Mordheim Board *Update pg2*

Dashworth

Member
Welcome to the build thread for my Mordheim board!

Here’s a pathetic doodle of what I am going to try and build!

F622CF3B-5D24-4076-A2DC-92A13A684E36.jpg


Anyway…. couple of weeks a go, me and some friends decided that we were going to try and meet up and play a few games of something.

We finally decided on Mordheim as it wasn’t a bank breaking experience buying the models. (Most of us have everything anyway) and along with all knowing how to play it, We all have fond memories of playing it years ago.

After lots of smack talk on Whatsapp, I volunteered to make some scenery for the game.
Friends of mine who will be playing are also currently playing frost grave at their local club and as a result have made some fantasy scenery themselves.

The idea being that we would have enough scenery to completely saturate two 4x4 boards and play multiple games simultaneously probably once a month. Maybe twice if we’re lucky!

And so on to the build!

This was my first piece. It was quite basic but I just kind of sat down and started cutting out bits of foam core until I had built this.

D2DED9B0-FDE3-4EEF-8DD1-0C22A2AA8CD0.jpg


18379DD9-2545-423A-BAAF-EEDABE0ADAC9.jpg


3A35169D-E5B2-45B9-A3C8-C6FB04EF8C2B.jpg


Everything I’m building is basing on coffee mats and place mats as they are brilliant for stability. They don’t break and don’t require any cutting. The cork underneath also does quite a good job of protecting anything that might be underneath.

The floor boards and wooden cladding is from coffee stirrers my wife bought back from work. She works in hospitality and I asked if she could get me some. That evening when I picked her up, I had a bazillion coffee stirrers to model with!

After building my first piece, I wasn’t really very happy. It looked too ‘Insta-ruins’. The sort you buy at Games Workshop when you know no better.
As a result of my initial disappointment, I decided to build something a bit more GrimDark and set about building the gallows.

Gallows

A2CCBE03-3CC6-43B5-9DD7-69F3F3458BEC.jpg


16ED5C31-5B1E-496F-8DC6-128AA58AD975.jpg


They worked out pretty well considering its held together with absolutely tons of Glue from my trusty glue gun!
I have literally built everything in this thread with a glue gun and think it’s the best stuff in the world!

My next piece of scenery I wanted to build something that was still fairly modular as it would need to fit onto a place mat. I wanted to build something really playable as I had attempted to the first time but without looking so ‘Insta’ruin’. This was the result.

857788AC-D970-4507-B5D0-2FBB2A52318B.jpg


CCC55EE0-92B0-47C5-9376-65F8A682C63D.jpg


C953151D-AAAD-40D6-80AD-5442B995ECF1.jpg


9CD1D370-4F6C-4804-94D3-CEE51C6E7475.jpg


E51E3258-FE49-413F-B60F-BEA4C8086C63.jpg


558FC647-DE24-4203-95BC-F5A0622ECB32.jpg


A65E5CAE-3780-428C-8D61-5356181F7A00.jpg


The majority of it is just more foam core and coffee stirrers but as you can see from the pictures, I’ve used some balsa wood I bought from HobbyCraft to add bits to it.

The roof is just cereal box cardboard with I cut into strips and then cut vertically almost all the way through so I could lay it in strips.
All held together by vast amounts of glue which has made it very robust and insure it doesn’t fall to pieces after the first game.

The coffee stirrer floorboards are supported underneath by mounting card which you cannot see unless you turn the model upside down. It gave it a lot more structure and it meant that we could put large heavy models on every floor without fear of it all collapsing.

After building my second piece, I decided to build another smaller piece of scatter terrain as I had quite a lot of off cuts of Balsa wood due to not really measuring anything properly.

The result was a rather amusing outhouse

198A9A83-DA64-4B1F-9A2A-AAEAA91EFB04.jpg


For some reason, I remember when my local GW was demoing Mordheim when it was first released and they had built something similar on their board. It always made me chuckle and I thought that this was a nice homage to their original board.

The next piece I built was rather more ambitious. I liked how the previous building had turned out side I decided to do something very similar.
However I decided that I didn’t want to make tow identical buildings. My reasoning behind that being that I thought that A) it didn’t look very in keeping with the Mordheim artwork I had been looking at for inspiration. B) I didn’t want to just make generic L shaped ruined buildings.

So I built this:

92B1B3BD-6771-4841-95DB-C04E0A01210D.jpg



1AD117A3-413B-4219-9DAC-B6651638A3FB.jpg


FB3EEB89-C7BD-4F03-A906-DCF38CEA8E99.jpg


8B5A059A-3764-4FB4-83D3-CF1A0EF1C5E2.jpg


C29FA451-DD70-4E05-91DF-3E593055B717.jpg


76F63616-B5C4-4BF6-988E-8C8BC53638CB.jpg


The tower was a bitch! I started by cutting out a very large piece of foamcore and then simply scoring it every two cm until I could wrap it around itself.
Unfortunately because I really didn’t pay attention in maths at school I had to google how to figure out various measurements inside and still messed it up to the point its just stuffed with crap inside to hold the bottom floor up!

The rest was fairly straight forwards and the roof tiles were curled up on every additional layer so made it look brilliant, even if I do say so myself.

The rest of the building was done exactly the same at the previous building with oodles of glue, coffee stirrers and balsa wood.
Once I had finished the main part of the building, I decided the tower looked a bit boring and limited the use of it in game terms.

To combat this I initially thought of building some form of walkway or spiral staircase but after trying to build something that looked half decent I got very angry and smashed/ripped it all off.

A few beers later and several cigarettes and I had calmed down. I then decided to build a balcony and It seemed to work out really well and suited the Mordheim GrimDark look of the GW artwork.

FB7C3DFE-2386-4F8F-B50E-98AE64B5678E.jpg


After building the tower, I continued with another house/parade of shops and made another balcony for it.
I ended up cutting/ripping a hole in the middle of it though to keep the whole piece as dynamic as possible so all the models could enter the building at multiple points.

Once I had built the previous large pieces of scenery, I had a chat with a friend who would be playing in the campaign and was told that maybe I should make some more small pieces.
Whilst he was right, I didn’t want to loose the height aspect of the what I was building so decided to build two smaller houses

36DA4DB7-55F1-4595-9243-D19A61037A5B.jpg


I was really happy with the result on these as the base is heavy enough to allow me to build multiple overhangs whilst remaining very very sturdy.

The single houses looked so good that I decided to build something of the same style but in a much bigger scale

97903F8F-22DD-41C9-8AEC-08C51968238E.jpg


B85993C2-521C-461F-A2AA-6D0BEE8FCF46.jpg


You can see from the ruler that these things are huge! They stand almost two foot tall and have loads and loads of playability.
They also fit the theme of Mordeim really well and Im hoping they paint up a treat

When I was done with all of the building, I decided to crack out my board to see if I had built enough to cover at least one.

DB95FB24-8646-40D3-A8E2-4B75A1169118.jpg


As you can see, It’s pretty much there save a few additional pieces of scatter terrain. As I was building all of this though we collectively decided that others would be building/bringing some scatter terrain to fill out any empty spaces on the board!

Anyway.... I hope you like everything so far. Please feel free to leave some feedback as comments and Critisism are welcome :)

Dash.
 

Dashworth

Member
Re: Dash's Mordheim Board

DB95FB24-8646-40D3-A8E2-4B75A1169118.jpg


Once I had seen how much I had made, I decided to make a few more generic houses and shop fronts on smaller and larger bases (coasters and place mats)

I think in the end I got a bit carried away in making stuff and in the end I ended up absolutely tons of stuff including a fountain that is currently just a toilet roll stuck to a mat but I’m waiting for a few Ebay purchases to arrive so I can stick a model on top and have a little statue as a centre piece.

Once I had completed all the pieces I wanted to build, I set about basing them.
For the rubble, I had used Cat litter...

Now as mental as this sounds… It works really well for large piles of rubble and looks a hundred times better than bits of sprue in a blender PVA’d to the base.
Once I had glue gunned the cat litter down, I used a mix of sharp sand and a bag of woodlands scenic’s course rubble mixed with some cat litter and just chucked it all on.

Again, I am really really happy with the results.

40C01B04-369A-4146-83AC-1041906CDB50.jpg


16AA0643-93D4-40F9-891F-B8947AD4EA65.jpg


070BC664-ABB9-4C8E-9CD4-2ADA390B64AC.jpg


B8E2AB5B-5946-4A38-9A26-88ECC87C6819.jpg


FBB65D8C-3062-4421-A3E1-BD85880D8ED5.jpg
 

Dashworth

Member
Re: Dash's Mordheim Board

My next plan on action, now that I had built and based everything I wanted to build, was to texture paint all of the foam core.
There were two reasons for doing this.

A) When it comes to painting the buildings, I could dry brush them and get a really decent look without having to paint it on and waste loads of time.
B) The spray paint would have melted certain parts of the model and It would have looked peculiar with card walls and no interior filling!

CBB9F4B3-E48D-41AF-AACE-F0CBFBEDFCC5.jpg


Unfortunately this is the only photo I have of any WIP with the texture paint.
I make it myself and usually use it to texture boards when I need to build one. It’s a mix of around 60/30/10 of plaster (usually interior pollyfiller) masonry paint and PVA glue.

The plaster and paint mix allows you to stipple the mixture onto the model and it will keep its shape whilst the PVA in the mix makes it a bit more durable when its dry and stops it flaking and cracking when its being moved around and models moving in and out of it.

Once All of the models had been suitably covered in texture paint and allowed to dry, It was time to base paint the models.
The following pictures show the brown spray paint I’ve used to base coat the models.

It’s from Halfords and cost around £7 a can. It’s not too bad but I was pretty shocked at how much I’ve needed to get a decent base coat on everything… to the point where I had to go back in and buy six cans a few days ago just to ensure I had enough to get it all done!

Its ever so slightly darker than GW’s old scorched brown colour but has given me a really good base for the paint to go onto the housing

990B7FB9-1323-4F0E-B5DE-8FA5E33F0BCE.jpg


917C98EE-A4FF-45FF-B1DB-D9D69C6DE922.jpg


972BCA09-07A6-4BAE-8DA8-75A3674B0F68.jpg


Finally, As I am currently office based at work due to an injury I sustained I have found myself with a lot of spare time at work.
As a result I’ve been able to do quite a bit of research and come across some really cool stuff.
These posters being the coolest thing by far!

5D252AA8-B0FF-41A5-8A7B-A241CFA30A0C.jpg


1968EAB3-67D2-4E82-A84A-230FB0682EDE.jpg

They were on a blog somewhere or on tumblr or something… a part of the internet I don’t really understand I guess.
I managed to save each one individually though and then copy them to a MS publisher document before printing them all off.

The wanted posters were a PDF somewhere else and came already nicely ordered so I’ve pinched them too!

I hope you enjoy the updates!
 

Mason

Member
Re: Dash's Mordheim Board

That is wonderful progress, enough to get gaming on already.
:grin:

As an owner of a Mordheim table I would suggest a few shortcuts that may help with burnout:

Grab yourself some cheap paintbrushes that come in big packs for next to nothing and drybrush your way through that lot all at the same time, or in large chunks.
Looking at the amount you have already could be very daunting if you do them one at a time.

Use cheap emulsion from a DIY store for the base layers or cheap acrylic paints as there is a lot to cover there.
Any other form of paint could cost a fortune.

Make a load of walkways and ladders from coffee stirrers and paint them all in one fell swoop, as they can be boring as hell if done in small groups.
The walkways joining building are really the best way to get the most out of those tall buildings

Scatter terrain; boxes, crates, barrels, even piles of rubble all add a great look to the table and really help to fill it.

Also, and something that I have not done yet: Make some 'blocks' big enough for buildings to sit on out of foam. It is easy to add detail to insulation foam and really adds to your options when trying to lay the table out in different ways.
 
Re: Dash's Mordheim Board

Wow wonderful project. I like the idea with the posters to add to the buildings as this give a more realistic look.....

keep posting progress pics
 
Re: Dash's Mordheim Board

Shaping up to some quality terrain.

I have a suggestion about the wood. If you draw exagerated wood grain on with a biro before painting it it really helps. Balsa and lollipop sticks tend to look like higly finished wood when painted. I think in mordheim some heavy grain texture will really make the wood look older and more shodily made.
 

Dashworth

Member
Re: Dash's Mordheim Board

ramshackle_curtis":302nl58c said:
Shaping up to some quality terrain.

I have a suggestion about the wood. If you draw exagerated wood grain on with a biro before painting it it really helps. Balsa and lollipop sticks tend to look like higly finished wood when painted. I think in mordheim some heavy grain texture will really make the wood look older and more shodily made.

That sounds like a fantastic Idea.... If i wasn't working quite so much and having to look after a 4 month old baby as the missus isn't feeling very well at the moment! When i get round to making bridges and walk ways I'll definately consider doing that as it sounds like a good idea.
 

Dashworth

Member
Re: Dash's Mordheim Board

Mason":2668adpr said:
Also, and something that I have not done yet: Make some 'blocks' big enough for buildings to sit on out of foam. It is easy to add detail to insulation foam and really adds to your options when trying to lay the table out in different ways.

Another really good idea. When I get round to building the board, I was going to have static peieces but making them modular so they can be removed and re positioned is a great idea. When i finally get round to ordering my cobble stone mold from eBay and some HDF foam I'll probably end up doing that so it can all be moved around
 

Dashworth

Member
Re: Dash's Mordheim Board

So Ive been relatively busy the last couple of days, trying to get as much as I can painted as the Campaign begins on Sunday and I'm either out with the family, working or at a wedding (which I would miss to finish the scenery!)

I had a friend come over the other day to play test it and make sure that it was as dynamic as I wanted it to be… Dark elves Vs. My Marienburg gang!

We played twice with then first game being a straight up gang fight in which I lost several models quite quickly to some very lucky repeater cross bows and then rolled 10 for my rout test and my whole gang ran away!

The second time we played we played ‘secure the find’ and had to control 3 pieces of scenery at the end of turn 8 with no running away unless you volunteered to leg it…
Thankfully I won the second game very easily and felt a little faith restored in my Gang!
Heres us playing on the unfinished board in all its (not)glory

8F34E579-403F-4865-8B9F-F3150B2E90A2.jpg


As you can see, Ive done a little painting over the weekend but tonight was a big push to try and get as much of the scenery done as possible. All of it had been texture painted and the Empire General I won on eBay turned up so it meant I could finish building the fountain before it gets a last coat of texture paint and then drybrushed to oblivion.

Here’s the fountain with the ‘statue’ that will get a very fine texture paint to rid it of some of the details and make it look like a stone carving

841015A2-A394-458D-8B42-B61D7A0E928B.jpg


Next was to paint what I had based and undercoated… Im trying not to do everything in one go as I don’t want to get bored just basing everything, then just undercoating everything etc etc.
I still have some bits that need basing, others that need texturing etc and some that still need roof tiles gluing on!
Anyway, here is the progress of the painting.

With all the undercoating done - As mentioned in a previous comment, Im using artists acrylic but it comes in 40ml tubes and is really thick with a good coverage. Painting onto the dark brown only takes about a coat and a half to get a nice cream colour.
26D2748C-585F-428F-B389-4ABF2556FB96.jpg


So I painted all the walls a colour not to dissimilar to Games workshops old graveyard earth and then highlighted with a bleached bone colour.
Both were from the same range so mixed really nicely
5B5DECC6-0856-42D0-B7B3-A7C9E2DD5733.jpg


I haven’t done any of the wood yet in this photo but i couldn’t wait to start putting the posters onto the walls.
To put the posters on, I cut them out and let them swim in a small bowl of water as the A4 paper I had printed them on wasn't really modelling friendly. I then put a wash of PVA and water onto the wall and stippled the brush against the poster to make it look like it had been glued to the building by some local business man, trying to drum up business…. or the town cryer letting one and all know about the latest public executions!
79B43174-B3BC-430D-A4B9-65D9BCA8715C.jpg


Heres a shot of the front of the house with the finished dry brushing… This was my first effort and with this one i dry brushed the umber and cream directly onto the dark brown undercoat…
It came out ok but looked very rushed, even if I do say so myself.
179BADB4-AE59-4F55-B2D7-B994167BF387.jpg


With the insides of the building I wanted them to look a little different to the outsides but as everything was going to be the same colour almost I came up with the idea of making the interior walls look like a blind man had plastered them
I literally just let the paint brush create the lines and layers of texture paint on the interior and it came out just the way i wanted it to when it came to paint it
DC02707E-4C08-468F-9A07-E59B5EB91812.jpg


As I mentioned a few lines ago, I wasn’t really happy with the dry brushing straight onto the dark brown as it made it look really rushed and exactly like i was trying to paint on a time scale… which i thought was crap.
My frustration with the dry brushing was solved with my age old friend, the heavy Wash!
I poured tons of black, brown, then watered down tea and coffee onto the model to make the interior and exterior look as old and shi**y as possible and it seemed to work.
I haven’t got any green ink to hand at the moment but now its in the state it is, I might pass on using any…. Still it depends if any of the weathering powders Ive seen do the job.
you can see i’ve also painted the floorboards and inked them up too.
5E46051C-E655-4E8C-B889-2C0C7BF0CC53_1.jpg


The interior was treated to the same sort of heavy inking. I then used black and the original brown and black spray paints to make some of the windows look like their had been fire damaged.
EFE4E956-966B-4933-A0A5-3DBF07B4A978.jpg


Heres all the current production line of buildings Im working on. There were another 2 finished but it gives you a sense of the scale of the buildings when my iMac and dining room table is present…. These buildings are Huuuuuuuuge!
54B48084-521F-46AC-829E-3583F3EFCF4C.jpg


Also, the posters I printed for the houses…. you’ve obviously been able to see a few here and there on the exterior and interiors of the buildings, I also printed off some joke posters that i planned on hiding behind walls covered with them…
Here you can see a few adverts for the competing taverns in the area, ‘YE KINGS FEAST’ and ‘YE OLDE CELLAR’… then a cheeky little poster of David Cameron for shits and giggles!
I wonder if the Wyrdstone comet was labours fault?
E9F66994-2071-43FB-86BE-B5E6B0A6AA1F.jpg


Another stupid poster, The part of the building where its hidden is quite difficult to see unless its facing you directly. I don’t know why I decided to put a poster of Donald trump on my scenery but it seems quite funny.
F5D822A4-AA17-471B-98AA-21EE20A413D7.jpg


Finally, here are the 4 that I finished tonight. Now they are all finished aside from being based Its really bringing a uniformed feel to the buildings!
248A3241-6EDA-42BD-9EC2-CEA624701A98.jpg


A couple of Individual shots of the buildings I’ve finished this evening to end the update on.
Considering how quickly I’ve built, based and painted these with minimal fuss (not including the posters) they’ve turned out really really nicely and stand up to heavy scrutiny paint wise.
They are also surprisingly strong when we were playing with them. Even as we got progressively more boozed up on cheap lager they managed to avoid being broken by two twenty something year olds! happy days!

C2E54210-EC26-4316-94AE-FFF487633F3E.jpg


D7219BDF-8F09-4F31-9512-A4ED4B2A8E0F.jpg


2F70422D-2E18-4FBD-83B0-78EFD67D8156.jpg



As always, I hope you enjoy the build thread and how its all slowly coming together… comments good and bad are always welcome!
My hands are currently shaped like claws after all the dry brushing and Inking I’ve done tonight! So its off to bed, possibly to dream about dry brushing!
 
Impressive town you have built there! I'm surprised how well that cat litter worked as rubble. Did you paint the loo yet? Because if not, I have a little advice: You could try and draw vertical lines on the balsa wood with a pen/pencil in order to make it look as if it is made of planks.

BTW, I am drinking the exact same kind of Carlsberg right now, as I'm typing :grin:
 

Dashworth

Member
The plan is to build some more scatter scenery to go between the various buildings.
I want to get it looking as ruined as possible without looking like just generic scatter scenery so I was thinking road signs, I village notice board and other bits and pieces.

We finally played our first few games yesterday. No pictures on this occasion for multiple reasons.

1.) All of the various models I had ordered on Ebay hadnt turned up in time so I was using Napoleonic models to proxy EVERYTHING!
2.) we had agreed to all meet up and play but given that I only had 2 weeks to get it all built. I simply didn't have time to get it all painted so some of it is still just foam core and lollipop sticks!
3.) 2 of the 4 of us were at separate weddings the night before and so both of us were HANGING.... badly. I think I had beer sweats until around 5pm and we started playing at 11. ^_^

Anyway. Some funny results throughout the day.
Newman's Blood Dragon vampire gang got decimated by my Marienburgers and when his vampire finally got taken out of action he rolled 'old battle wound' for his injury... I cant wait to play him and his vampire not turn up!
Deans Dark elves cleared up pretty nicely and I think he won every game he played simply by running away and shooting at everything... My Gang suffered horribly and as a result my captain is no -1WS and can no longer Run due to a smashed leg.... Thankfully as he is still BS4 I think that the injury has just confirmed he is going to be rather shooty in the following games.

Will try to get some more photos us as I complete the scenery and add more to it, but until I have a bit more spare time, It will remain how it is!

Will update soon

Dash
 

frenchfever

Member
stunning !! i am not patient enought to build my own set, but this is a great example of what talented people can do !


MAKE MORDHEIM GREAT AGAIN :mrgreen:
 
Back
Top