One of my collections that I’ve been developing alongside the Midgard project has been forces suitable for Norse mythology. Some of these are quite specific, such as Norse gods and frost giants, others do double duty with other game settings – like my Tolkien Dwarves or Red Book of the Elf King figures.
There’s no particular reason that Norse myth games have to take place in an icy landscape, but I’ve always liked the idea (Narnia was probably an early influence as well).
Here’s some terrain and cloths for snowy settings that I made during last year’s lockdown. The mats were made using simple polar fleece fabric with some paint effects and distressing.
To match the cloths, I’ve knocked up a few movement trays to organise the figures into units. My Midgard rules require units to have similar base frontages – the standard is 120mm, so that’s what I’ve gone for here. The trays are 2mm MDF from Warbases with a top layer of steel paper (self adhesive flexometal) from Coritani/ Magnetic Displays.
As my figures all have magnetic bases, they stick to the tray and can be transported on them as well inside a Really Useful Box. The whole thing gets a light spray of dark brown paint (Halfords Khaki for UK readers), followed by a stippling of Army Painter Leather Brown. Finally, I used a ripped-up piece of sponge to apply white acrylic craft paint, most heavily around the edges. The idea is that my figures with neutral (non frosty) bases will match well enough with the base but blend in better with the snowy cloth – that’s the plan, anyway.
The bases were also decorated around the edges with some tufts from Gamers Grass, and also some clean cat litter painted to look like rocks. A word of warning here – if you’re having a go at these, be careful to keep the area where you want the figures to stick absolutely flat and free of texture – a single piece of grit or patch of flock can badly affect the figure’s magnetic base sticking to the tray.
My friend Mike W had kindly 3d printed me a stone circle during lockdown, but I’d never got around to painting it. I already have a stone circle for my Celtic games so I thought it’d be fun to have one for the snowy setting as well.
Having painted the pieces an appropriate colour and based them in dark brown to match the earth areas of my cloth, I added a mix of white paint, pva glue and Woodland Scenics soft snow scatter. Following the advice in Pat Smith’s excellent ‘Setting the Scene’ book about modelling winter environments, I then dunked the base in more snow flock before it dried. Once dry, some extra white paint was dry brushed around the edges to even up some of the snow. I was quite pleased with how these looked when they hit the gaming table last week.
mogsymakes 
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