 2, Quick Shadow the Apprentice, Thief 2, Captain Tough Nut, Death Arrow the Crossbowman.  He still has a number of his summoned creatures that need to be finished but the basic war band is done.

As you can tell from the boys' warbands I gave them all textured bases that I made.  The first step was to drill holes in the MDF bases and add some rare earth magnets.  This allows the miniatures to be moved in their display cases without worrying about them crashing around.

I then used my textured rollers and green-stuff to make the bases.  I used the Cobblestone for Shep's and the Frozen for Duncan's.

Base colors for the Frozen were Army Painter Ice Storm and Space Ship Exterior followed up with a Blue Tone ink wash.  The Cobblestone base colors were Army Painter Field Grey and Dungeon Grey with a Dark Tone wash.

I then did a highlight of Gorgon Hide and another Blue Tone ink wash before using Vallejo Black Primer for the edges on the Frozen.  For the Cobblestone they were dry brushed with Castle Grey and a second Dark Tone wash with Vallejo Black Primer on the edges as well.

I also got the Eternal Guard Skeletons based as well, just in time for the Skeleton Run for Dark Alchemy Campaign of Frostgrave.

Realizing I would need more than five skeletons during the Skeleton Run, I knocked out these Reaper Bones skeletons as well, using the Vallejo Grey Sand Ground Texture for their base, it makes nice snow when painted.

This weekend I started work on Ivy's war-band, here are her Knight and Archer, both from Dark Sword miniatures.

Here are her two thieve's from Wizkids HD Minis.

Last is her snow leopard (summoned during her first game), and Crossbowman from North Star.

Saturday night Shep got in his second game of Frostgrave, completing the aforementioned Skeleton Run of the Dark Alchemy Campaign.  The battle report should be out this week.

Here is the update for this week.  A little behind on Ivy's war band and I am probably going to switch to Mugzy's instead of Gideon's this week as I will have a paper to write for C&S this weekend which will take up some time.  See you all next week!

Terrain Tutorial - Birdhouse Towers

A while back on one of the Frostgrave Facebook pages someone posted a link to Michael's Birdhouse Castle and commented they could make some good cheap terrain.  At $4.99 they were right about the price but a little work needed to be done first.

Michael's' Birdhouse Tower

 Other than needing a paint job the tower also cannot fit a standard 25mm base on the second level.

To solve this I decided to have two towers for the price of one.  The first thing I needed to do is get rid of the off center base on the bottom of the large tower.  To the band saw!

With the crooked base trimmed to the walls I could now get a straight cut between the top of the large tower walls and the crenelations/roof.

To make the roof and crenelations usable I needed to remove the small tower.  

I used a Dremel cutting disk on my DeWalt cordless drill to cut out a base for the small tower.

The crenelations were now free of the small tower but there was a lack of a roof!

To fix this I cut two pieces of 1/8 inch plywood.  One matches the dimensions of the crenelation square and one roughly matches the inside dimension of the square.

I then drilled a hole in the center of the roof pieces for a ladder to get to the top.

Add some Gorilla Wood Glue and then drop the wife's Kettle Bell on top until it dries!

Once the top was re-attached to the tower I wanted to make the walls look more like stone than wood planks.  So I used a rock to begin marking up the sides with divots and gauges.

Next I added some DAP spackling putty to fill in the gap between the new roof and the crenelations.

I then added some DAP spackling putty to the edges of the new roof to fill some slight gaps.  I also added some bits to the walls to give even more texture.

With all the hard work done it was time to paint.  First I primed the towers in Matt Black.

Next I added a base coat of Anita's All Purpose Acrylic 11086 Charcoal.

I then added the first highlight of AAPA 1200401 Antique Nickel.

And finally I added a highlight of AAPA 11084 Rainy Day Gray.

With a little bit of work we now have two towers with top floors at 4.5 inches and 2.5 inches, with an extra 0.75 inches in height for the crenelations to give your ranged miniatures some cover!

These towers allow for some cheap, easy terrain suitable for both fantasy games like Frostgrave and historical games set in the Dark Ages, all for about $5 and a little bit of work!