The Menhirs of Gelosul – a tutorial on standing stones

After a long hiatus I return to the blogosphere with a new tutorial. A full-time job, moving countries and the advent of a baby boy did somewhat reduce my hobby time to almost zero and only slowly I get back into a rhythm of late night hobbying. Nevertheless work continues on my forest themed gaming boards.

In this post I focus on making standing stones from scratch, a staple in any fantasy game, but also interesting for the historical wargamer. Making some ancient menhirs for the gaming table is a fairly simpel affair. You won’t need fancy supplies or exotic materials. So come along and explore ancient sites deep inside the forest.

Enthroned in darkness – How to make a ruined shrine and flagstone bases

Last time we fashioned a diorama base featuring weathered gravestones, a gnarly autumn tree and moss-covered flagstones. As promised  in this second installment we will focus on an objective token or a small piece of scatter terrain featuring a ruined shrine and a removable birch tree. Naturally nothing stops you to use it as a scenic base instead or to incorporate this idea into a gaming board.

We will also cover how to make a generic flagstone base if the miniature you are working on does not demand a very elaborate base.

Given I already covered the basic techniques in the graveyard base tutorial, I will only provide instructions for new elements and some work in progress pictures with short annotations for the rest. The list of materials needed is similar to the graveyard base one, with some exceptions noted below.

In taberna quando sumus – building a tavern in 28mm part I

The tavern is one of the most iconic staples of any fantasy role-playing game. It is the place where many adventures start and where  prospective quest givers and shady informers can be found. Naturally it is also a place where our heroes  end up in great a many brawls or spend the coin they earned on drink, food and rumours. Naturally a tavern can also be an excellent terrain piece for historical games. Many generals of renown made the local tavern their headquarters or lodged  there for some time.

We see, the potential for a tavern in our gaming is endless, but how to go about creating a tavern?

In this first part I will cover the basics: features a tavern might have, basic construction techniques, materials needed and so on. To exemplify these I built a prototype that consists of a house front and floor only, well suited to experiment with different techniques, but also an excellent photography or gaming background when finished.