Warm Ale and Mud

I   want to take about something related to my Warm Ale and Mud project; Inspiration. As gamers and modellers we almost all surely find inspiration for aspects of the hobby from here and there. What sort of stuff inspires me? Films, TV shows, Books and History mostly. Other than Oldhammer my other great love are Hammer Horror films. These are a source of inspiration for me in terms of names and personalities of the villagers, in terms of plots and storylines, but especially in terms of appearance. The costumes and sets of some of the Hammer Horror films are outstanding, so much so than the multimillion dollar CGI slop we are served today. Now, before I go on a ramble about Hammer Horror films I will list some of the films that I find inspire me. Of course there are no Warhammer TM films, but many films can be viewed as such. In some cases, just change the names of places in your head to those in the Old World and they work. Other films require you to swap relig...

I decided to increase my Helblitzen from 15 to 25 models. But with my own project rule of no duplicate figures and all the soldiers and villagers having to be oldhammer GW models, finding another 10 different old models was not especially easy or cheap. Having said that I did manage to pick up 4 more for £10.00 which was a bargain. After having a ponder and reflecting a bit, well, a lot, I decided a unit filler may be fun and cheaper. Now, with the unit filler not being a soldier or a villager, it did not have to be an oldhammer model. This is handy as I had a modern model pig lying around which I was going to use in Mordheim. So. I set about converting the pig into a unit filler, a War Hog. I wanted to have something a bit daft and also something that sort of reflected my love of Hammer Horror films. (I have the Karnsteins in my undead and also have a banner with Ingrid Pitt on it.) I have been tempted to buy a goblin fanatic and lend it to my main WFB 3 rd edition opp...

Wife to Count Halven, the Countess Carmilla Halven is the apple of the counts eye and as pretty as they day they were wed. With the Count spending time in the capital, patrolling the locale and otherwise keeping the area safe (and partially in some measure to him not being that way minded) , the Countess looks after the Halven estate. From the day to day running, including but not limited to book-keeping, magisterial duties, tax setting and collection, inspections, hearing petitions etc, to also marshalling and inspecting the garrison in times of conflict. She is a mostly content woman and has no desire to increase the Halven lands. Like the Count she follows the old faith of The Mother (Rhya) and The Father (Taal). Here we can see her with a small doll stuffed with herbs and seeds and so on, which is to be placed in one the villages many small shrines. Heiligsheld has a number of shrines dotted around and these are kept to help ensure a good harvest and ward off blight. T...

Heiligsheld has always been near a river and I wanted to model the river in a single section as I thought it would be nicer to look at than a river in bits with joins. The perfect way would be to have it sunk into tiles as I always used to do, but that would mean making tiles and I am already well into this project and can't be bothered with starting a new table. Now, I have made a river before, for my 15mm fantasy games and I wanted to try and get my river to look as nice as that: However I mucked it up. :( I won't bore you with the details here, but poor planning lead me to making a mistake which I hurridly tried to fix but made it worse. I then had to wait for the 'fix' to dry and then essentially start again with inferior products. The end result is not a million miles away from what I intended, though the mistakes are visible and it also took a whole weekend to do the water effects rather than about 3 hours.. IF you are interested, you can read about the journey HE...

Blimey, it has been about 2 months since I painted a model. It has been a stressy few months, but even so I had not realised it had been that long. Anyway, it is super hot so I did not spend overly long on this chap, the building I had done a good few weeks back when the weather was milder. Next up on our tour of Heiligsheld, the blacksmith's. The second building proper in Heiligsheld is the blacksmiths workshop of Hans Eisen. When the inn, The Wicker Man was first made, the then smith worked from the inns yard. However as the inn grew the smith decided it prudent to build a small workshop not far from the inn. It is this building in which Hans Eisen now ply's his trade as his fathers’ did before him. Where once the smithy mostly fixed the wheels of wagons and shod the hooves of the the visitors of the inn, it now makes weapons and armour for the Counts men. That is not to say Hans will not sharpen knives and fix pots and pans, but the real money lies in work for the Count. As ...

  Heiligsheld was not always called such. In 2155 Imre Jenz a veteran of the battle of Hel Fenn, died defending the sacred stone circle off in the forest from followers of chaos. Imre was already well respected in the village but when he managed to kill Grazak The Unclean a champion of Nurgle and later died of his wounds, the villagers, so grateful for his sacrifice at both Hel Fenn and right here in the village decided to rename the village in his honour. Since this renaming was never sanctioned by the Emperor, it is not official which no doubt goes some way to explaining why Imperial cartographers have not placed it on any maps. The stone circle is a site holy to Rhya, or as the villagers refer to her, The Mother. Rhya is the wife of Taal, (another of the villagers favoured deities) mother of Manann, Morr, and Verena.   Those who worship her view Rhya as the deity of fertility, childbirth and the family. The Stone Circle predates the village and not much is known about it. W...

I think for me with most oldhammery type stuff, it is the buy in factor, which in turn is influenced by the look/style. I want to believe the things I see, they should make sense and have a logical purpose. There needs to be internal consistency with any setting or the setting itself is not to be believed.  The Townscape buildings being a perfect example, I can very easily believe that people would build them: The fortified manor is just a bit too toy like and too high fantasy for me. This Skull Tower model; no chance: Yet this Skull Hill; yes: But why, they both have mad big skullz?! I think I like a feel of WFRP 1st edition to my WFB. WFRP really brought the world to life and I prefer that version to the WFB take on it. I find it to be more about context. Quality over quantity. The Skull Tower and The Skull Hill to me appear as two very different ideas, executed in two different styles. For me it comes down to buy in, if someone asked me to place the models ...