A Very Merry Christmas from the Shed

Happy Christmas to all of my followers....

I hope you all get the pressies you want..

As a special present I have uploaded a few special pictures of my cats...Mrs Shed wont let me post festive pics of the family....

Wishing you all the very best for 2016

Eric the Shed

Frostgrave Terrain Build part 12

Good Morning Folks

When I left you last I was talking about statues for the city of Felstad.

Last link is here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/frostgrave-terrain-build-part-11.html

I had acquired some metal broken Lord of the Rings Chess pieces. Turning these into statues was dead easy. First up paint them black and the dry brush them in a succession of greys -  dark to light.

The finished result looks rather good and adds some great scatter terrain to the ruined city.

I acquired a total of eight broken LOTR figures - pretty much all the weapons had been broken off

In addition to these statues I also bought the Airfix 1/72 scaled European fountain. This is a resin kit and works perfectly for my 28mm city. Again this was painted black and dry brushed grey. I then added some PVA glue into the pool and allowed this to dry. The effect gives a frozen pool of water. The kit itself cost £9 inc postage.

The fountain is sitting on the board with the embossed circular shape - see previous post 

The PVA ice works quite well

Finally my last statue parcel arrived - a large number of plastic Harry Potter Chess Pieces. Total cost £10 inc postage. Some of these will make for great Statues. The Pawn pieces are loose on their bases so these bases can be turned into cheap plinths for other statues. Just cut off the protruding knob and spring and bobs your uncle.

As you can see these chess pieces are huge compared to the LOTR ones

With 28mm figure for scale

To create a plinth...cut off the protuberance

Add statue...

Finally we got round to playing a couple more games last night - great fun and helping us to put together the campaign for the new year...

A couple od shots rom last nights gaming board...sadly no AAR this time

Until next time....

part 13 can be found here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/this-old-dog-does-learn-new.html

Frostgrave Terrain Build part 11

Hi Folks

More on the Frostgrave Terrain build... but NO SNOW YET

up to now you have only seen the standard paved board I have created for the Frostgrave Terain boards, but with three terrain boards promised for my group to play on simultaneously I needed more playing areas, so rather than create more of the same I have created two more different types. On top of that they also needed to be interchangeable.


Oops sorry if you are just joining part 10 can be found here...

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/frostgrave-terrain-build-part-10.html

So there are two more types of boards some with paving but more ruined, other just bare ground. These were created in the same way as the originals using 2mm EVA foam embossed with a pen. The non slab areas are covered in sand and grit. Everything is painted black and then dry brushed greys.

 I also tested out some wintry trees - these were just fixed into some drilled holes and can be easily removed.

The non paved areas have been drybrushed brown over the greys.

I now have nearly 30 x 12 foot square boards more than enough to create the three planned Frostgrave terrain boards.


Part open ground part ruined

 

The trees



I can mix and match these with the original boards - there are nine ruined pieces and nine plain

I also created a couple of designs to go with the standard boards for some variety - for example this cross effect.

 

and this circular one...

I really cannot stress how good (and cheap) this eva foam is for threse types of builds (thanks John for coming to the rescue when I ran out)



The embossing is all done with a biro freehand

 

Again these boards are all interchangeable

And they all stack into a relatively small (but heavy tower

The next post will focus on statues...the ruined city will no doubt feature its heroes and heroines of the past. Fortuitously I saw a recent blog post talking about using chess pieces as statues -- inspired.

I trotted off to ebay to see what I could find.

The first goodies to arrive were these damaged metal Lord of the Rings Chess pieces - £5 inc postage
 - yes they are missing some hands and weapons but they will make great statues (plus they come on their own plinths...

More on these and some others in my next post...

Until next time

Part 12 can be found here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/frostgrave-terrain-build-part-12.html

Frostgrave Terrain Build part 10

Hi Folks

First up can I thank you all for the wonderful comments you have all kindly left following my blogs 4th Birthday. They really are appreciated !

Back to business...my Frostgrave Terrain project has continued over the last few days and we have even managed a couple of games. No reports as yet until we get the hang of the rules but they are fun !

As a short recap the plan was always to build three different boards for my Frostgrave campaign - these would need to be modular and interchangeable. So far I have built the non-ruined city, part of the ruins and when I left you last the latest board was coming to shape. More here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/frostgrave-terrain-part-9.html

This is what it looked likw...the ruins were built from a mix of Pegasus hobbies gothic buildings and warhammer terrain. By chance I discovered that with a bit of glue I could add the warhammer stuff to the pegasus kits relatively easily and as you can see in the following pictures they have come up a treat.



The two kits joined together...

All the buildings were sprayed black and then drybrushed with a dark then light grey. That's all there is to it.



Lots of terrain to block line of site

Of course Frostgrave needs treasure tokens so its good news that I finished these for our games

Now of course with all this terrain built I need more base boards...have no fear these are on their way and will be posted soon.


In the next post - more scatter terrain and a great source of statues (not more dragons)

Until next time

part 11 can be found here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/frostgrave-terrain-build-part-11.html

Happy 4th Birthday to the Shedwars Blog

Happy 4th Birthday to the Shedwars Blog !

Believe it or not this blog has now been running for four years – hasn’t the time has flown by.

In my last birthday post  I set myself the 400 goal – that was to achieve 400 posts, attracting 400 followers and gaining 400,000 hits.

Last years post http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/shed-wars-happy-third-birthday.html

Well how have I fared. The blog post count is in my control and over the last 12 months I have been steadily adding to the tally and I can safely say that post #400 was past last month. So I can tick one of the goals.

The other two are to be frank outside my control. I can only hope that the content is sufficiently appealing and resonates with the audience to achieve the stated goals. As you can see from the table below I have built on both the number of followers and hits to the site.

Based on current run rates I’ll top the 400k hits in January but the number of followers has dried up in the last few months staying static around the 370 mark for the past three months. I shouldn’t complain too much as there has been growth during the year.

I continue to add between 6-8 posts per month and the hit rate now runs around the 12-13k /per month. I appreciate that the stats aren’t perfect but by my reckoning each new post gets about 600 fresh hits and the rest goes towards the historical posts in the blog. This means I am probably getting a large number of new visitors each month but they don’t want to follow.

 

	Number of followers	Number of page views
Dec 2012	80	25000
Dec 2013	180	95000
Dec 2014	285	230000
Dec 2015	373	383000

The objective for next year will be to hit the half million mark for hits and 500 posts – This should be achievable barring any disasters.

So onto the highlights of this year and the chance for me to indulge a bit…

Perhaps the biggest highlight in 2015 has been to play so many wonderful games and share this great hobby with so many people.

A couple of years back the Shed only really had a couple of regular visitors but thanks to this blog and some fortuitous meetings I can now boast a regular weekly gaming group of 6+. It is with sincerest thanks to all those who have frequented the Shed in 2015 and for giving me the opportunity to play with all my toys.

We have played a vast array of games from the deserts of Egypt to the Frosty City of Felstad, from the steamy jungles of Central America to the Docks of Liverpool. So many genres, so many rules and so much fun.



The Big Pirate Game - First Game of 2015



Our first game of Lion Rampant played in January 2015 - Robin Hood



Muskets in Tomahawks in March

First game of Pulp Alley in April



Celebrating waterloo in June

Kicking off my Pulp Campaign in July

Pulp Campaign - Germany 1938

Massive Lion Rampant Crusader game

 

The painting front saw me complete my Armies of the Third Crusade and although they have only been out a couple of times I can now proudly boast two big 28mm armies. Add to this the additional units for my VBCW campaign – Postie Unit and the Naval Units. Plus Daleks, Sikhs and more Arabs


Arabs in the 1930's



The painted Saracen Army

Sikh Forces for my Pulp games

 

A Dalek Army

 

Over 100 Pulp figures painted for my scales of Anubis campaign including the rifle armed Arabs, and more recently I have started painting some fantasy stuff for Frostgrave. Best guess around 800 figures painted this year.

 



Some pulp minis painted in 2015

 

I finished all 200+ Crusaders !

 



 

The terrain building keeps going. The year started with my tramp steamer, and onto the docks of Liverpool. Most recently I have been building the boards for my Frostgrave campaign. I am fairly sure I can now feature most standard terrain types in the shed.

Remember the Volcano for the LAF Build something contest? I came fourth !

One of my most popular posts - building a static grass applicator

Started the modular tomb

The 1930's Docks finished

Tramp Steamer finally finished

Latest project - Frostgrave tables

 

The Shed Wars message continues to be broadcast to the bigger world – a couple of mentions in the printed press and two published articles in Wargamers Blogger Quarterly.



Front cover of Wargames Bloggers Quarterly - my Egyptian Terrain

 

BLAM, the annual meet of the LAF went without a hitch (phew), and I was fortunate to travel to Tactica early in the year to meet some wonderful people. Add to this trips to Salute, Colours and Warfare my show needs were sated.



BLAM in my local Pub



Visit to Tactica in February

 

 

2015 has been a great year for the hobby – I hope 2016 is as good

Even the Shed got a lick of paint !

 

Thank you for following everybody....

Eric the Shed