The ferry & the jetty (or two of them) received a coat of bestial brown followed by a wash of nuln oil.



I used Faller weathering powders (mainly black, white, greenish grey and red) to weather pretty much everything. A bit messy, but the results look fairly nice.



This photo shows a comparison of a weathered and an unweathered jetty. On the left you can also see the painted thatched roof. I used quite a number of GW colors – initial layer of scorched brown was drybrushed with a mix of scorched brown and codex grey, then with snakebite leather, vomit brown, graveyard earth, kommando khaki, and bleached bone.



The pieces touching water received a bit of ‘ardcoat to simulate wet wood around the waterline. Finally, to blend the jetty to the riverbank, I drybrushed the top parts with Vallejo light sand. The lamp posts sit on top of of channels made from straws, making it easy to route the wires from the lamp posts through the entire Styrofoam terrain.



Here are some pics of the finished cottage, complete with a stack of firewood outside.







The final pics show how the simulated night light was achieved. I routed an RGB LED strip over the entire gaming terrain. My initial attempt was to use pure blue light – this was recommended by some model railroading sources as a good way to simulate moonlight. However, the resulting photos looked frosty and wintery, so I ended up having a bit of green mixed with blue. The five meter LED strip has 300 LEDs in total, 100 each of red, green and blue, allowing for quite a selection of colors. A model railway transformer supplied power to the ferry lamp posts.





If you haven’t yet done so, please check the campaign thread to see the night time gameplay photos – they are usually 0.6 second exposures, with no post-processing whatsoever. I was quite pleased with the LED strip, and will be using it again for the Weathertop scenarios to provide some night light, and in Moria to give our games some fiery orange glow. Stay tuned!

Jeeez! Am speechless

Ditto bro

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*5th in 2014 GBHL

So that's how you took those amazing photos.

Very impressed. Look forward to seeing more.

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Harfoots-The first of the Hobbit people to cross over the Misty Mountains and enter Eriador.

Every single thing that has been posted on this thread is simply breathtaking!!!!

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Anduril, Flame of the West forged from the shards of Narsil,
Sauron will not have forgotten the sword of Elendil

Oh my god yes

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My old WIP thread - http://www.one-ring.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16246&start=0

You might want to make these boards a bit more realistic mate... (joke!)

Absolutely amazing stuff; no actual compliments really do this work justice!

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Feel free to check out my galleries and painting guides! www.freewebs.com/necromancer7

The amount of forethought and planning thats gone into this project is simply amazing. Your scenery is great, I look forward to seeing the next parts built, and I'm going to love reading through the battles played out on them, keep going!

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WIP thread: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=25860

Bravo! Wonderful project!

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My This and That Again WIP blog: viewtopic.php?t=25598

nice terrain! Just love it. Felt like making some new terrain. Looking at this only increases it! Got to get rid of the old ones first and then some time and material needed! Haha i have lots of idea's.. but getting them worked out... Just don't get there lately..

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goblin: "people associate me with boogers because i am green"

Thanks for the great comments, folks, much appreciated!

Some repetitive tasks behind the scenes of our campaign have been completed - all of the yellow grass -based terrain tiles are now complete (apart from the river tile "D", which still lacks the water surface). The procedure of adding turf was the same as before, so there was no need to post WIP photos this time. However, upon completing the tiles, we put together eight of them to give you an idea of what the Fords of Isen terrain would look like once we reach that part of the campaign.



The placement of woods is rudimentary, and I will most likely do a couple of new hills to match the yellow grass boards. Nevertheless, this should give you a good idea of the playing area - mostly flat, to best suit a WotR scenario. The playing area size is about 3.2 x 1.8 meters.

Plenty of interesting projects are about to start next, including the planning & building of Amon Hen and Parth Galen scenery, the planning of Helm's Deep and Isengard, painting of some of the figures still needed up to Amon Hen, and the assembly of Rohan and Isengard armies (to be basecoated outside once this long winter turns to summer). Contrary to the earlier plans, we will use three yellow grass tiles with additional scenery bits to form the Amon Hen area, rather than use the green board (of course, assuming that the Fellowship is formed and it reaches Amon Hen - I'm optimistic, though, and will begin the planning at least).

This is beautiful work, very inspiring!

Particularly looking forward to your plans for Helm's Deep.

Realy nice work

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You would of had me crawling on all fours like a BEAST!

I know it was simple, but can we also see how you made the treason of isengard wizard duel game board too?

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My work in progress thread: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=27503

@Batman, sure thing! The honeycomb hexagonal playing area of the Wizards' duel board came with the Best of White Dwarf, where the scenario was, too. I cut it out and glued it to 5mm foamboard. I added about 3cm wide rims around the honeycomb in three sections - foamboard as well, covered with texture found via Google search "black marble texture". The Orthanc interior walls were a bit trickier - I couldn't find good images showing the inner sanctum walls and those memorable doors straight-on. Any screen captures had a varying degree of angle (or a wizard blocking the best view). I tried my best to combine a decent image by combining several bits of screen captures in Photoshop. After some twisting, turning and correcting of perspectives I came up with these two background images, each with a different type of a door:





Two sets of these were glued on foamboard, and onto two of the floor edge pieces. All told, these four bits formed the playing area:



We did not have the "Escape from Orthanc" figure set, so I had to build a quick-and-dirty Palantír pedestal from a 25mm round figure base, a Hirst arts plaster column, and a head of a pin.

Continuing on the "behind-the-scenes" theme, here is a close-up of a barrow used in our sixth campaign scenario.



Unfortunately I do not have any WIP photos, but basically, the construction uses an MDF base, some Hirst arts blocks for the entrance, blue foam bits as formers, a round piece of cardboard for the top, and plaster cloth to form the slopes. The standing stone is a resin bit by Copplestone Castings, a UK-based vendor. The mound around the top is a bit of newspaper rolled into a long "snake", held in place with masking tape, and covered with plaster cloth. The surface was basecoated with green paint, followed by fine and coarse turf and some static grass.

Finally, in the "Fog in the Barrow-downs" scenario, there is supposed to be, as the name implies, a mist covering the playing area (until Tom arrives). To represent this, the first few images in the battle report were taken using a Cokin fog filter #2 attached to my DSLR camera lens.

I absolutely love all of your terrain pieces.

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"pay a drunk to carve one out of soap than give GW more money"
Seen funny memes on the forums? Probably me

There is some fantastic scenery here, look forward to seeing more!

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My Miniatures Blog (covering LOTR/Terminator/Doctor Who/Warpath and more!):
http://cruciumgiger.blogspot.co.uk/

Thank you so much Celevue, was very interesting

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My work in progress thread: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=27503

Today’s behind the scenes concerns a very small item, the campfire as seen in the scenario 7, Amon Sûl, battle report over on the campaign thread. The campfire used the Viessmann flickering fire effects module with two yellow and one red light bulb. The campfire itself started with a small piece of cardboard painted grey to represent the ashes at the bottom, with a bit of red for glowing coals. A hole was cut in the center, with a bit of scrap plastic forming a transparent dome for the bulbs.



Next, small bits of round wood (leftovers from the pile next to the cottage near the Bucklebury Ferry) were glued radially around the dome, with some fine ballast to suggest cinders.



Ironically, the Woodland Scenics water effects product, used for waterfalls and rapids, is also quite nice for making transparent flames:



The cardboard base was then cut to the final round shape, and larger bits of talus were glued around the campfire:



The flames were painted with Tamiya transparent yellow and red, the wood with shades of brown, and the boulders with greys. The campfire was weathered with grey weathering powder.



The Weathertop ruin received a hole through the center; a bit of straw formed a channel through which it was easy to route the bulbs and wire:



The Viessmann electronics module and plenty of wiring were shoved under the table, powered by a model railway transformer.



Here’s the glowing campfire in the center of the Weathertop ruins. The bulbs generated quite a lot of heat; we left the campfire on for a bit too long during gameplay, resulting in some blackening / melting – luckily, the campfire was not set ablaze… I probably should have left the top of the flame open to dissipate heat.



As with the Bucklebury Ferry scenario, the Amon Sûl battle report night lighting was achieved with a LED strip set to blue-green light, and hung above the gaming board. The battle report photos were usually 1 to 2 second exposures, and they received very little or no post-processing. In the next WIP update, I will have something bigger in mind – I’ve been busy planning the Helm’s Deep board, and will share the initial plans and drawings… stay tuned!