Deth Wizards – Preparing the Buildings
Further progress on Deth Wizards, as we're starting to assemble the buildings. A lot of them have wooden beams in ground floor and to prevent issues with supports while printing, these are separate parts.
And Dark Realms Forge took care of that in good way, by numbering the beams.
I simply used super glue, as it was the easiest accessible for me. I know some people have certain filament glues to bond bigger pieces (or more or less melt / weld them together). Mostly they have a tight fit, but in some cases, I'll need to retouch the areas to fill in the gaps.
Deth Wizards – They not just hunger, they are thirsty as well
In addition to the regular houses and shops (and their ruins) from the Briarwood range, we were looking for a show piece for the table. Not necessarily for Deth Wizards per se, as the table setup is rather compact with 30 by 22 inch, but for the overall set.
And the largest piece from the Briarwood range is the Leaping Frog Inn, which is also available as a ruined terrain piece, but due to its size, is split into several smaller pieces around 15 by 15 cm.
Warmaster – A fortified Manor
A while ago, I fixed a mistake I did even a longer time ago - I treated myself to the Fortified Manor. This came out around the late 2000's, in June 2007 to be exactly (shown in White Dwarf #330). I wasn't even a student when it was released and the price was 40 GBP / 59,95 EUR, and stumbled across it a few years later in our local wargaming store when I think it was around 70-80-ish euros and for that money you got a whole Battle Force back then. Besides, I didn't had the room for a gaming table so stocking up on terrain wasn't my priority.
Yet, the item got discontiniued and what made this set special, was that it was not just a combination of the chapel and tower, but had an exclusive sprue with parts to connect the two buildings, and that would create quite the price surge in the years. So seeing the manor on ebay for 200 to 300 Euros wasn't uncommon, and they sold for that price, which made it worse. I was not going to pay that amount of money and would simple sit it out - and I was proven right, as I had the chance to pick up two copies from their re-release in January at 75 EURs each.
But why did you get greedy and bought two? Well, the tower and the chapel are more than 90 EURs if you just buy them, making it cheaper to go for the manor and you even get the fences and exclusive sprue free on top as well.
So, yeah, we got it, Dennis, you made a bargain, but there is Warmaster in the headline. So what does this mean? I get to that directly. As written above, the 2nd hand market pricing, showed there was a demand for that kit, and while there were some alternatives, somebody went very close - as close possible and made a crowdfunding campaign for a digital copy.
February 2025 review
Welcome to March and let's do a recap on February 2025.
I pre-ordered the Army Painter - John Blanche Masterclass sets at Radaddel and now that they were shipped, I have set 1 and 2 in my hands. Looking forward to use them on the Turnip project.
Beyond that, we had a lot of Warhammer on here during February. From the High Elves release forĀ The Old World, we covered the Ellyrian Reavers. And strongly reminds me to get back painting my Blood Bowl High Elf team.
Deth Wizards – Barricades and Markers
We talked about the buildings for our little town for Deth Wizards, but no we need to add a bit here and there, to add details.
The buildings themself are from the Briarwood range by Dark Realm, and they do have their own set of scatter terrain, but I wanted more or let's say different things.
What really inspired me, were the barricades build for Mordheim (Town Cryer issue 03) and the skirmish games in the Generals Compandium / Warhammer Skirmish.
Deth Wizards – There is something odd about this town…
The Deth Wizards table is a group project. While some participate with their own warband, like Dino is painting up his undead, and I am gathering in an Middlehammer theme around Heinrich Kemmler, Florian contributes with terrain.
As we wanted to be flexible with the terrain and not locked in just with Deth Wizards, we looked up various ranges on MyMinifactory and Cults and ended up at Dark Realms and their Briarwood range. That wouldn't just work with Deth Wizards, but Mordheim, Middlehammer Empire, Frostgrave and to some extend even Turnip and beyond.
Last year, while I was looking for terrain files for Warmaster, I came across Dark Realms and I bought the Castle Argent files, but subscribed to the tribe as well, giving me access to some of the Briarwood houses and ruins, and we went with House #1 for a test print, to see if it would work. Florian used his new Bambu Lab A1 and used Bambu PLA filament (some say it's repacked Sunlu or Esun PLA+).
The buildings are split into different floors and you can take of the roof as well. There are smaller detail parts as separate pieces, to not create a problem with overhands. The fit is impressive and the overall quality by the Bambu print is incredible. This very close to a plaster or resin cast, but much more durable and weighs significantly less.
Warmaster – Small Settlements to fight over
We are talking about Warmaster again and after printing a whole week of tiny skeletons, I wanted to add some terrain to the table. While I have generic terrain like hills and trees, I thought about a small town or settlement, that could be used as a point of interest or scenario objective.
Not everything, but a lot of terrain can be scaled down to 40% to fit Warmaster, and as I wanted to have a small settlement, that could be used with Bretonnians as well as Undeads, I searched for some more rugged, run-down buildings, that could house either rather poor peasants or corrupted minions of the undead. And the Slum huts by Infinite Dimenions Games would be perfect for that!
Initially I intended to print the shacks A, B, C and the Slum Tenement A, but the last one would take 5 (!) print plates on my printer, so I decided to just go for the three shacks, and as you can see above, these already provide a bit of a foot print.
Warmaster – Tomb Kings of Khemri
What is a perfect way to motivate yourself beside deadlines? Having somebody else join your project / play the same games. So I managed to fire up Florian / Celebration Parallax about Warmaster and he chose the Tomb Kings of Khemri.
Not a bad fit, as that would create the Bretonnia vs. Khemri setup from the Old World Release, we could do a bit of crusading and it would certainly not feel like a mirror match.
Beside that, due to their design, painting them in 10mm shouldn't be the hardest thing, as you could probably easily do a lot already with a coloured primer, midtone wash and a bit of dry-brushing. For those of you, who don't know the Tomg Kings of Khemri, they are egyptian themed undead within the Warhammer World, using a lot of elements of the era, like Sphinxes or Chariots.
Blood Bowl – Preparing for match reports
I've written multiple times about my love for Blood Bowl on here, and I want to move the coverage into a nostalgic driven direction. We did game reports in the past, Dino did so with his Maulers, but I want to pick something up in a style, that I grew up with.
To give you an idea, what I am talking about, these are pictures from tactic articles from the very first German White Dwarf issues introducing Blood Bowl.
October 2024 review
While it is spooky season, I enjoyed my first vacation since may, when we went to Scotland. We stayed in Germany and went for a prolonged weekend towards the south western part, Trier and the surrounding Eifel.
We went for a bit of sight seeing and lots of animals close up, at our stops at the Porta Nigra and the Wildlife Park Daun.