Village Games' Blog - Terrain Projects

LAYING DOWN ON THE JOB...

nospam@example.com (Dan Hobot) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:56:00 -0600

LAYING DOWN ON THE JOB…

As regulars of the shop know, many of us like to make our own scenic mats for our miniatures games. It involves using acrylic caulk spread over a piece of felt followed by flock and static grasses being pressed in. The process, which can be very successful, can be physically very taxing. You only have a limited amount of time to get the caulk spread out thinly and the flock/grasses added before it starts to “skin over” and dry out. To compound the difficulty in this, spreading the caulk evenly in a thin layer usually results in the felt being pulled up, flipped around, stretched out and more all of which causes delays and eats into your working time.

As I intend to make many different mats for the shop, I needed to find a way to speed the process and take the stress out of the working time. So I built a special jig for making the battlemats. The jig is designed to tightly clamp down the fabric allowing the caulk to be quickly and efficiently spread. It even allows the mat to dry under tension, so it won’t pull or curl while it is drying. The jig is designed to hold mats ranging in size from 3’ x 3’ and 4’ x 3’ to 6’ x 4’ and even 8’ x 4’.

I needed a 3’ x 3’ mat for my recent trip to Rochester, so the jig was quickly pressed into service. The results was fantastic (other than the colors – I was testing out some new flocks, and I wasn’t totally happy with the colors)! I made the mat in all of 20-25 minutes, and after it had dried for a day, I trimmed the edges and it was ready to go.

I will post some updates as I make more, especially since I have plans to make mats with stonework, roads and cobblestones pressed into them.

Until next time…

Cheers!

Dan

Adventures in Creating Nature

nospam@example.com (Dan Hobot) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:49:00 -0600

PLASTER HEAVEN

Recently, one of our regulars (Mike Z.) has embarked on a mission to test out as much of the new Woodland Scenics materials as possible in a single project. So loaded with products he headed to the game room to test them out. Over the course of a week we really started to see progress on his test board.

These pictures, while a little hard to see the details due to the all white plaster coating, gives some ideas as to what Mike was attempting and what he achieved. Some notes from his comments:

Now on to the details...

PLASTER CLOTH: Fell in love with it. It was easy to use, and not very messy at all. He even got a convert when he advised Robb S. to use it on a terrain project he was working on.

HYDROCAL: A kind of plaster. Not real sold on that. Might need to play around with it a little more to become more familiar with it’s properties. Has potential…

ROCK MOLDS: Awesome! Make fantastic rocks and rock faces, which then stain up beautifully with the Woodland Scenic’s pigments. Can’t recommend enough!

The work station

SMOOTH IT: A different kind of plaster for making roads. Has potential, but takes a little getting used to to use it effectively.

UNDERCOATS: Paint used for undercoating and staining rock faces, the plaster surfaces, etc. Gives great results, very easy to use – almost foolproof, whatever you do turns out great.

Another view...

Hopefully I will get some pictures of the finished product as well for comparison. In the meantime, I will be starting a modular game board using many of these techniques myself over the coming couple of weeks.

Until next time…

May all of your commands be productive!

Dan

A NEW SOURCE OF TERRAIN

nospam@example.com (Dan Hobot) — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:30:00 -0600

FAST & EASY

Recently the store brought in some of the terrain kits from Pegasus Hobbies. They do a variety of sci-fi type plastic kits – power stations, pumping platforms, etc. While I snagged one of the kits to create some store terrain out of, one of our regulars (Mike Z.) grabbed one of the power station kits for himself.

I haven’t had a chance to work on the store one yet, but from what Mike said they are a breeze to put together and even easier to paint up. Mike said that he also broke his set up to get three separate terrain pieces out of it, rather than one big piece. The picture give you some idea of how nice the set turn out in the end.

Seeing him finish it up at the shop the other day convinced me that these sets are really pretty cool. With our next restock order we are going to get a few of the other sets as well for the shelves.

Until next time…

Cheers!

Dan

A Unique Victory

nospam@example.com (Dan Hobot) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 01:42:49 -0600

I just finished three more of our new terrain boards (a desert/dried grass one, another hilly/grassy one and an urban one) - giving us a total of five. However, the one big problem facing us when we started this project - how to store the boards had yet to be solved.

Typically boards like these are stored in some sort of permanent rack system, usually horizontally. However in our case there were some extenuating circumstances - namely available space, time to build a rack and the ability to put more boards in the storage system as necessary. What I came up with sounded a little bizzare at first, but on paper it met all of our needs.

Essentially the terrain boards are stored vertically, with one edge resting on the floor. The other end is then held up by using tension from the rack. There is a little movement allowed at the top of the racks for sway, due to someone bumping the racks, etc., but not enough to allow the boards to move more than and inch or so.

Here are a couple of pictures of the racks. As you can see, there is plenty of room for additional boards as there is space between the boards that can be eliminated by moving the tension points and increasing the tension from above (more tension equals less sway, and thus less space between boards needed). The rack was fairly easy to construct, with a minimum of materials, and should still be able to be moved around if we need to shift things about.

Boards from the Backside

Boards from the Front View

In the end we are pretty pleased with the new boards and their storage system. Now I can turn my energies to some more unique boards for the shop - a beach board for amphibious landings, and exposed dungeon & hills board for fantasy battles and maybe even a snow board...

Well, until next time...

Cheers!

Dan

A New Project

nospam@example.com (Dan Hobot) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:23:00 -0600

With our upcoming Warhammer 40K tournaments (�Ard Boyz in September and Village Faire in October), and with the proliferation of historical games at the shop, Carl and I have decided to construction permanent 6� x 4� terrain boards for use at the store.

Besides providing a cool place to play, these should help us set-up for games faster and make it easier for Carl and I to play ourselves (I am even working on spiffing up my Space Marine army for use on these tables J)!

So with this in mind, I set out this week to construct the first two tables. Eventually we will have a dozen or more of them (and I rack I will build to store them in), but for now a ��journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.�

I constructed the basic boards in the same way I build all of our tables and racks � a simple supported box frame with the flat surface firmly attached. I then added some Styrofoam hills, which I covered with a plastic patching compound that really sucked � I won�t use that again.

A Close-Up of One of the Hills

Under Construction Next to One of Our Existing Tables

The Boards With Hills & Patching Applied

After some extensive sanding to prepare the surface, I then coated everything with a thin layer of brown acrylic mastic (caulk). After that dried (maybe 30 minutes) I splashed on watered-down wood glue and covered with flock.

The Completed Tables

The Completed Boards - The Fantasy Table is Closest

The tables turned out pretty good, although there are some things I will do differently next time. I made one �realistic� table for historical games (dried grass, olive greens, etc.) and one �fantasy� field (with bright greens and yellows).

The Historical Table

The Fantasy Table

Some other ideas we have�for tables include one or two ruined urban ones, a desert terrain board, and an exposed �dungeon in a hill�.

If you get a chance, make a table reservation for one of the new boards and try them out!

Until next time�

Cheers!

Dan

A New Terrain Project...

nospam@example.com (Dan Hobot) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 01:09:00 -0600

A RIVER TO CROSS

I recently attempted a new terrain project, and had pretty good success with it. The best part is I remembered to take pictures during the process so I could post a summary here.

My goal was to create:

1.) A scale river for my 6mm gaming in geomorphic sections for maximum versatility.
2.) The river had to be durable, and ideally, flexible for storage and longevity of use.
3.) Finally, I didn�t have a lot of time to devote to the project so it had to be fairly easy to complete.

What I did essentially met all of the above requirements.

MATERIALS:

o 1 Tube of brown acrylic mastic
o Grassy flock of choice
o Soft, flexible foam strips (1-3 mm thick and 25-50 mm wide)
o Plexiglas sheets big enough to hold the river sections
o River color paints (greens, browns, blues, etc.)
o Shiny �water� material (Vallejo water effects in this case, could be glossy paint, etc.)

PROCESS:

It was really simple actually. I cut the foam into to strips that measured 1 �� wide at each end � they have to be uniform so each piece will fit with any other piece � and then place the pieces on the Plexiglas. The Plexiglas will allow the mastic to �pin� the pieces down so they won�t curl while they dry, but allow for each piece to be carefully scraped off after they are done.

The next step is to apply a bead of the mastic/caulk on the long edges of each piece (these will be the banks of the river) make sure the mastic is half on the foam, and half on the Plexiglas so that the piece is held down to prevent curling. Right after the mastic is applied I flocked it to taste. You have to work quickly here so the mastic doesn�t �skin over�. If that happens, the flock won�t stick and you will have to glue it on after the mastic is dry.

The final step is to paint the river bed to your liking and then apply the water effects. For my project I used the Vallejo water effects paste. It paints on and then dries shiny and clear, but still retains its flexibility.

The whole project went very quickly, less than four hours start to finish. After 24 hours drying time, I simply used a straight razor to cut the short edges level and then scrape the rivers from the Plexiglas.

Here is a picture of the final product in action (in a Cold War Commander game):

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall I was very pleased with the net effect. One thing I would do differently next time would be to use a little mastic to �glue� all of the ends down to prevent curling. I didn�t secure the short ends and the water effects did cause a little curling. In the end though the river accomplished every one of the goals I set out � a successful effort by any measure!

Until next time�

Dan