Building the Mystic Isle

 Right, I'm back, more or less. My father's funeral went well... even if my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer only days later. My blog output might be even more spotty than usual!

Anyway, on to business. I've always loved the idea of Ulthuan, this mystical pseudo-Atlantis of soft focus, slender pines and blue hues. But how to realise it? I've never felt quite confident enough to scratch build elven terrain due to all the perfect lines and wotnot. Luckily, Etsy and Ebay came to my rescue!

Look at these statues! LOOK AT THEM! The detail on them is incredible. I got these from an Etsy seller called Elfhead 3D, who was really nice and quick as well as creating great terrain. I decided to paint them as a cold blue stone. 

Speaking of Elfhead, they also sell this great obelisk. My paintjob isn't quite as solid on this one, but that's me, not the model. 

Last one from Elfhead. I decided that this fallen statue should be overgrown. Indeed, all of these bases use a variety of static grass and model leaf litter.

Now, this one here is from minimonsters.eu. It's a bit differently proportioned, but the texture is probably nicer. They also do a bigger version, which I have, but... erm... it's in a different paint scheme and doesn't fit here. 

So there we are! Ulthuan on the tabletop at a fairly low price!

Ode to Tabletop World

People get into this hobby for different reasons, but for me a major factor was the narrative aspects and the splendid vistas of the Old World. I started the hobby with Warhammer Fantasy in 1995, and my imagination was carried away by the beatiful timber-framed houses, the little forests and the rickety bridges shown in publications at that time. Now as anyone who lived through the glorious era of Books for Hills can attest, a handsome table can really make the difference. 

Making decent terrain has been something of a passion for me since I learned how to do it when working at Games Workshop in 2005-06, but my already potentially worrying passion was given a boost in 2015. Specifically, when GW dropped Warhammer Fantasy. Those familiar with my Age of Rebuilding project will know that I had no intention of adapting to their new world, but what I realised at that time was that at some time along the way, my own gaming board had been coerced. I'd slipped into the habit of buying GW terrain, and whilst some of the pieces were nice, the overrall effect seemed to be that someone had put Clive Barker and Tim Burton's works into a blender and then drizzled them across my table. I decided it was time to restore my terrain collection to what the Old World should be. Cue lots of individually based Gaugesmaster trees... and Tabletop World. 

Tabletop World is a small Croatian company that specialises in scenery which, whilst never outright stated, seems aimed at Warhammer Fantasy players. Now straight up, let's be clear: these models are expensive. Like, almost GW expensive. I'm warning you of that now not because I think that as a wargamer you're averse to high prices (!) but because once you've got one of these kits, you'll immediately want to outfit your entire table with them.

These models are beautiful. The detailing is incredible, including interior detail. Details as small as crumbling plaster are sculpted. They aren't the quickest models to paint because of the sheer amount of features, but honestly they're among the most enjoyable I've ever worked on. 

The roofs and sometimes the individual floors of buildings can be removed, which means that garrisoning can be done by literally placing models in the building rather than abstraction. 

Tabletop World uses a very nice, cream-coloured resin for their models. At one point I tried painting one without washing to see if it worked. To my surprise it almost completely worked fine, though I would still always recommend washing resin (I was just curious at the time). I don't remember ever encountering flash or injection lines on the kits. If your only experience of working with resin is the horrible defect-ridden stuff that GW uses (Forgeworld and Finecast) then TTW kits will leave you goggling in astonishment and thinking you've forgotten something. 

I should emphasise again: if what you want are cheap and nice but not awesome, this isn't the range for you. 4ground do some decent stuff that's easy to get ready. But if you really want to create an immersive and beautiful tabletop environment, Tabletop World is well worth the investment!

Crystalline deeps

And now for something completely different.

A Skaven looting party scurries nervously through the sombre halls of the Undgrin.

I had a random moment of inspiration recently. I was looking at some amethysts and my mind drifted to an old idea I had about making terrain for underground caverns. Regular readers may have observed that I have always been and remain an ardent fan of Warhammer Fantasy. An important part of that world is deep, dreaming caverns and monumental underways. I've always had this vision of vast underground vistas, where soaring crystal formations stand at the edge of subterranean oceans, lit only by the strange luminescence of curious fungi which have never seen the outer world.  This is the kind of landscape which the Dwarfs of old would have looked upon when cutting through the depths to build their holds. My inspirations included Holst's 'Neptune the Mystic' and the beautiful if primitive visual effects of the 1959 epic Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

And a couple of weeks ago, I decided that it was time to have a crack at it. Now, I thought about using clay to make the crystals but decided against it. I wanted to do a few test pieces first. So I purchased some cheap pre-made crystals from an Ebay Seller named Sixtownscenery. They arrived almost frighteningly fast and I set to work.

I made the bases out of 2mm MDF, cutting rough shapes out of a sheet. These were between 3" and 6" long. Now, all GW models have beveled bases and terrain looks a bit funny if the bases aren't beveled the same way. It's easy to do: using a craft knife or boxcutter, you can push through the edge of the base at a roughly 45-degree angle without much effort. New hobbyists - please watch yourself. The MDF doesn't give at an equal rate, and sometimes that blade will move fast.

Next up, I glued my crystals down with PVA and covered the majority of the base with sand, leaving some spaces for mysterious pools.

Now, paintjobs are each to their own, but I'll take a moment to explain the ground effect (the crystals were the normal layer/wash/drybrush combo). I wanted the ground to look a bit darker and a bit colder than if it was just stone. Indeed, I wanted to conjure a certain eldritch mystery. So I went all over with a coat of Eshin Grey. After that, I gave it a wash of Drakenhof Nightshade. Finally, a drybrush of Ulthuan Grey gave it just the right ethereal feeling.

The Ophelian 1034th advances through the eerie wonderland of an Eldar Maiden World.

I finished the pieces with some vivid green static grass. You can get this for a couple of quid from War World Scenics or Serious Play. The idea here was to have startlingly luminous fungus growing on the cavern floor. I think it works quite well.

And there we have it. Dwarf caverns, Night Goblin boltholes, Skaven warrens... or the weird landscape of a distant alien world. All in a couple of hours!