How to Base the Garden of Morr!

If you own the beautiful Garden of Morr, you probably empathise with how irritating it is to put together.

If this pile of bits looks familiar then this tutorial is for you.

1) Realise that although the Garden of Morr looks great when assembled it is far too annoying to build over and over again.

2) Go to Pizza Go Go and order some delicious "Chicken Hot" pizza. Either take advantage of their free delivery or buy one, get one free on collection offers.

3) Eat pizza.

4) Assemble garden of Morr for the second last time inside pizza box.

5) Notice just how badly it fits together.

6) Wonder why it wasn't designed to jigsaw in more closely.

7) Draw round the base of the Garden of Morr leaving a little room on all sides.

8) Eat after dinner mint while trying to roll three dice until they equal nine.

9) Cut out shape and build Garden of Morr on the base for what you pray will be the last time.

10) Eat second after dinner mint. 

11)  Use clippers to cut off some of the inner wall base so it fits together better.

12) Roll a triple six.

13) When Garden of Morr is FINALLY fully constructed, use super glue to fix parts in place.


14) Wait for glue to dry then paint all areas of the base with black paint.

15) Tip bird grit all over base so that it sticks to the paint.

16) Wish you'd rotated the photo before attaching it to blog.

17) Hope nobody in the online community notices your Minnie Mouse  coaster.

18) Paint the bird grit black.

19) Dry brush inner areas grey.

20) Line up Mantic Bull Centaurs on levitating cutting mat in pleasing configuration.

21) Prepare spirit level for brush straightness test.

22) Realise grey gravel looks terrible.

23) Redo gravel to match warboard: black | dark brown | light brown | mustard | cream.

24) Test straightness of brush using spirit level.

25)Put mausoleums into Garden of Morr.

26) Reflect on how ace it looks.

27) Feel smug that you never have to rebuild the sodding thing again.

28) Test straightness of knife using spirit level.

29) Put Garden of Morr on shelf really easily.

30) Feel more smug.

Scenery Workshop: Rocks!

So you want to build some rocky scenery?

Well now is your chance! Here's how!

1) Go to a hobby store and pay two to three times more than you're comfortable with for some sheets of foamboard.

2) Keep your clippers to hand in case of a cat attack.

3) Using a very sharp modelling knife, cut the foamboard into a pleasing shape, making sure the edges slope outwards.

4) In a crazed moment, decide to make six more similar pieces.

5) Buy a slab of insulation foam or sweet talk a builder to get some.

6) Assure the builder that it was purely about building some scenery. You don't want to start anything with him.

7) Cut a chunk of foam off the slab roughly the size of your first rock.

8) Try unsuccessfully to convince a family member it is a delicious piece of cheese.

9) Start to cut chunks out of the block to make it more naturally rocky-looking.

10) If your knife gets tired, lean it against the foam.

11) Cut up a whole load of rocks in the same way and glue them to your bases using wood glue.

12) Wait far longer than it says on the glue bottle for the glue to dry.

13) Rest knife.

14) In another mad moment, cut some of the rocks into preposterously unlikely shapes that would never really occur in nature.

15) Start to realise you've made too many scenery pieces. Question where the hell you're going to keep them all.

16) Reassure wife/girlfriend/builder that this scenery is vital to the continued existence of the universe.

17) Ensure tape measure is to hand but don't actually use it.

18) Get bored of making scenery.

19) Spend several weeks doing other projects.

20) Fend off complaints from wife/girlfriend/builder about the pointless waste of space your rocks are.

21) Agree to at least get them finished and play one game with them before you throw them in the trash.

22) Spray paint the rocks black.

23) Realise that spray paint doesn't work on foam.

24) Paint the rocks black using a brush.

25) Pause half way through to read about family fun at a messy church and to learn about the life of Muriel Spark.

(whoever she is)

26) Wet-brush the rocks brown.

27) Compare them to some rocks you made earlier.

28) Realise that rocks don't really come in such weird shapes.

29) Lay out some daemon models just in case.

30) Mix up a delicious looking beverage in your water pot.

31) Don't drink the beverage.

32) Paint round the bases and sprinkle bird grit on then paint over that.

33) Throw up if you did drink the beverage.

34) Wash out mouth.

35) Gargle.

36) Dry face and hands.

37) Finish painting rocks brown.

38) Use cream paint to slightly-less-wet-brush the rocks.

39) Realise that the old rocks look different from the new rocks.

40) Repaint the old rocks to match them up.

41) Lay the rocks out in a pleasing pattern.

42) Try to come up with some realistic-sounding (but still false) reasons why rocks would be sticking up in the air like that for when people ask.

43) Rest knife.

44) Go and watch TV with builder.

Warhammer Forge Chaos Dwarf Skullcracker Painting Guide

So you want a Skullcracker - perhaps one of the best units ever invented in Warhammer?


Well good choice!

Let's find out how I went about doing it...

1) First build your Skullcracker.

Not an easy thing to do. It is quite a delicate model and kept coming apart in little ways.

The secret here was to mount it on a base for stability and to give you something to hold. I used foam board for this, making sure the knife I cut it with was ultra sharp to get a smooth cut.

The wheels weren't all at the same level (classic Forge World - oops, did I say that?) so I used glue and sand to fix all the wheels in place on "the ground."

2) Paint the whole thing a dark metallic colour (I used Boltgun metal at the time).

3) Shade the metal using black ink.

4) While it is drying, place it on top of some paint pots.

5) Start picking out contrasting areas in Dwarf Bronze (or another colour of your choice) as well as a bit of Warplock Bronze.

6) Be sure to dry model on some paint pots and place empty glass nearby in case of emergency. 

 7) Give those parts a good shading of Flesh wash.

8) Blow nose and discard tissue nearby. 

9) Knock over paint pot in frustration.

10) Start highlighting up the metals with progressively brighter silvers and golds, ending on a bright silver highlight for the end of the spikes.

11) Make pile of books and old VHS tapes on which to display finished model.

12) Decide not to bother with display stand. Stupid idea!

 7) Paint the Dwarfs to match the rest of your army.

8) Paint the coals in orange and red.

 9) Dry brush the upper surfaces of the coal black to get that glowing look.

10) Finish the basing and sit back to enjoy... 

How to Build a Bridge

With my push to make my campaign games more "realistic" in terms of the terrain that's fought over, I realised I needed a bridge.

But that was only the beginning of the thought process as the bridge size was going to be critical. Too narrow and it might look good, but the game played on it would be frustrating as units queued up to fight a one on one battle in the middle.

I decided to go for a bridge wide enough for three normal units (or a combination of larger and smaller units).

Here's how I went about it:

1) Decide that what you need is a preposterously over sized bridge.

2) Get some foam board from a hobby or art shop (Hobbeycraft sells this in England).

3) Gather a shockingly large amount of spare wood you happen to have lying around.

4) Use a craft knife to cut the foamboard into the appropriate sizes. My bridge is 17" wide. The level section is 22" long and the ramps are about 11.5".

5) Eat some Bran Flakes.

6) Glue on "hinges" made from cardboard. These allow the bridge to be set at different heights with the ramps then at varying pitch.

7) Write a note to yourself to not glue wood on later that will completely undermine the original plan to have bridge as adjustable (I missed this step).

8) Pile two paint pots up into an intriguing paint pot pyramid.

9) Reinforce the underside with hard balsa wood pieces while taking a refreshing drink of lemon.

10) Cut some appropriately shaped moulding wood to and hang from the side of the bridge to give a decorative look and an illusion of thickness.

11) Use old VHS video tapes to hold the wood in place while it glues.

12) Add balsa wood on the edges of the upper side of the bridge to make an edge to it.

13) Remember to put that Homebase receipt someplace safe.

14) Make some legs from wood and decorate them with more moulding.

15) Realise the legs are too narrow and rip them off.

16) Take a photo and email to friends so they think you're a cool dude. Place miniatures and tower on bridge for scale demonstration. Ensure VHS tapes remain in shot for nostalgic purposes. 

17) Cut some new legs from insulation foam using a saw. Cut grooves in them to make them look like layered stone and paint them accordingly, dry brushing through various shades of grey.

18) Add more decorative moulding to the top of the bridge and use paper sheets to cover the cracks where the foam board joins are.

19) Paint the parts of the bridge that are going to be exposed black then dry brush through several shades of grey.

20) Try to ignore discarded fragments of broken legs.

21) Buy a black towel (or towelling material) of the appropriate size and dry brush Scorched Brown (I used a duplicated colour from B&Q). This is also how I did my war board blanket by the way. 

22) Drybrush the towel Bestial Brown in patches.

23) Take a bath. Use towel to dry yourself.

24) Place over a radiator.

25) When dry, drybrush the towel Bubonic Brown in overlapping patches so that all previous colours are still visible. 

26) Drybrush Bleached Bone in the same way. 

27) Put the towel on the bridge and set it up.

28) Realise it is preposterously big and you may have made a terrible mistake.

29) Console yourself with the fact that it is chuffing cool!