When asking "What have you been up to?" to the wargamer, the inference is usually "What have you been painting?" And fair enough, as that is the big chore for most miniature wargamers. But I have tried in the past while to work on the terrain aspect of the tabletop. Using some lightweight but very sturdy poster boards which seem not to warp with water/drying, I can apply terrain in large areas. Thus I can indulge in creating mini terrain boards of building complexes or fields.
As with the recent posts I usually scratch build out of whatever material is at hand. Foamcore and coffee stir-sticks are my go-to from which I built a farm house and put together with a small sample of rather realistic looking astro-turf as a crop.
The field utilized some of the "straw" fences previously built but as they were very susceptible to knock over or damage, added them permanently to a layer of plaster for a medieval/renaissance field.
These took the afternoon to accomplish while I listened to wargamer podcasts some of which content complained about the lack of "appropriate" terrain on the average tabletop!
Finally over the week or so, needed some added "jungle" for placement on jungle-print neoprene mats bought a while back. Not really sure I like the look of the printed mats and they certainly look worse in the photos. The jungle is, of course, the every popular aquarium plastic plants which were embedded in leftover chunks of styrofoam covered by ground up natural lichen and moss. As the weather is rather not conducive to the spraying of matt greens to lessen the 'glossy effect' of the plastic, that must wait til spring.
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| Poor 'Ieko' with his lunge-mine chasing an Australian Matilda tank somewhere in South-East Asia. While he did manage to hit the tank, he did no damage to the tank...but of himself?...say no more... The leafy print on the mat is over-scale and not that convincing. I might sell the mat and just build more jungle. |
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| Again poor "Ieko" this time exposing himself to the rifle fire from the accompanying Australian infantry - in the background - during the second game with the boys on Friday night. The first rifle bullet put a big hole in his shoulder, the second mortally. The jungle bits look a bit better in this angle. The non-commercial made body of water was purchased at a convention years ago forms a very nice terrain piece. This open ground allowed for "Joey's" fine shooting. - a rare night of good dice rolls by me! |