Thursday 25 February 2010

More Boards...

 
So here's my life for the next month; these are boards 1-3 of an eventual 8 or 9, for Zama.  The furthest two boards are 60% complete; they still need a lot of highlighting and will need some selective  flocking (although the final theme is going to be brown).  

The nearest board is perhaps 25% done.  The next step will be to trim the fields using my Wahl.  Then I will apply texture, and finally a basecoat of Chocolate Brown Sandtex (which trick I picked up from the "Touching History"  books).  

I also need to check that my plan to use a template to superimpose a hex grip on the finished boards, will work.  It occured to me, yesterday, that the standing crops may prevent the template from lying flat on the boards.  Gulp.  I'll test it before I start board 4; on future boards, I may need to apply the crops after the grid. 

The scale of the venture is daunting...

12 comments:

saxon dog said...

Big project but it's looking great!
Keep up the good work! Looking forward to seeing this all done as I'm sure you are!

BigRedBat said...

Hi there SD, I'm also looking forward to seeing the boards done! 5 weeks of evenings, gone. :-(

I've not tackled anything like these, before, but I think they'll look good in the end. I'm using basing gunk by the kilo!

AJ (Allan) Wright said...

Looking great so far!

trev said...

Hi Simon,

Hang in there, the game is going to look great. In my experience of doing these big demo games they often look naff until the last minute too. Then everything suddenly comes together. So don't despair it's often darkest before the dawn. :)

Good luck. Really looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Trev

BigRedBat said...

Hi Allan!

Trev, must put a face to a name, sometime! IIRC you chaps have a few Romans...

Secundus said...

I've left you a little something on my blog, I know its Imperial but It's Roman.

I for one know just how hard It is to get a Roman battle or Campaign up and running, I think you are doing a great job.

DeanM said...

Simon:

Great stuff again - your tireless efforts are inspiring! Regards, Dean

BigRedBat said...

Thanks for the support everyone; I'll spring open a new tub of Polyfilla, and return to the fray!

trev said...

Hi Simon,

I should be going to Salute, so I'll definitely come and say hello if I am. I think we met before actually. We were on the table next to you the year you did the Dwarf Mine game. Although we didn't chat about Romans until later. We do have Romans, yes. Quite a few between us. Not as nice as yours though. To be honest I've been struggling to find a set of rules I like and hence off ancients since I went off WAB a couple of years ago. You keep tempting me back though.

Trev

BigRedBat said...

Hi Trev, if you have a spare Saturday, it might be worth doing the SOA day in Bletchley, the week before Salute, for the opportunity of being able to benchmark all the ancient rulesets out there! There should be at least 10 different sets used.

I'm personally intrigued to see Simon McDowell's set played. The number of units in his game are very similar to those in ours, and it may be the rules would give us an alternative to C&C(A). Variety is the spice of life, after all...

Consul said...

is the 'chocolate brown sandtex' the stuff you'd used to make the plowed field on the closest board? looks good! may try and scale that up for my boards.

BigRedBat said...

Hi Consul, yes that is the base colour. For the highlights, I added a tiny bit of green, and then diluted it with cream.

But Sandtex isn't very textured; there is loads of texture underneath it (sharp sand, tetrion etc). All the ploughed fields were made with a cheap polyfilla, with texture applied on top.