As with Mr. White, I am never content to have a project be finished.  Although I’m not 100% on the newer rules for terrain in Underworlds, for the core boards in Shadespire there are some blocking terrain pieces.  While not required I feel that having just some border lines on the hexes is enough to truly represent the terrain.  I’m not the only one thinking that because there are people out there making terrain purposely made for the boards.

Long ago HEXY STORE came out with a line of terrain called the Shadowpike line.  It gives you option of adding terrain to the Shadespire boards that is thematic to most of the warbands that came out in season 1.  Mr. White made an excellent post a year or so ago when he showcased the Shadowpike line here. I like to imagine a section of the city that is being run by the warbands.  If you have ever read Shadespire: The Mirrored City by Josh Reynolds then you can truly understand what I’m talking about.  In the book their are factions that are aligned in the city with their own pieces of terrain that they have claimed as their base of operations.  With this in mind I decided to pick up the Shawdowpike Reavers Terrain Set.

Anyone who has painted a Warhammer model knows that skulls are an integral part of their designs.  Obviously this set was made for Garrek’s Reavers who’s bases are loaded up with various skulls.  I could easily see this as their hangout spot where they chunk their collected skulls after a night out on the town.

There was a couple of issues, or should we say multiple pairs of issues with the design choice.  While I’m all about the form of the female body its not something I normally I celebrate on the gaming table.  Call me a puritan if you choose, but once you know the endless joy that comes with marriage its often better to just take the high road and avoid explanations down the line.  So how to take care of these problems?  Well the bases already have a few skulls so part of the solution was to cover up the models with a few more!

This collection offers a large variety of skulls and actually gives you more than just the run of the mill human skulls that Hexy store went with.  My other tool to use was GW texture paint to cover up some of the offending locations.

I started off painting up the icon.  It didn’t have any questionable designs to coverup and was my test run on the whole project.  The Shadespire boards have a lot of green tints to them and I wanted that to be represented in the soil and wood.  For the metal I tried adding some Nihlakh Oxide paint to show some corrosion, but the results where so-so.  I was pleased with the skulls though and with my confidence boosted I plowed into the second pieces.  Alas, that is where this project went off the rails.  First we will talk about what went right.

Utilizing the skulls, texture paint, and a zombie style skin tone I was able to take away from the nudity of the pieces and still keep the pieces generally as designed.  I got the base layers of the metal, soil, and wood to almost completion when I decided to tear through the skulls.  Somewhere around the 150th or so skull it occurred to me that something wasn’t going quite right.  I checked back to my reference source and low and behold I hadn’t followed the correct color scheme.

Sometimes in a project a simple mistake is enough to turn it from an enjoyable time to a chore.  For me the prospect of repainting all these skulls was enough to push this project out of the realm of enjoyment.  Overall the terrain is great.  It checks all the boxes for setting the scene of Shadespire and I could imagine Garrek and the crew hanging out cleaning skulls and tossing them on the pile after every battle.  I think I’ll just take a break from this project and de-skull my brain for a bit.  Some day in the future when I am in the mood to paint skulls again I’ll come back and give it a whirl.  I’ll probably just leave one of the pieces out within arms reach so I can finish a few skulls every now and then and not worry about the crush of doing them all at once.  I hate to post about a project that stalls out, but I am just human and not all projects are a smashing success.  Lets hope the next one goes a little better.  Until then, happy hobbying!