Blog The Jade Host: Mayan Lizardmen

Awesome. I find it makes a huge difference.

 

The Battle Standard Bearer has had some work done, mostly just a big coat of gold paint.


Not sure if I am going to do the feathers in red or green yet?

Also finished my four temple guard Slann bearers; now they just need the palanquin and a slann to carry around. Long standing project moving closer to fruition:

Spoiler: temple guard pics

Prior to the addition of the shields and the forward wood pieces.

 

And in other news, the House of the Pigeons is completely painted.

Front:


The building is three separate pieces that fit thematically next to each other, but can easily be moved around the map for some diversity.

Back:


Some ratmen heresy may have leaked into the project...

Spoiler: House of the Pigeons

Some pictures of the access stairways on the individual terrain pieces, plenty of places for Mordheimers to assault up:



"Trapdoor" above the stairs (doesn't actually lift up):


More heresy spotted among the ruins:

 

Your creativity is so extraordinary! I really like how every bit of your terrain is actually playable in every detail.
Not like those bought models where a stegadon can hardly fiddle it's tail through a 'big gate'.

Me, too.
Also like how there is always a puzzlpuzzled looking skink or two around...

 

Had some fun playing Jungleheim with my new buildings this weekend, more pics in the battle report!

 

More terrain work for future Jungleheim/Mordheim games:


Two more buildings with their first coats of paint and details ready to go. The one in the foreground is modeled after a long house of columns I saw at Uxmal while I was there.

I am planning to eventually fix up my jungle fortress (which was damaged quite a lot during the move ). Overall the pieces need the dark-grey "detail" paints, and I plan to add more greens and browns to spice up the terrain pieces. Right now I started working on the easiest parts: the two "ruined" wall sections. I also made a bunch more ladders (you can never have enough!). Here are the bases with a fresh layer of mud-paint:



More siege towers will be fun to make too.

 

Terrain hero! Terrain hero! Terrain hero!

 

Truly honored by your compliments

More heroics have been accomplished: the two new terrain pieces are now complete!

The Long House from Uxmal and a basic terrain building I nicknamed the Snake-Faced House, loosely based on a structure from Tulum (without the face of course, that is based on the BIG pyramid I built from Chicanna.



Uxmal Long House:


...comes equipped with some experimental stairs down the side! They are a little short, its hard to balance minis on them:

Spoiler: Uxmal Long House pics

The interior:

The Snake-Faced House:


...a skink encounters a trespassing warmblood:

Spoiler: Snake-Faced House pics

The back of the house features a rickety ladder to get up to the second level:



Quick comparison between the Snake-Faced House and the first Mayan/Jungle-themed building I built over a year ago. Both have the same shape (a simple one, easy to reproduce):



Final pic, just the same skink scampering through the jungle terrain.

I hope you liked the pics!

 

Why has GW not hired you to make them terrain?!?!?!

They should pay you to design these. Then they mold them, and sell them as kits! I am certain that they would be a hit!

The way that you tie history with fantasy is quite alluring. People can use the terrain for Warhammer, or they could use it for Historical wargaming.

I don't know if I have enough seniority to do this (I might get blasted for it) but yolo!

 

That's awesome!! I love the snake face it seems to jump right out of those walls
How many hours did you put into that?… and how much space do you have to store all that?

 

I have only been working on projects for at most 2 hours in the evenings when I had time; I would say about 6 hours for both terrain pieces spread over three nights? (2ish hours to build, 4max hours to paint...). The estimate seems a little high, but I normally do them really slowly while listening to music or youtube videos.

Everything is stored on the shelves of my game room:



I might get some better storage methods later, for now everything is contained on the two shelving units along the wall. Plenty of space for terrain and works in progress.

Spoiler

I am honored by your compliments, though my painting skills are far from professional (and my materials far too cheap)... I do get a ton of inspiration from GW, like the awesome Mayan/Aztec themed piece by Mike McVey featured in the white dwarf, and the amazing Hexacoatl temple-city display!

Mayan artwork and their civilization is another big hobby of mine, so I am glad I can get my wargaming hobby to match up too!

 

I have decided to start working on some major terrain pieces that have been in my backlog for some time: Mordheim platforms!

This is the general plan, I think I have posted them before somewhere:



The basic idea is to put more, smaller pieces of jungle terrain on top of the larger blocks (the images were made using sketchup, just like what I used to make my temple-city artwork!).

So far I have made three of the above terrain pieces, here colored green: the Arch of Labna, the Rattlesnake House, and the "raised plaza" which needs a better name.




I have finished assembling the ones labeled in yellow today and will be painting them next. If I have a chance I will add some of the ramps too.

Spoiler: Inspiration pics

El Tanjin platform inspiration (Bldg A):



Sayil Pyramid: the platform is going to be the bottom-third of the structure; eventually I will make the upper part too.



Xochicalco platform inspiration: its going to be fun to paint this one up! (more pics of this fascinating structure here)




Another angle of the platform pieces I am planning to still construct:


Inspiration for this Mordheim-platform-setup comes squarely from Long Island Wargaming and their amazing City Limits Mordheim Campaign battle reports, posted over on youtube.

 

Good plan!(Great Plan?) Think it's a clever idea to build stuff according to bigger plan. That way you can use it all together as a mordheim setting (or skirmish in general) and also use the single parts in unit based games as terrain on a bigger board.

As a suggestion for a name for the raised plaza: what about something with market? Fish market? Market of Bones? Blood Market ... or maybe Arena? As a tribute to the traditional indigenous ritual sport of South America? You know what I mean... this Aztec mixture of soccer and basketball where the winner team was sacrificed to the gods and the losers sometimes where already dead or heavily injured... Arean of Glory ... Madison square garden ...

 

I do like the idea of making a Mayan/Lizardmen ballcourt, that is a good one that I will have to implement.

Not decided on a name yet though, though "Madison square garden" made me laugh


...major progress completed during the day, including a several hour long mural painting section:

Spoiler: platform pics

Sayil Platform:



El Tanjin Platform:


Xochicalco Platform:

I had a lot of fun painting the Xochicalco feathered-serpent patterns on this one!


I will probably fill in most of the dark grey space with some Lizardmen glyphs too. Plenty more to be done

 

Multiple projects still being worked on, to include the platforms, but here are some pics of Project Gatormen Part 2:



A new crop of 15 is assembled and ready to be painted, with enough bases to be four groups of Gatormen Posse or twenty kroxigors!

Spoiler

Another quick shot after I added sand to the bases in the first layer of basing. The missing models are drying after being spray-painted black. Also I drilled all the future magnet holes in the bases and the gator's feet.

I plan to give all four units a unique color scheme; after scouring the internet for pictures here is what I came up with:



My current gatormen are green to start as a baseline (upper left-hand corner), with the rest being slight deviations from the start. One group is going to have some red warpaint, another dark-scaled version will have some white skull warpaint, and the fourth will be a lighter-scaled version, maybe something more akin to a nile crocodile.

I came across this video from Blue Table painting with some excellently painted gatormen, this is probably the scheme I will try to mimic for at least one of the groups.

 

Most of the basecoats are complete for the gators, except the light-colored unit as I need to mix a better color than the one I attempted



Bases are muddied up and ready to start the water effects. I have done similar work to the carnosaur's base in the effort to get him done this month:



Work continues on the platforms too, adding tons of tiny glyphs and details!



Most of the tiny glyphs are randomly spouting invocations of Sotek (SOTEK IS GOOD, SOTEK IS GREAT! ), but the center section states a mysterious message from the Old Ones, inspired by @Krox_v.2 's mention of Douglas Adams earlier this week (SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH! ).

Spoiler: Xochicalco Mural progress

One thing I noticed writing out this phrase was the Lizardmen alphabet in the back of the army book doesn't have an "f," so I have been using the "ph" glyph instead