Some results! Bilbo's Birthday Bash

OK!  Bilbo's Bash is over, and it is time to begin the review.  The short answer is freakin' amazing!

When you sign up for this tournament, you are in for something special.  Everybody walks away with something, leaving no one empty handed.  The swag had the nifty custom dice, the priority medallion, and the dice bag/patch.

Everyone also received a box of figures, whether you won an award or not.

Did I mention food?  Yes, lunch was provided on both days.  Yea!  It is the first tournament where I did not attempt to starve myself to death.  That makes for a much more pleasant experience. :-)

On the topic of pleasant experiences, this truly was just such an event for me.  Pound for pound, the painting efforts for this tournament were tremendous.  Lots of talent and care on display.  It was an honor to take part.  The players were of the variety that you would love to play against all the time.

Given the amount of effort that is put into this tournament by Brent, Chris et all, it makes sense that the participants would also try to make it a great environment.  Normally my favorite part of a tournament is when it is over!  This time around, I was a little bummed when it was over.

As you can see, I was fortunate enough to win the Best Apperance award.  There were lots of really fantastic armies there.  All the efforts on the display board proved to be well worth it!

The trophies were beautiful, and there were some extra jars of paint as well. :-)

In addition, they had a separate painting contest.  How cool is that?  Once more, I was fortunate to win Best Painted Single with Radaghast the Brown...

Also, I managed to take home a trophy for Best Painted Cavalry with my converted Saurumon figure

These pictures don't show all the additional work that went in to the tournament, such as the individually themed gaming tables, which was very fun, and impressive!

I can't emphasize enough just how great this event was.  Everyone there was very fun to be with, and it was a great time.  I will start posting pictures of the games later tonight!

The Battle of Fortress Falls: Minis on the display board!

Well, there were definitely many times where I did not think I would ever see this.  A week before the tournament, I had given up hope of ever getting this done.  Instead, I was going to paint up a few magnetized boards like my Grey Knight army board from Adepticon.

I don't know if it was insanity or pure spite that drove me to get this board done.  From our recent experience making the terrain board for the Dragon Shoppe, I thought that the 'terrain' part of the board could be done very rapidly.  It was all the buildings on top that would be the problem.

My original vision was a large set of structures that would be interlocked together, with towers and platforms, water cascading through it all, etc.  That part had to be abandoned, which was a bummer.  I also had to give up writing out the story and fluff behind the armies, which I never do.

I was determined to at least have some kind of structures on the board, so I went with the ruins, as I mentioned in a previous post.  As it turns out, everyone else (who was not me!), had no idea about any of this inner turmoil, or the original plan. :-)  They just saw a neat landscape with waterfalls!

So, in the end, it was well worth all the extreme stress.  Getting to see both armies interacting on this piece was very gratifying.  Knowing that we can also use it for our games is even cooler!

Also, the magnetic primer really did help.  While the flock and grass did cut down on the magnetic effect in some places, it seemed to offer just enough hold to keep minis from flying off the board!

I was surprised at how much room there was for all the minis.  I could easily have gotten many more on here.  My thought process was to make the outcroppings large enough for a mini or two here and there.  Man, there's gonna be a lot of climb rolls on this baby!

Here's Delilah preparing to call Nature's Wrath on some chariots...

The King is trying to figure out just how he's gonna get across that river...

Gwaihir defends his nesting grounds...

Later today I will get into the tournament itself!  Stay tuned.

Water world: Creating the falls!

The tournament has now come and gone.  Yes, I know that you are wanting some info on the tournament results, but that is going to have to wait for now...

You have heard over and over how time was running very low for the end of this project.  At this point, we were going to have to be leaving the house in about 5 hours.  I had not packed anything, not slept, and not even started the waterfalls!  Can't have a Fortress Falls without it.

So, out came the Woodland Scenics water effects.  It is a lot like Elmer's glue, but a slightly different set of ingredients.  I wanted churning water, so I took a relatively stiff flat brush to spread out the effects into the river bed.  If there was more time, I would have done a few layers, but there would only be time for one.

I started to get desperate, so I took the top off the bottle and started squeezing out huge chunks of it.  That really worked well!

The real fun part of all this was going to be the falls themselves.  To get this:

You need this.  It is a plastic sheet with all of the water effect spread out with a flat brush.  Once the effects dry, it forms a clear textured 'sheet' that looks like falling water!  Be careful though, as it remains sticky.  While this is great for getting it attached to the rocks, it also means that it will stick to itself like crazy!

So, you take some of your wet water effects and brush that on to where you want to attach your sheet.  Once the sheet is applied, you brush on some more effects to hide that seam, and make it have more of a nice 'edge' where it goes over the rocks

I worked out from the top center section, expanding outward and down to the river bed

Where it reached the river be, I went crazy with very heavily textured, churning water!

Here it is right after I completed that task.  I turned on an industrial strength fan to dry it faster, but that only worked partially well.  In fact, it was still drying today!

Here is a sneak preview of the finished board!  The water looks a bit different here, doesn't it?  I will have to go back over my river bed to do some more applications.  I will also have to mix in some white paint with 'hardcoat or some kind of gloss varnish to make the foamy, frothy, effect.

Flock me! The clock's tickin' ...

It is now day two of the tournament, and we are about to head out the door.  Before that, I wanted to do a post about the flocking of the display board.

By the time I got to this stage I was becoming painfully aware of the passage of time.  I still had an additional stage left after this, and this would have to dry for at least a little while before I could get to it.  So, out came the wood glue and the flock!

You can see that I have my two types of flock.  A fine mix and a coarse.  First, I applied the wood glue to all the cracks and crevices.

The fine mix and some static grass are applied over that glue.

The same technique is used on the island watchtower.  Using the flock in this way saved my the time of painting and weathering all those cracks.  I will still go back and refine all these areas later!

For now, however, this will have to do!

You can see that I advanced upwards from one level to the next, just as I did with the sand and gravel.

Here we have piles of flock everywhere!

Getting the extra stuff off the board is a very messy process, and one that could be a bit hazardous for your lungs if you are not careful.  The fine flock, in particular, is nasty.

I had some newspapers spread out on the floor.  The board was tilted on its side, and I tapped and shook the board so as much stuff as possible came off.  You can see this very dramatically on the tile areas...

Well, this meant one more stage remained.  Water!  Stay tuned...

Better late than never: Painting the display board

We still have more posts on the army board!  In fact, there might be two more. :-)

You can see that I have gotten to some mid level light greys.  I was sure to keep mixing in some warmer greys, as well as some green.

Also, it was time to start painting my buildings.  They were going to be the same color as the tiles on the main level, so I painted those at the same time.

I used some tan, mixing in that with the black for the darkest colors.  More of the tan crept in to each mixture.

This building shows how I tried to weather the structures by keeping my lightest colors towards the bottom of the structure.  Since these were ruined buildings, I wanted the top parts to be as stained and weathered as possible.

By "cheating" a bit and leaving the top darker meant that I did not have to go back and paint those stains in.  Ideally, I would have preferred to do that, but as you know, time was not on my side at all!

Same thing for the tiles.  The shortcut here would be using flock and grass in the crevices and grout lines.

Some of the tiles (notably the ones by the river) were left darker to simulate stains.

The island watchtower is just about complete...

More lightening of the bottom part of the large building.. I tried to use my brush strokes carefully, in order to get stain and streaks without actually painting them!  Note the lighter section just above the doorway right next to that dark greenish streak.

Here's a few more shots as I get closer to the next phase...

Hey, this thing needs some grass!  More to come tomorrow!

Off to war: No, that's not Cheeze Whiz

All right, we are just about to leave for the tournament.  First, a few images of the board from the other day. You can see the process of making waterfalls starts with water effects, spread out on the plastic sheet

You make the waterfall sheets with a brush, and let it dry.

The board ready for priming.

Priming the board with black latex paint!

Then it was time to put the magnetic primer on the horizontal surfaces to hold the minis better..

Painting the board!  Lots of acrylic paint...

Big brushes, and key colors spread out on pallettes...

Mixing grey and green into the black to lighten all the rocks gradually.

Some areas get a yellow ochre to make them more greenish

The river bed gets even more green...

Same for the waterfall area

More to come!