Blackbarrow Update, The Details.

Another month , time for another update on my Blackbarrow project. I was pretty busy this month being someone who now lives in the "gig economy" when the jobs come they come hot and heavy, leaving little time for things like hobbying, fortunately I still a few things done, especially with a few days off before the holiday weekend.   A massive project like this lives by its details, First up we have Trees! , no too exciting eh? I agree. however this table when finished will boast close to 50 trees!, and that is quite a bit, and most are being redone from the their boring long gone days as LoS blocking drab and unfinished pieces for weekly war-gaming., All these trees are getting properly based and landscaped., I put alot of time into landscaping the last month, Woodland Scenics, Scenics Express, etc...

Reaper figure here, the Woman and Kids are Bones, the Farmer is a metal model.

There are still numerous sections of the village to complete, still figuring out what building are staying and which are going if anymore, I definitely have the Hirst Arts itch this year so something else is getting built this summer I am just not sure what.  of course this board is loaded with tons of figures, personalities, etc...at this point the farm section is done, I have a hog and goat being painted, the Farmer just made the table tonight.

Travelling merchant,  this is Otherworld minatures, Mule Handler, while the Cart , I "think:" is from Gripping Beast, but the carts items are all Hirst pieces.

Figures are Reaper Metals..

Of course we have hordes of monsters too, and not just in the dungeon the town is loaded with things that go bump in the night , I dont think the cow is making out too well here.

This isolated cabin in the woods will have some nefarious goings on eventually Witches, or Cultists summons things from beyond, or perhaps a simple woodcutter, who is also a werewolf.

Moving over to the  Tavern at the Wayside Inn, the Tavern is now fully populated with locals, I still need to do the kitchen area up a bit more, but we are well filled now with about a dozen figures through out, here we have figures, by Lead Adventure, Black Cat, Reaper and Jonny Lauck post Mega Miniatures figures. the two barbarians chowing a table full of food is a personal favorite.

The towns graveyard is getting some  revamping, here is in its current state, I will spruce it a bit moving ahead, The gravedigger is the Reaper Bones figure.

I cleaned house on my GW figures in the last couple years, while I still have some vintage unpainted metals to sell, this plastic Necromancer is definitely one of the few who is sticking around he and his Otherworld companion here are bound to start all kinds of trouble hanging out in the Graveyard.

New in town? Meet the Town Guard, totally corrupt and looking for payoff, The town Castellan might be friendly enough but clueless that his underlings undermine him at everyturn!  Here we have a group of Adverntures by Otherworld and a Reaper town guardsman (metal).

That's my brief update, hoping to get a bunch done this month we will see!, Happy 4th of July Weekend to my fellow USA folks..

Blackbarrow Farm

Farm with Inn on the right and Castle in the backdrop/.

Per my last post I was having issues whether to call that new building of mine a Farm or a Hunting Lodge for rich nobles or something. After landscaping its seem to work as a Farm and thats what the table needed, abet a nice rather large raftered farmhouse. Some of the trouble spots seemed to not bother me as much on this whole section of table was redone, the scale seemed to slide into place by sinking the building 1/4 " recessing the floors...the walls, garden , fields seem to soften the look quite a bit.                                                                                                                                                       

The Western road into town, 

The Cow and Cow Pen are new additions as well, the landscaping, and road are redone and painted, flowers and new flock added, Trees based and finished I'm using Woodland Scenics products for all my landscaping needs .    I'll sign off now with some photo captions, the table is really coming together, Some more landscaping on some of the more beat up sections (a ton of games have been played on this table which I finished about 3 years ago  ) there are some smaller older Armorcast buildings I need to figure out what to do with and a Church to redo, pretty close to moving onto finishing the Dungeon which will be some work....I plan on having it all done by the end of the year! I guess, we will see.                                                                                                                

View from the top of the Castle Gatehouse.

Side of Inn, overlooking Farm . you can see where the new landscaping meets the old,, that old section of road is next for touchup.                                                                                                                                                                                            

Rear and Field

This cow pen was fun afternoon build, Cow is by Reaper I have large hog and a goat as well. the straw is from some old scenery kit I have had forever its origin unknown.                                                                                                                       

Here is a good look at the garden and stonewalls, all pieces are from Hirst molds, Figure is Reaper, Wagon by Johnny Lauck.

Hirst Arts- Timber Frame Building

Its been awhile, Its seems more of struggle of to keep the blog updated these days than I remember even thou, I've painted close to a dozen figures , finished the castle and built this since the last update.
this from the "project files" on the Hirst Arts website, a Timber or "Half Timber" building depending on what molds you used, for this I used mainly molds #224 and #225, with #260 for the floors, a few 1/4 planks from the original wood panel mold #220 and the Chimney and Fireplace from the old small brick mold. 250

 I found numerous issues with this plan from the start. Since I used these molds for my upper story of my Inn, I felt like this building was too large and I was right, 3" for 1 story walls is just too high unless you are adding a second floor, I compounded the issue by placing the walls on top of the floor (and I go back and forth on this , something I inset the floor other times not, here and inset would have been better) so in the end I to my eye the building is out of scale for my 28-32mm purposes, I mean it works its just too large and too fancy to be the simple farmstead I envisioned for my fictional town of Blackbarrow .

 As result I decided to either sink the building into the table or build up the surrounding landscaping I am going to do to cover where the floor shows, this will help the scale issue I have slightly, and you can see I left bottom of the chimney off, so I can make it the building is rest properly on what height variation I end up going with..

Roof is plastic card #91533 from plasticstruct, that isnt cheap and I should spend the $29 on the Hirst slate single roof mold, however a bought a whole bunch of it years ago and still have enough for one  building this size of two smaller ones..might as well use it up. and I will adding some edging to that lip

 One I decided that it was no longer a simple farmstead, I envisioned it a grand hunting lodge, for towns leaders, I found this medieval picture of a hunting scene online, scaled it up in photoshop and printed it out on sticker paper, putting on a painted piece of balsa as a huge painting for largest section of empty wall..

 Speaking of walls, the original spec shows a layer of cast sections on both sides off a piece of cereal box, which I though was total overkill, so the interior black walls are just painted and stippled cereal box with mold #225 pieces glued over it directly.

 Pictures here show a good indication of size with both Reaper and Otherworld figures show in the photos, I am not going to add my furniture here just a table and some chairs, the upside being plenty of room to "play thru" this piece in any sort of skirmish game.

 As you can see with this rough set up here things are slowly coming together, I originally planned to replace all my old armorcast resin buildings, MS AUS mdf , and GW buildings with original hirst pieces as scalewise many of them are too small, but I just dont think I have the room on the table, I was thinking about the Mill and Blacksmith shoppe but we will see.

With the Inn and Castle in the background you can see how insetting the building in ground and          building up some surrounding landscaping with help put this building in proper perspective so thats     the next step, building the landscaping and cleaning the some of shoddy areas of table that need a refresher after year of play.

This overall took longer than I thought, since I had everything cast I was thinking I could build this is an afternoon and a couple evenings but with drying times assembly painting, the roof and other details I think is a solid 12 hours project.  next up,  already finished figures and more finished blackbarrow and hopefully some Frostgrave and sooner than another 6 weeks!

Blackbarrow Castle

Just recently I finished the main construction and painting of my Hirst Arts Castle, which I call Blackbarrow Castle. It was long time in the making- the taller, thinner tower ( I call the lighthouse) and the Gate House were built and completed in 2014 for Adepticon that Spring and used on my Legends of the High Seas table for that event. The large tower was complete last fall and the remaining wall sections where finished in the last few months. There is still quite a bit of work to do before I call it "finished" and it sits at the head of Fantasy table overlooking the Village of Blackbarrow.  I still have interior details galore and its inhabitants to paint. as well as redoing the entire base.

The base itself and road to gate will be totally redone with proper foliage as well.

I just ordered some carving plaster and other goodies from Woodland Scenics to get the base looking like a real rock formation as opposed to some carved foam board., currently the floor in the tower are temporary until I can finish them properly and You can see the one, wooden interior building, (a soldiers barracks) will probably have a stable across from it.and perhaps a gallows in the courtyard.

Not really sure how much time and or plaster I used on this as I mentioned it was a long road, I know which molds I used thou the entire projects used molds..70,71,72,75,78,701,260,261,224,225 and 58, the last 3 just being the wooden courtyard building, the bulk casting being the tower molds, the wall slab and basic block molds for the Gatehouse.  I hope to get the base finished up and and remaining details complete in the next month, as I like the whole table done for this summer.  I will leave things here with the rest of the photos, there is a gallery on the left, but its currently the same photos you see here.

Frostgrave Cultist and Barbarian Sprues

Just a quick shout out to these fine plastic kits being put out by North Star Military Figures for Ospreys games , Frostgrave.  I know I have previously mentioned my dislike for plastic kits, as I like to say I have gotten too old to be fiddling  around with putting hordes of plastic models together. However I am very impressed by all these kits.  For me they fit a variety of roles not just Frostgrave.

At 20 Figures a box, Hard plastic Renedra sprues (aka. High Quality), coming out to about $1.50ish a figure . I have 3 of the 4 kits they make with today purchases.  (the Gnolls outstanding) looking forward to putting these to good use.

I had a tough time finding proper up close photos of these sprues, perhaps my google fu is weak but anyway for my own reference here they are.

I"m really like these Barbarians, The can easily be Viking Raiders with some bit swapping to some more historical shields. With large army games on the serious decline and skirmish games becoming the main stay, I expect these kits will stay in  demand for some time.

                                          again, good close ups of the sprues, front and back.

Next up....Blackbarrow Castle...its almost finished.