Terrain WIPs

For last Sunday afternoon's paint-and-chat session, I decided to tackle some rocky terrain pieces. A couple of months ago, Graham handed me a ziplock bag filled with wood bark, and I had some leftover 115mm x 90mm oval artillery bases perfect for the foundation.

Wood bark - rough terrain

After letting the glue dry, I slathered on my favorite Vallejo Earth Texture paste. I plan to leave the natural look of the bark as-is, but I'll add tufts and flocking to complete the scene. They’re going to make great line-of-sight obstacles for 15mm games. A bit small for 25mm IMO

Of course, as with any completed project comes the classic challenge: storage. While hunting for a suitable container, I stumbled across a box that fit the new rocky outcrops perfectly. Inside were some "magic" mushroom miniatures I painted over 30 years ago while sitting at my kitchen table in Halifax. I’m pretty sure today is the very first time they’ve ever faced a camera lens!

Mushroom Forest - Resin Pieces

The other forgotten treasure I unearthed was a GF9 Crystal Forest set. This set will fit right in as terrain for either Space 1889 or my18mm HOTT Barsoomian army. To bring the stand to life, I used a package and a half of Gamer’s Grass Alien Fire tufts to spruce it up.

GF9 - Crystal Forest with Alien Fire Weeds - Mars or Barsoom

All in all, a very successful afternoon at the hobby workbench.

GF9 - Small Autumn Wood

 Last November Tistaminis sponsored our Saga Tournament (SAGA Montreal Grand Melee).  Using the discount they offered the participants I purchased some Gale Force Nine products. Amount them were some much needed terrain. I assembled the Small Autumn Wood today to see how they looked.  Nine trees of various heights and colours to represent the autumn season.

Who is advancing through the woods? More about them tomorrow.

If an Artillery Barrage

falls in the woods does anyone hear it? The last couple of evening I've just been touching up some simple terrain pieces. A dozen trees, basing them for ease of transport and stability on the gaming table. Plus a rock face to serve as for a difficult terrain piece. I have no idea where these pieces originated but they've been in storage a few years. Now that I am actually playing again I had to dig them out. Hopefully this weekend I will find my river.

Smoke and flame in the mix.

Sacred Martian Grove: Blood Crystals

Battlefield in a Box: Blood Crystals (BB541)

Last weekend I received a belated birthday present from my cousin. This is certainly not an item that I would normally purchase for myself but would be happy to find them in a deleted item bin or at a deep discount sale. I immediately thought that these would make a perfect Martian terrain piece for Space 1889 as a Sacred Grove.

In this photo I have included my standard 25mm Griping Beast Roman figure for scale and a Space Wolf  in terminator armour. I will pick up some autumn foliage to provide reds and yellows Martian plant life.

The bases were covered with Liquitex Resin Sand, that included a paint mix of  roughly 1 part red to 4 parts Raw Sienna. I then lightly sprinkled on some brown/red  ballast, which I think was a Woodland Scenics product. After drying overnight I painted over the soil with a watered down GW dark flesh.

Stonehenge and other Terrain Features

I recently completed a number of Terrain Features and was at odds on how to best display them. In the end, it was a no-brainer and I decided to base the features on some installation CDs that were taking up shelf space in the office.

The first piece is a representation of Stonehenge,  a prehistorical circular setting of large standing stones. Being circular, it was very easy to make the leap to mount the pieces on a CD. The model used is called  Stonehenge: Build Your Own Ancient Wonder and is available from Indigo or Chapter Books in Canada. I used two sets that were given to me as gifts and still have numbers numbers pieces left over. The kit was called to my attention by a fellow gamer from Halifax who used  the same kits to build a large standing stone structure to be a centerpiece for a large battle HOTT games. . A stand with two 15mm  undead archers is used for scale throughout this posting.

The 2nd piece is a desert ruin by JR Miniatures. It is a heavy piece and from the JR Miniatures' website I would guess that it is made from Drystone. Drystone is described as a polymer modified cement for casting detail parts. 

According to the website Drystone is durable and chip resistant and has a PSI of 10,000 as compared to plaster which only has a PSI of 2,000.  When painting DO NOT wash and using a primer is not necessary.

I purchased this piece from a local gaming store sometime last year to go with a 15mm  DBA army.

The final pieces are some resin rocks that were included as a freebie in a Armorcast river set I purchased on eBay years ago. The river  was one of the first posting I wrote about on this blog, three years ago.

Again the 15mm undead show the scale of the pieces.
 

Games Workshop Palm Trees

Last weekend when I dug out the shoebox of palm trees from the storage closet for my Vietnam photo shoot, I discovered that fully 3/4 (21) of the trees still needed to be based and painted. I remembered that it felt like a daunting chore at the time they were assembled.

The Jungle Project was quickly sidelined the first time after seven trees had been painted and based. Oh well, the job had to get done. Over the last five days (and nights), I have slowly taken 15 or so minutes at a time, to complete this project in stages.

 

Warrior leads his horse to water, surrounded by lush vegetation.

I commenced by super-gluing one to three of the trees to each of ten plastic stands. I then applied a layer of texture paint to the bases. I then proceeded by working on 1/3 of the trees/stands at a time. First I'd paint the stands and then the palm trees. Finally I glued either sand (to four desert stands) or static grass (to six jungle stands) to complete the effect. Carried out in increments, the task wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Actually, it's rather easy to spend 15 minutes just before bedtime on a painting project like this, and then another another 15 minutes in the middle of the night after answering a call of nature. Thus when I woke up in the morning, the stands were dry and ready for the next stage.

 

Foliage for a tropic island or the mighty jungle. 

IMO these trees were one of the better deals from the people at Games Workshop. They were rather clever in the way these models were designed to be assembled in an endless variety of shapes. Unlike most plastic model trees these looked pretty good, despite being 100% plastic.

Three Pieces of Terrain

With this post I decided to showcase three homemade pieces of terrain. I was digging through my boxes of wargame supplies and felt that these should see the light of day.

1) Skull Mountain: This is intended to represent a possible stronghold. The piece was built up around a Grendel (or even older Fantasy Forge/Grenadier piece) resin cast cave entrance. Grendel is now part of Scotia Grendel Productions (/www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/) but I was unable to locate the piece on their website. They do offer a product that is similar in design, the Ram Skull Gate (ID 10014).  The resin piece is 6.0 cm in width, 3.0 cm in depth and 7.0 cm in height. The actual entrance measures 2.5 cm x 3.5 cm x 4.0 cm.

Hero? Exit the Batcave. Figure 25mm for scale.

The entrance was attached to a artist board base roughly 20cm x 16cm in area. The hill was then built up using Styrofoam, covered with a thin layer of plaster, painted and flocked.

Darkness falls adding a more sinister apperance

2) Trench:  This trench was my first attempt to create a 3D below ground tabletop piece for Warhammer 40K. I took a rectangular piece of styrofoam and roughly cut it in two. I then attached the two piece to an artist board base (38cm x17cm) separated by 2.5cm.  Another two layers of styrofoam were added to build up the trench sides which were then coated with plaster.

Trench with Duck Boards

The top of the piece was flocked with a brown sand to give the impression of turned over or dug dirt. The lower half flocked with green for grass. A balsa wood duck board was placed in the bottom of the trench.The balsa was scored with a pencil to create planks and the "planks" were glued to two long runners.

Stand To just before dawn. Platoon 20 Modern Soviets for scale.

The total piece has an overall height of about 3.5 cm, with the trench having a depth of 2.5 cm. As you can see from the photographs, we have a very basic design. Overall I don't think the trench has enough depth, nor is it quite wide enough. As you can see from the photo even, these Platoon 20 modern Soviets are too exposed along the firing line.

3) Roman Palisade: My goal was to create an impressive table edge terrain feature.Once again I used an artist board base that was 50 cm long and roughly 13.5 cm wide. Again, a  rectangular piece of styrofoam, cover in this case with paper towel soaked in plaster create the illusion of a low rise.

Palisade with Bean for scale (or Jack Bean in Gulliver's Travels)

The palisade itself was produced from standard wooden kitchen skewers. I cut the skewers in half using a pair of pliers. Thus only every second post is a sharpen stake, while the remainders are flat top.  Each half of the fort is about 20 cm long. The skewer halves were then glued to balsa cross beams.

Unobstructed View (Front and Side)

A walkway was created from a double layer of balsa wood. The bottom layer was needed for support, and the top layer was scored with a pencil to have a "plank" effect. The walkway was glued to the top of the upper crossbeams and supported by dowel that was cut ti size. The gate was also made from balsa.

Rear View (Bean for Scale)

Troops Man the Walls

Legionniare detachment goes outside the wire on foot patrol.

Walls manned: Inside View

Cangames 2010 Purchases

As I wrote in my Sunday's posting I purchased a painted 15mm Babylonian Army. I thought I post some photos of the figures.

Photo 1: General in 4-Horse HCh with Friends

Photo 2: 3 of 5 Two Man Psiloi Elements (L)

3 Four Man Spear Elements (R)

Photo 3: All 5 Cav Elements

A useful addition that can be fielded against my 15mm Hittite Army (by Irrgeular Miniatures) that I painted years ago.

My second purchase was from Daniel, from Crossed Swords (http://www.crossedswords.net/) a well known dealer from Toronto . It was a 15mm terrain piece, consisting of three 160mm lengths and two 80mm lengths of reinforced wood walls.

15mm Archers for scale. Note Rear view of wall behind the archers.

These resin pieces were very easy to clean and paint. My only complaint would be one of the 8mm pieces had a 3/4 inch piece broken off one corner. Since it was not in the bag, I could not make repairs. Still for $8, I think this was a very good buy. I added static grass along the wall after the piece was painted.