Post Apocalypse Month: Coming soon!

Next month is Post Apocalypse Month on TFH and we'll be looking at all sorts of post-nuclear goodies. Mostly we'll concentrate on Muscle Car Apocalypse, which I am hoping to get running at my school wargames club next year. For this reason, you will need a few special materials, so I thought I'd put up a shopping list before we start.

• 1/32 (or close) cars. MCA is a 1/32 scale game, but anything from 1/30 o 1/38 will do. Since most toy cars are made on standardised chassis they tend to fudge the bodies to fit. For our purposes, this is really not a big problem. 1/32 scale diecast toy cars are widely available, I usually get them from eBay for about $10aud each. Sometimes you will find things at op shops, so keep an eye out! (I got a New Ray 1/32 Peterbilt tanker truck for $1.50!)
• 1/32 or 1/35 weapons. 1/35 is the most common military modelling scale, so there is no problem finding lots of weapons and goodies to fit to your cars. Several companies make sets of plastic weapons for customising their kits or building dioramas, invest in a few of these and you're laughing.
• 1/32 or 1/35 figures. Again, there are tons of these available. The plastic ones are quite affordable, and you usually get quite a few in each set, so a single box will often give you a whole gang.
• Plasticard, plastic rod, girders etc. You'll want plenty of these things to add armour, rams, bulldozers etc. to your vehicles. Get different sizes and shapes of everything.

Well, that's the major stuff. It's generally fairly cheap and readily available, although I have found some car types harder to find than others (SUV, Jeeps and other 4wd types have been rather thin on the ground for some reason). Most toy cars depict the more glamorous and interesting models, so expect to find two doors rather than four. Although this technically makes the car a Coupe, I tend to fudge things a bit and call it a Sedan if it's big enough and obviously has a back seat. Number of doors don't count for anything in the rules, number of seats do.

Ishoo Forty: Dwarven Forge

When Dwarves chose to live above ground, they often find gainful employment in the towns of humans as smiths and metal workers. For this reason, the distinctive Dwarven school of architecture is seen across the old world. Dwarves build entierely in stone and metal, dismissing wood as a mere fuel source. Although the Dwarves have a distinctive style of building, it is not a hard style to emulate. How hard? Well, here's one Grot prepared earlier...

And there you are, hippo fans! Peeling foam core can be a bit tedious, but the results are worth it. If you are using a thicker foamcore, say 5mm, there's no need for the inner and outer walls - the sheet is quite strong enough on it's own. It's important to paint the foam with PVA, this helps to protect it as it's a bit delicate. It's vital if you are going to be using spray paints.

Anyway, that's it for now, and that's it for this year. Make sure you come back next year for Post Apocalypse Month, which will run for the whole of January!

Warhammer Cookbook: Dwarves

I've decided to gradually post the Warhammer cookbook on TFH, one page per month, so here's this month's page!

Dwarven Architecture

I know I promised a Dwarven forge rather a long time ago... Well, I actually did start work on it, but I was not happy with the way it looked, so I pulled the plug on the project (a first for TFH - I do not like to admit defeat). A new version is coming very soon, I promise you. IN the mean time, here are some notes on Dwarven architecture.

• Dwarves never use wood. The 7th edition Warhammer army book made this quite clear - wood is for burning, nothing else.
• Most of the time, Dwarves live underground, so you don't have to make buildings for them anyway (of course, this is cheating!)
• Dwarves revere their ancestors, and will usually carve their stone work into representations of them. Pillars will often take the form of huge stone warriors, and doors are often mouths.
• Dwarves are short. This means lower doors. It also means windows are positioned closer to the ground. Getting this right is very important as it adds character and racial flavour to the model, BUT it must still be in proportion. They might be short, but they are also wide, so doors are proportionally wider than human doors.
• Dwarves like stone. Lots and lots of stone.

And as a special treat, here are some old photos of Kazad Grunks, a dwarven hold army display board I built for a mate many years ago. When I had a crap camera. And always tended to scale the photos down so they were really small anyway. Sorry about that. You'll have to squint a bit.

Merry Orcsmas people!

Tis Orcsmas, that strange mid-winter time when Orcs and Goblins feel a strong compulsion to dress in bright red, don fake beards, and give one another brightly wrapped packages, rather than the usual axe to the face. No one quite knows why they do it...

To help you celebrate this most unusual of festivals, the hippo and I have produced an orcsmas set, which you may print out and build at your leisure. It is indeed in 28mm scale, and fully compatible with the various other fantasy RPG tiles which infest my photobucket account.