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

Setting the scene...

When I think back to my early gaming beginnings, I always recall playing with the typical 20mm or 1/72nd scale plastic airfix toy soldiers... tipping them out on the carpet, lining them up and knocking them down to the accompaniment of mouthed sound effects... boom, bang, dakka dakka, Aiiieeeeee!!!!

Simple 'rug-rat' fun... but then of course you want to have some scenery for your soldiers to interact with, take cover behind etc etc...

The next trip to the toy store and you start picking up bits and bobs of lichen or other spongy foam stuff from the model railway section...

And I think its this close connection to model railway materials that begins to transcend our humble wargaming efforts...

I can still recall, back to my youth, when sometime back in the 70's, the fire brigade went on strike in the UK... it was a period of strong trade unions, and it seemed everyone was having their chance to hold the country to ransom by striking for more pay or better conditions or both... My dad was in the fire service, and although he didn't agree with the strike, putting lives at risk, he had no choice due to the strength of the trade unions, and being unable to cross the picket line, as such...

With the forced time off, he built us a proper model rail layout, on a 8'x4' board complete with hills and tunnels, using chicken wire and cloth bandage and paper-mache, then painting it all up and adding clumps of lichen and sponge etc... and although relatively basic by todays standards, it rocked my little world back then.

But best of all, when not playing with the trains, the board was perfect for my toy soldiers... and I think its the connection between toy soldiers, model railway stuff and cool looking terrain and layouts that's at the root of all my gaming now... I want it all to look good!

We strive, well many of us wargamers do, to paint up good looking figures to build our forces for the game, whether a simple skirmish force or a large army. But I don't really see the point in striving for well painted figures, if you then plonk them down on naff terrain. Agreed, we all have to start somewhere and we were all beginners once, but I feel if we are going to try and improve our figure painting, we should be trying to improve our scenery to 'display' them upon too.

However in wargaming, we are not dealing with a simple static display, but terrain that needs to be interacted with as we move our models over and through it. Our models need to be able to stand on the terrain without falling over all the time, so a balance has to be struck, quite literally, between looks and 'play-ability'. On top of which, we don't want to be playing over the same board every game, so we often resort to making terrain pieces that can be re-positioned to vary the layout for each game...

I have always enjoyed making terrain, as anyone who has followed this blog over time can probably tell, whether its simple hills and hedges, or trees, walls, fences and buildings of all shape and sizes... but these have always been terrain 'pieces'. My relatively recent return to Middle-Earth, and playing through many of the journey book scenarios, has now led me off down another terrain building path... no longer just 'pieces' but now entirely themed boards, to match the specific scenario... and this has had me looking back more closely to those model railway scenic items and how-to guides...

So I have been looking over the Woodland Scenics range of materials and how they work together and compliment each other, and found their how to videos on their website and Youtube very interesting...

Here's one which seems to cover most of the basic techniques and materials...

Having watched this, I was all fired up at the weekend, to have a splurge at the local store... However I saved a few pennies when chatting to the chap there, who explained there was no need to buy the branded spray glue, as its just thinned PVA (interior) glue with water about 50/50 with a little detergent added. I did buy the spray bottle and some packs of fine and coarse turf to add to the stuff I already had at home... Only downside was they were out of Realistic Water, which I need to finish my Watcher Board... oh well, hopefully have some next weekend...

So I'll be giving these techniques a try, with the Watcher Board to finish first. Then our Fellowship quest continues through the subterranean realm of Moria, so things will be mostly rock and stone there for a while, then back out in to the sunshine, with the flight to Lothlorien, followed by the scenes at Amon Hen.

Lothlorien is fairly straight forward, though I am tempted to try building a model tree large enough to take a flet; an elven tree platform.

Amon Hen has several scenics items; ruins, statues and more water to arrange, and I have been ordering and sourcing components to complete this set up too.

I think, on the terrain, and thus gaming front, its going to be an interesting year! Wish me luck!