Under Mount Silence

It's been a long time in the pipeline, but finally Thunder Under Mount Silence, the first Oakbound boxed game (if you don't count Tripods!) is on the doorstep. I've cut 98 sheets of nice, thick, glossy dungeon tiles, just two left to do! The artwork on the tiles was produced by photographing 3-dimensional pieces I had made, so I thought it would be fun to photograph some scenes on them. The walls aren't very high and in places the perspective has been forced in order to read better from above, but I think they're quite fun little vignettes.

 

Under Mount Silence

Metal Quest Furnishings

A few years a friend had a lucky find on ebay. A set of metal dungeon furniture, in fact more than a set, a whole bag full. Someone in the casting room at GW had obviously found some furniture moulds and got excited for some Mordheim or Warhammer Quest terrain. Whoever was selling them on ebay had no idea what they were and so a bargain was had and a set found its way in my direction... we, of course, recognised it for what it was.

Here's a pre-release advert for Heroquest in White Dwarf. You can tell the character cards and the quest book cover are different. The screen and board have scruffy edges, they've clearly been printed out and trimmed with a scalpel. The maddest thing? Look at the miniatures. They're on round bases (as they should have been in production IMHO). That means they are THE METAL PROTOTYPES painted to look plastic! Each one of those figures would go for over £100 these days and here they are painted in gloss enamels! :D So this image is from before there were plastic sets to photograph. BUT... There's furniture in there. Yep, METAL PROTOTYPE furniture! It existed! And my matey had just stumbled upon a bag of it... 

Having had it for a while I decided now was the time to get it painted up. I had thought of just mounting the metal parts on card bodies like the plastic furniture, but in the end I thought it needed a bit more than that. So I set out to make full 3d pieces.

The fireplace and cupboard were foam sculpts with balsa wood and plasticard details. The tables are just coffee stirrers. I didn't have rats or skulls (though there are some in the advert pic it's not clear what they are, maybe just existing giant rats and plastic skeleton horde skulls?) so I used the excellent packs from Ral Partha Europe. My favourite giant (not too giant) rats. The candles are resin pieces (Ristull's I believe?) and the portrait was a print out of the original from the card piece.

More coffee-stirrer tables, rats from RPE and an assortment of resin and metal book and scroll castings.

The rack, alchemist's bench, chests and a few throne variants (cushions and skin in putty). One for use as the ogre throne. The chest timbers are just match sticks. The base of the alchemist table and rack are balsa with plasticard detailing and map pin drawer handles.

And finally two tombs and the sorcerer's table. It's such a joy to know the candle sticks won't break! More rats of course... The figure on top of the tomb is actually Sir Cyril Destiff from the F5 paladins range. I guess if you already have a dead knight sculpted...

The sword has been placed along his body, possibly to aid the plastic casting by not having the gap between his legs? Praying hands removed to grip the sword, but same head and body under it all.

What I am missing is a weapons rack. There's one visible in the advert, but perhaps whoever cast them up thought the weapons looked out of scale, or perhaps it didn't cast well. We can only speculate, however if anyone has a metal rack to complete the set feel free to get in touch!

Metal Quest Furnishings

The metalquest continues!

 

Whilst we're on the subject of Heroquest miniatures, here are the substitute heroes I've been working on, plus a gargoyle/bloodthirster. Now having mentioned how rare/unknown the original prototypes are I decided to try and find 'proxy' miniatures instead. You know, to tide me over until they inevitably appear for sale! 

The dwarf is one of a few obviously based on the same John Sibbick art, this one is the 90th anniversary white dwarf. He's quite stocky compared to the prototype and plastic HQ dwarfs but I think of him as the same adventurer grown older, more grizzled and wiser as well as spreading a bit with his years!

The elf is, I think, a Citadel Silvan Elf. Chosen for his similar locks, pose and armament he's rocking the stripy trousers of his dungeon equivalent.

The barbarian, sorry BARBARIAN! with his Broooooaaaawwwwdswwwoooooordddd! is a Mark Copplestone Grenadier miniature with his axe swapped for a Celtos sword. Chosen, again, for similarity of pose, hairstyle and adornments. The Celtos sword is a bit chunkier but a bit shorter than the plastic miniature's and not as pointy as either of the prototype barbarians' but hey it's a broad-sword, right?

And the gargoyle is, of course, the relevant Citadel Bloodthirster. He's too tall, has too fussy details in his armour and face and frankly pales in comparison with the prototype, but failing another Marauder Bloodthirster hitting the open market he's probably as close as it's possible to get. The whip has been reposed and smoothed with some putty to better resemble the one on the prototype miniature.

Of course there's a hero missing here. The wizard seems pretty unique among fantasy miniatures in that he isn't based on Gandalf, with a long beard and floppy hat. There are a couple of preslotta 'young wizards' that look right but are too small to fit nicely with the set. My solution? A 4th/5th ed High Elf mage with sword swapped for staff and pointy ears hidden by further flowing locks. Unfortunately I have yet to acquire him, so you'll have to wait for that update. I've stuck in a dwarf wizard instead to uphold the magical arm of the party. He's probably about as competent as a junior apprentice shoved down a tunnel to face horrors beyond his wildest nightmares...

The metalquest continues!

Shelving, doors and a big hole in the floor!

 Over the weekend I managed to crack on with some of the dungeon rooms.

The library is now almost finished, apart from finishing off the stone work, putting the fire and chimney in the inner sanctum and picking out a few more coloured books.

The staircase was a pain in the backside to assemble and the cause of much swearing and cursing! It seemed once it got beyond about 40mm high any further layers just wouldn't stick. In the end I used superglue rather than pva to finish it and once it was in place liberally coated the pillar with glue. It seems to have held. 

The edges of the floor and the balcony I washed with woodstain to darken them. There's a doorway hidden in the top left, but will the adventurers notice it in the gloomy corner of the library?

Here's a shot with the removable side panel attached. I've yet to paint the big doorway and add the free-standing shelves to either side of it.

 

Next up, the ramparts/courtyard. The idea is to have an open space to serve either as an entrance/exit from the dungeon or so adventurers can get their bearings in the labyrinthine tunnels. Lots of barrels and sacks strewn across here, a trough and a well for water as well as numerous doorways leading back into the caverns.

 

 

The walls were coated in PVA, had lots of cat litter pressed onto them and then a coating of paint and PVA to seal them before drybrushing. The floor still needs some washing, drybrushing and piles of scatter/gravel across it to break up the surface. I liked the bobbled polystyrene texture, so haven't disguised it with a textured paint, but it does need varying across this sized area.

 

 

Spraying some resin cast doorways.

And the next big room. The idea for this one is an underground lake or cistern. I started off by applying my resin cast tiles to the areas in front of the doorways, giving the impression of the remains of a richly tiled room.

Around these I painted pva and applied liberal amounts of sand, this would form the boundary of the lake area.

 

Next I sprayed the exposed polystyrene in the centre with black primer, melting it away.

The trick is not to spray so much it eats right through the styrene! Once I was happy with the amount that had been dissolved I mixed some paint and PVA and painted a base colour onto the bed of the lake. This seals the polystyrene to prevent the resin I would pour into it from further eating away the surface (and then pouring out all over the workbench!) Once this was dry I mixed up my clear resin and poured it up to the level of the sand. Then I checked it a few hours later before going to bed, all looked level and clear and not eating away the styrene, all good.

This morning, when I checked, I saw disaster had struck overnight! Instead of a nice, clear lake I had a foamy mass of bubbles! Rock-hard bubblebath foam! Ah... The material I had left in the pot to test curing without touching the pour had set just fine, so it wasn't a problem with the resin, ambient temperature or moisture level. I think what must have happened is that as the resin cured its exothermic reaction caused the styrene to emit gas, which managed to get through the layers of paint and glue and bubble up through the resin. Not the effect I was looking for! I did have an idea on the way into work this morning however, I'll have to have another look when I get home. It might be that this unexpected issue has prompted a whole new aspect to the relationship between the gnomes and goblins who live in this mountain!

 

 

The door castings have been much more successful. The dark strip on these is where I have poured resin with an iron filler powder into the mould. This is magnetic (see small magnet stuck to left door) and with magnets set into the door frames on the dungeon boards this will provide my magical hinge solution. Now I just need to order a shed load more magnets!

Shelving, doors and a big hole in the floor!

Going underground... underworld style

I recently heard news that an Underworld 5 is in the offing... hoping for a return to form after the dismal 4th film the wife and I had an Underworld marathon of the original trilogy at the weekend and I came out of it really wanting to create some terrain that's a blend of William's prison from the 2nd film and the vampire castle from the 3rd.

There's been a lot of talk around me about dungeons at the moment. After BOYL on the drive home Harry, Chris and I were discussing a dungeon bask project for next year. Then Harry's Twisting Catacombs stuff turned up (mine's still not here, boo), then Maki Games announced an imminent revival of their Modular Underground project.

With the release of 'Secrets' thoughts have turned to the next sourcebook instalment for The Woods. This will take the action to the conflict between the Gnomes and Goblins in the mountains, working title "Thunder under Mount Silence". Obviously I'm going to need some underground terrain for playtesting and photography.

We lately took delivery of a new bandsaw at work which came in an elaborate and large polystyrene box, with lots of dungeon features...

With all this happening and a few weeks of quiet summer left it would be very rude not to do something about it don't you think?

 

What you're looking at here is the bandsaw box chopped into chunks and surrounded with MDF (which I laser-engraved with a nice Oakbound logo for when we take it to shows). There are 8 modules measuring 45cm by 22.5cm each, giving a 3' square dungeon. Of course they can be arranged in rectangular or linear fashion as well. I figured a 3' square would be about as far as you'd want to lean to move figures. There's also a double-height section because the packing was too cool to chop up. This can add on, or displace one of the other modules which can then be stacked to give a second double-height section.
What's especially good about this size is that it means my modular board tiles which are swamp one side and cobbled the other will fit in nicely as they're 22.5cm wide and 66cm long (I can cope with the 15mm gap, might make some inserts).

The depth of each module is 12cm, with the floor depth varying between 4cm and 10cm. Now I've moaned about accessibility for play in dungeons with walls before and granted some of those areas are pretty tight. I've tried to keep as many open areas as possible and there will be lots of levels built in so the narrow spaces aren't as hard to reach. BUT I am a bit concerned about getting in to decorate, play and photograph so some of the MDF walls might be made removable once I've got the basic forms in place.

 After boxing everything up I decided what I wanted each room to be. Library, cistern, council chamber, lower gatehouse etc. Actually I have two libraries because I've wanted to do something like the library from Gormeghast for some time. I then marked in lots of doors, making sure there were some standard connections and plenty of options for the feature doors, matching them in as closely as possible with the layout of the polystyrene. One of the good things about having the thick walls and different levels in there is that it doesn't matter too much if doors shift along slightly, don't line up or seem to lead nowhere. The thickness of the wall means an unseen narrow corridor, stairway or cupboard can easily be claimed. 

For transport and storage these modules will stack together into a relatively tight 45cmx45cmx60cm block. I'll make a little trolley with some fixings on so it can be wheeled around for events and games at other people's houses.

 

Mad to start something else, especially something this big, with the planned undead army and lots of commission sculpting to get on with? Well sure, but anyone who knows me will tell you I'm never too busy to start another project... finishing, well, that's another matter. I still have a few books to bind...!

Going underground... underworld style