The Beard Bunker

It's been five years since I invested in some tiny resin real estate from Tabletop World (the guard tower , thanks for remembering). Their kits remain a joy to paint. So long as one is familiar with a drybrush, one is in for an easy ride. Today's post is really just a few photos of the finished thing, with a few tips on the most interesting elements of the painting. Using a brown primer The one change I made to the usual "prime black and start drybrushing" method was to prime with TT Combat's Laser Cut Brown spray. Arguably it's too rich and red a brown to serve as a universal undercoat, and one can tone it down by slapping a quick bodge-brushed layer of Vallejo's burnt umber over the top, but overall that brown tone really added some warmth to the stone. I'll definitely repeat this with the next building but it's a bit intense on the wood, so next time I'll hit all the wood areas with the burnt umber before proceeding to the drybrushing. Paint...

Em recently got very excited about doing some fantasy skirmish gaming and was looking around at building up a Frostgrave warband. Her research led her to the newly released Warcry, specifically the starter set, with it's generous pile of scenery and a feral looking warband she was intending on using as her Frostgrave warband. Since it arrived as a complete game we decided to give it a try. This would be my first real dip into the Age of Sigmar universe since they blew up the old World (it's still too soon). This is our thoughts on the game. Emma's Thoughts What's in the box It's hefty, and so is the price tag. But if you break it down into 'normal' GW model costs, everything in there is really a steal (as I've discovered is usually the case with these boxed sets).  I have to be honest, the set first appealed to me because I could see the Untamed Beasts models working great with my newly purchased Frostgrave wizard (the Jaguar Boudi female shaman mo...

It seems I owe Gee-Dubz an apology. When their textured paint range first came out, one of the smurfs at my FLGS let me try them out and I was… less than impressed. “You can just paint it on!” he boasted (you can’t). Celhelas keeping it frosty Cut to several years later, and I tried applying that stuff with their texture spreader (which, I think, they released some time after the texture paints came out). It's like a tiny spatula. Suddenly, everything made more sense. Shovel it on with the wide end, do some fine tuning with the pointy end. You have to be so careful when applying the texture paint around the feet of a painted model that I think it's probably quicker  to use sand and glue if you’re doing a big batches of bases, but I've taken to using this stuff when I just want to base one or two dudes and can't be arsed to fetch the PVA and sand… and then sit through three long drying times. Of particular charm is the snow effect, Valhallan Blizzard. You don...

When the time came to add the tenth member of my  Frostgrave*  warband, I was originally planning to get a treasure hunter. I've got a bunch of knights, so something zippier seemed sensible. But then, I learned they had since released the option for captains: a henchman who gains experience and manages your warband. * In case you haven't heard of it, Frostgrave is a skirmish wargame set in the frozen ruins of the treasure-filled city of Felstad, where wizards hire a warband and go looking for swag. It's a nice, straightforward ruleset with surprising depth. It's designed to work best when played as a campaign, with each individual scenario being relatively quick to play. This provided the perfect excuse to pick up a slightly more swanksome chap than the rugged folk who make up my other soldiers. The model itself is Hasslefree Miniatures' Daev ( HFE010 ). It was a thoroughly enjoyable model to paint, and the sculpting of the face honestly astonished me. It...

This week I've managed to get finished a few extra henchmen for my Frost Grave war band. As you progress in Frost Grave you are able to hire additional minions to help with either finding of new treasures and artifacts or to fend off other wizards and their war bands. For my additions we have some hapless adventurers who are only in it for the money.   First up we have a Ranger. She's the nice outdoorsy type and enjoys walks in the woods, archery, and rustic haberdashery. Rangers have a good mix of speed, improved health, and ranged abilities.     Next we have added a thief to the war band. He/She (I honestly can't tell the gender from the model) is a fully paid up member of the thieves guild, and thus is contractually obliged to wear nothing but black. Thieves are slightly faster than you average pleb, but they don't have much more going for them. Their main advantage is they are cheap to hire.  Last but no means lea...

Hello everyone! I'm rogue Druid Kri Spackham, we've packed up the studio and come out here to the frozen wasteland of Frostgrave to take a look at the exciting wildlife in this thawing hellhole. Join us as we explore in this year's Critterwatch! Theme music plays Lets jump straight to those live cameras as we've seen some incredible action already today! A territorial challenge between a greater frost wyrm and a snow troll! It might look like a back garden in Cardiff but no! It's the heart of the frozen city! It has snowed a lot lately here... like, not a lot for Canada but tons for Wales So with that challenge ending in tentative, immobile standoff it's probably worth looking closer at these wonderful creatures and how they've come to live in this overly-chilled wizard-ghetto. Firstly, of course, neither of these are truly natural, they are in fact Not Proper Creatures (NPCs) created by magic and now wandering the city supplementing their diet...

Jeff: Greetings fellow explorers of the City of Chilly Corpse Disposal Facility! We have been making a few more forays into the Frozen City and as a result my warband has grown even more than it was before. Time to share these bad hombres (and have a natter about winter basing at the latter part of this post). Owing to some well-applied violence and not a little luck in the early stages of the campaign I had wound up with what is colloquially termed All Of The Money. Thus I had much to spend to expand my warband and thought some pricey specialists would do the job. One barbarian, a templar and 2 treasure hunters later and the job was a good 'un. I've taken an inn (the "Ragged Duchess") over as my headquarters so I can have 11 fighters total in the warband and this fills all the slots. There's also the transient member of my warband, the model representing the succession of zombies all called Stinky Pete. First up we'll take a gander at the magnifice...

Maisey: 2017 was going to be year of finishing things. For the most part that has been true. Looking back at my to do list from the beginning of the year and this is what I have actually managed to get done. Orge Scrap Launcher. DONE Bolt Action German veteran Grenadiers. DONE Frost Grave warband, board, and scenery. DONE Tabletop world buildings. DONE Charlie’s Storm Eagle. DONE Desert board scenery. DONE Industrial scenery. DONE Thousand Sons. DONE + More What is still left over from that list? Vampire Counts - This was meant to be a tidy up and finishing thing. Sorting out all those little bits and bobs. I’ve not actually started anything here, in fact I totally failed and ended up buying some more models. In my defence, I picked them up off a friend and it was a time limited offer, so I jumped on it. Also, we’ve not actually been playing fantasy at all, so if something is going to get bumped down the priority list it’s going to be the thing that isn’t being played. Em...

Yes, like the tagline to a 50's movie this time we're all about things that "Came From Beyond!" as the other half of my Summoner warband coalesces into the world: One of the things about Summoners, I realised during playtesting, was you need a bunch of additional models. If you want a "lowest possible cost" warband, Summoners aren't it. But for me? Oh no, don't make me paint more awesome stuff... As I've tooled my wizard's spells up for being in the Summoner theme, I've got almost all of the ones that allow you to bring in other models for the warband: Summon Demon, Raise Zombie (yeah, still waiting on the zombie) and Familiar all bring extra models to the table. Initially I thought I'd just need one of each of the sizes of demon and a familiar because I'd been thinking of them like the zombie. You can only have one of those. But each spellcaster can control a demon so theoretically you can have two of each size of dem...