Griff and Em very kindly gave me a Vampire Counts Black Coach for my birthday! Thanks guys! It’s quite a nice piece and will easily get my VC force to 2000pts. Tempted to do a bit of light conversion…probably change the flames on the lamps and there definitely needs to be a Zombie or Skeleton hanging off the open back deck of the coach.

Still painting the Fortress towers. Have weathered their bases and drybrushed the trap-doors. Just have to paint the hinges and sort out some balsa doors.

Molded a single wooden shingle and cast it a few times in resin for the Coach House roof. Have started cutting up the casts to build the broken rooftop. The Coach House is creeping towards completion. Kind of appropriate now I have a Black Coach!

Spent $299.95NZ this month on modelling stuff which is a bit over the top! Although $150 was Lotto winnings and $80 was a present to myself as October is my birthday month.

I have cast enough wood shingle pieces to build a damaged roof for the Coach House. I’ve also been painting the wood-work on the top floor and hopefully I can finish this building shortly. It’s certainly a monster piece that towers over all the other Mordheim terrain in my garage, which means it’s often fought over as well.

After working with the wood shingle mold I believe I’ll make a custom mold of a single large roof section for casting in resin. The resin cast piece can be more easy cut up for damaged roof sections and even individual shingles which will be required for Mordheim buildings.

So the new Ogre Bulls for GW’s Ogre Kingdoms are plastic - I was wondering. Here are the plastic sprues. Unfortunately they come six to a box. I was hoping to pick up one or two for Mordheim…but I’ll have a hard time justifying purchasing a whole box of them. Possibly a metal character figure from OK will be appropriate.

Well, cobblestone and wood shingle arrived after the long weekend. Second cast is setting in the garage now. Both are up to Mr Hirst’s usual standard. Cobblestone will be used for Mordheim tiles and will almost certainly be turned into some WHFB road sections at some point. In fact I’m thinking of creating an oblong master ‘road builder’ to use up most of the RTV. Also still very keen to create at least one equilateral triangle tower for use with the wall sections.

Primed fortress tower trap doors last night, ready for some dry-brushing tonight.

Spray based four Dire Wolves. Picked up another can of ‘Spray-Kote’ satin black enamel for NZ$9.95. Picked up two more hogs bristle brushes for NZ$4, they’re great for terrain painting.

Applied gravel to front of all wall sections for the Fortress. Finished trap door for last tower and applied resin cast hinges to all trap doors. Must cut balsa door sections and break out burnt umber student’s paint to base the doors and trapdoors. Must get some of these tower pieces to varnishing stage!

Sanded down and glued together the base of a Vampire Count’s ‘tower’ terrain piece.

+2 Gravestone markers. Sculpted a crude little hinge and cast it for detailing the Fortress. It will also be handy for doors as the hinge is easily cut or snapped in two along the middle.

When molding little or rather detailed pieces like this it’s definitely worth sacrificing a brush to paint the first coat of RTV over the master before pouring the rest. I find a moderately stiff hogs bristle brush works best because it pushes the RTV into all the nooks and crannies.

There’s a great article on the Flames of War site about scratch building 15mm plaster walls for buildings and diaromas. This technique could also be used for custom Mordheim or WHFB pieces.

Attached legs spider with a lot of pinning. Legs bend quite nicely for posing although I still need to patch various gaps in the joins. Cleaned up green stuff on Lahmian Vampire:

The stuff I ordered from Freebooter miniatures arrived too. Everything is a little smaller than I expected but it’s actually all in 25mm scale. The gargoyles are very nicely sculpted and will look great on a Mordheim building. The window sets will be very handy for the Vampire Counts Tower I intend to build once the Fortress and finish off the Coach House. Just waiting for the Hirst Arts molds to arrive…

Such a nice day today and I was looking after my son in the afternoon while my wife was at work. Wandered down the road and picked up two more sheets of foam card for $15NZ.