EXT: Yawning Portals

Come on in!

And here you are, popping out on the other side of the page break.

It's funny - when AoS first came out, I was sceptical like so many of us were. Their first terrain pieces didn't really get their hooks into me at the time. Two years on, here I am with a pair of Baleful Realmgates in hand, grinning like a fool.

Easiest assembly for a GW product I have ever experienced, may I say? They come already off the sprue, hardly any burrs to smooth off or anything. Building the first one took five minutes. Painting it didn't take much longer, they're very fast.

The other side has the Warhammer schools of magic on them. Funny, seeing as they're hardly in AoS now, but a nice nod to the Old World all the same.

Snow, as ever. This one got a standard black-to-grey base and a standard brown-to-off-white portal. The sparkly effect is crushed glass poured on to water effect gel, which came out a bit heavy and crusty in places. When the light hits it right, though, it lights up with a very nice frosty finish, so I'm quite happy.

You can see it settled too thick at the bottom, but it still looks proper chilly, so I'll let it pass

Gate two, I decided to do a bit more work on.

First up, it's lying down. This is for several reasons - it fits with my general ruined city theme, for one. Next, I wanted to build some line of sight blockers and hills, and this felt like a nice way to give the hill a bit of flare. It's about three and a half inches high at the back, and I used the steps from the Realmgate to create flat bits for models to stand on.

Who wants to live forever?

Deciding it was a snowy hillside magic portal also gave me an excuse to use the resin ice crystals I've had lying about since last year. I originally intended them to be on Frostgrave model bases, but they were much bigger than I realised.

I forget which store they were from, Ristul's Market I think? Very nice kit, anyway, and I'm very pleased with the paint job. Marine Dark Blue with some Ahriman Blue shading, then Etherium Blue and Praxeti White drybrushes, and 'Ardcoat to finish.

Proper Frosty.

The hill itself is made of air-drying modelling clay, a fiver a bag from a nearby art shop. Smelly stuff, and it takes a long time to dry out. Even longer if you're an idiot and seal the outer surface with watered PVA glue, trapping the moisture inside. It's pretty heavy as a result, and probably brittle, but there's a lot of glue smeared on to keep it in one piece.

The inside is hollow, too, as I wanted the illusion of depth. Or, well, actual depth I suppose. You can stick a model in it and pretend it's emerging from another dimension if you're so inclined, which obviously we all are here. Anyway, the interior of the hill is painted in the same green-to-white swirly scheme as the mystic smoke effects are, and that helps sell it.

Here it is in full. It's about 8"x6", 4" tall, slightly curly edges where the damp PVA snow got into the cardstock base. I must remember to use plastic for bases, or something else waterproof.

Nothing else to say - I'm very happy with the way these have turned out, and happier still that I've got lots of spare parts from the second gate still. Enough for a third one, in fact, as the magic symbol side is a separate mold that I can use for something else, as well as the blocks from the base. I shall leave you with some pics of the gates in situ on my Kraken mat, and my usual crude photoshopping.