This is from the Troll newsletter, its really good and you can find it at the Games-workshop site.
Mordheim is a fantastic game with so many modeling possibilities. Straight out of the box you get a cool section of the city ruins. This is great to play over, but in time you will certainly want to expand your little piece of Mordheim with exciting new scenery. The easy way to do this would be to pick up Blood on the Streets, or another Mordheim boxed game. This gives you a plethora of card buildings to battle amongst. However these pieces are really quite uniform and don't show off your abilities as a terrain maker at all. Now, here is how to remedy this land of conformist terrain.
I propose that instead of single large pieces of scenery, do a whole truckload of small pieces. I've got nothing against big and involved projects, but for Mordheim it is cool to decorate the streets with all sorts of little terrain bits. These add that creepy air to Mordheim that the game deserves. Another driving factor behind small pieces is time. Be it going to work, participating in sports, keeping the girlfriend happy, washing your hair, or walking the dog, we've all got stuff to do. So here are some scenic ideas that are simple to do, not super time consuming, and very rad looking when completed! All right, first off, what good is a ruined area of Mordheim without some gallows hanging about? These devices are a perfect dark atmospheric element to add to your ruins. They are as easy as gluing two pieces of wood together! Get some balsa wood and cut them to an appropriate length. Make one stick about three-three and a half inches long and the other an inch long or so. Glue them together to form an upside down "L". Where the two pieces meet you'll need to place a support. This is a small bit of balsa wood cut to fit between the two glued pieces. You should now have a small triangle where the two glued pieces meet. Add a noose made from some twine or thin rope and you are almost done. Don't really hassle over making a proper noose, as it's not necessary. But if you can perform this task, then great! You'll need a base of sorts, and a good source of bases for these pieces can probably be found in your pockets.
Yes, spare change is your friend. It has the weight necessary to keep the structure from constantly falling over, and everyone has pennies and nickels lying about! Other countries also have a wide selection of equally useful coins which can be used. Take some epoxy and make a small blob that will be large enough to support the balsa wood, and place it on the coin. Slap the "L" into the blob of putty. Now you can do a bit of sculpting to disguise the putty at the base of your gallows. The easiest would be to sculpt a rocky base. Alternatives to this could involve bits from your bits box. If you have a skull or two hanging (HA!) around, or some extra balsa wood planks, you can smush these into the putty. Just keep it simple and you should be fine. Super glue the putty to the coin to be on the safe side of sturdiness. Finally flock the base with your choice of materials. You will find that in only a couple of hours, you will have constructed a veritable legion of these things! Now that you have the basic gallows set up you can begin to dress a few up with things like bodies, body parts, hooks instead of nooses, and skeletons. Just add the appropriate spooky bit and get ready to paint! Spray base the gallows black and then paint the wood, rope, and bodies. They really paint up quickly and look great. If you wish to extend this idea you could build an entire gallows stage with a trap door and everything, it's just a matter of imagination! Next up, barricades. You can imagine hastily made barricades being put together as the enemy approaches. After the battle these structures remain and age along with the rest of the city. This is also another quick and easy scenery piece. Basically grab a bunch of balsa planks and pebbles from outside and glue 'em down to a base. The base can be made from a sheet of plasticard, or hardboard. A cool idea is to use cavalry bases and 40mm monster bases.
This way you can "link" them up and string them across alleyways and streets. Start by prepping your barricade bits. Take a few thin balsa planks and cut them into appropriate lengths. This length is up to you and how large you want the barricade to be. A series of two to four inch piece are a good length to try. Rough up the edges with jagged cuts and breaks. Weed out any pebbles that are too big, as they will just look out of scale and goofy. Now begin building the barricade. You can make an armature, or understructure, out of epoxy putty if you wish. Don't work too hard on an organized structure, just glue pieces on there haphazardly! Spread some Elmers glue around the base of the barricade and spread some sand on there to hide any gaps. Bingo! Barricades! In addition to these standard barricades you can dress a few up with a mix of odds and ends. Find spare swords and weapons, put arrows in some of the wood planks, add graffiti, and as always, throw some skeletons on there! Mail Order has all sorts of cool tables, buckets and stuff that are great for barricades. If you are feeling ambitious try adding a body to the barricade, or even better, buried beneath the barricade. These are the types of touches that make Mordheim creepy. If you find yourself with an abundance of Zombie sprues, and Skeleton bits, try to make an entire barricade out of bodies. Eeeugh! Moving along, I feel that most Mordheim tables lack fetid pools of gunk and ruined wells.
These scenery pieces can be used as important objectives or hiding places for horrible monsters in special scenarios. A pool can be made by cutting a piece of plasticard or hardboard, or by once again using a Games Workshop base of some sort. In this case, a round Dreadnought base would suffice. Along the edges of your pool, build up a border by using pebbles and sand, plus cool bits like skulls, zombies, and discarded weapons. This border should be a bit higher and built up so you know where the pool should actually begin. Once the border is complete, move on to the pool itself. The simplest way is to just paint the smooth card, board or whatever your base is made out of, the desired color. If you wish to add some texture to the pool, like ripples and such, try various methods with sand, glue, and thick areas of paint. Massive amounts of hot glue look great when dry. Just keep pumping the stuff out of the gun into the pool. Be sure to use clear glue sticks or else you'll be stuck with a strange milky pool. Which isn't such a horrible thing actually. Feel free to place inhabitants into the pool, like an emerging tentacle, of floating skeleton! Add some flavor to your pool's border with some swamp grass by cutting some strands off of a broom, or more simply add some static grass. Wells can be made from "stones" of epoxy putty. Sculpt a bunch of closely equal sized blobs or bricks of putty and allow them to harden. Once they are dry and solid, glue some into a circle on your base. Add a new layer and continue until you reach a desired height. Add a wooden framework for the winch and crank from balsa wood and a chunk of paperclip. If you wish you could even add a bucket and rope! I would prefer to add a creepy hand coming over the side of the well or yes, once again, a tentacle. There is something about pools and Mordheim that just screams tentacles!
What next? Stakes! Oh yeah! These pieces are lovely little bits of gore! Once again use a coin for a base and prepare a bit of putty to be glued onto the coin. Use larger heavier coins here. Grab a stick from the yard or some balsa wood and sharpen them into a dull point at one end. Now don't go running around with pointed sticks in your hand or point them at anyone's eye. Be careful. Smush the stake into the putty and once again, like the gallows, work up the putty and the base in a stylish manner. Now for the fun stuff. Grab some extra human Mordheim mercenaries, Empire Soldiers, Zombies, or Skeletons. Impale these poor suckers on your new stakes! Try and model the victim in a suitable limp death pose. Paint up the wood stake, the impalee, then the base, and you are in business! Try multiple victims on one pole, or dismember a model and spread it out over several stakes. If you wish, try gluing a wagon wheel to the top of a stake. Then place a victim on the wheel. The Mordheim rulebook is filled with these wheel thingies; there are even a few on the Mordheim box cover.
Here is a no brainer idea....statues! Mordheim is full of inspiring statues and more recently, perverse idols of the dark gods. Now, grab an old model that is suitable for such purposes, or special order one that really catches your eye. Trim it up and put it aside. Think about how you want to make the pedestal for your "statue" model. This is where you need to use your best judgement. Try and make it fit the feel of the statue. Use a chunk of Styrofoam, wood, plastic, whatever! Once it is underway, glue the statue on top of it, and paint it up to your liking. For a weathered brass metallic appearance try this painting trick. Base coat the model with Chaos Black. Next lay down a heavy drybrush coat of Jade Green. Green for a metal statue? Trust me on this. Wait for the paint to dry thoroughly and get some Bolt Gun Metal ready. Lightly drybrush the statue with this color next. You do not have to cover every spot on the model as this coat is more of a primer for the coming colors. When dry, add yet another drybrush coat, this time a bit heavier, using Dwarf Bronze. Finally do a highlight drybrush of Brazen Brass or Shining Gold. Bam! You should now have a cool metallic statue that looks as if it has seen a few years of weathering. If you wish to go a step further, have some Static Grass creep up the side of the pedestal or add some rocks and crumbling bits along the side. This emphasizes the age factor tremendously when done correctly. Mordheim is full of Witch Hunters, and the remains of their practices. One such popular activity is slapping a heretic in some stocks and forgetting about them.
Stocks are simple to make, as well as other hideous devices of torture. Check out the library for some great ideas for Mordheim pieces! Get together some balsa wood planking, suitable base material, and a victim model (preferably plastic) or skeleton sprue. Cut a plank of balsa wood 2-2.5 inches long, and about .5-1 inch wide. The thickness of the wood should be about as thick as corrugated cardboard. In the center, drill out a hole about the size of your victim model's neck. On either side of the head hole, add a new smaller hole, in the center of the wood, for each of the model's wrists. Now, take this piece and carefully cut it down the middle along the longer edge. You should have two long rectangular pieces of wood with three half circles cut of it; these are the upper and lower parts of the stocks. Put the upper half to the side for now. Make two posts out of wood that are about waist high to the model. Attach these to lower half of the stock pieces at both long ends to form an upside down "U". Place the wooden "U" onto the base, making little feet where the posts meet the base. This will greatly help stabilize the whole structure. Here comes the fun part! Take your victim and pose it so the head fits in the center half circle, and the wrists in each of the holes to either side of the head. You will have to next pose the model into a bent over position. Plastic models are ideal because they offer lots of flexibility for various poses. Finally glue the upper stock half onto the top of the lower half. Finish up with a suitable done up base, and you now have one poor victim in a horribly uncomfortable position! Try branching out, and make stocks that can accommodate multiple victims at one time. Another cool idea is to have the torture subjects in various states of decay by utilizing the Zombie, Empire, and Skeleton sprues! What is a Witch Hunter's favorite pastime at camp? Well, burning people at the stake of course!
Try your hand at modeling the charred remains of this time-honored tradition. Simply make a thick stake out of balsa wood or a straight twig and attach it to a base. Chop up a bunch of smaller sticks to represent the logs placed around the base of the stake. Glue these all around the stake and once again grab a skeleton or zombie sprue. Glue the unfortunate victim to the stake and wrap it with some twine. Flock the base and prepare to paint! First paint the wood and stake to look like......wood! Next, paint your victim and base. Once this is completed, char everything with copious amounts of black drybrushing. Use your brush strokes skillfully. Be sure to char the wood, the victim, and parts of the base. All done! You now have a very wicked piece of scenery for all you Witch Hunters to taunt your opponents with! One final idea that adds such a cool flair to your games. Signposts.
Two pieces of balsa wood is all you need to make a signpost. You can make it point in one direction or combine a bunch of signs to point every which way. Dangle interesting bits from them, or even make a local posting board for "Wanted" posters. The cool part about signs is that it allows you to name your own chunk of Mordheim. Customizing the streets and local points of interest is a neat way to play Mordheim. You can name the streets and make it your warbands' own turf! Signs are so simple to make, you just gotta do one or two!
Well that'll do it for now. There is plenty of stuff here for you to chew on. I certainly hope some of it proves useful! Mordheim is just chock full of cool possibilities, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. Look through the rulebook for ideas, the illustrations within are very busy and full of potential scenery ideas. Now get movin' and make some cool terrain for your warbands to fight over!
To make a REALLY cool looking cobblestone road or walkway or something cobblestone that can be moved where ever you want, read on. All you need is really thin cardboard, like the stuff from cereal boxes, some blue/white tac (The stuff you can buy at dollar stores or office supply stores that is like epoxy but a LOT cheaper) some glue, a modelling knife, and your paints. First, cut out the size of the road or whatever you are making with the cardboard, then take the blue tac and spread it out as THIN as possible and cover the whole thing. Then shave off and excess tac around the edges and then seal the edges with some white glue. But try not to get to much on the blue tac or you might lose the cobblestone look at the edges. Then grab your modelling knife and start to cut striaght offset lines (like the pattern of bricks on a wall) into the blue tac. Cover the whole area with this pattern and then under coat it black. Then get the skull white and mix a LITTLE bit of chaos black into it. Drybrush the surface in this colour, but try to leave the cracks black. Then get out your chestnut ink and ink the whole thing as this gives it a dirty and worn look. Now let it dry and you have a cobblestone road that you can move anywhere you want!
Sent in by Silence
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