Mordheim
A few simple tips and hints for your Mordheim terrainmaking efforts.
The buildings created by GW are good, but you need to be careful when you prepare them. Before removing the plastic pieces from the sprue, spraypaint the sprue with your favourite black undercoat. When removing the plastic pieces, use a sharp knife and great care, as the small details are easy to wreck with the use of excessive force. Now take the instructions and read them carefully. If you have both the beginning set and the Blood in the Streets expansion, start assembling the Blood in the Streets set first - the instructions are better and once you've assembled the first few buildings, you'll know how it is supposed to be done. Be careful - try assembling the buildings without glue at first, as there is an error in the instructions (at least there is in mine...).
When preparing to assemble a building, only punch out the pieces necessary for this building. Photocopy the floorpieces for later (check out the floor section further down this page). Pick the plastic pieces necessary and drybrush them to match the colorscheme choosen for the building you are creating. Remember that you have the final say. The wallcorners resemble the cornerstones used in the Renaissance buildings, so for inspiration, try borrowing a few books with color pictures or search the internet for European cities with a similar look. I'll try to add some pictures from Copenhagen later on. The beams are supposed to resemble wooden beams separating and supporting the stone walls. Variety will create a more sublime look. BTW: Old wood which is weathered will have a greyish tint to it.
Use polycement (plastic cement) to glue the plastic parts together. Be sure that you have them at the right angles before gluing, though, as polycement creates a quite strong bond. Remember to allow the pieces time to dry throughly before going on. (Start working on a new building in the meantime...)
Use bits of sprue cut in short lengths (about 2 cm) to support the floors from inside when necessary. Use superglue or acrylic glue to attach the sprue.
Before assembling your buildings, photocopy the floorpieces. Using the photocopy as a guide, you can easily create floorpieces that fit perfectly, from balsawood. Score the balsa along the natural veins of the wood to create the impression of planks. I use a pencil for the scoring, as balsa is soft and fragile. The scoring does not need to be absolutely perfectly straight, as planks were hand-cut back then. BEFORE gluing the floors to the floorpieces of the assembled building, stain it with either brown ink for a dark floor or chestnut ink for a light floor. Drybrush with various brown shades to fit your fancy. You could keep the floors in the color of balsawood, resembling pine, but then you should follow the scorings with a very light greyish/black ink to resemble the dirt assembled between the planks. Only the freshest pinewood is actually that good-looking, so for weathered pine, try a light drybrush with an appropriate light grey color.
If you want to add the impression of nails, use the tip of your pencil to make an impression in the balsawood. Then when the floor is finished, touch up the nailimpressions with a bit of silver. Be careful - for this you'll need a steady hand and a very fine brush.
I recommend creating strong bases, as card buildings are fragile by default. Adding balsa floors stabilizes and strengthens the buildings greatly, but I still prefer to create a base from ½ cm thick wood, preferably MDF or similar quality. It might seem expensive at the time, but you paid good money for the buildings - this is the best way to ensure that they will last for all the games you want to play.
The standard Mordheim buildingset comes with a ladder. But obviously, one ladder is not enough. A good and fast way to create new ladders is to take 3 inches pieces of sprue and halfed matchsticks. If you are a smoker or like candles, you'll be able to create these ladders for free, as the unburned part of a used match can be use easily. But most craftstores sell large bags of matchsticks at a low cost. I use 4-5 matches (8-10 half matches) for each ladder. Using superglue, I attach the halfed matchsticks to the sprue as steps. The sprue was spraypainted with a black undercoat while I was preparing my buildings. Now I use brown ink or chestnut ink to stain the steps in a wooden color. Drybrushing with various colors of brown (vermin brown, vomit brown, snakebite leather) and also painting the sprue to match, I end up with a cheap and very good ladder.
The White Dwarf "sprue rubble" is a quite good idea. Use the odd ends of sprue (never the long straight parts, which are so useful for other purposes) to create bits of rubble. For this purpose, I prefer to use my pliers to cut the sprue - it is faster and the rubble should rather look broken than neatly cut. I mix it with small stones, kitty litter and a bit of sand.
The buildings from the standard buildingset are quite good. But adding details will enhance them greatly and it is not all that hard. Try creating a bookshelf from a piece of balsawood. Then add books. The books can be created from another balsastrip (about ½ cm wide) covered on three sides with thin card or thick paper. The card or paper is supposed to look like the binding and should be painted to resemble leather. The inside of the book (the balsa showing) should be painted to look like yellowing pages. This is done easily by scoring the balsa a few times with a knife, staining it with yellow ink and then drybrushing lightly with bleached bone or similar beige color. If you have a very neat and small handwriting, you can try adding gold letters to the front of the book, but mostly this will not be necessary - the shelf will be impressive enough as it is. Remember, that books are rare and expensive in Mordheim - there will only be a few books left on the shelf.
For a fireplace, check out Shaun's site. Look for the 1" and 1/4" items - the link at the top. But take a look around the entire site - it is truely amazing
You all have the starting set of Mordheim buildings by now, I presume. So... take the chimney piece and cut the blackened fireplace out. Now glue it to the support in the middle, creating a 3D fireplace instead of a painted-on replica. Remember to touch up the exposed card with a light grey matching the stones of the chimneypiece. Using two half matchsticks and a bit of a lollipop stick, I created a shelf above the fireplace and expanded the fireplace a bit out into the room. It looks great! The last touch would be to place a screen in front of the fireplace. For this, I would suggest using plastic flyscreen or car repair mesh.
Want more details for your buildings?
How about broken furniture, more books (homemade, paper cover on a small piece of balsa or thick card), a length of rope curled up, a homemade wheelbarrow (from matches and an undead shield - I'm going to post the darn thing as soon as I get it finished, photographed and scanned), statues, beermugs in the abandoned inn, broken and whole. A pitcher overturned on the floor and beer spilled from it. A barrel with a tap to pour beer from on a counter. A few overturned chairs and a table. A tray for the mugs to stand on. Broken pottery. Scraps of clothes. A chest of clothes, partly open and seemingly left behind in a hurry. A treasure chest with little leather bags supposedly filled with goldcoins and other valuables. A bed filled with straw and perhaps with a partly burned cover. Rats, mice, cats, dogs, spiders, birds.
Just go to a museum, take a look around and take the ideas with you home. The residents ran for their lives or got fried by a meteor - the stuff they left behind can be in surprisingly good order or broken to pieces.