Each year at my local store, we run a Christmas tournament. Each participant shows up with a painted model, securely wrapped, and attaches to it a label with a handful of hints to its identity. We play Warmachine all day (the last two years, the format was Thunderdome), and as people score points, they can unlock the clues to each present’s identity and creator. Then at the end of the day, people use the hints to choose which model they think they’d like to swap their current present for, with higher-scoring players getting later swaps to better ensure that they keep what they choose.

The entire exercise, from model creation to playing to opening presents, is the most fun I have gaming all year.

Two years ago, my entry models were a pair of festively-themed Basilisks named Herb and Lindy, while last year I brought the fury of Santa Reznik, High Naughtymonger of Menoth.

This year I’ve been trying to focus more on scratch-sculpting than on conversions, so I decided that whatever I ended up making, it would be entirely sculpted out of Fimo, which would give me more leeway in creating an interesting model. I originally tossed around some ideas for a custom warbeast, but had just finished scratch-sculpting a few rather large models, and was in the mood to work on something smaller and faster. In the end, I had a fantastic idea; a counts-as Withershadow Combine in the guise of different collection of immortal magical cobblers:

Boo-yeah.

Updates have been a bit sparse lately due to my holiday giftmaking– most of my projects are super secret until delivery to their various recipients, and work on the remaining presents robs me of the time I’d need to blog about them anyway.

But fear not, seven remaining readers! For while Spud cannot show you something worth looking at, he CAN waste your time with an incomplete practice mini and a goofy piece of recently-acquired photographic equipment!

I’ve decided to do three nice things that require almost no work on my part, because that pretty well sums up the kind of guy I am.

1. Anyone wanna sculpt at Templecon?

This year will be my fifth Templecon, and the first where I’m not planning to play much Warmachine. I’ll be playing in whatever Infinity events they have and probably getting in a few games of Grind and Thunderdome, but otherwise I’m mostly just planning to hang out and do whatever. During this period of whatever-doing, I was thinking that it might be fun to sit in a hotel room for like twelve hours straight and sculpt an army man. I mean, I’m paying enough for the bloody room, I might as well get some use out of the damned thing.

Would anyone be interested in such an activity? Twelve hours is enough time to get a dude from wire to partly dressed; I’d be covering things like armature-rigging, fimo mechanics, useful tools, basic anatomy, faces, and clothing, with lots of random pointers in between about general technique and good habits.

In between my truly amazing projects, I also do a lot that merely evoke an offhand “Ehh, that’s kinda neat, I suppose”. Most aren’t really worth blogging about, but here and there I find one that I can tap out a thousand or so words about as a filler.

Today we’re going to look at one of those.

Quick update: I’ve had a couple requests for the templates I used to make my foamcore buildings, so I quickly cleaned up the files this morning and am offering them here to anyone who wants to walk in the footsteps of madness.

There’s a PDF version for anyone who just wants to make the same buildings I did, and I’ve also uploaded my Illustrator files in case anyone wants to make variations on my building shapes:

• Spud’s Modular Terrain Templates (PDF Format)
• Spud’s Modular Terrain Templates (Adobe Illustrator format)

The templates are a bit sparse on instructions (though I did put a recipe on each floorplan to indicate which walls are needed to make each one), but you can probably get the gist of it if you check out the original article.

If anyone does end up making their own buildings from these templates, be sure to send me pictures.

-Spud