The tale of Devil's forest

Devil's forest is my humble translation of a forest known as "Hudičev boršt" in slovenian. First word means devils (hudič is "a devil") and boršt is slovenian deformation of german word for forest, forst. If anyone is interested, slovenian word for forest is gozd.

The name represents the patch of woods in the northern part of the country, near Škofja Loka.  It lies on a hill called Zaplata. You can see the little forest on a picture below:

As the legend has it, long time ago, two farmers were having an argument about ownership of a forest that lied between their properties. Each argued that they inherited the forest after their deceased father. As they couldn't resolve the argument, they went to Škofja Loka's castle, letting castle's judge decide who the forest belongs to. The lord has questioned both over and over again and, eventually, lost his nerves as both kept telling the same story. He yelled at them "How can I know who the forest belongs to, if you are both telling me the same story! You're fathers are burried for a long time now and they are the only ones who could solve the argument! But you know what? Lets make it a bet. The one that will curse the most, is the one I will believe to!".
 Then, the first farmer cursed "The devil himself should take the forest, if it is not really mine!" and the other went a step further, saying "The devil himself should take the forest and take it to the top of the Grintovec (the highest local mountain) if it is not really mine!"
After he heard them both, the judge laughed and said "If that is how it is, let the devil solve your argument, as a man, that would want to solve it, would have to be mad!"
It has happened, as the farmers wanted. The devil himself has resolved their dispute. In the middle of the night, he came to get the forest, put it on his hump and carried the forest up the hill, limping towards the Grintovec.
He was walking and walking, and when he was climbing Zaplata, a bell from a close by church of saint Jacob started tolling at the dawn of the new day. At this moment, the creature from hell has lost all his power. He has dropped the load and ran away fast, so he wouldn't get blinded by the sun.
After all this years, the little patch of forest remains where the devil has dropped it.

I've decided to post this short tale as I figured some of you might be interested in it. I've got reminded of it while I was making trees for my Strange Aeons games. I've figured how cool it would be to game on a table full of dead trees, where evil cultists preform unhumanly rituals to try and please the gods that lurk in the eternal cosmos..and then I've remembered, I actually know a place like that! Plus, the story lets me talk about my country a bit...it is a small country and we, Slovenians, are always happy to let the world know we exist!

Mathyoo

Terrain, terrain and a CONTEST :O

Or the lack of it!

I have lost my enthusiasm with building the city table for modern zombie wargames (but I will pain those buildings that I have made in a closer future!), I was thinking about the terrain I should make for my Strange Aeons game. I haven't played for a couple of weeks no, been very busy, but still, lack of terrain doesn't help when one wants to play some more games!

Generally, I'd just like you to brainstorm some ideas for the pieces. Generally, I was thinking I got to order some crates and barrels and such, to bring the board to "life", but I would still need bigger pieces. I could probably do some more grave yard modules so I could cover around half a 2x3 feet board with it. With some more of those dried trees, I think I could get quite a morbid feel to the game, perfect for abominations and beings out of space!

Then, I was thinking about some buildings....I figured I'd would like to do something like those houses from Van Helsing (movie I didn't see when I got the chance, to be fair)

I saw those at Brummie's if I am correct. I really like them because they're dark and neglected. They're gothic, which is good if I ever (when I?) start (playing?) that period, too. I would probably build them from foamcore and coffee stirers (which I cant find anywhere here, in Slovenia, except by online order, which would double the price...) I would probably make the roof angled as they are here, for a bit of sillyness. I think it would make sense for strange things to happen in god forgotten village like this.


I was also thinking about some bushes and such, but then it ends. I would like to have a table with lots of things to climb, in more levels. The reason is, I'd want to use rules for the whip (Indiana Jones!) and there are rules for throwing or blasting people away (if shotgun doesn't kill, minaiture moves D3 directly away from shooter). This means it would be pretty awesome if you could blow someone off the balcony and such.


Then I got 2 more ideas for two more themes. Those are just wishes as I dunno where  could I store all this, but I would loooooooove to play SA games with copplestone's arctic explorers on totally white table....at the mountains of madness! Such table could still be made with separate terrain pieces, just painted white, lots of rocks and such...now I feel the need to invest in hot wire cutters and do one!
Well, back to reality, next idea is using The assault groups aztecs (or incas or some of those, please forgive my ignorance) as cultists and playing in a jungle next to ancient american ruined pyramids and such. Thats also cool and once I'll get PDF for playing a SA campaign in rainforest, it will make all the sense. The problem is vegetation. I've been to pet store and none of those flowers looked good enough to me. Anyone has any cool idea for building a jungle? Maybe just enormous tree trunks, but without actual crown (that is supposed to be a term for the branched part of the tree?). This would help playability, ease the terrain building and...well, make table look like a big natural disaster!

So, if there is anything that pops your mind, fire away. If it is of any help, I game Strange Aeons in 1920's, location worldwide. We're talking about global danger here! Which reminds me, god willing I have taken my last pregraduate exam today :P




To make things more appealing I can offer a humble reward for the one with the most realised ideas! So, lets do it this way. I will be building terrain until NOVEMBER 1st. So I can have more than a month and we're not waiting until new year's, plus its a good day for everything horror. On that day, I will check how many different pieces (so 3 templates of woods are still 1 thing, to make things balanced a bit) I've made, suggested by each participant.

Let the reward be a secret, as I will chose it later so it can benefit the winning individual as best as possible... and let me say I will do my best to make it something semi spectacular! 

Hope this buys you! :D

Mathyoo

Graveyard

Hello,

I've started building module grave yard when I got SA rules. I needed some terrain, as my brother and I played with only sandbags, wood fences and three obelisks I made before, which made games similar eventually and somewhat boring. I went for graveyard as crypt (or anything horrifying on a CD sized base) and grave stones are needed in quite few scenarios. Grave stones are needed for ghosts and zombie spawn points (makes sense!)

I've counted most I'd need are six, so I made six grave stones on single bases (25mm slotta base). I wanted to buy some, but you know...making something so basic yourself is faster, cheaper, easier and its yours in the end. Of course the finishing product is not as good as some gravestones out there, but I like what has became of mine :P

Here is a picture of all 6 of them:

They were painted black, drybrushed dark green, drybrushed grey. I went for random lines instead of actual writing, as it is faster, easier and big letters would just look silly. Plus my imagination fails when it comes to the names! I've drawn some eldritch stuff on some of them, like the star sign and something that should look like cthulhu's head.


To get some terrain, I've made two templates with grave stones. Those are meant for terrain purposes, but you could easily designate one or two (or all of them, wish be) to be used as grave stones instead of those I've shown before.

First template has a row of graves, first two being of a wealthier people and the rest being some random. I don't know if you can see it, but earth at one grave is piled up a bit. The last one is only half visible and really battered, someone disliked this person a lot!

Second template is a bit different, so I could avoid boring repeatings. It has a custom made tree, drybrushed with greys and whites. First, this helped me avoid figuring how to make leaves and secondly, it gives a certain "death" feel to the grave yard. I wanted to make grave dug out, but that will be hard to visualise, so I will probably just gloss varnish the grave and make it look like a pool of something unpleasant. A hand sticking out sounds perfect!


The crypt itself is in early stages of WIP. I need to get to it and build doors and some details out of plasticard, use spackle to fill the roof...I am not sure how could I make the walls less boring (or should I say more detailed?) and the building itself will probably be painted the same way as grave stones.  Somehow it seems I don't have a single nice pic of it, so I will leave it out. You can  see it in one of the pics above, it is made of cork.

All the pieces lack static grass as I am thinking about buying some tufts to complement the grass, making it a bit less regular. I also only got the "straw" grass, which I bought for my FOW US army in North Africa. I will probably buy "dead" and "green" grass too, and simply mix them up a bit for some variety. I also dont like the way I've painted the earth at the templates and would prefer it too be like one at the grave stones. The thing is, I don't want to use my vallejo paints for bigger terrains and I always keep getting brown with too much red in it! Well, once there will be more grass, it will be less noticable and I think I could live with that.

Let this be it for another late post, next time I will try to give you at least a review of Strange Aeons rules, if not an AAR!

Thanks for watching,
Mathyoo

Mathyoo (probably) goes to Salute 2013!

Hello,

a bit late with my post.

I just got new computer, as this one is totally messed up (sometime it doesn't start or it simply restarts for no apparent reason), so I am slowly switching files and such. I also have to study, play League of Legends again (haven't played since march!) and I even work...up to 6,7 pm, actually.
 I am adding to my sculpts little by little, working on a graveyeard and am dead-slow with painting of 3 more WGF zeds, so I have nothing much to say.

In march, I was in London for the first time. I've really enjoyed it (albeit I was surprised at how rare actual englishmen are there :P). Few weeks after I came back everyone was talking about Salute and I was really sorry I didn't heard about that before, so I could plan my trip accordingly. So, I've just figured, if I'll hoard enough finances, which I should, I'll just get up there again  and this time somewhere around 20th of April, when Salute takes place. Vampifan, if you're still for it, and if it would be afordable to check the North, I'd gladly visit while I'm there! But well, that is all still far, so the main thing is, I have a goal to follow, heh!


Well, let that be it for today and hopefuly I will have something to show soon!

Mathyoo

Meet the Formless thing!

Hello,

before I start, I'd like to thank you for helping my blog reach amazing 5,000 PLUS hits! Really gives man a fuel to blog more!

I've painted my formless thing, the monster I was showing you last time. It still needs some static grass, but I will apply that later one day when I get more mixes and some tufts and more things to apply it too, it gets really messy and I like to do it as much as possible on single occasion :P.

I've painted it skin color for no particular reason, but that I was also just painting some WGF zombies and I couldn't decide on any better. I didn't want to go with black (black slime is what Lovecraft's shoggots and formless things are made of), because is way too used and I think I couldn't paint it as good. For the eyes, I went with very light blue, to get some contrast in. For same reason, I've painted one side of the tentacles with grey. I've made a little bit more details on the tentacle's underside, but that is hardly visible. I've painted monsters teeth in very unimaginable sandy colour and its tongue even worse - plain redish. I am really satisfied with how it all came out, paint makes it even better (yet it shows how bad I've blended putty especially around some of the eyes), but on the negative side, its way too small...as in low height. When I'll get around to make another one (well, everyone should make at least one, its sooo much fun), I'll make sure it is at least as high as human waist, preferably head, which could end up with pretty weird shapes - the weirder the merrier!  A good example would be Tengu models' Son of Yog-Sothoth, which has to be one of THE BEST miniatures around. I'll get that beast one day. To give you an idea of a size, its face is around as high as 28mm miniatures' face. Really a great sculpt.

So, back to my little blob, here are some random pics and one for size comparison with Grom (which, mind you, is on the smaller side of 28mm miniatures):

Hope you like what you've seen,

Mathyoo

Eldritch horrors WIP

Hello,

I've got my Strange Aeons book I was talking about on monday. My brother and I went to play few games on the first day, and played whole tuesday. He is 13 so he has problems being interested in one thing and I was surprised at his enthusiasm about the game. This, I think, is one of the best proofs about how good the game simply is. I'll write a review in one of my later posts, but in a nutshell, it has simple mechanics, which means everyone can get a hold of the rules pretty quickly. Yup, even a 13 years old with a limit knowledge of english. We've proxied all the miniatures, as I don't have any for the 1920's period the game is set in. This means that my zombies were played as zombies, as frankensteinish constructs, fishmen, giant vermins (well... :D) and so on. We did, however used two of my mostly done sculpts, that I'll be showing you today.

First, there is Shantak I've been working on for quite a while (and is still not done):

For those of you who aren't familiar with Lovecraft's tales, a Shantak is an elephant-sized, not entirely bat and not entirely bird thing with horse's head and scaly skin. I gave mine 4 eyes to get him a bit more nightmarish, but the head has this...wrong expression on it. He looks like if he'd been giggling. From the last time I've shown him, he got some work done on his tail, but mostly neck and a head done. I was having enormous problems with sculpting his feet (note for the future: sculpt those first), so I had to make a base first. Yes, make. A custom one, just for him. I gave him a rock of DAS putty, so he becomes bigger. Still not an elephant size, mind you.


I've made him modular now. I've glued his wings on the body, as I have to bulky the arms a bit and sculpt another few fingers on the bent part. His legs will probably be sculpted once I'll paint him and the body, because otherwise wings would make those parts pretty unreachable.

He was used as a "winged nightmare" monster in a game, which is a nice way of naming that allows you to use any remotely flying thing in its place. It might be good to add, that rules specifically let you play with any miniatures you'd want, not just with official range. In a game, my brother thought it'd be a good idea to grab my main character and carry him out table (to "nightmare's nest"), where my hero of the fairy tales was unheroicaly fed to little nightmares, efectivelly ending my campaign! Brave companions of my hero were unable to form searching party in attempt to save lost adventurer as they got beaten by the nightmarish beast as well.

Next is a formless thing that I could say, is finished:

It sits...or should I say in that given moment it occupies an area, as big as 50mm round base. Formless thing could be painted as one of the million formless things Lovecraft mentiones in his tales, or the "eyes" could be painted green and the body black to make a "shoggoth". I am pretty happy with how model turned out, but it is too one dimensional, so to say, and too low sitting. I'd need to add more layers of putty to make one parts of the monster higher. For putty, I've used milliput (yelow, not seen much as it was covered with other layers), greenstuff (darkest green areas) and a mix of both (my new favorite putty). It took me some courage to actually mix milliput and greenstuff (you mix 2 components of each first, so you got a ball of milliput and a ball of greenstuff, thne you mix those 2 balls together). You get a putty that isn't as sticky as greenstuff (which is way too sticky :P) and not as crumbly as milliput - its perfect. The eyes were made with balls that I've got from Carl at Grekwood miniatures (check the tab on the right, if you haven't yet ;) and holes and craters were simply made of sticking my homemade tool (a ball of GS ) into the fresh putty, varying the pressure from hole to hole. It gives monster's "ooze" or whatever the thing is made of, some more texture, making it more interesting. And, as you can see, I've made some a coulple of mouths I am not satisfied with and HAD TO make a tongue sticking out of one. I have to do something about those 5 little eyes, because they look too plain, but so far, wasn't lucky. Its too small area to work on and I'll probably just leave them as such. Maybe I should do something about those mouth under them to make something there a bit more interesting. Any ideas?

There's another WIP picture of the thing below:

Last thing I got to show today are three dollies that are slowly becoming monsters. I've only started working on them this week, so they're nowhere close the end. I'm sculpting them using "greystuff", or procreate Carl has kindly sent me to test. So far, I like the putty, but I've found out I keep mixing too much and that it cures way faster than other two putties I work with. As for stickiness it is less sticky than greenstuff and much nicer to work with.


A Night-gaunt:

Only made legs (keep in mind, no feet yet, I haven't learned a thing!) and started working on a body. If it goes as planned, he will end up "thin", rubbery, faceless and with wings. I'll go in more detail when I'll make more details!

A conglomerate:

...or, if you wish, a clump of human, animal and any other parts stiched together and given life.

 I will make this one up as I go, but here is anatomically uncorrect hoove:

(either the hoove or the knee is twisted around...or, now that I think about it, we could call it a back leg and everything ends up beign fine!)

And, for a femine touch, toes-walking human leg:

Probably borrowed from a fashion model!


The god-knows-what:

This started as another conglomerate (I just love the idea of those, pretty funny (and pretty deadly in a game), but I will probably make him a "dimensional shambler". I was thinking about making forearms two big tentacles, but now that I've coated one, I am thinking about cutting the other one and repositioning it in "reaching forward" position. I think I will, indeed, go that way to produce as wide range of different beings as possible, just for the fun of it. There is only 1 real reason to keep him as a conglomerate, his left "leg" (so right, watching the picture) is actually an arm. I thought it'd be funny to give him an arm to walk with...but I can do that again any time!


Lastly here is a group photo I took when I had them all nicely set up on table:

Overall, I must say I really enjoy sculpting those. Firstly, they're all made up so I am free to interpret everything, which means I can't do things wrong and I don't have to worry about proportions too much and secondly, it feels good to jump in a shoes of a reanimator! Muahahaha!

Well, thanks for reading and any comments, critics and ideas are warmly welcomed!

Mathyoo

Stone carving!

Among other resources at Strange Aeons homepage are beta rules for a game called (let me copy that :D) Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten. It is a game that uses Strange Aeons mechanics, profiles and much of everything else, but instead of the fight of good versus evil (like in SA game), evil fights evil here. There is a certain scenario in the book, where you put 3 obelisks on a table, to form a triangle of death and destruction. The miniatures that die in that triangle count as sacrificed for the certain gods and let you summon the daemons. Those 3 obelisks seemed as a good way to start working on scenery for the game. They will be used as a random scenery in all the games that don't use special rules for them, obviously.

I've made them out of blue foam. I had a little piece of it laying around for few years now. It's really a nice material! I've started by cutting 3 3x10 cm blocks and then rounded them a bit. When they seemed okay, I've sanded them and used a blunt pencil to draw the "sculptures". I went for basic protagonists; Cthulhu, Dagon (as my cult will probably be Dagonites, as in story The shadows over Inssmouth) and I was breaking my head for the third....I'd want to go with some of the real gods, but it would be hard to represent a galactic mist on a stone, hehe. I then went with an image of a Serpentman. There is a third cult archetype in the game, called the Serpentmen worshipers and it made sense to give them a stone of worship, as well.


Here are the 3 stones. First, dedicated to Cthulhu, has his profile on it. Second has a profile of Dagon, a fish-and-frog like humanoid (it is supposed to be a bigger Deep one). Third represents a Serpentman. I wanted to go with Mother Hydra, to make the water trio of the entities, but I couldn't figure of a good way to portrait it. Mostly, because I've heared she's supposed to look like Dagon, but mostly people portray it as a mythical creature of the same name...and that'd be just too onesided. I ma add, I quite like how the Serpentman came out, Dagon is way too boring and Cthulhu could always be better.

I've cut the edges of the plasticard I've based them on, because ordinary squares simply look boring and I can't cut a round shape out of so thick plasticard. I've added a bit od pavement details on the serpentman's obelisk, but I am not satisfied. I will add some grass and sand to hide the ugly shapes and I will use miliput on the other ones. I went with greenstuff because I wanted to keep texture as low as possible, but thicker brick would bring out texture way better.

 Here is a back shot:
On Cthulhu's obelisk, I've made a little "story", from top down: the stars are "right" on the sky, then you got an island with 2 palms (dont ask :D), water, and deep below there is an ancien city of R'lyeh, where Cthulhu was dreaming, waiting for that exact moment. Dagon, again, has the boring one. I've just made another image of him, even worse this time, wrote Father Dagon on it and cut the N away,  to make it look like it was written. I've started too wide and I couldn't fit a whole name on it :P. Below are 3 weird things that look like boiled eggs, but its supposed to be a fish...use your imagination! On third, again, I was pretty much without any good ideas, and I've just made a desert sun shinning on the ancient arab city of Valusia, where Serpentmen are supposed to be from.

Here they are painted this time, but still WIP, as Ihave to work on their bases:

 They're simply primed black, drybrushed grey. But I am horrible at it (don't know what i do wrong, really :D), so I had to wash them, drybrush them some more.Then I've washed the "carved" space around the monster's profiles to make them stand out more. For the final touch, I've painted their eyes to give them some constrast. Dagon is still meh, Cthulhu is okay and I'm really happy how Serpentman's profile came out.

Here are the boring backsides, I was actually sorry I haven't left them blank a bit :P

On the SA front, I am still sculpting that Shantak. His legs are giving me problems, as does his face. And when I get there, as will little fingers on his wings. But I've made him a cool custom base and well, working on it slowly. I am also working on some other monster, but I will show you the sculpts in my next post. I am really trying to give out one thing a t a time, hehe.

On the NMRIH front, I'm painting my bodies now. For a teaser, here's a pic of them still green, but taken off their bases. Bases were too thick and when I tried carving around them, they were just silly, so I took them of and some of the minies broke:

To be honest, they're kinda awful, but I figured I should call them finished and work on other things. They look as they look so I'll be able to say "damn I made some progress!" next time I'll work on some! :P


Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo