The trip was sort of a present for me from my parents for me graduating in Communication & Multimedia Design. We flew with Ryanair from Maastricht airport. After an affordable, yet bumpy ride we arrived at Pisa with our kneecaps for the most part intact. We spent the remainder of the day in Pisa watching cultural stuff like the leaning tower and the Baptisterium and Cathedral of Pisa, which where really impressive.

Then we took the train to Florence (Firenze in Italian) where we visited a lot of Roman and Italian cultural heritage. Among all Judeo-Christian and Greek-inspired paintings and sculptures where actually a lot of Beastmen! Yeah, that’s right, I spotted several of them sitting in plain view all over Florence. Take a look at the pictures if you want what I mean.

Anyway, now comes the really good part. The third day in Florence I coincidently stumbled upon a Games Workshop store in a street near our apartment. According to Francesco, the manager of the store, it’s actually the only official GW store in all of Tuscany! Francesco turned out to be a really nice guy, he even invited me to lunch (read: pizza) with the rest of the store’s regular clients. He told me about his band; Stazione Centrale of which he put on a record in the store and we had a lot of fun.

Also, feel free to take a look at the other pictures I took in the  Games Workshop store or at my other holiday pictures.

Cheers,

- Vince

The temple is made from the packaging material of my mom’s new netbook. My parents got the netbook when they bought some new furniture their living room. I kindly asked them if I could turn the Styrofoam packaging case that came with the laptop into a will-be sacred ground for the acolytes of Sigmar. The good part is that the polystyrene foam which the casing is made of is much more flexible and durable than ordinary packaging Styrofoam.

As you can see this project is just starting out, but you get the gist of it I guess. Loek told me some Sigmar related stuff which inspired me to make a stained glass window to make it look a bit more like a sanctuary of some sort. Also, Koen, Loek and I had a chat about the strategic aspect of the scenery piece and how it sound be balanced game-play wise. With this in mind we decided to make 3 possible entrances into the building, namely a destructible window, a destroyable wall and a main gate through which the building can be entered.

So, how did I get this far? Well I used:

• The polystyrene packaging material of my mom’s netbook
• A hobby knife
• A pocket tape-measure
• Some black spray paint [±€ 2,-]
• The plastic packaging of some sliced Gouda cheese
• A permanent marker
• Some acrylic paint
• total investment: [±€ 2,-]

I started out by marking where the main entrance would be cut out. We decided to change the storage compartment for the netbooks adapter and the compartment as back rooms. After I marked the Styrofoam piece in the center of the wall using a tape-measure, I drew the contours of the gate and cut it out with a hobby knife. (The excess Styrofoam piece is used as an altar in the picture below) I added some flavour to the entrance by carving out some steps. I did the same for the window and cut the foam. I made a vertical slit in the foam to hold the stained glass window. After that I marked the other side wall and cut out the destroyable wall piece. I used some cheap black spray paint to undercoat the temple.

I made the stained glass window from the bottom of the plastic packaging of some sliced Gouda cheese. I guess this temple is meant to attract Empire followers and Skaven alike. Noticed how the piece of plastic has ‘wings’ which fit in the slit I made in the window frame of the temple. After a quick Google search I found one of Sigmar’s logo’s: the twin-tailed comet. I redrew the image on the piece of plastic I had cut out by using a marker. Then I coloured it using some acrylic paint. Lastly I used some glossy varnish to brighten the colours and help preserve the layer of paint.

More on this piece soon. Feel free to let us know any ideas you have on what the interior of the temple should look like or how this piece could be used in a campaign setting.

- Vince