A few people asked me how did the tiles on the ruins I made last week.
I've been restructuring my house a few months ago and I discovered the world of encaustic cement tiles. A technique of coloured, pressed cement from the beginning of the 20th century with the most amazing patterns.
While it's a modern technique, many of the patterns in reality are based on much older Islamic tile and mosaic designs.
While planning various options for the house I made and printed some wallpapers to see if it worked. Using pictures from various online catalogues.
Inevitably, at a certain point I tried how it looked with some miniatures having Arrakis meets Marrakech in mind.
Some of the test prints were blue tiles, and had a somewhat icy aspect. Then I had the idea that there must be tiles that looked like snowflakes that would be great for Frostgrave. And indeed they exist!
I also found some antique Moroccan ceramic design. So here a few of the designs a did, for you to download and print out. I print two pictures on one page, using Windows, for the right size. I recommend heavier, semi-gloss paper for the best effect.
Edit: more tile designs:
I finished my first ruins. I've been obsessed with encaustic tiles for months for my own house and it was only a matter of time to trickle into my miniatures projects...
I've found several designs that resembled snowflakes and I think it works great. Frostgrave is supposed to be a wizards' city, so elaborate designs would be common.
These ruins are extremely simple. Blocks of high density foam with a stone pattern carved in. A bit of sand, printed tiles and that's it.
I would love a box or two of plastic LotR Osgiliath ruins, but they are out of production!
In the meantime I painted more warriors. These Evil Henchmen where originally intended as dark ages Chaos Warriors. I figured full body chainmail would be something only elves and chaos warriors would wear. I painted these as a team for the Lead Adventure Painters League. Crusader Miniatures' teutonic knights with headswaps:ancient german and saxon, and West Wind arthurian separate heads.
Frostgrave goes on. There's no way back. That dark night, when I saw which cannot be unseen, included a snowman. An Evil Snowman by Copplestone, a monstrous magical construct or maybe an elemental.
For years I had been eyeing the set, but I never bought them as I wouldn't have any use for them. But now I had.
One is decidedly vicious while the other two are a bit more silly.
The one on the left got his hat replaced by a toupée of reindeer moss I did with superglue and sand. The other snowman got himself a Dark Age Finnish scarf. Oh yes he did.
I've been rather obsessed lately with the upcoming Frostgrave game. A Northstar/Osprey production. I admit I actually don't know anything about the game apart that it's about about rivalling wizards and their henchmen searching for treasures and battling in the ruins of an ancient snow covered stone city. Mordheim meets Osgiliath. Open air dungeoncrawl in the snow. The game will be released with bunch of very nice miniatures. Six or seven of them are by Mark Copplestone. I accidently saw some previews on google one friday night and I instantly was hooked. I dug up some of my old Grenadier and Copplestone miniatures and started selecting my warbands.
Most Grenadier barbarians are half-naked, but I selected the ones covered with furs.
I've seen a pic of two frostgrave wizards with a Copplestone evil snowman. It reminded me I had a pack of unpainted inuit.
So here is my inuit snow-seer:
I imagine he went down to the frozen city with a war party to recover some ancient magical artifact.
The snow seer's apprentice:
and two henchmen:
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