Category Archives: Fantasy

Posts on fantasy gaming using the Fantasy Rules 2nd Ed. and Hordes of the Things rules.

Fantasy, Terrain

BS2017: The Bloodyear Blomp, Part 3

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Blomping onward, in a classic goblin-engineering “make sh*t up as you go” fashion!

The front half of the gondola has been skinned with styrene sheet, cut in one continuous strip for strength. I also glued in more styrene strip on the inner edges of the gunwale. The edges of the flying bridge received similar treatment; both areas will be getting more detailing/decoration to finish them off.

Styrene skin on the front of the gondola and the flying bridge. Click for larger.

On the underside of the gondola I superglued a pair of 40mm X 20mm galvanized steel bases, and some scrap styrene to keep everything level. The keel went on next, long strips of 1/8th x 1/4th inch basswood. The metal bases and the slot in the keel will hold another piece of the same basswood with two or three rare earth magnets embedded in it to hold it into place, and a long steel wire (possibly two) leading down to the ground as the “flying” part of the Blomp’s flying base.

Keel installation, with steel bases. The piece of basswood behind the superglue bottle is already notched for rare earth magnets. Click for larger.

Finally I cut sections out of two plastic tubes (till receipt paper rolls salvaged from the recycling bin at a previous job!) and glued them just behind the flying bridge as part of the lift/propulsion machinery – tanks of whatever mysterious, hazardous lifting gas the goblin alchemists have invented, probably! The end caps are wood craft circles trimmed slightly to fit, and the tanks will get detailed with rivets, weld lines, pipes, and such in due course.

Midships tanks added. Click for larger.

More soon as we progress! The February 18th end date looms like a looming thing!

Fantasy, Terrain

Build Something 2017: The Bloodyear Blomp, Part 2

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Progress on my Lead Adventure Forum Build Something 2017 entry, the goblin-crewed Bloodyear Blomp!

I’d said previously I was going to finish covering the blimp envelope in fabric before moving on to the gondola, but in standard wargamer fashion I’ve been distracted into working on the gondola first.

The basic skeleton of the gondola is a couple of big hardwood craft sticks, cut and butted together with more scrap wood between them. The flying bridge is more craft sticks cut and jointed together, and the support structure under it is random scrap foamed PVC board.

Blomp hull basic assembly, with Reaper Bones goblin crew for scale. Click for larger.

The crew are going to be converted from Reaper Bones goblins; I’ve got a whole bunch leftover from my BB Goblin team conversion project and they’ll fit right in!

First part of the Improved Non-Exploding Flautulating Engine. Finest goblin engineering! Click for larger.

The midships portion of the gondola, behind the flying bridge, is going to be filled with the lift and propulsion machinery. Pipes will lead from here up into the balloons of the envelope, with solid wire cores to provide the structural connection between the gondola and the envelope.

More soon!

Fantasy, Terrain

Build Something 2017: The Bloodyear Blomp

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Every year or so over on Lead Adventure Forum they hold a friendly Build Something competition. There’s a theme that imposes some restrictions; one year it was “your scenery must be based on a CD”; we had “marine/watercraft” once, and this year the theme is “flight”.

I’ve been a LAF member for years and it’s an awesome forum, but I’ve been fairly inactive over there for the last year or so. Joining the Build Something 2017 Contest was a good way to nudge me back into being an active member of this awesome online community.

The theme being “flight” I thought of doing a cargo shuttle of some sort for Infinity, but with only a six week timespan to complete the entire contest entry in, from start to finish, I shelved that tempting idea in favour of an entertainingly silly piece of Blood Bowl sideline terrain: the goblin-crewed Bloodyear Blomp, which carries magical cameras and announcers over Blood Bowl fields all over the known world!

To give it some actual in-game purpose, I’ll put a pair of Reroll counters on the base of the thing, to go along with the goblin scoreboard I made a while back.

Being goblin-engineered (to push the term “engineered” very near it’s breaking point!) the Blomp can be a bit ramshackle, so I just started building! I picked up a pack of craft foam spheres as the balloon/envelope structure of the Blomp and started jamming them together and then covering them with bits of scrap fabric.

Here’s the first building session’s progress.

Blomp! First construction of the blimp envelope, and a few of the goblins who will eventually crew the thing! Click for larger.

Since then I’ve added a fourth sphere to the tail end and done some more fabric.

More Blomp! Fourth envelope sphere in place and more fabric. Click for larger.

I’ve got a build thread over on LAF that will generally be updated faster and more frequently than I’ll do blog posts on the Blomp, in keeping with the spirit of the contest. I still need to figure out the gondola design and a bunch of other details, but it’s been a fun build so far!

Fantasy, Painting

A Christmas Tree?

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Various Reaper Bones figures for Blood Bowl, including a really massive feral treeman! Click for slightly larger.
Various Reaper Bones figures for Blood Bowl, including a really massive feral treeman! Click for slightly larger.

I’m going to be moving between Christmas & New Years so I’ve been busy packing stuff and cleaning; I’ve been in my current digs about three and a half years and the gaming stuff especially has kind of crept all over the place, so it’s a good opportunity for some sorting, de-junking, and reorganization of my work bench. The new apartment will have more space for hobby stuff, which is both great and slightly worrying as wargaming has a proven ability to fill all available space!

Anyway, after boxing up the majority of the gaming stuff and doing some initial straightening of my actual workbench I decided to do a bit of painting to relax, and to work on some figures that have been lurking, mostly ignored, around the edges of my bench for ages now.

Primarily, that mean finally getting some proper paint on the massive Reaper Bones Spirit of the Forest. I based him and added some Blood Bowl-style shoulder pads ages ago (possibly 2014?) and he’s sat around the edges of my painting mat ever since. A base coat revealed that the figure has all sorts of cool detail on him, plants, vines, fungus, and moss all over. I got some of that tonight and I’d run him on a BB pitch without being too bothered, but this really is a figure that will reward some time picking out more details. The one downside really is the sheer size of the figure – that’s a 2″ washer I’ve based him on, and his toes poke over on both sides…

The other figures are a wizard (far left) for those (rare!) times when a BB team gets to hire a Wizard as an inducement; a gnome Apothecary to patch people up and get them back on the pitch; an Ogre so I can proxy my still-unpainted Amazons as a Human team; and finally a big Minotaur that I picked up because I liked the look of the figure but who might now become the centrepiece of a Chaos team from some of the other Bones figures available.

Almost all my painting the last few months has been on the BB Goblin team, so it was nice to get paint on other figures and especially satisfying to start on the giant Treeman.

With holidays and moving I might not get one more post completed this month, so if I don’t, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Season’s Greetings, and Happy New Year to everyone!

(or, you know, Bah Humbug if that’s more your thing!)

Fantasy, Terrain

Blood Bowl Sideline Ads, Sheet The First

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Finally got a sheet done with most of my Blood Bowl sideline ads to date, arranged in strips and sized for 1″x3″, which is a good height for sideboards or hoardings.

There’s a mix of Blood Bowl-inspired ads, almost all parodies of real products. There’s Haterade, Croak, Plopsi, Goblin Sweat, and DorfAde (in new Stunty Tears flavour!) for starters, as well as the Necromancer Beer ad I’ve posted previously and a Blood Bowl ad/joke.

Later on I plan on doing different sized/differently proportioned versions of most of these, but I needed 1″ tall for the sideline scenery I’m currently building so here it is!

A4-sized PDF, single page

Letter-sized PDF, single page

These are all my own work; I’m sure some of the ideas or parody names have been done elsewhere by other members of the BB community but these versions and this artwork is all my own. Permission is granted for personal, non-commercial copying or printing. Enjoy, feedback appreciated!

Fantasy, Terrain

Goblin Dugout Started

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Simple dugout for the goblin-themed Blood Bowl pitch-side set I’m doing; there will be another dugout similar to this for the other team, and the turn- and reroll-trackers will be done up to look like spectator terraces/stands.

Coffee stir sticks, mostly, over a plastic base. Click for full size, as usual.
Coffee stir sticks, mostly, over a plastic base. Click for full size, as usual.

The basic structure is coffee stir sticks over a plastic sheet base; the hoarding along the back will have ads on both sides, similar to the ones used on the scoreboard and some others I’ve been working on.

More soon, although I’m packing up all the gaming stuff before the end of the year to move into a new apartment with my girlfriend, so that will (among other things!) disrupt the finishing of this set of scenery. Also, Christmas, New Years, all that holiday stuff. Still, updates will appear here when I can!

Fantasy, Terrain

A Goblin Scoreboard, Part Two

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The base of the new Blood Bowl scoreboard is now covered in sand, painted, and flocked. I might still add some additional foliage or other details to the base, but it’s perfectly usable as is and I’m willing to declare it finished and move on!

gobthing
Base finished on the scoreboard. Click for larger.

Instead of puttying around the strip of plexi in the centre of the base I used matchstick-sized wood strips and made it look like rough timber foundations. I also put a wooden boardwalk across the front; I figure that’ll be a good hangout for markers or sideline figures for the stuff like cheerleaders, apothecaries, wizards, or other BB sideline addons.

I’m still brainstorming how to do team dugouts and turn- and reroll-tracks to match this scoreboard, but I should the details figured out by this weekend and then they, like this scoreboard, should be fairly quick and simple builds. After that, the more involved project is going to be doing a new fabric pitch, probably on the back of the current lizard-themed fabric pitch I made last winter.

Fantasy, Terrain

A Goblin Scoreboard, Part One

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Decided that my Blood Bowl Goblin team, currently glorying in the name of T.U.R.D. (what that stands for changes every single game they play…) needed a scoreboard, to use as substitute to my existing Lizardman temple BB setup.

Goblins have an reputation for being clever but not smart, and for lunatic behaviour at the best of times. This presumably explains why they attempt to play Blood Bowl at all, and excuses all sorts of things like really shoddy carpentry. With that in mind, I broke out the craft wood and set to work!

goblin-thing-one
Goblin BB scoreboard in progress. Three billboards for colour, and the actual scoreboard part two-thirds of the way up. Weather indicator will go between the two score placards. Click for larger.

The main structure is coffee stir sticks, with basswood strips for the big vertical beams. The eventual plan is to have small rare earth magnets behind the scoreboard, embedded in a wood beam, to hold magnetic strip score number placards in place, and to have a smaller weather placard in between the two scores. There’s still some details to add, like “US” and “THEM” labels above the two score areas, and possibly a small announcers stand right at the top of the whole thing, some sort of rickety crowsnest with a raving goblin announcer howling away.

The base has a strip of scrap acrylic with two holes drilled in it to support two bits of wire that go up into holes in the bottoms of the legs, holding everything solidly, and then some scrap plastic to expand the footprint a bit more. I’ll putty along the edge of the acrylic to blend everything together and strengthen things further.

gob-thing-two
Three trolls and the scoreboard. You can see the rickety walkway in front of the actual scoreboard part here.

The second image has all three of my trolls, all still very much works in progress. Left and centre troll are the same figure, with some fairly extensive arm surgery on the left hand troll to give him a different pose than the stock centre troll. All three are Reaper Bones plastic figures, which are awesome for Blood Bowl conversions! You can see the narrow walkway in front of the score panels nicely in this shot, which might get a gobbo scorekeeper perched on it eventually.

More soon; I’m currently out of rare earth magnets and need to restock before I can finish this project the way I’m planning it. That should take place this weekend and then it’ll be fairly simple to finish the rest of the thing!

Fantasy, Infinity, Painting, Science Fiction

The Workbench This Week, 4 November 2015

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Quick and dirty late night snapshot of my workbench!

workbench4Nov2015
Troll surgery and various other things on the bench. Click for larger, as usual.

Front and centre is a Reaper Bones troll (in white plastic still, hence kind of blown out in the pic…) next to his orange-painted buddy. I’ve cut both arms at the elbows, repositioned them, and gotten started on puttying to cover up the damage. He’s for my goblin Blood Bowl team, eventually, so the rather rough putty work will be covered with football pads similar to the ones worn by the right hand figure, who has just had pads added to his basic pose.

Most of the rest of the clutter is also Blood Bowl related; there’s a wizard and a doctor just mounted on their bases to the right, a couple of goblins lurking, and two Bribe counters in the left foreground – the plastic sprue will eventually be painted to look like gold bars.

The background is mostly Infinity stuff, a pair of new figures for my Haqqislam forces and six consoles from Warsenal. More on the consoles sometime soon, as I’m writing up a review of them and the Supply Crates I also got from Warsenal.

Fantasy, Terrain

Necromancer Beer – a Blood Bowl Sideline Ad

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Something quick and silly to break the month-long dry spell in posting!

On our local Blood Bowl league’s Facebook page one of the guys made a joke about “Necromancer Beer – one taste will revive you” and while I was waiting for dinner to finish I fired Inkscape up and cranked out the following bit of fluff.

Necromancer Beer - one taste will revive you! Feel free to print this for personal use!
Necromancer Beer – one taste will revive you! Feel free to print this for personal use!

This is the same height as a number of other BB sideline ads already floating around the internet, so should mix nicely with them.

Enjoy, and if you do use this, please send me photos of your pitchside scenery with the Necromancer Beer banner on it!