UMS "Agram" : House on the Haunted Hill < Articles < Hobby

Marko Paunović, 11th September 2020

Any old west town has an undertaker's and Malifaux shouldn't be any different, because let's face it, the burrying busines thrives in the city of Malifaux.

Idea and planning

By now you should already know my mantra about how crucuial planning is in any bigger project. Since I'm doing a more or less typical Haloween structure set in Old west, I started my google search and instantly I found pictures of several types of wooden structures that I was going for. Mostly I got a lot of Tim Burton hits which was perfect. A rickety old wooden house on top of a hill with a winding road leading up to it. Something like the opening scenes of the movie Sleepy Hollow. This gave me the idea of adding some jack o'lanterns to the terrain, as well. Being too lazy to sculpt my own, this in turn, prompted me to start a search of some jack o'lanterns. I knew I saw a couple of crews on the Wyrd forums that had some on their bases. Almost immediately I found some by Secret Weapon Miniatures and purchased them as I was aware that it would take them a while to get from the States to me in Croatia.

During my search for jack o'lanterns, I stumbled upon some model pumpkins made by Busch. Being reasonably priced, I ordered those as well.

I now had some details that I knew the folks at Wyrd would love and I had a rough idea what my terrain should look like. It was time to put it all to paper. Begining with the house, I started drawing on a blank piece of paper. Once I had the preliminary sketch, I transfered it to graph paper. This provided me with some measurements that I could work with. The hill would be 10 cm high, the house would have a rough footprint of 10x8 cm while the whole terrain would have a footprint of roughly 30x40cm. This much space would allow me to have the winiding road – wide enough for a hearse (which I accidentally found in my bits box and decided to use).

Materials and tools

After the rough sketch, I could make a definite list of materials and tools needed for this project. Those are as follows:
- one 2x2 mm linden slat
- one 5x5 mm linden slat
- roughly two full planks of 2 mm balsa wood (they come in 10 x 100 cm planks)
- roughly 20cm of 5mm balsa wood (they also come in 10 x 100 cm planks)
- about 0,5m2 of 5cm thick HD styrofoam (50x100cm)
- superglue
- PVA glue
- 0,5 kg of DAS air drying clay
- gravel (four sizes)
- static grass / tufts
- pine trees
- sanding paper (1 sheet)
- thin card
- masking tape
- toothpicks
- some pins
- pumpkins
- jack o'lanterns
- hearse

The tools needed are:
- scalpel blade
- marker pen
- scissors
- modelling saw
- pin vice (or an electric mini drill)
- brushes– various sizes – for painting/washing and for drybrushing
- pliers and pincers
- hot wire cutter

* Unlike June issue of Wyrd Chronicles, where I used my Proxxon disc sander, jigsaw on the MDF to make the base, here I would make the base with styrofoam only. However, if you like a sturdier terrain, you can always cut the MDF base using a jigsaw and sand it down using a disc sander. When your base is cut, just glue the styrofoam base described later to your MDF base.

Building the base

Having all the materials arrive, I cut the footprint of the house that I drew on the graph paper and using a marker pen I used it as a template to drew a rough outline of the house on the HD styrofoam board. Around it, I started drawing trying to copy the design from the paper onto the HD styrofoam board. Once I was satisfied with the layout, I proceeded to cut it with my scalpel blade. Using long strokes with relatively shallow cuts it took me several goes to cut only one piece of styrofoam. Going around the base, I repeated the process untill I cut what would be the whole base of my new terrain. It is important to go with shallow cuts, because if you try with to deep of a cut, you'll end up tearing the styrofoam which looks really messy and would only result in a lot of sanding. This in turn would slow the whole building process. I now had the first layer of my haunted hill. If you remember, I wrote that my hill would be 10cm high. The HD styrofoam being only 5cm thick, meant I had to cut another base of the same size. Using the first base as a template I first drew the outline with a marker pen and then following the same procedure as with the first base, I cut it to size with my scalpel blade.

With both halves of the base cut, I had to make the winding road which meant further cutting of both of the bases. Using a marker of another colour, I drew the cut lines and carefully cut the excess styrofoam with my scalpel blade.

NOTE: if you feel that the cutting is getting heavier, change the blade. Unfortunately, styrofoam is murder on the blades and to have a perfect cut, you need sharp blades.

After the cutting was done, I used a piece of sanding paper to smooth out the irregularities left over from the scalpel blade. The two halves were now complete and I had to glue them together. Using skewers to connect the halves I glued them using PVA glue. I also noticed that at the start of the road the styrofoam was really thin so I stuck a whole skewer through the side of the terrain so it wouldn't break. Also, I protected the begining of the road with masking tape.

With the base glued, I now had to cut the cliffs. Same as last time I used my hot wire cutter to model the vertical surfaces. I again used my cheapest wire cutter, powered by two AA batteries. The electricity from the batteries heats up the wire that then melts the styrofoam performing a perfect straight cut. However, as it heats the wire elongates so you should take into account that fact when fixing the wire to the cutter. If the wire is too long, it will still perform the job, however it won't be as handy and you (like me) will have to stoop to some really fiddly and strange handling of the device in order to get a nice cut. After a bit of fiddling I managed to engrave the errosion patterns with the hot wire cutter.

When the hillside was built, it still looked a bit dull and plain so I decided to make some escarpments along the sides of the cliffs. In order to do so, I needed to build up the volume there. I could have done it using HD styrofoam once again, but I opted against it, choosing to sculpt the escarpments using DAS air drying clay. DAS comes in two versions, white and terracota. Both are equally good, don't crack during the curing period and are reasonably good for sculpting. (Note: you won't be able to sculpt your minis with DAS, but you will be able to model brick or stone walls, cobbled streets and whatnot.) I poured some PVA glue and spread some DAS along the inner and outer sides of the winding road. I then added some clay to the upper level of the base. I also added some volume to the middle of the road with DAS clay as well.

Finally we come to the stage of adding the texture. First, I decided to do the road. Applying a heavy coat of PVA glue, I added some gravel. As always I started with the largest grain and finishing with the smallest grain – sand for chinchillas. I also used the smallest grain on my pumpkin field on top of the base.

The road and field being done, I could now turn to the other horizontal surfaces – mostly the sides of the road. Again, I covered everything with PVA glue and added three or four different types of gravel. The final layer was a bit coaser than chinchilla sand in order to differentiate between the two.

When these were dry, I added pure chinchilla sand to the vertical surfaces of the cliffs. Here I had to make sure the PVA got into the grooves so I diluted the PVA with water in order for it to flow more freely.

I do all my texturing (and flocking for that matter) inside an old trey. This way all the excess material drops into it so I can reuse it later on. Saves money and time on vacuuming.

After the texture was dry, I undercoated the base with a black acrylic mat sprey in my garage. Always sprey in a well ventilated area.

Making the structure

While the texture and undercoat were drying, I proceeded to make the structure of the Undertaker's house. I decided to go for an easier and faster method of building the structure than I used in my old west church build. Unlike the old west church where I first made the wooden frame and then glued each plank separately, here I opted to make the walls from a single piece of 2mm balsa wood. On top of it, I would then glue 2mm thick balsa planks (cca 0,5x3cm). I made sure the wall structure had grooves going in up-down direction while the wall planks were glued going left to right. This way, although the wall is relatively thin, the structure is sturdy enough to withstand gaming abuse without any damage/breakage. As with MDF and styrofoam bases, I first drew the outlines of each wall on the balsa plank using my marker pen. Then I carefully cut each wall. I used my modellers saw for cuts against the grain (perpendicular to it) and used the scalpel blade for cuts going with the grain. When every wall segment was cut, I glued the walls together.

It was now time to cut and model balsa planks. Once again, I used a method similar to the one I used during the old church build. Since I would need a lot of slats of mostly the same size (3cm long) which would require a lot of precise and repeated measuring, I decided to help myself and construct a toos that would be used to cut the slats into desired length - 30 mm long. The geometry of these simple tools would allow fast and precise cutting of the balsa slats and true enough after only half an hour I had cut almost 4 meters of balsa planks.

Once the basic outline of the structure was made, I started gluing the planks. In places where the planks protruded from the walls, I cut them using my scalpel blade. The whole process is fiddly mostly because none of the walls is perpendicular to the other so lots of tayloring was required.

To make the roof structure, I used 2mm thick balsa wood. Once the roof structure was made, I used the same material I used on the church to make the roof – sanding paper cut to size. I just love the texture it has. Once everything was finished, I took both the structure and the base to my garage for a quick sprey of undercoat. Remember to always sprey in a well ventilated area! When the undercoat was dry, I first dryfitted the building to the base, closed the gaps with some balsa planks and applied with a large brush a coat of black colour to the places the sprey didn't reach.

Painting

When the undercoat was dry, it was time to paint the terrain. Normally, I would have glued the building to the base at this point but I decided against it mainly because of the site of the terrain itself. This way I could handle the terrain easier so I left the two parts separate. I started painting the base first. Wanting all my terrain to fit one theme (and consequently one tabletop) it was only natural I use the same colours and colour scheme as on the earlier terrain. Therefore once again I used Pebeo Deco color range. I used Brown (29) for the basecoat and continued drybrushing with Ocre (51). Lighter shades were done with a 50:50 mixture of Ocre (51) and White (41). The final highlight was done with Antique White (69). The road was first basecoated with Brown (29) then heavily drybrushed with Ocre (51) and a 50:50 mixture of Ocre (51) and White (41). The last two highlights were Antique White (69) and pure White (41). This way, I had a visual difference between the cliffs with normal groundwork and the worn out road.

The building has two different surfaces and consequently textures – roof and wooden walls. I proceeded to paint the wooden walls by drybrushing first using a 50:50 mixture of Black (55) and Grey (54). Next layer was pure Grey (54) and the finishing highlight was Ash Brown (70). I was not quite satisfied with the result, so I added another highlight of pure White (41). The roof was painted first with a mixture of Black (55) and Grey (54) and then a mixture of Grey (54) and Antique White (69) finishing with almost a pure coat of Antique White (69). With the base and house painted, I could now glue them together. I used PVA glue to glue the building in place.

Vegetation

After the painting, it was time to add the vegetation to the base. First up, I decided to plant some pine trees. I used Ziterdes ones that come in a big pack of 20 (or 25, not sure). They come on long shafts and in several sizes and heights. In order to glue them in place, I first had to cut their round bases as they got in the way. I also added metal pins to the pine trees. The easiest method of pinning metal pins to the plastic trunks of the trees is to heat the metal pin using a candle and just stick it into the trunk. The heat will melt the plastic locally and as the pin goes into the trunk the heat dissipates and once the pin is cool it will become lodged into the trunk without any need to glue it. Also, I used a pinvice to make the hole in the DAS clay base to accommodate the pins. I glued the trees using both PVA and super glue.

With the trees in place, I could now add the static grass. I made a mixture using several green, brown, yellow and black shades of static grass and when I was satisfied with the end product, I glued it in random patches throughout the base. One thing I made sure of is that I put static grass over any and all of the remaining holes where the wooden structure met the base in order to hide the unintentional mistake. Once the static grass was in place, I applied several shades of different tufts. Again, as in the former articles, I used tufts made by a company called Gamer's Grass.

In the end I added my cool Haloween-ey additions. First up was the pumpkin field. Pumpkins come from Busch, a German model train company that produces excellent terrain accessories, especially in their Natur Pur range (pumpkins, sunflowers, roses, water lillies etc). The set cost about 8USD and has 10 sets of pumpkins with vines and I think it's great value for money. Being an H0 scale, these are in a scale a bit smaller than 32mm minis but the pumpkins come in various sizes so you can even use the smallest pumpkins as tomatos. They already come in different colours so painting required was minimal. When the painting was done, I glued the couple of sets into my pumpkin field using superglue. The second addition was a couple of Jack o'lanterns made by Secret Weapon Miniatures. Set costs about 10 USD and has 10 Jack o'lanterns which is also great value for money. They are full of character and come in several sizes and designs. Unlike Busch, they are created for tabletop miniatures in mind so the scale works perfectly. Being grey these required some painting – using reds and oranges with some black lining. Once I was done with the painting, I glued them randomly along the road and in front of the house for some Haloween feeling. The third addition was the coffin and the lid. They come from an English company called Zealot Miniatures. Among other stuff, they produce excellent resin accessories for dungeons (like doors, trap doors, furniture, fountains etc..). In fact, they recently had quite a successful Kickstarter. I painted the grey resing with brown colours. The final addition to the terrain, which I actually left unglued, was the hearse. It was an old GW Black Coach that I had lying around. I built it using superglue and painted it black with some grey highlights. The reason for leaving it unglued was purely because of easier gaming. With it in the shed, it would prevent models from going around the house. This marked the end of the build and all I had to do was to take some pictures of the finished product.

Association of miniature collectors, modellers and tabletop wargamers "Agram"

House on the Haunted Hill

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