Boarding a new project

 New crazy project starting now!

I have to admit that I've been working on this for some time, and my original plan was to have the whole project finished before I posted it all, but in the end I've decided to show the first part of it.

If you look back in the archives of this blog (or you've been over here long enough and have a real good memory), you'll see that back in the day I built a full 3D board for Shadespire, as I don't really enjoy playing on cardboard if I can avoid it.

I keep on talking about Shadespire and not Underworlds, because in fact I've never got the other games. That's why I took my chances and went 3D on it. Of course I wouldn't be able to storage full 3D boards for all Underworld Seasons, so I focused only on one. Given my number of games per year, it looks reasonable.

The thing is that, speaking of storage, my boards posed quite a problem. I simply couldn't make them fit in any shelf, wardrobe or whatever. So I had to make a difficult decision... and let them go.

I didn't have to put an Elsa costume on or sing let it go or anything, so it was easier than you think. I made a donation to a local club and moved on.

But moving on means... that I need a new version of the boards, but this time making them stackable! Right, of course it's the only reasonable thing I could do, why do you ask?

I need them to be fairly threedimensional, yet flat enough to allow storage. So with this conundrum I started my Shadespire.V2...

Here I go, again on my own...

The first setback I had to face is that the company that produced the boards I used the first time had unfortunately ran out of business. After some research, I concluded that my only choice was a shop called Customeeple, that produced hexed boards fit for the game. The only issue is that... they don't provide a single MDF piece, but two halves!! Right. Go see the pic above again and you'll get what I'm saying.

OK, some extra work, but still doable. I glued a reinforcement below and those hexes on top. Now I have a solid structure. Now let's think of the 3D aspect of it.

...going down the only road I've ever known...

That's the top height I was comfortable to afford. I provided five support points with the same height. So anything I stack over this board will keep horizontal. I checked several times, trust me :D

Well, let's add some salty details. As in my previous iteration, I'm marking the starting positions on the board with crystals; or more properly speaking, Wyrdstone. What can I say, I'm still oldschool. I added some skulls and rocks too, for some warhammerical ambientation.

No element can get higher than the five designated support points

Time for texture. Just DAS putty:

No need to cover everything, you just need to give an impression of an irregular field

Then I added sand, fine gravel and stuff

The same, but in the sunlight

The areas without sand will be some puddles, as this board will look like some puny marshes or something. Now it was time for some colour. I have only one trick here: throw all you have on the board!

You can't have enough tones of brown. Mix and try everything

After proper drybrushing to provide some homogeneisation, I painted the puddles. I had some doubts here. I should have painted them brownish, but then there wouldn't be any kind of visual contrast and it all would be too dull. So I sacrificed realism for conventionalism, and settled for blues.

Dirty blues, with a lot of greens and browns

OK. But for now the board looks like a weird desert. All that water calls for at least some grass...

So some grass it is!

With some true natural daylight

The same, but inside, so you can compare

I also added some bushes here and there

You may have been asking what are those three weird sticks on a row supposed to represent. Well, my intention was to have an old fence all shattered. All these pieces come from a Renedra kit.

I hope they finally make sense!

Let's have a look at the whole board:

Finally coming along

I mean, I could totally play here

I would ordinarily declare this board finished. But not today. I have a confession to make. I had been collecting falling leaves during all the Autumn, and using this puncher by Green Stuff World:

It can get repetitive, but the results are worth of it

The good thing of going out with the kids is that no one will judge you if they see you collecting hundreds and hundreds of leaves. I guess that seeing a bearded adult doing the same might look a little more weird. But I have also done it though.

I mean, I need a lot of leaves.

I know what you did last Autumn

I'm not showing the final bag I ended up with because it's ridiculously big even for me XD

Now it comes the time to apply the leaves on the board!

One by one, with a tiny drop of superglue

I even wanted to add more, but I had no sanity points left for it

You may probably come with an easier solution, but in the end this method worked for me, as it gave me full control of what I was doing and had no leaves unglued whatsoever.

Just a close-up

And again, an outdoors shot of the board, now definitely finished

This is what playing on it will look like

Final shot

I'm trying to find a balance between an hexed board (where you can actually see the hexes and have no misleadings about the tile your mini is on) and a natural, visually appealing display. I'm learning a lot and will definitely bring some of these techniques to future boards.

But for now what can I say? One done, three more to go! I don't know when will I start the second one, but I think I have some ideas of what I want to do...

It's been an infinity since last time I posted...

 ...but it's because it took me all this time to think of a title for the post.

After my first incursion into these ranges, it was time for the Yu Jing set! Well, first thing I have to say is that they are, of course, as detailed as their Panoceania counterparts, and that's wild. I mean, they all are gorgeous sculpts, but they are pretty challenging because of that!

This time I found the main base colour at the first try, which makes me utterly happy :D

It's a particular orange. I used a 50/50 mix of Vallejo... "Transparent Orange"? (a pretty neutral orange) and Deep Yellow:

So now it's really a kind of yellow

And then I used GW's Iyanden Yellow Contrast as a wash, as I've done some times before. This provides a kind of orange I' happy with:

I can work with this

So, you know, as usual in my techniques, the key is to use the paints to any other purpose different than they were designed for. Do it wrong to make it right!

Anyway, I painted all the oranges on a row:

At this stage the main precaution is not to lose any bit

You may notice there's an intruder there, the girl with the rocket launcher down in the pic. It's Oktavia Grímsdóttir, a special character who doesn't really belong to this faction. However, I had to paint her jacket in this colour, so I just got her there. I'll have that mini finished for the next installment of the project.

Now I had to paint different kinds of not-really-black clothes. For the trousers I used a mix of dark green- dark blue- black mix (highlights from there with more blue). For the cloaks I went for a more neutral grey (black and grey) and the armour pieces were made with a mix of German Camo green and Black. Finally, weapons were made with a Royal blue and Black mix, adding grey to the mix for the highlights.

You haven't read the above paragraph and I'm OK with it

I dared to use the Apothecary White Contrast paint, and I was surprised with the result:

Unexpected success

In the end this is what I got. Here you have the armour guys. The guy on the left is a Dàofěi (of course I had to google all the names). Apparently it translate as "Bandit", a name taken from their training methods. My research says that in Mandarin it should be pronounced "Tǔfěi". Not really essential data, but if I know that, now you have to know it too.

The one on the right is a Jujak, which is Korean Shock Infantry. My research on this unit has been quite frustrating as I have found almost nothing, but no doubt he looks like a tough guy.

You don't want to mess with them

Not as impressive, but don't mess with them anyway

The sniper lady is a Hùndùn, which translate as "faceless", after the evil creature from Chinese mythology who embodies chaos and confusion. The bloke with the shotgun is a Gŭiláng ("Ghost Wolf"), who are the special arctic branch of the Yu Jing Army.

I hope I'm just writing those names right

I'm not sure if those coats are practical, but of course they are cool

Finally, the Zhànshì Qízhì (Troops of the Banner), the core of the army, light infantry troopers:

I wouldn't dare to paint an Imperial Guard sized army this way, but the minis are gorgeous

Well, I really don't see those tight pants in service in the military, but that's another issue

 Yu Jing has eight separate armies, each one with their banner. The one on Svalarheima, where this Operation Kaldstrom takes place, is the White Banner Army.

I'm used to WH40K, where finding background on the units is pretty easy, but there's not that much info on this, so I'm trying my best to get the fluff. It always helps me to understand the unit itself and gives me some kind of insights when painting.

Anyway, here you have the core force painted:

 

Camouflage is clearly not an issue in this game

So these are the two forces of the core box:

I need to build a backdrop for group shots like this one!

 My pal asked for urban bases, but what you see is temporary, I will add some rubble and stuff when I have all the minis finished.

I've talked about Oktavia Grímsdóttir above, but I also have a few more minis for both sides, so this is not the last you've seen on this project!