Boarding action

Before I gave away the two little copses that I mentioned at the end of my previous post, I took a couple of photos of them in-situ on one of the other projects that I managed to get started last year. This is something fairly vital to achieving that truly satisfying feel of a fully immersive, narrative, tabletop wargame.

It's the tabletop itself. Or, more accurately, the board or boards that sit on the tabletop.

Rather than having bespoke builds for every setting, I always favoured the idea of a more modular approach. A bunch of boards that can connect to each other in a few different combinations, spanning a selection of terrain types that can be mixed and matched to create a variety of different locations. And then additional structures that can be added to further change the detail and complexity of the warzone. Ideally, simply by adding or removing items, I would be able to switch between a wide open battlefield suitable for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB), Age of Sigmar (AoS) or Warhammer 40,000 (WH40K), and a dense, multi-layered environment more in keeping with Kill Team, Necromunda, Mordheim or Warcry.

Of course, the more you want to cover, the more you need to build. But by keeping elements as modular as possible, you can start to reduce just how much stuff you need.

Some terrain types made with a fantasy setting in mind might be compatible with a sci-fi set-up. A grassy Ghyran battlefield for AoS could double as farmland on an agri-world in WH40K.  And it could work in reverse too. With a little forethought some Mechanicus terrain elements for WH40K could be seen as steam punk style buildings in a fortified City of Sigmar, or a Kharadron Sky-Port or even a Skaven tunnel system.

I'm not really at a stage to test out these possibilities yet, but I'll keep it in mind as the project progresses.

My initial plan was to create a set of 2 foot by 3 foot boards, that had road points in the middle of each side. Some of the boards would be sci-fi, some would be fantasy, and some might blur the lines a bit. I figured grass, rock or dirt boards should almost definitely fall into that last category. 4 boards would be enough for a standard game of WFB or WH40K, but the more I make the more options I'll have.

With hindsight, I probably should have made each board 2 foot square, rather than these slightly larger rectangles. This would have dramatically increased the scope and flexibility of the final set by meaning boards could be turned 90 degrees to fit together. I'm a little annoyed I didn't work that out sooner, but I've already discarded my first attempt at this project, so I really don't want to start again once more.

With WH40K in mind I also decided I wanted to be able to stack buildings to create different densities. I put together a diagram of how I see them slotting into the base. 

I tried to work out if this system could be applied to a fantasy castle or town as well, but decided it would probably impose too many limitations. In fact it might even stifle the sci-fi terrain too, so I'll just have to see how this plays out.

The two boards that I had to discard were made on thin MDF sheets, about 6mm deep. Once finished and covered in glue and paint they started to warp terribly. So for this reboot of the project I started with 18mm MDF. It's heavy, but its also sturdy, meaning it won't bend out of shape so easily, and is less likely to jolt when knocked mid-game. 

The other benefit of the thicker MDF is that I can carve into it to create depressions. This means a 3D feel can be achieved, while keeping the surface flat to accept buildings and other smaller terrain pieces wherever necessary.

The design of the road varies slightly on the countryside board, so that it can be used with both fantasy and sci-fi settings. I also added a slightly raised area in order to play with line of sight a bit.

This is just the very beginning of the project, but I'm pleased with the finish of these boards, and am really looking forward to having a larger set of them. Although, as ever, I'm not really loving the idea of finding the time needed to create them.

Not quite out of the woods

As an avid maker of models for tabletop wargames, I am constantly enthused and excited by the thought of something new. I spend a lot of time wondering what would look good in my collection, or what would offer up interesting gameplay, or how I could adapt an existing kit into something unique.

Unfortunately these thought processes have led to a completely unrealistic quest to build and paint every single model I've ever conceived of, or dreamt about. And not just centrepiece models like dragons and heavy tanks. I often find myself wanting to start with the basics – like a massive collection of troop units to base an army on, or an extensive collection of multiple terrain types to switch between. Not only does this take up a lot of space in my home, but it also leads to a significant backlog (the dreaded pile of shame), and the mildly terrifying realisation that I will probably never be on top of my hobby goals.

But on the plus side, it does lead me to try a bit harder. To be a bit more motivated. To organise myself and try to get stuff done. And last year I really managed to make a few dents in some of the projects on my wishlist.

One of those was something I was first introduced to right back at the beginning of my hobby journey, in the mid 1980s: a woods. In fact it's less of a woods and more of a copse, but the idea is that two or three similar models could be combined to create a larger wooded area.

So I made two.

I started by shaping a couple of bases from 12 inch by 6 inch rectangles of thin MDF. I gave each board a kidney bean shape, rounded all the corners, then tapered off the edges to create a slope. I stuck bits of an old, broken cork table mat over the middle of each board, in order to raise the height profile a bit, and give myself something extra to stick the scale model trees into.

The first couple of trees came from my old collection of random bits, but then I bought some new ones from Amazon and a couple of online hobby shops (most likely Element Games and Wayland Games), taking care to find trees of differing heights, colours and textures. I had to thicken their trunks with green stuff (two part modelling putty), and also, wherever I could reach them without knocking all the foliage off, give the obvious plastic bark areas a bit of a drybrush with a more matt-looking paint.

Once the trees were secured to the boards with superglue and a bit more modelling putty (roughly shaped to look like widening tree trunks, or exposed roots), I then used some polyfilla (or spackle) to fill some of the gaps in the cork, and shape it to have smoother sloping edges. A few flat but textured stones from my garden were also superglued to the boards at this stage.

When that was all dry, most of the top of each base was coated in PVA, leaving the stones and a few root or cork details exposed. They were then carefully dipped in a mix of coarse sand and small stones, left to dry, and then liberally soaked with a final coating of watered-down PVA to ensure everything was stuck fast.

Painting the base was a simple affair of washing and drybrushing, before various grass flock, tufts, leaf litter, lichen and foliage effects were glued in place. The very final detail was a small sprinkling of painted paper leaves, made with leaf punches, carefully glued into prominent, but natural positions.

After spray-varnishing, my wife saw them for the first time, and instead of her usual allergic reaction to all things wargaming, surprisingly decided she really liked them. Really really liked them. So much so that she thought they would make lovely little desk ornaments, even for those unfathomable folk that aren't addicted to the idea of miniature armies clashing on fantastical tabletops.

So I then started all over again, in order to create two, smaller, new ones. One for her, and one for a friend. (Hence the work-in-progress image above, where there are two smaller, rounder bases with bits of cork stuck to them, rather than the larger, kidney-bean-shaped one mentioned in the text.) I gave my wife hers at Christmas, and delivered the other last week.

Annoyingly for the purposes of my collection, I think these new ones are a bit better than their earlier prototypes. So... I guess that means I have to make at least one more.

Slicin', dicin', shootin' and torchin'.

In my first post of 2026, I want to share one of the projects I managed to complete in the last few months of 2025. This was the final of three Ork Deff Dreads that have been in progress for quite some time now. Happy New Year.

Like the previous two Dreads (that you can see more of here and here), this clanking collection of pistons and bolts is only partially based on the Games Workshop Deff Dread kit. The main body of it was taken from Paolo Parente's Light Panzer Walker for his Dust miniatures game. 

I flipped the body up the other way, discarded the weapon options in favour of more conventional looking Ork parts from Games Workshop, built up the shoulders, added an engine and some other Orky gubbins, grafted on a huge claw-fist thing that I grabbed from Ramshackle Games (which I then gave a couple of extra heavy-duty digits), then constructed a kind of 'face' from grills, sensors and plasticard teeth.

You might just notice that it's got a slightly cleaner paintjob than the two previous Dreads. This is because it is the newest of the three walkers, having only just lurched its way out of the mek boss's workshop, and is of course nothing to do with me having spent considerably less time weathering the thing.

Marauders of Mayhem

Today I'm sharing 3 rather lovely miniatures I bought on Etsy a few weeks ago. These guys are the latest completed additions to my Slaves to Darkness warband: Wintry warriors of Chaos who follow Gshtaad, a dark god of my own creation.*

They're from the seller BrakaonBitz and aren't made by Games Workshop, but are instead part of a range called Realms of Mayhem by Beholder Miniatures. The design and print of these guys was so good that within a week of them arriving, I had pretty much finished painting them. Something that anyone who has ever glanced at this blog knows never happens with me.

They are available in various scales, so I went for the 28mm versions, thinking that not all warriors have to be massive, muscled, murder-machines, and regular-sized people could join the fight too – but the sculpts are so perfect, I wish I'd gone with the larger 32mm size to give them a bit of extra 'stage presence'.

Sitting on 25mm diameter bases, they will be joining the existing ranks of my Thugs and Marauders.** If you're a veteran hobbyist of Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures you may remember Chaos Thugs from the late 80s and early 90s. You can see some of them here and here on The Stuff of Legends. I always felt these (often less well armed and armoured) hooligans formed the first step on the Chaos career path, graduating to Marauders next (some early examples of which you can see here), followed by Warriors, then Chosen and perhaps finally Possessed or Spawn or some other kind of ascended/descended demon thing. Later editions of Warhammer did away with the Thugs, but I figured it would be nice to mix in a few home-grown conversions with my Marauders and bring back some of that crazy variation.

*We all have our demons, right?
**Darkoath Marauders these days tend to come on 28.5mm bases, but I'm really not ready to rebase an entire army for a second time, and I like to have squads and units on consistent bases.

The ute of today

I love this hobby. I really do. It's safe to say that I've dedicated quite a chunk of my life to constructing and painting 28-32mm scale miniatures based on the various worlds of Games Workshop. Anything can spark the beginning of a project: the release of a new miniature; something I saw online; a passage in a book; a scene in a movie; or even a real-life object, building or landscape. I never really know where the inspiration will come from, but it usually forms the burning need to create some cool-looking derivative model that will somehow slot into my existing collection. Often I'll start with the intention of really going to town, taking my time to actualise the ideas floating around in my head in a way that is as accurate or interesting as possible. To attempt to achieve something that sits at the (admittedly not very high) pinnacle of my capability. 

But occasionally I'll simply want to paint a model with the sole intention of clearing some desk space.

This Mantic Mule was just such an occasion. Released as a robust, sci-fi, military asset, I thought it would instead make a rugged, little, utility vehicle (or ute) for more domestic usage. The sort of thing you might see driving around the enclosed road system of an Imperial Hive City like Kruenta Karoliina Arx Rotunda.

But once I'd built the thing, it just sat there for years, looking forlorn and unloved, collecting dust. It's not alone in that fate, as I have hundreds of unpainted miniatures waiting for their moment under the brush. But when I absent-mindedly picked it up earlier this week and reacquainted myself with its muscular design, I realised that if I stuck to a quick, simple, paint-job, I could get the whole thing completed using just the spare moments of that single day. 

So a lunch-break and a bit, a decidedly non-military colour scheme*, and a handful of dry transfers (that I'd never used before, but which I wanted to include as an oblique reference to my rugged, little, youngest son) and this was ready for display.

As is often the case with these quicker projects, I'm a little indifferent to the final piece. I'm neither proud of it, nor do I dislike it. It's good enough to add to my collection of domestic 40K models, without being any kind of centrepiece.

But at least I have a little desk space back.

*Non-military colour scheme in the classic sense, that is. I guess there are plenty of sci-fi forces that use colour schemes heavily featuring yellow and green. My very own Ork Armoured Brigade being a pretty good example.

The greed for speed

 

Last year, in my final post before Christmas, I mentioned that one of my sisters had given me the Forge World Ork Nob Warbiker set, and that, instead of the usual 3, I was trying to squeeze 5 bikes from it. When I looked at the kit I realised there were too many cool parts to use, and I didn't want them to simply disappear into my box of spares. And besides, why have some when you can have many? I promised to share the other two bikes when they were done, so now I'm making good on that.

These two are mainly made from the pieces in the kit, except, crucially, I had to use the cut-down chassis from an old Space Marine Bike, in order to provide most of the structure of the first one above (the one with the caterpillar tracks at the front). Fortunately some of those left-over bits from the Nob Biker kit allowed me to almost completely hide the old Marine bike behind greenskin gubbins. You can still make out the engine block in a couple of the images, though I subtly changed its profile by trimming the foot plates from beneath it.

The other one got the trike wheels at the back, so I decided to use that wider rear space to mount a diminutive hanger on. He's probably got a very hot left foot right now from the overtaxed exhaust that he's precariously balanced above. I also figured I'd bring in a fresh Ork head for the rider. One with a piece of iron bolted to the side of its jaw, which I grabbed from the Age of Sigmar Orruk Brutes set. I think mixing in a few odd pieces from other kits, and slightly varying my painting style helps to get across the idea that Orks grow to different sizes, can have a range of skin tones, get injured differently, wear different prosthetics and like to tinker with all their equipment. Basically, in short, each and every Ork and Ork vehicle can be unique. Something which is fun, if a little time-consuming, to try to capture across an entire army.

Talking of which, these two new bikes mean their ragtag squad is now 15 strong, if you include the two larger bikes (that actually count as a buggy and a skorcha). 

So I'll finish off with a quick snap of the gang getting their rev on, ready to go start a fight someplace.

Big, shooty and stompy.

Orks love those three words. And nothing embodies them quite like a Deff Dread lumbering its way towards the enemy with unpleasant intentions. 

A great big rusty robot, ready to grab its foe, and start furiously chopping and sawing until nothing is recognisable.

Not so different from me doing a model kit conversion, then.

This particular beast started life as the very excellent Medium Panzer Walker (also known as a Kampf Läufer, or Luther/Ludwig/Lothar) from Paolo Parente's beautifully realised Dust miniatures game. The box it came in had three different weapon configurations, none of which I had any intention of using. Those were put aside, and instead I grabbed a few arms and other bits from Games Workshop's bona fide Deff Dread kit.

This isn't the first time the Kampf Läufer has appeared on this blog. You can also see it here. Sort of.

Some hacking, sawing, gluing, bleeding and about 5 years later, et voila.

There are a few other Ork Walkers planned and underway, so this won't be the last you hear of this unit. Pop back in, let's say, another 5 years and we can see how far I've got with them.