Hirst Arts Cathedral Update

 Mordheim, Warhammer 40k  10 Responses »
Oct 022007
 

Hirst Arts Cathedral Parts Voting on the current poll seems to be split between the 28mm Hirst Arts cathedral and a second 15mm 1930′s building facade. So I’ve been dusting both these projects off.

The last time I did any casting for the Cathedral it looks like I was pretty close to having all the required pieces! I actually started building the sub-elements of the Cathedral, but got frustrated due to problems I had getting individual bricks to bond well together into large linear columns and abandoned the project temporarily.

It turns out that temporarily meant around 18 months. Since then the cast pieces have been languishing under my steel gaming table. I fished them out from there last night and dusted them off and took the above photo.

Top right and centre right you can see the larger parts I started assembling. A few more pieces broke off those long columns centre right while I was handling them last night, so I definitely need to find a better glue.

The pieces have been drying in the garage for so long they actually feel ceramic, and almost ring when you knock them together. Hopefully the Ultracal 30 hasn’t deteriorated at all by being left unpainted for so long.

After looking at how close I was to assembling this project I am feeling inspired to complete it. But we’ll see how the voting pans out I guess!

 Posted by at 8:31 am

Hirst Arts Ruined Fieldstone Mold

 Mordheim  No Responses »
May 282007
 

Hirst Arts Ruined Fieldstone Mold Hirst Arts have just added a new mold to their Fieldstone line! It’s a nifty set of ruined Fieldstone pieces that actually fit together to create whole pieces as well. I know a lot of Fieldstone mold owners have resorted to creating and molding their own ruined pieces but it’s nice to finally have a mold created by the master.

It’s a good mold too with a mix of broken bricks, floor tiles and a couple of ruined arches. It also adds some new Fieldstone columns which will be useful for a lot of people. It definitely goes straight to the top of my Hirst Arts ‘wish list’. In fact I wish it had been available when I started building my Fieldstone Mordheim table because it would have made my life a lot easier!

No doubt it’ll be a good seller for Mr Hirst too because I’ll wager anybody that owns even a couple of Fieldstone molds will find it an attractive purchase.

 Posted by at 11:01 am

Hirst Arts Cathedral: Casting II

 Mordheim, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy  No Responses »
Apr 082006
 

Hirst Arts Cathedral Pieces I’m still casting slowly for the Hirst Arts Cathedral but have made some progress compared to my last post. I certainly have enough pieces to start assembling the major parts. However two sticking points remain: I still have to make about 20 casts of the Gothic Belltower and I need to sort out a base for the whole piece as I’d like to sort out the floorplan first before assembling walls and bell towers.

It’s going to be a real challenge to keep everything straight and level. I have a bit of room for errors however since I do intend to build a partially ruined cathedral without a complete roof. For painting I plan to use the same scheme as the recently finished 40k CD terrain as I think that’ll look good for Mordheim and 40k.

For detailing I am considering embedding rare earth magnets in the statuary alcoves and try putting together two sets of ruined statues. One themed to 40k – so lots of old Space Marines and some Guardsmen, and the other themed to Mordheim/Warhammer Fantasy – so lots of armored Knights and some Flagellants painted like stone. I also wonder if I can put together a suitable set of iconography with a large Imperial Eagle or a Sigmarite Hammer over the entrance. Hmmm well see how much of that actually gets achieved!

 Posted by at 9:19 am

Hirst Arts Cathedral: Casting

 Mordheim, Warhammer 40k  6 Responses »
Mar 172006
 

Hirst Arts Cathedral Casting I’m still slowly casting up for the Hirst Arts Cathedral while trying to finish other projects. This chart of required pieces comes from Bruce Hirst’s PDF plans. The green pieces are those I have finished casting and the blue numbers are my cast counts for the unfinished pieces. Most of the casting left to do is from the Bell Tower mold.

I’ve made a few changes to the plans, dropping the original floor in favour of one made from the Gothic Floor mold – which is why all of the plan floor pieces have been ignored. I’ve also decided not to include the decorative 1/4″ squares on the buttresses and towers and will instead use the plain 1/4″ gothic square – simply because I think the decorative pieces are too floral for 40k.

I’m not overly concerned with how many roof sections I’ve cast either because at most my Cathedral will have a ruined roof, and at least just exposed balsa wood beam-work. I figure most weapons in 40k are sufficiently explosive to remove the cathedral roof and blow out all the windows (hence little or no stained glass work either). At least that’s my rationale for not bothering to build the entire roof!

 Posted by at 1:01 pm

Paper Terrain Roundup

 Flames Of War, Mordheim, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy  7 Responses »
Mar 082006
 

28mm Paper Dungeon Much as I prefer foam card and ultracal terrain there is some very nice paper terrain available on the web.

I am vaguely considering creating an ‘undercity’ for my Mordheim table and investing less than $20 for a set of printable paper terrain could serve as a good gaming prototype before taking the time to create an entire Hirst Arts dungeon set.

Here’s the online paper terrain I’ve discovered so far:

28mm

World Works Games have probably the most extensive range of fantasy, sci fi, modern and pirate printable paper models I’ve seen. They’re all richly detailed and vibrantly coloured and quite reasonably priced considering once you purchase the PDF you can print copies to your heart’s content. They’re also in the process of creating models for an entire fantasy city which should be of interest to any Mordheim gamers already using the GW cardstock buildings.

Stone Edges have a range of fantasy dungeons and sci-fi space station interiors paper models and also have a few nice free samples for you to try. While their range is smaller than World Works, it is definitely comparable in quality imho.

Miniature Scenery are an Australian company that make a range of pre-cut MDF buildings – which while not paper are still quite interesting looking, particularly for 40k or City Fight.

15mm

www.paperterrain.com do a nice range of 15mm scale European buildings and villages. Their terrain is interesting because they use a kind of ‘slip cover’ model where a complete building can be converted to a ruined building simply by slipping the top off to reveal the ruins underneath.

MAGs Papiermodelle has some free 1:250 scale paper models with a distinctly European flavour. While they’re not 15mm scale they are so richly detailed I believe you could scale them up without any problems.

Please don’t hesitate to recommend any further paper terrain resources if you know of any! Also I’m curious to hear how this terrain stands up to regular gaming. Any visitors using paper terrain care to comment?

 Posted by at 9:05 am

New Mordheim Undead

 Mordheim  1 Response »
Mar 072006
 

It seems Northern hemisphere gamers have been graced with an updated Mordheim Undead Warband boxed set! The Necromancer, Dregs and Vampire remain the same but the new set contains some great metal themed Mordheim Zombies.

I must have missed that announcement on the Specialist Games website but Allan from Synthetic Perspectives has some nicely painted examples on his site.

Still it doesn’t really matter, because I don’t think any local retailers carry the Mordheim lines in Auckland any more alas…

 Posted by at 3:40 pm

Hirst Arts Cathedral…Should I?

 Mordheim, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy  14 Responses »
Feb 242006
 

Hirst Arts Cathedral This week I’ve seen two orders from Hirst Arts arrive in my mailbox, both with a 7 day delivery time from US to NZ which is superb.

So I now possess all the required molds to construct the monster Hirst Arts Cathedral. Today I also picked up a full 1.2m x 2.4m sheet of 3mm MDF from Onehunga ITM ($15.99) and an entire new 22kg bag of Ultracal 30 from TopMark ($53 for a pail refill). So I really have all the supplies req’d!

The million dollar question is do I have the gumption to complete such a monster project? I reckon this beast will take at least a year of solid effort to create at my normal modelling pace. So should I? Or not? Feel free to comment!

 Posted by at 1:12 pm
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