Mordheim Monster Mash

Well, my costume was pretty much finished Friday night, so I needed to find another spooky diversion to last until Halloween. Fortunately, Mordheim is the spookiest, so I wrote up some warbands and brought up a small table and set it up for a quick solo game. Although, to be frank, I don't have enough terrain to really get the proper effect.

These warbands are completely book legal, although some of the other ones that might show up later have been slightly house-ruled to fit my collection.

Pan Blaszkowicz and his men were exploring an abandoned village. Leaving his musketeers and their sergeant in the village, to provide covering fire if needed, he went to investigate the church ruins with his loyal pancerni comrades. But once they left the relative safety of the village walls, the forces of evil attacked.

Historical Mordheim

or perhaps "By Fire & Sword-heim".

The Poles use Marienburg rules (extra money at warband creation):

The Swedes use Reikland rules (better marksmen and leadership):

The Cossacks and Scots use Middenheim rules (stronger captains and champions):

A few new models here and there, but mostly you've already seen these. More warbands under construction...

Fun with 4ground

Just a quick shot of some wagons and my new battlefield surface.

It's an overhead shot, because I haven't yet rigged up a sky backdrop.

Church concept

Inspired by this thread, I'm starting to think about getting a little more ambitious with terrain. So I poked around on Wikipedia's Ukrainian Architecture links until I found this:

My version will probably be plastered/whitewashed, as seems to have been the preferred style in the 1600s, rather than the bare brick pictured above. As an added bonus, this church dates back to about 1200 AD, meaning it could also serve within a Medieval time-frame

I plan to construct it mostly out of Pringles tubes and spare cardboard.

Little Boxes (a blue one)

And here it is painted. Image is a bit larger than I usually attach, to show the textures. It does suffer a bit from the low-quality towel, but it's rather too late to worry about that.

Little Box WiP

Here is house number one, in various stages of construction. I started with a piece of corrugated cardboard, folded into a box and reinforced with masking tape. Then I added trim and additional reinforcement made out of coffee stirrers, and the doorframe made out of non-corrugated cardboard.

Then I made the roof frame out of more cardboard (both kinds) and wood.

It's a separate piece, for ease of painting. A view of the bottom shows the (frankly rather rudimentary) structure.

Next step is the thatch. I cut pieces of a spare hand towel into strips and glued them on with overlaps. I wasn't too precise about measurements here, pretty much just eyeballing everything.

I realize the inspiration picture had way more thatching strips than this, but I only have so much patience.

Of course, my guesstimated measurements weren't perfect, but that's ok because I still have the corner bits of thatch to do.

And then here's how the roof looks back on the house. Only missing the watered-down PVA glue on the thatch to give it some weight.

And here's the version with the glue brushed on. Now it just needs paint.

Final note: if you're going to do something like this, consider investing the time/money to get a nice luxurious towel. The fiber loops on this one were pretty threadbare, so the thatch isn't nearly as textured or convincing as it might be.

Little Boxes (made of ticky-tacky)

So, I've decided to work on terrain. Specifically houses, as you might suspect from the title of this post. I've made thatched-roof cottages before, but they're in storage now. And you can never have too many buildings to fight over, anyhow. Also, I've found better reference pictures this time around.

So, I'm thinking one of these:

And two or three of these:

Should be easy enough to build out of scrap cardboard, wooden coffee stirrers, and bits of towel for the thatch. Throw in a small church, some lengths of fence and maybe a well, and I'll have the makings of a picturesque little Ukrainian hamlet, ready to be devastated by arrogant Poles or rapacious Cossacks.