#Applepicking 28 and Advanced Apple Picking

 

Dear Hobbyists,

A few weeks ago, during some “quality” time with my family (aka quarantine), my wife suggested to me, to “paint one of the little men” with my son to pass the time.

At first, I was a bit hesitant, but when he, 4 year old wit that he is, declared, that he is a “big boy” now and that I had promised to make some models with him, once he is a “big boy”, I had no further excuses. So, I sat down and thought about what miniature I could give him to paint.

As he has had no contact with TV series or any “brands” so far, there was no starting point for me there. We also try to raise him in an open, liberal and non-violent manner, so that playing “war” was not an option for me as well.

Podcast time!

Greetings everybody!
Since Corona leaves us with so much free time (not...), what better way to spend these lonely evenings than with listening to a podcast.

If you are keen on listening to ramblings about sculpting, toy and... stuff, you can do that here , since, ages ago, I had that chat with Mr. pink and Brother Pink and they finally have come around to make it into a piece of audio. So... enjoy!

If you are to lazy, to click on that button, you can also follow the link after the jump...

Frostgrave - Perilious Dark : The things in the marshes

Greetings everybody!


As I have promised, this is the first "game report" of our remote Frostgrave campaign "Perilous Dark". We did some rule changes to the warband creation, which I will illustrate next time.
This time, we will follow our "heroes" into the salt marshes, where the try to find out, what has happened to missing villagers...


More, as always, after the jump.

Frostgrave -Perilous Dark: The things in the marshes [Prelude]

Greetings everybody,

I will (again) try to "report" the games we have with the frostgrave ruleset.
In times of social distancing, we decided not to be stopped by Covid 19 from having fun and dubbed for playing "Remote Frostgrave" (as I have described in my previous post). These posts shall be a mix of eyecandy (pictures taken during the games) and the storyline I am cooking up to keep everything together. We use the Scenario Rules as described in the Frograve: Perilious Dark" Supplement, but, as we have done before, we will use these rules just as the framework and make up our own fluff and additional rules to go along with it. As the goal is to have fun, we will make changes along the way, as we see fit.

So... follow me into the darkness... to Frostgrave...

#Remote Frostgrave

Greetings everybody!

It has been over a year, since I have started to play (and to love) Frostgrave and shortly before christmas, I have finished my first campaign (Thaw of the Lich Lord). The final scenario had a special treat; while in all the games before, we had to smash each others heads in, now, we had to fight together against the game itself.
And it was a blast.
So we decided to play Frostgrave: Perilous Dark  , a coop version of the game, next. We almost had everything ready, when the Corona-Crisis forced everybody to stay home.
Surely, the campaign is designed to be playable as a solo campaign aswell... but... in times like these, it is nice to share the hobbylove with a fellow mind and get some well deserved distraction from the world going mad, right?

So, we decided to play our beloved Frostgrave... just remotely.
How we did it and how it worked... after the jump.

How to Rock

Greetings everybody!

Don't be mislead by the title. This how to has nothing to do with the teeny series, not the actor... or the music.

It is about... rocks, stones and sand. Or, in a nutshell, how to create rocklike textures on styrodur.
When I was working on my mining table for Infinty, I wanted  a quick and realistic looking texture, without having to use something heavy like stewalin or exhausing like cutting all the structures by hand.

So, if you are interesed in a rather quick and cheap technique, head this way ->

 Materials:

- Papertowels, idealy without any structure. (Don't buy that 1000 Pack on Amazon, you don't need    

   thaat much of towels... I have the basement now full of that stuff) 

- some fine sand

- pva glue

- a handblender
- a bowl

- acryl colors (black and brown)

- prepared terrain

Of Cause you can use almost anything as a base to work upon, I have cut some XPS board into rough shapes. I got derailed with some, but don't spend to much time on getting that nice texture out of the foam. It will probably dissapear. 

Now, that we have everything in place, the fun starts. Tearing the paper. Every paper has a "tear direction", in which you can easily rip the paper in to long lines. I grab a bounch of tissue papers (~10 at a time), tear them into long lines, which I then tear into smaller pieces, about 2x2cm.

Put the shreds into a bowl, add water and let them soak nicely. Fill up the water until it coveres the paper. If you would have to much water, you could always squeeze it out afterwards.

In this chase, I didn't give the paper that long to soak. But it makes the blending much easier, if you give it an over night soak.

Now to the fun (aaaand a bit messy) part. Use a hand blender to shred everything to mush. Here come a bit to much water in handy, otherwise you handblender will have a bit more work.

If you had too much water, you can now easily squueze it out. Make sure the mush is moist, but not to watery, otherwise, squeeze out the excess. Having little water in the mix speeds up the curing and makes it easier to control the texture.

Now, for some fine, grainy texture, add some fine sand. Just a bit... you don't want to have your rocks look like sand dunes.

Now,  add pva-glue. Lots. The pva will keep your mush in place and will seal off the XPS, so you can use a spray can to speed up the painting process.

And now... acrylic paint. Black and brown. That saves you from work some priming the fines cavities.

Stir...

Then, take a large brush and apply on the XPS rocks. I found it usefull, to start at ground level and work upwards.

Finished?

Almost... I sprinkle some more fine sand onto the still wet paste at a steep angle. This way larger areas gain a bit more texture and flat, "boring" surfaces are avoided. 

Well... that's  it.

I have used several different spray paints to paint my rock, but mainly because I am a lazy frog. Using drybrushing, pigments and other techniques you can easily get some great results.

I hope you found this tutorial useful! 

Stay save, stay at home and stay tuned ;)

How to Fire Pit

Greetings everybody!

As you might have seen, I have recently started to venture into the frozen city of Felstad, playing Frostgrave with my good, old pal M. The board we play on, belongs to M and therefore I only can come up with good suggestions of what might look cool on the board.
A few weeks ago, M the great idea of using an LED-Tea Candle to build a glowing mystical crystal, as you can see here:

I really liked the idea and suggested to make some fire pits, to bring more light in his dungeon.
He then told me in depth, how long it would take to do something like that and I picked up the challenge.

The task is clear: a cheap, quick and easy way to build a fire pit from a LED tea candle...