Showing posts with label Terrain boards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrain boards. Show all posts

Friday, 22 August 2014

Chairman of the board

Today I've managed to cut and paste green flocked paper onto the additional 15 MDF boards I need for our unfeasibly large Pydna game at Partizan.  When combined with my existing boards, they will form an 18' by 5'4" table.


My joy at pasting these together is slightly confined by the fact that I have realised that they are in two subtly different colours; some in spring green, and some in autumn.  I'm hoping that this discrepancy won't be especially obvious, within the Stygian gloom of Kelham Hall.  ;-)

Monday, 4 August 2014

Pydna boards

... and they are literally boards at this stage!


I've four big boards and 9 smaller boards to cover with static grass sheet, and then add patches of flock, selectively.  When finished, they will make an 18' by 5'4" table, which I'll use for various large games over the next year or so.

Thursday, 29 May 2014

New terrain boards

Sunday's game at Partizan requires no fewer than 7 additional terrain boards. Here are four of them; two river banks and the Via Postumia (on the right).  

Most of the boards are 12mm MDF with flocked paper pasted onto them. Several that needed contouring (the river banks, for example) are 6mm ply with 3 layers of 2mm MDF glued to them. The raised road  is solid timber, and heavy, with it! Tomorrow I am going to add patches of long static grass to break up the big green areas.  

Luckily, I had off-cuts of flocked paper left over from previous projects (and a gift from mate Ian), so the big expansion has turned out to be a relatively inexpensive undertaking.  As well as for Cremona, the additional boards will be really useful for regular gaming chez Bat.

Sunday, 25 May 2014

Bridge over the River Po

...being a WIP shot of my pontoon bridge and the river it will cross.


The "Po" is a 6mm ply board with adhesive blue tiles from Homebase on it. I am cautiously pleased with the tiles which are much more hard-wearing than my previous attempt at a river. On the downside, they needed to be cut down to size, which was a real pain, and one can see the joins to some extent. The separate banks are also 6mm ply, build up with 3 layers of 2mm MDF. They sit over the edge of the river, disguising the join between the boards, and are the same thickness as the 12mm MDF boards that I will be using with the game.

The river will also do service as the Rhine, for 70AD games, especially if I can make up some models like the Liburnian that Skull and Crown sent me. I am considering making another 4' length of river, and a couple of narrower rivers, too.  

If you are coming to Partizan on Sunday, and would like to move a legion or so about, please drop me a line!

Thursday, 21 November 2013

Reflocking

I've noticed that my green terrain boards have been "balding" around the edges, where gamers such as I lean on them, during play.  I thought I'd try out my new static flocker on them.


It seems to work very well, although I'll have a better idea when the glue has dried and I've shaken away the spare flock.  Previous experience suggests 2 coats will be required.  I'm using a blend with some darker grass in it, which I hope will break the lurid spring-green expanse up, somewhat.  

This time, per the instructions, I diluted my PVA 50% with water, and added a drop of detergent to get rid of the surface tension.  This is a big help.  I have been able to observe the flock standing stock upright on the latest set of bases, so the static principle is clearly working fine.

Thursday, 29 August 2013

Beach II


This is the sea flank for Sunday's Thapsus game.  The unfinished beach is at the back, and the sea darkens as it gets deeper, and is lighter near the shore as it shelves up to the beach.   I'm in the process of coating it with many layers of Gloss Acrylic varnish.  I'm hoping this will work almost as well as Yacht Varnish, without the strong smell of the latter, as I need to apply it indoors.  Seems to be working so far; it's starting to look "deeper".  I've also made a couple of darker-looking river boards, for use on the swamp flank.

I also finished the final reed-bank section last night, so they are good to go.  In fact I find myself quite close to being ready for the game...

(Note to future-self- the sea is Crown Matt emulsion Laguna Bay Feature Wall, shaded with a little Dulux Sapphire Salute, and Buff Titanium near the shore.   On the river boards I mixed in some Dulux Enchanted Eden and Brown Umber, and a little Army Painted Strong tone in every coat of the varnish).

Friday, 23 August 2013

Beach I


This is going to be a beach (honestly!).  I have designed it to fit on one end of my ever so useful "Zama" boards, so that I can use them for my BigRedBat-on-autumn-tour Thapsus game.  I have built up the near side of the board to 10mm high with wood and balsa.  I've also applied a couple of coats of filler over the "beach".  The far side of the board will become the Mediterranean Sea, some 10mm below the level of the land boards.

Saturday, 10 April 2010

No more snowballs...

After a week's reflection, I decided that the white map pins were unbearably... white.   Today my long suffering accomplace Ian came around and we pulled out the 350 pins we hammered in last Tuesday and replaced them with 350 pins I'd sprayed beige.  We then put another 350 pins into the remaining 4 boards, which are substantially complete (they just need a bot of drybrushing on the vegetation).


This is the board with the new pins, which are much less obvious than the white ones.  I'm very pleased with them!  A big thanks to Ian for his help.

Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Snowballs in the dust... (B-10)

Now having spent 3 months producing a set of rather realistic-appearing terrain, my mate Ian and I have just spent an evening fixing little white balls all over it....   

The reason for this madness, is that we need to mark out the hexes that are (nigh-on) essential for Command and Colors. Each hex is around 13cm across the flats and will hold one unit (there are c.120 units in the game).  I decided that the minimum we could get away with, in terms of indicatiing the hexes, is a map pin marking the apices. 

To position the map pins, we made a template from a thin sheet of clear plastic, marked the apices out, and cut a 10mm cross at each one.  We then pushed the pins through the plastic into the foam, carefully removed the plastic sheet, and whacked each pin with a hammer, which anchored them in the MDF beneath the foam.  The really nice thing about the map pins is that they can be removed without damageing the boards in the event that we want to use them for non-hex games, at a later stage.

You can just make the plastic sheet out by the glare, below:


Below is the board with the plastic removed, and some punic troops drawn up in line.


Whilst the pins are slightly obtrusive, they are, unfortunately, a necessary evil. There will be around 750 map pins across the entire table.  I'd like to than Ian for his help with the 4 boards we finished!

Monday, 5 April 2010

'arfer table

This is the right hand side 8' of the table, finished (bar the hexes).  The main change since the last photo are that I've dyed the lighter fields to darken them, and drybrushed all the tufts of static grass to make them blend in.  On the day, there will be trees and haystacks. 


I'm really pleased with how they came out!  Tomorrow Ian is going to help me with marking some hexes out.

Sunday, 4 April 2010

Still Frantically Flockin'...

...I just started the final flock of board 8.  Today I'm listening to Johnny Cash and Cat Stevens, who are making the work light.

Here's board 7 which has more ditches, and which is consequently more lush than the average:


In total I think I've used around £150 worth of 10 different grass and flock products.  The vegetation still needs to be drybrushed.  I'm very pleased with the small amount of Silflor "weeds" I bought, which are tufts with small "leaves" attached; I'll be buying more of them.

Saturday, 3 April 2010

Board dressing

I've been frantically flocking my terrain.  My concept involved a lot of bare earth, and it looks like it'll be realised (if only because I don't have enough silflor clumps or time!).  The lush, green vegetation will be largely confined to the ditches, and I'll be drybrushing it lightly at the end, which will hopefully tie in in, better.


Greg, this is what the rest of the fields should look like, finished.

Sunday, 28 March 2010

Boards on the Tabletop

I put four of the eight Zama boards on a table yesterday, and they joined up nicely.  I've still not finished the flocking, but I've done enough to know that it'll all work.  The boards are a little browner in real life than in the photo.


Yesterday I raided the local pound shop, and bought enough camping mats and doublesided tape to put a padded backing on each of the boards, as below.  I'm hoping that this will protect the surface of the boards when they are stacked up against each other, and protect my table top, too.  It only cost £1 GBP per board!


Monday, 22 March 2010

Test shots of Figures on Boards

I'veput some figures on the boards to show what I mean about the colour.  Essentially the base colour is a good match, but I'm certainly going to need to get some green vegetation on there!   Unhelpfully, there seems to be a UK-wide shortage of Silflor at the moment.  :-(


Below is a Dead Nellie, who probably tripped up in that drainage ditch!


I'm shortly going to raid Modelzone in search of vegetation ideas.

Sunday, 21 March 2010

Pictures of the Real Zama

I thought it might be useful to show some links to photos of Zama I found on the interweb, which explain why I've made the terrain colours a bit muted (some might say a bit grey!).  

Here's the approach to Zama at sunset:-

http://www.woodbrothers.tv/image.axd?picture=2009%2F11%2FWood+Brothers+-+Zama+sunset.jpg

And this picture, in particular, is very much what I'm trying to capture:-


http://www.woodbrothers.tv/image.axd?picture=2009%2F12%2FWood+Brothers+-+battlefield+of+Zama.jpg

The field is slightly browner than mine, but appears to be an umber-type shade.  I wanted to achieve a very dried out , dusty post-harvest look.  In hindsight, I could have bunged a bit of yellow ochre into the mix when highlighting, which I do with the mix I use for basing.  I'll need to work in some clumps of dark green vegetation.  If anyone could whip up some trees looking like those, that would be very helpful!

The below looks like it is taken much earlier in the year, as it is a lot greener, but appears to include an olive grove (I have one on order):-

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/23/95148729_137d2b6ba9.jpg

Flocking hell...

I started the flocking stage yesterday hoping that it would be a quick job, but one test board later (and that far from completion), it is clearly not going to be the case.  Below is the test board before flocking:-


and after...


The flock disguises the dark brown edges where the base board paint had soaked into the fur, and makes the field edges appear less regular.  I 've also been applying it on top of the fur which makes it seem more natural.  What I haven't done, yet, is to apply flock around the drainage ditches. I intend this vegetation to be greener, to inject just a little colour onto the brown-grey boards.

I'm estimating 3 hours per board, now, to complete flocking.   This should use up all my spare time before I start work.

Thursday, 18 March 2010

Fields of Zama

Sorry that my hithertoo regular posts have become somewhat sporadic!  I've been very busy with life in general, and some very time-consuming and non-photogenic elements of the Zama project.

Here is one such element.  These fields (and others not shown here) all needed to be cut into shape, trimmed, shaved with my Wahl hair trimmer and dyed with diluted acrylic paint.


The next stage will be to stick them onto the terrain boards.  Then I'll need to dress the terrain boards with clumps of static grass, leaves, weeds and whatever.  The board project is now around 75% complete!  Never again.  ;-)

Saturday, 13 March 2010

4" Drybrush Day

Today I drybrushed the 9 terrain boards, with a mid-brown and then a highlight, using the biggest brush I could find!

 Here's a board drying in what passes for sun around here.

Here are a couple of boards with the first highlight.  I hope to apply a very sparse second highlight, tomorrow.  The colour I went for is a sort of raw umber with a bit of tan in it.  It looks a bit grey in the photos, but it is slightly browner IRL.

The boards will look (somewhat) less austere when the fields and tufts of vegetation are added.  I feel an awful lot better about the project, as they are starting to look like something a man could stick a wargame figure on!

Monday, 8 March 2010

Board 7 of 9

My increasing gaps in posting have been caused by the need to break the back of the Zama terrain, which is proving to be very time-consuming.  I'm trying to get all the Zama boards textured and base coloured before I go on to the next stage, highlighting.

Here's an iffy pic of board 7.  You can see gaps I've left for the teddy bear fur fields; these will be trimmed, coloured and added later on.  The base colour doesn't show up well; the boards are a dark chocolate brown.


I've designed the tracks so that the boards can be combined to make either a 4' by 18' table surface, or a 6' or 8' by 8', so hopefully they will be useful for a variety of other projects in the future.

I still need to find a way to indicate the apexes of the hexes; I'm thinking that I may use pins, pressed into the styrofoam.  These could be removed if I recide to use the boards for something different and non-hex based, later on.

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...