Rippa's Snarlfangs

 In the "no one ever knows what comes next" series in this blog, today I'm bringing some dear, lovely Goblins! Yes, OK, I had to look up for the name of these fellas, "Rippa's Snarlfangs". Sure thing, Games Workshop, sure. Cool wolf rider Goblins, that's all.

I admit they don't look specially Oldhammerish, but I also have to admit that these wolves look really cool. Not 100% what I envision when I read The Hobbit, but utterly good looking nevertheless.

They conform a warband for Underworlds, so I have yet another excuse to get back to that game!

Here you have the three of them: 

The Goblin version of Bretonnian cavalry

Not pretty sure if that sword is really functional

I don't know who's angrier, the wolf or the rider

Unfortunately there's only three of them. I guess it makes sense for Underworlds, but I'd really like to have a few more!

I cannot play the Battle of the Five Armies with just these!

 That's it, a nice little side project. I have quite a few ideas of the like, so I may do some other small things in this fashion. We'll see what comes next!

Second second board

 New installement in my second attempt of building boards for Underworlds!

I had quite a clear idea of what I wanted, so the first steps were more or less pretty straightforward. First thing, put the two half-boards together. I glued them to another MDF surface:

Here we go again!

In case you wonder, I of course could have used only the below MDF piece, but having the laser cut hexes is an enormous time saver, so it all was quite a no brainer for me. This approach came with its own setbacks, but I'll get to that later. For now let's just move forward. I wanted this board to have a rod as main element, so I just made it with DAS clay:

It could be a river, but it's a road, trust me

I used a roll pin to provide texture, nothing too complicated:

Walls, floors or roads are all the same to me!

And then I just marked the hex grid on the road:

There are tiles in the tiles

With this, I could say that I had the main element in place. From now on it all was a matter of embellishment. I knew this was the best moment to bring these beauties back:

As first seen here

I wasn't sure of what exactly to use, but here you have my first take:

I would change my mind later on, but you get the idea

As I told you before, making these boards stackable is a must. It's my true priority. So any sign or any other piece of scenery could not be excessively high or, if that wasn't possible, then it had to be removable.

So the signs were to be added on a game by game basis, I just made room for two of them and that's all. Apart from that, I wanted to use some ruins. I had these Age of Sigmar pillars, which I cut at maybe 1cm high. I then provided the same heighth for any other element on the board, ensuring that another board could be stacked just on top on this one when storaged:

Better explained here. I have four support bits of the same heighth

But this is how it's going to look when gaming

Well, let's get dirty! Some sand and gravel...

This is where you have to rememeber to not cover the grid!

Oh, by the way. Cutting the pillars away is quite a [redacted] of a job. I thought I could press mould the pice for the future:

The hole on the top is to make the upper piece fit in there

Unfortunately, I didn't take the right precautions and I broke the mould on the first piece... and had already glued the orginal bits on the board. So I may have to repeat the experience to see if I can get it right, I hope it will spare me quite some time in the long term.

Let's splash some browns on that board:

Well, all the browns you have. Don't be shy

Now let's tone it down a little:

Ugly wasteland

I painted some puddles and the Wyrdstone I use to indicate the starting tiles in the game. Here you can finally get a proper idea of the board I had first envisioned:

Still ugly and still a wasteland

In order to make it coherent with the first board I already had, I added some grass:

I also partially covered the road, to show the decay and so

Some flock, small branches as fallen trees and tiny leaves

I guess there's nothing else to add, just have a look at the finished board, ready to have a game on it:

It's almost the same pic as above. Spot the four differences!

A few close-ups. There's one thing I regret, I should have added some more variety on the slabs of the road, as I've done other times. I wanted to get the board done and move on, but it bugs me. I may have to repaint them so there are some more colours and not just plain broken white

Anyway, it serves its purpose

The signs are painfully Warhammerical

This is how a game will eventually look like!!

A general overview of the finished thing:

 I also have to paint the edge of the board. It really looks awful this way.

 So now I have two boards! Though limited in my options, I can have a game again!

Oops, what's happening here?

Here you can see the issue I mentioned at the beginning. After having glued the two half-boards to the MDF large piece underneath, I experienced some serious warping. I've been cautious, as I don't want to break the board now, but I've learnt that I need to use less glue or to explore other solutions. Anyway, as I said, this is finally game-ready:

I really want to make the real thing

Finally, the relevant issue. How flat is actually the board?

I can work with this. Now these are stackable

I think I can build the other two boards and still be able to storage them, which is really a concern for me. If you are willing to follow me on this adventure, just stay tuned!

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...