Boats and Yo Ho Ho’s

Good Friday was upon me, the figures were 90% done. I dug out the tropical islands and set about making a layout.

We all set off on different islands ready to lay waste to inferior tribes, there were a couple of ways to score points, your shaman being alive at the end of the turn and shaman with most kills. Given that there are a quite a few troop types I decided to write the class on the bases so we knew what was what, especially helpful given that I was using proxy miniatures

Normally the game is played on a less watery map, so we added house rules. Shamans have a spell called flatten which can remove terrain, we decided that this allowed for ladders to be removed. We also decided water was insta-death which added to the hilarity given the amount of spells that pushed/pulled or caused random movement. Fortunately shamans can respawn if killed.

All in all it was a fun and brutal game, there are a lot more rituals and warband compositions to explore so there’s definitely a lot of replay potential. The developers are actively writing extra rules and mechanics for things such as summoning terrain. I’d like to see some form of narrative campaign set up to play over a series of conflicts. Overall I enjoyed it enough to pick up a copy of the rules and find myself a better/cooler looking shaman proxy. One of my friends is toying with an Ewok tribe…I’m considering lemurs. We’re not right…none of us are right.

A couple of mates picked up a game from Chillcon called Tribal Conquests and wanted to play on Good Friday, I need about thirty miniatures to play. It’s the Wednesday before Good Friday, 9:45pm…better start painting.

As luck would have it I had a bunch of kitbashed tribal and Aztec type  figures primed and ready for contrast paints. I had a couple of hours on them on the Thursday morning.

Painting the islands was pretty similar to the earlier rocks project, mod podge and black paint as a base. The top of the rocks I wanted flat to put scatter and small buildings on. So textured and flat, right, ok.

I slapped a layer off buff sandy paint down, and the effect was like someone had painted a buff sandy colour on top of a rock. I had picked up a kind of textured beach paint, mostly for basing Ghost Archipelago and other piratical nonsense.

I put a layer on, that stuff is a pain to paint on a larger area as it’s developed for glomming on bases or small dioramas. It did the trick though, Textured and flat.

Around the base of the rocks I used a couple of moss paints sparingly, when dry I applied a permanent wet look thing from AK Interactive, it absolutely reeks, so ventilation is highly recommend. I use an extremely cheap and effective ventilation set up called ‘outside’.

To make the catwalks I grabbed my trusty bits of wood bag and glued some coffee stirrers together. I them trimmed them with my super heavy craft scissors (apparently they cut bone). Some of the sticks came off during this process, which added rather than detracted to the overall look.

I then added a wash of scale 75 ink, with a small bit of nuln oil after that. The result was a dirty lacquered wood effect. I was really chuffed with the end result. I plan to do a darker mossier variant for Frostgrave walk ways.

I took a large sheet of XPS foam and drew some random shapes on it, I cut these out using a hand held wire cutter (I have since upgraded to a proxxon, but have yet to harness its full potential). I then cut some detail in with a craft knife and sanded sharper edges smooth…very very messy.

Once I was happy with the shapes I painted them with some acrylic paint mixed with mod podge (as recommended by Black Magic Crafts, you can’t spray this stuff as it melts).

One half I painted up gray for regular fantasy/ temperate earth based games. I used inks and some moss and lichen paints to add interest.

The other lot , I painted with a hellscape in mind, I wanted a burnt rocks with hints of lava. I did the lava using a white base and then inks over the top (vallejo and scale 75). It looks ok, but it’s something I want to re-visit and improve upon.