The Fellowship on Durin's Causeway

I've had a few requests for pictures of the LOTR model figures on the Causeway terrain piece, so I set up a scene and had a go at photographing it...

I have to say, its quite a tricky thing to photograph well...

The first few pics are with fill-in flash...

The next few are the true night time shots, no flash, and where I have tried tweaking the exposure... enough so you are not blinded by the light of the fires, and yet no so dark that you can't see the figures... Tricky work I can tell you... tripod and timer function a must for this... and patience!

These are the best pics I managed tonight...

I hope you enjoyed them and they give you an idea of scale with the models featured on the terrain piece...

Now just have to actually play a game on it!

Durin's Causeway - Finished!

At long last I have finished Durin's Causeway. 

It's been a marathon journey, and as usual what seemed like a simple idea at the outset, grew and grew in the making...

Unsatisfied with how the suggested terrain looked in the Fellowship of the Ring Journey book, to play the game, I started making this to look more in keeping with the movie. It's still far from a perfect copy, and several things I did my own way, either for practicality or play-ability reasons.

I am more than happy with how it has turned out, though the amount of effort that has gone into building it, compared to how often I will actually get to play on it, plus I have still to figure out where to store and keep it, having yet to be resolved, has led me conclude this is most likely my folly! ;-)

However, I am still happy to have built it and will look forward to playing the FOTR scenario upon it :-)

Just to put things into perspective I have included the movie sequence which the terrain piece is derived from. It's an epic and iconic movie moment, and also gives perspective for any blog readers who are not fans of or simply have not seen the movie...



Here's how it looks under normal lighting and fill in flash photography...

And then some more atmospheric 'night-time' pictures. These took several goes to get right and I still think they are perhaps a little over-exposed but I haven't figured out how to reduce the exposure on my camera settings as yet. It took me all my time to get these to work at all!

Never the less, I hope you enjoy them...

I left this picture un-cropped, just to give you an idea of how big it is... its roughly 3' x 3' x 3', give or take a few inches...

The next terrain piece on my list of to-do's is to finish Balin's Tomb, which is actually for the scenario, before this one! Yes I know, I know, I should have made that one first, but oddly enough this one had given me most cause for concern so I had decided to tackle it head and get it out of the way first...

Ah well, that is part of the madness that goes on in my head! ;-)

Stone, Fire and Wood!

Several bits of terrain progress going on at the moment...

The ongoing saga of the Causeway board... I have added several rocky ledges and levels to allow goblins to scale the walls in various scenarios...

And have 'dwarfed up' the goblins shooting gallery, with pillars and trim...

Up next will be adding the flame effects in the base of the board....

I have made some flame makers made from clear plastic sheet - the sort you get from the typical plastic clam/ blister packs many goods come in these days, or even using a sheet made from laminating sheet off cuts...

Cut out a circle with a wedge piece cut out then glued it up into a cone shape. Then added more cut spiky pieces as flames and glued these on top. Then covered the whole thing in Woodland Scenics Water Effect. And then painted using GW yellow ink and orange ink....

I then considered the lighting of these... I was going to use several LED bulbs wired together, but I don't think I will get enough intensity to light up the whole flame-effect piece sufficiently... so I went to the local electrical store, and had a chat there about what I needed. I came away with 4 of these LED light units.

They are small, compact and cool running, mains power plug-in type. So they will fit under the board and not cause any heat problems and have enough intensity to light up the flame-effect piece... I think I am still going to need to build up the thickness of the base board to fit these, but that should not be too difficult...

Reduced from NZ$75 each to NZ$25 each... not bad I thought...

So once positioned underneath the the flame effect piece, I am hoping they will look something like this:

This was done sitting the flame effect piece on top of the upturned energy bulb (equiv 60W) of my angle poise desk lamp... Quite nice I thought... I will glue on top lots of black sprayed 'filter floss medium' to effect black smoke rising above...

So that's the Causeway board progressing...

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You may recall I moaned recently about my mini disaster using the Woodland scenics tree kits? Well I managed to salvage them and got them based up, gluing 4-5 trees per piece of MDF base... So they worked out OK in the end... though I must admit, the 'tree kit', to my mind did not come with enough clump foliage to cover all the tree armatures provided... In the picture below the darker trees were done using the kit... the lighter ones I had to finish with spare clump material that I had, even though it was a lighter shade.  Still it makes for a more pleasing effect I think with the varying colours together...

Woodland Scenics pine trees

Staying with trees I have been looking at other ways of making trees and came a cross a useful site detailing rubberised horsehair. I have seen trees made using this before, and they look rather good, so thought I'd give it a try... only problem was I couldn't find an NZ based supplier, so had to order online from a UK supplier...

Here's what I got...

So just need to break it up into pieces and glue it to some garden twigs to make the basic tree, then flock the horsehair...

Of course I couldn't resist playing about ... 'Instant Treebeard'... just add idiot! ;-)

Stay tuned for more, if I can regain my sanity!

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PS I'm on holiday at the moment so haven't been perusing blogs as usual, I'll try and catch up next week... Cheers all,
Scott

Causeway saga continues...

The saga continues, but in a good way...Saturday I managed to make good progress on the Causeway board... in part, due to a slight change in 'tactics'...

To try and speed things up I have also been using hot-glue (via a hotglue gun), to tack into position the poly rock clumps, with PVA between, which will set later but stronger.  Same with the new rear back piece of MDF sheet for the side wall.

It all allowed me to get the whole side wall built up, and attached and skimmed in polyfilla over the course of one day...

So that really is the main construction finished now... though I need to add a couple of styrofoam carved pillars to the shooting gallery... might even 'dwarfy-fy' the outer surface of it with some polygons or strips of depron..

Next is going to be the fiddly bit; making and rigging up the LED lighting array for the flames coming up through the base board...

Once that's in place, I'll conceal the wires and 'rocky-up' the base with poly chunks again. Then skim with filla, and then paint... the end is in sight!

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Other weekend activity included putting together a set of Woodland Scenics plastic conifer tree kits. Trimmed them and assembled the trunks, melted up spare sprue to conceal the joins, drybrushed the trunks, and 'hob-e-tac'-ed the trunks to attach the clump foliage... all well so far... then I had a brain wave, since these would be handled more than in a static display, I figured I would spray them as well with WS scenic cement (which is a bit like very thinned down PVA glue), to 'seal on' the foliage... all seem good to start ... then disaster! The water content of the scenic cement seem to lessen the adhesion of the hob-e-tac, as clumps of foliage started falling off all over :-( I left the remainder to dry over night... it seems now dry and OK, though considerably barer than before... I may get some ADOS F2 aerosol spray adhesive and see if I can get a bit more clump foliage attached that way... might be able to recover them I hope...

Other than the above woodland disaster, I pressed on with general paint work, varnished the Hobbit ale cart, and got the base half done. Got the trolls base painted, and continued ploughing my way through the Gondorians...

Busy as always...

More Moria work...

Underground matters of Moria nature continue to keep me busy... more work over the weekend...

Finally got stairway properly re-positioned and level this time... also built up a more rocky irregular surface to back wall left of causeway (as it was too smooth before), to better match back wall down to right... and lengthened final section of stone bridge across last gully...

With flash...

And with side wall MDF panelled "de-warped" - its now glued into position, and pre-done foam/poly and gallery glued back into position against it...

...No flash... I often wonder which way is best to photograph...

Just need to block up the gap at base and rear corner with more poly chunks and skim the whole in polyfilla again...

After that, I think it will be time to sort flame effects and wiring through base, and battery pack placement and concealment... possibly may include switches so each flame can be switched on individually... though this might be a little OTT? Not that the whole thing isn't already eh? ;-)

So I am kind of back on track to where I should have been a few weeks back now...

While the above was gluing and drying, I started making Balins Tomb. Once again, 'Celevue' has given a very good idea of how to make a detailed tomb in his battle report on One Ring Forum... He's clearly done the hard yards in endlessly staring at the movie footage to see what goes where, so I will be basing my effort upon his excellent example... I doubt this will be quite as detailed as his, but it should make for an interesting skirmish game none the less...

Balins Tomb started...

More to follow...

Weekend work - Moria continued...

More work over the weekend, saw progress on my Moria terrain...

I managed to build up the rocks on back wall of causeway to right of stairs... polyfilla looks dark as its not fully dried yet... also, photo perspective may seem odd... I actually had it lying on its back while I worked on it, and photographed it that way, and have rotated the picture around - that's why the paint tin is upside down in the background ;-)

The side wall is undergoing more reinforcing and straightening still... that part of the build is becoming a bit of a nightmare! I am beginning to wonder whether I should even bother with it, but its one of those classic movie moments - seems a shame not to try and do it justice... I'll get there in the end I guess... this project is rapidly becoming known , at least to me, as 'Bowmans Folly'! ;-)

I should buy shares in Polyfilla!

Back to the Bridge of Khazad Dum board... and I finished making the chasm edge... with my DIY 'plaster cloth'

I made up more polyfilla, though quite runny with an excess of water, then also poured some PVA glue into the mix. I cut strips of crepe bandage and dunked them in the mix, keeping one end dry. This I hot glued to the top edge, then draped the wet cloth down over the chasm edge, going back over the dry top piece with more of the mixture to blend it all together. Strip by strip, I worked my way along both sides... a messy process but it worked and is strong.

I now want to texture up the surface of this chasm, and am thinking of breaking up more foam (or maybe also bark mulch chips) into tiny fragments - spraying the surface with thinned PVA, sprinkle the fragments on , then spray again with glue to seal, them maybe skim coat with thinned filla again if it needs it or just paint with sand textured paint... I'll have to try it out see how it looks...

I was looking long and hard at the rubber rock molds you can get from Woodland Scenics and other suppliers at my local hobby stores. They are rather pricey and you would need several different ones to avoid repeating the same rock over an over... hmmm ... I like the look of them, but...

I also got my Dwarrowdelf pillars finished and painted... I'll show them soon, after the Watcher in the Water Battle report, as would be about the right timing! ;-)

Further Moria activity included cutting out a base board for Balins tomb, and sketching out a plan of how to build up the walls and pillars on it... So I guess that will be more foam cutting this weekend...

More work in Moria and a return to the Caribbean

With work on the Causeway stalling, due to a realization I'd positioned the stair way in the wrong place, I decided to find something else to make through the week, until the weekend rolled around again, and it would give me more time to fix up the causeway stairs...

So continuing the Moria theme, the one iconic thing about the Dwarrowdelf, are the pillars... the end of last weekend saw me rough out the main pillar shapes from Styrofoam, thanks to a heads up from 'Celevue' on the rough dimensions he had used for his.

They are made from 5cm thick styrofoam (I actually had 2.5cm thick sheet so had to glue two thicknesses together). The base piece is 9cm x 9cm. The mid piece 7cm x 7cm and the top pillar section is 25cm tall. Cutting these bits out was fairly straight forward. The lengthy bit was then cutting out all the polygon shapes. For this I used 5mm Depron sheet, which once each piece was cut out, I sliced it in half reducing the thickness to about 2.5mm. There are 3 overlaid pieces to each panel, to effect the design... This took me most of the week...

Dwarrowdelf-themed pillars, with orc for scale.

I am the first to admit they are not a perfect copy from the ones in the movie - its such a tricky design to copy perfectly - and so I am going to call these "Dwarrowdelf-themed" pillars! Since this picture was taken I have skim coated over the depron areas, in plaster to fill all the little gaps and give some texture. I have also cut back the corner side edges of the tall pillar sections by 1cm, and finally tonight, base painted them dark grey. A light drybrush with a lighter grey tomorrow should finish them off...

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When the weekend finally rolled around, it was time to go back to the causeway and figure out what to do...

I needed to shift the stair way about 4" to the right as you look at it. I grabbed a long wood saw and sawed the main upright from the back wall, then cut the widened base of each 'leg' from the base board. Thankfully it all came away in one piece. So after a bit of extra measuring, trimming and fitting, I glued it back into where it should go... I also used the time to clad and build up the widened board back and base with foam and poly off-cuts...

Back and base widened and foam/poly clad...

Once the glue has dried, I'll skim it up in plaster again to hide the joins  etc., then build up a rock surface again on the widened back wall section. You can see where I have cut back the yellow expanding foam and skimmed the rock surface previously, to left of back wall...

... and Causeway stair relocated.

So now when Boromir runs out to edge of the broken stairway, there is now nothing below him...

Looking down into the yawning chasm depths...

Back to the sidewall and it was a case of the 'appliance of science', or at least in this case the appliance of large weights, and strips of MDF to fix the warping issue! Once this is dry I'll be able to think about positioning the side wall again with the goblins 'shooting gallery'

fixing the warping...

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So after all this work down in the Black Pit that is Moria, (also known as my garage), it was time to come back up to the sun, and take a jaunt round the Caribbean!

Chris has been playing a new game he got with his pocket money for the Xbox; Assassins Creed 4 - which is set in the Pirate era, so as you can imagine we've been watching Pirates of the Caribbean again, and been looking at our Pirates and Legends of the High Seas stuff.

Having finally had success with water effects, on the Watcher board, I decided to do a full sea board with it, so have repainted one of my table tops in a sea pattern, using a stippling technique, with various blues, turquoises, a little green and dark patches. This I will go over with the Liquitex gel, but will need to order another pot to have sufficient to cover the board...

Caribbean sea, painted, awaiting Liquitex...

Also, having found an easier simpler method to bend balsa strips (just leave them soaking in water to soften them), I returned to a long forgotten project, and finished my jolly boat... a very simple design from a template, I made some time ago. I am just trying to decide if its worth making some oars for it...

Jolly boat brings pirate to shore...

This pirate activity, prompted a game of pirate action... Chris rarely wants to play a simple scenario... I guess that's where a child's imagination comes to the fore...

My Brig was set up, anchored just offshore of the Isle, then the Kraken attacked! ( using Watcher-in-the-water tentacles). Needless to say, my pirate crew were nimbly plucked from the vessel and squashed, pulled apart and drowned, (not necessarily in that order!) and the ship started taking a battering... seeing his doom near at hand, and having seen his captain pulled apart, the quartermaster thought "bugger this for a game of soldiers, I'm offski!" , and nimbly jumped overboard, despite his wooden leg, and landed in the jolly boat. A few other scurvy hands who had been hiding below decks, followed his example, and they rowed to shore while the Kraken remained distracted by destroying the ship...

Having made it ashore, they had just made it inland when they were set upon by cannibal natives, evidenced by blowpipe darts whizzing past their ears!

Having miraculously somehow managed to keep their powder dry, they fired a volley with their pistols and charged! The resulting fracas saw most of the cannibals cut down, with the rest fleeing back to their village, but not before the Quartermaster was murderously clubbed over the head!

And that was where we left our little adventure for the day... but not before I showed Chris this figure from the Northstar kickstarter... as expected, he just about exploded with excitement...

... not sure if I'll be going with the kickstarter, but I am certainly keen to pick this figure up once its available...

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To finish off the weekend, once I had rescued my Brig from the bottom of the depths, I added a little balsa detail to it; the Cat-heads for the anchors and some trim below the rigging on the hull sides... one of these days I'll fully complete it!

I also had a rummage in the 'unfinished projects box' and dug out my other pirate sloop I had half finished a long time ago - I feel more balsa cladding coming on...

Another weekend task was tarting up my old river sections, adding a water ripple surface texture with the Mod Podge I bought earlier... that I left drying over night... boy, has that stuff got an odd smell!

I finally had another look at my Khazad Dum bridge board... I felt I had cut a rather too linear cliff edge (again having simply followed the mission brief in the LOTR scenario books). So I broke out the jigsaw and cut a kind of sharks tooth type pattern along the chasm edges, and then started resurfacing the cliff face using home made plaster cloth; crepe bandage soaked in a mix of runny plaster and PVA glue, till I ran out of crepe... another project to finish off through the week...


As always busy busy...