Building Adepticon: Part 1

One day while sitting around, a faint voice crawled over the ground. Not down the chimney, not quite like a mouse, but a booming whisper that soon shook the whole house. This tell tale heart could not be forgot.

 A look in the kitchen, a look by the TV, but no source could be found for this mysterious clamor. A creak of the door, and a look in my room, where a dull glow shown through the gloom. A slab of black lay on the desk, menacing and brooding, hummed the muffled voice.

A lift of the lid, and that dark palantir opened. A dark burning eye that grabbed my innards. I saw a tower of white, with a dead white sign, it read Westin; erupt with red flame. And from that thick smoke, the Dark Lord Jamie Welling did spoke, “Build me a tower, worthy of Adepticon…”

That brings us at to the project at hand; the great construction of our time. With Jamie’s words echoing in stone, I warmed up my foam cutter and set to creating a tone with that great big blue foam; and the forging of the two towers.

This being the first of a series of terrain articles that will feature this dark tower and its hard journey to the brutal table tops of Adepticon’s Lord of the Rings tournaments. So whether you are a Rings player, first time attendee, or Adepticon veteran, I hope you enjoy the photos and stop by that weekend to see the tower in action.

I went about looking for some inspiration and only found a couple actual models of the movies tower of Orthanc. One being seen above, from lotrscenerybuilder.org, basically an awesome Weta Workshop replica, and the other a GW store model.

I quickly realized that I had two options with this project; 1) Buy a new car to fit a 5 foot tall model, or 2) make the model smaller. So with amateur Microsoft paint skills I went about shrinking Orthanc to a more manageable level.

 

 

I knew that this had to stay big in eye appeal yet still be playable for a tournament setting. So I set on a nice round number of 3 feet for the central core and side towers. The hardest part by far was achieving the tapered obelisk design. Having only a classic woodlands scenic foam cutter, I built wooden frame panels that I could then make crisp, even cuts.

      I have built many terrain items over the years and have developed my own concept on the future of skirmish terrain, height. This third area of design is often sacrificed for better storage, playability, etc on the table. I believe that to keep taking terrain farther and better, this frontier of making the realism grander and larger is required. Think Warhammer 40k tables with 10 storied half ruined buildings or the mines of Moria with so 3-4 cave/tunnel height variations and levels for battling. Not being the biggest Star Trek fan in the world, but that awesome chess board they play on sums up my inspiration.

The base measures around seventeen inches square, while large, it will make for a fun table top setting. It can also serve as an eye blocker if your opponent is having a bad hair day.

With the core built, the next step was the most iconic part of this tower, the spires. I knew they had to be one piece each and razor sharp, no bumps or divots. Thankfully I got these squared away on a table jig saw before moving to Chicago; as well as sanding them down to nice points.

With the shrunk down version of my tower, I am able to separate it into 4 sections of 8 inch paneling to wrap my head around better. With that, this is the first 8 inches of the towers paneling and the frame work for the next section.

 Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next time when I tackle the spiked buttresses of the higher panels. An unexpected turn might occur too, when I think about cutting off the top 16 inches for easier transportation, storing, and painting.

Cured Meat to Cure the Wait

While waiting to unveil my big terrain project for upcoming adepticon, check out some bacon! This simple process involved some pork belly and a curing recipe from any of the many homemade salumi and sausage making books.

It took about three weeks for this 1 lb piece to fully cure. This is actually pancetta, the Italian version of bacon, in that it is simply cured, and not smoked like our American bacon.

This coupled with a successful first attempt at sausage making, means that soon I aim to have all sorts of charcuterie hanging in my fridge.

Desert Air

Home from Arizona and procrastinating unpacking. So here is a brief summary and photo collage of the weekend.

Finally got some good photos of my army all together for the first time. Here are the Dwelling Dogs with their goblin buddies.

Had some great match-ups all weekend with a majority of objective oriented scenarios instead of simple to the death engagements.

Tons of great terrain mixed with a classic good vs evil match-ups made for some traditional encounters on native terrain for round 1.

Dwarf vs Goblins in Moria for a seize the artifact where you had to exit your opponents board edge with the item. Puppy chow wargs helped secure a defensive line and get the object but loss of priority dragged the game to a dangerous point with only in the dwindling turns, 1 goblin passed his courage checks and got off the board.

 I got the chance to finally play a game on the aging prancing pony against an army of the dead from LA. Anthony was a blast and by far one of the best games of the weekend and in a long time. Goblins proved their worth by running away really fast once broken and the ghosts held onto all three objectives.

Last couple photos before getting caught up in some tense games was against Brent's woses. With the speed of the wargs, they got the randomized objective off in record time. A turn of luck made a fast game but we played out the engagement afterwards for some woses payback on the goblins.

A last ditch attempt did not prove well for the goblin...

With another Gathering in the desert in the books, all guns are pointing towards Adepticon and the great tower.... check back soon for terrain updates.

Gathering the Pups for Arizona

 With the last basing sand drying I finally finished up the final three warg pups. They were re purposed from the farmer maggot hounds. Added some tails and fur to hide the collars.

 These stand ins for wargs are not here for smaller targets or advantages, just got bored with stock warg models and had to switch it up.

The last item for Arizona's tournament is painting up that display board behind the dogs. Till next time.

Tale of Four Gamers: Completed!

So we come to it at last, the completion of our haggard army building story. As far as I know, I am the only 1/4 to finish in our 5 month period. So, after more time than I am used to in this army building, Here is the last bunch.

 These are most of the unique wargs, there a couple stock models as well as 3 of the farmer maggots dogs for warg pups. This is the paint scheme concept for some of the wargs, I wanted to have different ones just to break up the unity of 17 of them.

 Dwarf causes some indigestion.

 This brown scheme was again based on my old dog, just to vary the looks on the board. The two rubble bases are going on the inside of the display board. Helps spruce up the home decor of the mines!

So the final list for Arizona's Gathering in the Desert is

Druzhag
Cave Drake
10 Goblins with spear and bow

4 goblins with spear
2 goblins with shield and spear

20 goblins with Shield

1 bat swarm
17 wild wargs

With all the new buzz around new rule books by Gamesworkshop, I suspect most of our old lists will all have to be tweaked. And of course, I choose not to make all these wargs with goblin riders even though I could feel it in my bones that they would release a goblin warg raider....

Now that the army is finished, it is going to be lots of terrain work from here till April with the highly anticipated Adepticon convention looming.

Slow and Steady

So it has been awhile since my last update but here we go. First off, everything is right in the world again with the Patriots dominating win over the upstart Broncos and we are on track again for a Packers-Pats superbowl.

With that out of the way, we can get back to showing off some doggies. With my February 1st deadline fast approaching for finishing this army prep some serious building progress was made this last week.

 Dancing with wolves: these 2 goblins we trying a new stealth tactic against some dwarfs....

 Just playing fetch

The ole classic dog jumping on something pose: I am going for the cute, cuddly approach to these wargs.

These are only 3 obviously, but there are 21 more with about half converted up.

Check back February 1st for the conclusion of my 1/4 Tale of Four Gamers complete with hopefully a finished display board as well as a final recap of the army list before flying out to AZ for the Gathering in the Desert Indy Grand Tournament.

On the horizon is Adepticon and hinted in the past couple posts, there is a powerful terrain piece growing in the East.....