Hobby Basics: Tufts and Static Grass

Good basing elevates a paint job, and can be used to bring some context to your army. Are you playing with elves from a lush forest? Raiders from a wastland? A Champion fighting atop a pile of skulls? Thugs on cobblestone alleyways? Murderbots awakening on a factory floor? Whatever your mini is, you can use basing to help tell its story and integrate it into your setting and game. Many wargames take place outside, so adding some grass to you bases in common in many war games.

Grass Tufts

Tufts are small clumps of taller grass and can be used to emulate small bushes or other unkempt or wild foliage. They come pre-packaged by companies like Army Painter and Gamer Grass and are sold in a variety of colors to emulate the environment you want, from scorched grasses to verdant green foliage to alien vegetation. 

The rocks protect the grass tufts from the hooves of a devastating cavalry charge on the arid plains.

They are pretty easy to stick on a base, but it can be hard to pull off a natural look. Mel the Terrain Tutor has a lot to say on the matter, and I would suggest looking him up for more tips and details. But essentially you don't want to stick this just anywhere on the base. To get a natural look, think of weeds popping up around sidewalk or broken asphalt. The tufts should be stuck next to rocks and walls and such, as these other terrain pieces would typically protect the grass and allow it grow to tuft-size in your setting of choice.

Grass sprouting up near ruins, stones, or alongside buildings can look good on the tabletop!
Place it where it would be protected a bit.

Adding tufts is usually one of the last steps for me for a basing scheme. You don't want to get paint on them after all, so do everything else first for your mini and your basing, and add these on last. The tufts usually come with a tiny bit of adhesive themselves, but I usually use a tiny bit of glue anyways (superglue or PVA, whatever I happen to have next to me) to make sure that tuft sticks. And as a last tip, tweezers are a nice way to get these tufts right where you want them. 

To take tufts to the next level, use a variety of clump sizes and don't be afraid to trim the tufts into irregular shapes as nature is not uniform! 

Sorta Static Grass

Another kind of commonly used grass is static grass. Ideally, you use an applicator to get these on to your terrain. My understanding is that the applicator uses an electric current to get the grass landing upright (like static electricity would do your your hair), making this look awesome for dioramas and lush bases.

One pass with glue and grass for this terrain. Remember to seal it and you are done!

I am not that fancy! For me, this grass is likely either going on around miniatures, where I don't have the space to use an applicator well, or going on terrain that is going to see some wear and tear over time. For me, I add some white glue where I want the grass. I take a pinch of grass from the box, and then rub my fingers together to sprinkle it on. The grass should land at angles, and look a little beaten down, but not flat. 

I leave this to dry overnight, knocking the excess grass back into the little box the next morning. If I did not get the coverage I want, I repeat this process. When the coverage is how I want it, I use a spray sealer, like Aleene's Acrylic Spray Sealer to protect the grass, spraying down the piece of terrain or around the miniature's feet. Static grass confounded me for a long time until I learned to seal it. It "sheds" everywhere if you don't take that final step, so sealing is a must! 

And to take grass to the next level, don't be afraid to mix types as you go. If you go darker grass as a lower layer and brighter grass as a final, upper layer, you can add some nice depth and shadow to your hobby creation. Just remember to wait for the lower layers to dry, and above all, remember to seal it once you are done!

And that is basics of hobbying with tufts and grass!

Hobby Update: Herd Spirit Walkers

The weekend weather was unexpectedly gorgeous. Unfortunately I didn't have anything new prepped, so I did not get any additional priming in for the coming winter months. But I got a handful of very pleasant walks in, and I got to spend the evenings hobbying on some Herd.

When I first saw the unit entry in 3rd Edition, I originally wanted to do a Warcraft 3 tribute with some printed / converted Spirit Walkers with some some teal phantasmal forms... but oh man is that way too much work! I don't have a 3d printer or enough stuff to kitbash all that! What I did have though was 23 leftover old GW Gor with additional Hand Weapons, so that is what I used. These were already primed up from last year, so I'm just chipping away at some old piles of shame with this.

One Regiment.

The bases essentially got my old tundra style basing scheme, with some texture paste, a light blue / grey base coat, and then an off-white drybrush. The puddles got a variety of blue paints, and then a layer of Acrylic Glazing Medium to get the glossy effect. Then a snow effect was added with the Elmer's Glue, craft paint, and baking soda mixture, though this time I opted for two layers of snow. The first used a more ivory paint, and after that layer had sit for 15 minutes,  I added a second later of snow effect with white paint, glue, and baking soda. I treaded this like a dry brush, with the white layer not covering the full base. This multi-layer approach isn't a "must" but does look to add some "depth" to how the basing looks. I decided to omit the trees from these bases, as while I had green stuff, I didn't have any old pens to mangle. Additionally, the bases were hobbied up last, and looking at them, I wasn't sure if all the minis would fit nicely. Since the minis had been already painted all all green and spooky, I wanted to give myself a fighting chance at using them all up on this project! So, no trees. 

Some of the minis on the stir sticks,
during the dry-brushing stage.

I experimented a bit with some hobby techniques this time around. First and foremost, after some trial and error, I ended up super gluing all of them to coffee stir sticks in groups of 3-4. I am a bit of a barbarian, and don't use any kind of handle normally while painting, often gripping a stand or some other part on the model. Putting everything on sticks this time let the very washy technical paint get better coverage in one pass since my fingers weren't getting in the way, as well as made dry brushing a breeze as I could do up 3-4 miniatures at a time and get more consistent coverage with my dry brushing, and any unexpectedly strong strokes could be spread out to other minis. You can see some of these stronger strokes in the final product, but since a few of the minis have it in each unit, the unit still looks good overall. Just some variation between phantasms!

For the actual painting process, I had primed the minis white, and then did an off-white base coat. There was a nice layer of the Hexwraith Flame paint from Citadel to get a good green gradient going. Once that had set, I went with a dry brush of "09415 Dungeon Slime" from Reaper Miniatures, which is just a color and not an effect, and a color I have used on some of my undead phantasms before. The last step was a lighter dry brush with the Dungeon Slime and some ivory craft paint, giving some nice definition to the minis. 

The other regiment.

On the table, these should function quite similarly to the Fanatics of my Kingdoms of Men, as low-defense / high-attack infantry. Glass Cannons. The Spirit Walkers cost 10/15/15 points more though, gaining 1 extra speed and Pathfinder, and utilizing Thunderous Charge instead. All in all, this is not something you want grinding in combat, but the Herd has a number of screening and flanking units, so we'll see how they get used in-game.

The Spirit Walkers should open up some nice list possibilities for my Herd. My collection is very troop heavy, needing a lot of unit unlocks. I had gone all-in on Large Infantry (3x Lycan Hordes, 1x Lycan Regiment, and 1x Guardian Brute Horde) for my unlocks in 2nd, but things don't quite unlock like they used to in 3rd! These Spirit Walkers should let me unlock and run whatever I want for larger games. But hobbied up as regiments, they should also open up the possibilities of smaller introductory games with the collection too, where I tend to avoid hordes.

The Herd is sitting at around 3000 points, and I now have the unlocks to run what I have and however I want to run it. I've also finally made my way through all of my old Beastmen minis now, reducing my pile of shame. The collection of Herd is in a good spot! We'll see if they manage to hit the table anytime soon.

Hobby Update: Varangian Foot Guard

Huzzah! I got some more hobbying in recently and can now cross off a long-held hobby goal for the Regnum Aeternum. I have a nice horde of smashy Foot Guard now. 

The full horde. It is a little hard to photograph the whole thing. 

Lacking appropriate Byzantine minis when I started the army in earnest in 2016, I subbed in Romans from Warlord Games, but my Kingdoms of Men collection has drawn a lot of inspiration from the Byzantines. One of their iconic units was the Varangian Guard, so it's been a goal of mine to hobby one up for some time, though sourcing minis has proved difficult over the years. This has turned into a $100 unit I am sorry to say, going against a lot of my usual, frugal hobbying habits.

One-half of the unit.

Back in 2020, as the pandemic kicked off, I backed a kickstarter by Fireforge Games for their Byzantine range, which is now widely available commercially. While the pledge was only around $100, I probably still should not have done this - I have yet to use a single sprue, though I have purchased and used some of their Auxiliaries separately, for the redone Militia. In the kickstarter, I picked up some Varangian Guard, which happened to be resin. 

And a close-up of the other half. 

I then bought a box of Fireforge's plastic medieval Russian Infantry thinking I would mix and match the plastic and the resin minis. However, I did not do my homework. I had more resin minis than I thought, and the plastic kit does that "we'll give you two of each weapon type" so they cannot all be wielding two-handers like I wanted. To add insult to injury, the resin minis are head-and-shoulders taller than the plastic, which was disappointing. Since this was coming from the same manufacturer, I just assumed they would match up better. In the end, I was foolish, and decided that I wanted to work with plastic. Each box got me 10 two-handers, so I picked up three boxes and an extra sprue to build this full unit. No clue what I am going to do with the other 3/5ths of the boxes. Or the original resin minis for that matter. This has been a wildly unsound hobbying endeavor for me!

Backing the Kickstarter was probably an error. And buying so many boxes of Russian Infantry was also a bad move. I have another... basically full human army sitting around now. I should be a bit smarter and am unfortunately getting a growing pile of shame going in my closet. Thankfully, all my shame still fits into one storage box! Though we won't discuss the storage box of sorted bits, nor the box of stuff in-process... 

The minis were a little harder to hobby up that I had anticipated. All the heads are swiveling, looking off to the left of the mini. I did not realize this until most of the minis were otherwise assembled - I was putting the heads on last. So a few are looking in weird directions or holding the axe head with an awkward angle, but as a group they look fine. Additionally, the stand for the minis is thick. Rather than try to cut around it, i opted to just add more pebbles to the base over the hobby paste. The stands are still noticeable, but this all looks well enough for wargaming. 

All-in-all I am quite happy that the unit is done, and am pleased with it already. I have rather liked the Foot Guard on the table so far. Both the smashy and Def5 versions have been great and reliable as regiments, but I think I'll like having access to the smashy horde as I reconsider my Kingdoms of Men builds. I am convinced now that the army basically does need hordes to work optimally, and look forward to exploring more!

Hobby Update: More Pikemen

I was able to sit down for a few longer hobbying sessions over the last week and managed to finish up another unit. Ready for the table is another regiment of Pikes for the Kingdoms of Men! This is the third such unit I have hobbied up.

Eh, not too bad from the front.

The unit is built up the same as the other two: Warlord Romans bodies with an arm swap from a Fireforge cavalry box to get lances to use as pikes. In this case, I used some Teutonic Knights, though any of their medieval knightly kits should work. A little greenstuff was utilized again to give a little shoulder guard to mask the join a bit. The unit is overall the same, though this particular formation is a little messier than the other two. I evidently was not as fastidious with organizing what mini went where this time! It looks like I could swap one mini in the back rank for one in the second rank to get a better configuration, but I did not catch this soon enough. Oh well! Having a more dynamic-looking unit isn't really a bad thing in my view.

A bit more disordered from the side.

On the table I've generally liked the Pikes, hence the third regiment. They are more of a defensive unit, generally unlikely to kill anything, but they should be able to blunt a fair bit of aggression from your opponent. They excel against units with Thunderous Charge, like many cavalry units, but having Ensnare in addition to Phalanx lets them hold against non-cavalry units for a while as well. Their biggest downside is their average stats. Having just Defense 4 makes them rather vulnerable to anything with Crushing strength, as well as to shooting, especially shooting with Piercing. 

Still though, I like unit. While a bit fragile at this size, they do have a smaller footprint, and should be able to get where I need them to be without issue. They have a role, but have downsides and vulnerabilities, so they must be used smartly in order to be effective. I like that. It's a fun unit and I am eager to get them on the battlefield soon!

Hobby Update: Orc Reinforcements

Happy Orctober? I think that's the greeting. I am not a practitioner.

Late in 2021, I hobbied up a small Orc army. It was a warband that got numerically out of hand, but hobbying it up did let me start exploring some things related to Kings of War and movement trays and to armies that could potentially be run across multiple game systems.

More detailed thoughts are still forming around these topics of trays and multi-system armies, but for now, just a quick refresh and then the update. The Orcs are from GW, so are on 32mm round bases, of which 10 can easily fit into the 125x100mm heavy infantry tray, and this was how I had last left them. This number makes it nice for inter-system play, as a lot of games deal with increments of 10, but this a little haphazard for Kings of War since there is a fair bit of extra space about in the tray. Using a 3d printer to print some kind of a tray insert to "hold" the minis would certainly be an option, but I wanted any of these multi-system armies to try and showcase a minimal approach to help draw folks in. "Do you have minis? Well, put them into an appropriately-sized tray and you can play Kings of War!" However, I realized recently that the heavy infantry tray could fit 11 miniatures on 32mm bases. Doing so ranks up the minis much more, which leads to a better-looking army in my opinion. So that is part of what I set out to do here.

Previously I had already finished up a few extra armored orcs, intending for them to be used as infantry heroes or as ASBs, and swapping minis out of units as need to facilitate whatever I wanted to run. While that is not a bad call, it's not a great one either. Digging into the army list more, I am not likely going to want to run ASBs or infantry heroes. Fortunately, for me, I still had some extra orc minis sitting around, so I decided to make a push recently to fill up my existing units and to finish up this little army for now. 

Army shot. I could fit everything into one picture, and figured I'd go for it.

This is probably one of the more compositionally awkward shots I've taken for the blog. The little coffee table and it's fake stone is pretty "busy" as designs go... but this still captures the full army. A horde of Greatax; a horde of Young Ax; two Skulk regiments; a Moreax regiment; a Giant; a Troll Bruiser; a War Drum; and two miscellaneous hero orcs on a chariot and on a Gore. It's something like 1500 points without items or upgrades. But as you can hopefully see, having 11 miniatures per group does fill out the trays much better! The minis in the tray feel more stable as well, though that may be my imagination.

The Giant. Green, of course, though if you couldn't tell I wouldn't be offended. What a dark picture!

The giant is Krung, Hill Giant, from Reaper Miniatures. I love this manufacturer and have been buying their minis for years and years for my irl D&D games. This one was similarly purchased years and years ago, and seeing a Giant in the roster for the orcs, I figured I would do him up for fun. I added some green stuff to get the tusks, and sliced the tip of the nose off to try and emulate GW's orc snout. Overall, it works! He fills the space nicely even if he isn't amazingly tall. As a DM, I gave up on painting up all my D&D minis ages and ages ago, so it was nice to find a use for this one and I think it turned out pretty nicely.

The orcs get some supporting units!

The orc on Gore is some named character from Warhammer. Not sure which one, and I think he is incomplete? I think a shield is supposed to pop onto the hand and there looked to be something that should slot into his back as well, almost like a Japanese personal banner flag. He and his friend on the chariot are likely to be used as Krudgers, the stronger of the generic Orc fighting characters in Kings of War. The drummer was a leftover command model from the ebay purchase getting all the orcs to run as the Youngax. I added a gong and stand but the base is looking a little sparse, but I supposed I could always add another drum or something down the line. All of these were kept on square bases to help me out for Kings of War, as with the Troll and the new Giant. I figured not everything needs to pull potential double duty.

More Skulks!

Another regiment of Skulks was added. Orcs aren't known for their shooting, but I think these will be good to have around? Having lackluster units and teaching a player to evaluate their options is part of learning a game after all.  And the army lacks chaff (Orclings), so the archers might be able to function as a bit of anti-chaff and actually be useful. And the Skulks look to have gained an upgrade option for Scout and Pathfinder at some point, which makes them more interesting. The point here is, I hobbied up some Skulks. Time will tell if they are useful or not!

Orc Greatax, increased to horde-sized.

And a new regiment of Greatax makes a horde, which is likely how they will be run. The orcs do like their infantry after all, and this should give the army a good backbone unit for any introductory games. The Regiments are fine, but the trays make a horde a bit unwieldy, as each tray has lips and edges,  which gives the unit an even larger footprint. However, I have some 250mm wide bases I ordered by mistake years ago when starting Kings of War, so I should be able to use those to help measure and move things about in a game setting.

The original army was mostly ebay rescues, so I tried to have a bit of variety with the skin. I could have probably done more with the skin tones than just different base coats. More shades, more layering... but I was admittedly lazy. I can always go back and touch these up in the future.

The last things to highlight are a few of the new minis for the Youngax and Skulk units. They are wounded orcs from the Empire Archer / Huntsmen kit from old Warhammer Fantasy. Yep, I bought 3 whole kits back in the day. I painted up the archers ages ago, repainted them getting into Kings of War, but never did dioramas, nor connected with an orc player to pass these bonus minis along to, so these sat unused for honestly, probably close to a decade now. It was satisfying to find a use for these old minis as well!

And that's the Orc "army" now! Not optimized, really for any system, but a decent generic collection to have on hand for wargames. We'll see what use it gets in the future.

Hobby Update: More heroes for the Abyssals and KoM

The weather has started to turn rainy and chilly recently, so I've been changing gears, trying to prioritize getting the last of my known priming in quickly before the outdoors gets too nasty. I gotta have things to paint up over the winter after all! Despite that shift in priority, I did hobby up a few individuals recently...

The first up are two more Abyssal Champions for the Forces of the Abyss. The hobby pendulum continues to swing back with this army... more characters is not really what I need, but I was really impressed with them and picked up a pair of additional minis. Running all three is probably overkill for a typical game, especially since the army has a lot of great character options, but the stats are great and reliable, and with a powerful Lightning Bolt option, they seem like really strong and flexible characters and fun to have around.

Old and new. I apparently never did lava for the original. Eh, oh well. 

The minis are still Vaeloth, Hellborn Paladin from Reaper Miniatures, but the plastic this time was Dark or one of their other plastic options, not the typical flimsy white stuff I associate them with. Reaper used to be the "cheap" option in my head, but they've really come a long way over the years. Definitely check them out for characters, monsters or for D&D stuff!

I also finished up two heroes for the Kingdoms of Men. I was inspired by the Brothermark heroes I ran into in Battle 013 and Battle 015. The Brothermark stuff is really neat and that style of play is very interesting to me. It's potent and fluffy for the Brothermark, and my options and additions here pale in comparison - but that's how the Kingdoms of Men operate! Let's see what we got.

An Assassin and a Fanatic Instigator

The Fanatic Instigator comes from Warlord Games and their Dalcian Falxmen box, which I used for my previous two Fanatic Regiments. They are decent, though the metal parts make the units a little oddly weighted. I built up about half my Falxmen, and just haven't been able to bring myself to hobby up the rest the last few years, so I went back and cannibalized them into future Varangur Draugr, breaking off the superglued metal torsos to mix the plastic parts with Mantic Ghouls and Zombies - more to come on those over winter, hopefully. Left at the end of that reclamation process was a solitary full metal falxmen, so that got set aside and hobbied up here as a character.

My Heroes on Horses are decent speed bumps already, so I'd probably expect more from the Instigator, though I'm not sure he has a ton more to offer. He is decently smashy character, and has double the attacks of the Hero, so you can probably expect a him to do a few damage to most things, but I'm not sure a few damage is enough to justify his inclusion most of the time. With Wings of Honeymaze (and assuming line of sight) he could theoretically able to threaten more things and deliver those few pips of damage where you want it. I am not entirely sold on him, but now that I have him, I will likely run him at some point for fun.

The Assassin mini is a tiny kitbash, using a commander from the Roman Veterans box from Warlord Games and the hooded head of a Teutonic infantryman from Fireforge. I hobbied him up years ago as a leader for some old Militia troops, and plucked him out when I recently redid them, feeling he was a bit out of place and a little overdressed. A quick retouch on some of the paint and quick rebasing and he is good enough for the table again.

The Assassin seems slightly more likely to see play? Even ignoring the Brothermark, most of my opponents have made good use of heroes and individuals against me, since I have needed to ignore them to focus on their units, so if my list building gets a little better and tighter, a mere 80 pts might be worth spending in a "counter-pick" of sorts. The Assassin is a Duelist with Stealthy and vicious and a ranged attack, which all seems great, but the daggers only have 12" range, putting him quite close to his targets. With Def4 and only 10/12 Nerve... he doesn't seem very likely to survive a prolonged encounter with anything, even his quarry! I am not sure how viable he is, but I suppose the only way to test is to actually run him sometime. We'll see when he is able to make his debut!