More baseboard tweaking

While browsing the net looking at terrain I found that there are some great new base mats available. The days of the simple lurid GW (or Heki) mat, or the felt monstrosities of yesteryear from Monday Knight Productions (was that their name? Anyway, once up on a time they were the only game in town and I felt my self pretty swish to own one) are gone. Now you can get textured rubber (that you have to paint yourself: rip-off!), and you can get colour impregnated materials. These last ones have blends that really look natural. Or at least they convey a feeling of naturalness that is much better for practical wargaming purposes.

Inspired, I took a can of spray adhesive and put some smears on a spare piece of mat and a hill. Then I pressed in two different colours of flock: an earth and a darker shade of green. After shaking off the excess I sprayed art fixative to hold it down. Finally, after it was well dry, I took a brush to it and really gave it a good brushing. What was left is pretty subtle.

Here is a scene on this sheet and hill, using the scatter technique with boulders, gravel and clump flock in a much darker shade. Again: is it ‘realistic’? No it’s not. But I quite like it, and it’s certainly playable while conveying the illusion of the great outdoors.

The Japanese Garden theory of war-game table layout

My friend Alan is a fantastic modeller. His terrain setups are inspirational. His Schloss for the Jurassic Reich game was awe inspiring. But I’m not that good. I don’t have the patience. He once commented to me that he wished had my ability to not put so much effort into the terrain and just have a make-do set up so he could play… which is about as close as being damned with faint praise as I can imagine. But I forgive him, because he lets me play with his beautiful models.

In Wargames Illustrated 284 – The Thirty Years War special (joy!) – there was a set up for Poles versus Swedes. The table had some magnificent buildings up at one end. I’m guessing they were Miniature Building Authority. But that’s not what caught my eye. Instead it was the semi-random placement of gravel and flock bush. They did nothing, really, well: nothing game-rule significant. They just added a beautiful touch of ‘rightness’. The rocks scattered around the edge of a large natural feature, in the magazine it was a river, just seemed to tie the pieces together. The flock bushes conveyed the illusion of an uneven heath.

I fell in love with the idea. I call it the Japanese garden method. It’s not about creating a 1/56 scale replica of reality. It’s about creating the minimal elements that evoke the atmosphere of a believable scene.

This is my attempt at the idea.

Exciting terrain discovery at Adelaide

I bought these plastic aquarium plants a while back. Mine came attached to a circular frame, but other people have seen them on flat mats. At the time I thought they could be useful for my toy soldier terrain.

The problem, as I saw it, was the large disc at the base of the tufts which was used to affix them to their frame. I could not figure out how to disguise it.

Then at Adelaide I spoke to a tremendously friendly chap who had a scintillating Aztec game set up. He had the exact same plastic foliage stuck to simple bases. They looked grand.

“What’s your secret?” I asked.

“Go hard with the flock,” he advised.

And his work looked great. The intrusive disc/cup looked just like a bulging part of the plant base.

Here is the start of my attempt to recreate this great application. I have glued two tufts to thin card about 5.5cm in diameter. I have textured the base a little with some polyfiller, and have given the a coat of Raw Umber.

The next step is to highlight with a dusty tan, and then go heavy with that flock. Finished photos to come when I get the chance to do some real work (other than having to go to work).

Recycled blocks for wargaming

 

The kids are getting older now and are moving into that time of life when playing with toys is too… kid stuff. When they are older they will discover that playing with toys is one of the few delights a man has.

So, I found a whole bag full of wooden blocks that were ready to be tossed out, and I thought: they are a great size for my little lead men to hide behind.

Trouble is they looked like wood. Nothing against wood, of course, but it does look pretty lame on a table. Useful, but lame. Here, then, is my transformation of the blocks.

1) See the Jenga blocks, carefully labelled by little monkey hands to be Jenga blocks.

2) Taking a file I made a few gouges and score lines, just to give the surface some interest.

3) Use black and white craft paint – don’t use the good stuff. You want thick texture here. I scooped some white and a bit of black on the same fat (size 10) artist brush and dabbed on the block. Don’t mix. You want a mottled or feathered look. Don’t brush. Resist the urge to merge.

4) Use a Red Earth wash to fill in some detail, add some dimension to the thick paint, and give a pinkish – marble – tint. Again, don’t try to be even handed. Some bits are redder, some miss out. No drama.

5) Finally, dry brush white over the whole block once totally dry. This will find the edges of the score marks, and tone down the very dark or very red parts.

This could be used to build whole structures, I guess. But I don’t wish to work that hard. Hope this helps someone.

Making roads on Saturday

Roads, rivers, trees, hills and buildings are the very basics of war-game terrain. They are the elements that can transform a table into something attractive that spurs the imagination, or can make it look childish and amateurish. Mine have looked ordinary for decades.

Finally I found the answer to one of the problems. I found the download for printed roads from Drive thru RPG from Lord Zsezse Works. The full set is here: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=82406

These are very attractive flint-style roads, straight, with right angle turns. This is

somewhat of a dampener but is a practical response to the problem of getting simple modularity. And at the end of the day in 28mm scale the idea of a meandering road is probably not realistic. In the scale we are dealing with the road will be close enough to apparently straight as far as the models on the table are concerned.

The following images show how I built them. Using the image set I printed a full version, and then 10 extra straight sections. Luckily the World Cup just ended and I found an advertising poster stuck to dense foamcore. It had been thrown out, wasteful society that we are.

The prints came out in slightly different because we do not use US sizes here. We use A4. BUt this did not matter to me as I did not need to populate a whole board and I do not use the printed grid.

Simply, I cut out the paper and the plastic card, spread ordinary glue with an offset, then made sure the bond was tight by using a rubber roller. I cannot over emphasise this last bit. It made all the difference both to getting a nice flat finish, and for making for that ordinary PVA adhered to the gloss surface. I rolled from the centre to the corners, then on angles outwards down the sides. This squeezed the glue out, and I had to wipe the roller with a wet rag every swipe to prevent it from smearing the surface and ripping up the areas already covered.

New toys for wargaming

Once a movie property has run its initial course, the toys end up in bargain basement stores. What can be $50 when it first comes out can be $10 or less six months later. The following come from Monsters versus Aliens, and also Astroboy (the floating eyes). Both had cute eyes, so I immediately saw the potential for a consistent theme army. I see these matching well with classic ‘Grey’ aliens – bug-eyed little devils that want our women. The big robot was around $5, I think. The little guys were $2.

All have been repainted. I am particularly proud of the eyes.

The mole comes from GI Joe. It’s just great for VSF, or any classic pulp themed game. I forget his price but it was less than $10.

This has been repainted as well, as the original had a clear canopy so you could see the (90mm) figure – no use to me. But at 28mm it looks like an impressive mole. It would fit Thunderbirds as well.

Less exciting, from a discovery point of view, is the Star Wars escape pod from DeAgostini. It is what it is. There was nothing else that I needed to do. But it is a perfectly scaled model of an escape pod, as the AT-43 guys show.

In the background are two aquarium decorations that I picked up as well. These were $20 each, which is still pretty cheap for war-game terrain. And they look just fine. As Second Son declared, ‘you could hide behind the columns, you could shoot between them. You could use your rocket pack and get on top. These are SO cool.’

Paizo Flip Maps – a good thing

Terrain is what makes the difference between a good game and an ordinary game. Beautifully painted figures on a crap amateur board look far worse than pathetic figures on an attractive board. It’s a fact.

I don’t play big battles in 28mm any more, or any scale (except perhaps sci-fi in 10mm, but that’s another story). I have bought Warhammer Ancients, and Warmaster (even built the armies and then sold them), but I do not play them. If I want the big battles I use the hex and block system spearheaded by GMT. Nor do I play D&D miniatures as there are too many rules. Role playing, for me, is an almost entirely verbal story-telling exercise. I have no time for rules.

What I do play in 28mm is skirmish games, and now I have found I play exclusively using rules from the Song of Blades and Heroes suite from Ganesha Games. These are generic to the point of triviality, but what they do have is just enough variability in the turn structure and just enough softness in the actions available that I can breathe life into a game. It is the cross between role-playing and wargaming that I desire – that D&D minis and SWCMG, or anything in the d20 stable cannot offer.

But what of it?

The guts is that it always comes down to terrain. I use a standard 4′ by 4′ table, more than enough for a game. 12′ by 8′ is just showing off: you never use more than the two or three feet in the middle anyway. I build terrain in preference to painting, but no matter how much I get I always feel that one game looks similar to another. Two pipe dream possibilities present themselves: 1) terrain that is so modular that it can serve in a variety of situations, or 2) terrain that is rich but cheap so it does not matter if it only gets used once. Despite my abhorrence of waste, the second option is aesthetically more pleasing.

D&D minis and SWCMG use the printed battle mats. I like this. I like that many are available free – though printing and mounting is a challenge to the company equipment. What reduces the utility of the official product is that they usually come packed with a whole bunch of rules and crap that have no use to me.

Discovery: Paizo have a product called GameMastery Flip Mats that are a good size – 30″ by 24″ and are not packaged with any other nonsense. A size like that sits perfectly in the usable area of my 4′ by 4′ foot board. Around it can be placed linking terrain such as hills, trees, rivers and roads and just by its presence it focuses the eye to the objective of the game. I love them.

Today I picked up Bandit Outpost: company promo shot attached.

What I would like to know is how to take part in the Paizo subscription for more of these maps here in Australia. The product is known here but try and get copies… oi!

Square hexes

I probably spend more time thinking about, and modelling, terrain than I do the actual model soldiers. This is because I believe that poorly painted figures on great terrain looks better than beautifully painted figures on crap terrain.

There is a constant battle between specific representations and more abstract models that offer greater chances for modularity and reuse. The first case looks the best, but in reality who can afford to build endless specific pieces that only ever get used once? The answer seems to be modular pieces that are as attractive as possible but still offer the flexibility.

Hexes typically give you a better chance of putting together a board made of many pieces in many different ways. Apparently, or so I had always believed.

Trouble is, hexes are a swine to cut out if you don’t have access to some good tools, or at least access to a flat surface and the ability to create accurate angles. And this is a shame because the Battleboards described in the very old Avalon Hill game, Titan, give a really good practical sized playing surface. Depending on the size of the hex you can play quite a range of skirmish style games. For example, a hex size of 4″ side-to-side would allow you to have up to around 10 28mm models per hex. With 27 hexes, or manoeuvre areas, you have more than enough space to have a good tactical game, on a playing surface the size of a coffee table.

How could this be done without hexes? By making them square, and then offsetting them. Now each square can communicate with six neighbours, just like a hex. And a square is so much easier to make.