Desert Terrain Day 06

Today saw some more messy fun coating terrain pieces with filler and I have got most of them done now - just the fields/plantations, the steep hill and the plateau still to do.

I got the dunes coated this morning, then added Das clay over the bamboo skewers on the river pieces to create banks. I also did a couple of test pieces on the road sections - one with Das over the skewers, one with filler over the skewers and a scrap piece with just filler. spread over the surface. When the filler had dried on the last one I spread PVA over the filler and added sand to see if that would cause warping - it didn't. This evening I got all the river and road sections covered with filler.

Looking at the road sections, I think I might have been OK to forget the skewers and just coat them with filler - I might cut some more strips and do that. The ones I've done so far can always be used as narrow rivers for other gaming.


At one point while the filler was drying, I decided to strip down a couple of the topiary ball halves. You don't half get a lot of pieces - I got 180 off the leafy one and 200 off the grassy one. And that's just from half a ball!

And I think I might have found a use for the frame they came off:

Thunderdome?

I think tomorrow night I'll be adding filler around the edges of the field/plantation bases and make a start adding sand to the hills, gully and dunes.

Desert Terrain Day 05

After Thursday's post I carried on for a bit and cut and bevelled some more ePVC - bases for the impassable and a steep hill, plus a bunch of 20cm strips for river (8cm wide) and road (4 cm wide) sections.

Those who have read the comments on Thursday's post will have spotted an error I made - Das clay shrinks as it dries, causing warping. After seeing that comment yesterday morning I checked the fields and "dunes" bases and sure enough, they'd warped. I ended up removing the Das (and Milliput - that one didn't warp) from the field/plantations and flexed the dunes to release the clay forms - I've since superglued them in place.

The bits I cut on Thursday night got taken into work yesterday and were sanded during my lunch break. I didn't do any more work in the evening as I had a couple of drinks after work.

Before heading out this morning I decided to try something out. I took one of the plantation bases (the textured wallpaper had come off with the Milliput) and gave it a coat of filler. When I got back a few hours later the filler had dried and there was no warping - I should be able to use filler to create the field ditches.

For the road and river sections there is a much bigger risk of warping, so I cut some 20cm lengths of bamboo skewers and superglued them near the edges. They're a bit too thick for the road banks (but ideal for the river banks) so I sanded them down to reduce the raised effect.

I also had some messy fun covering the gentle hills, gully and the flat (for scrub and village) pieces with filler. I've also glued the plateau and steep hill to their bases.

Here's a pic of everything:

And a close-up on some of the river & road sections:

Tomorrow I'll be doing some more work with the filler, doing the roads, rivers and dunes. And maybe the edges around the fields/plantations.


While I was out I did a bit of shopping. After last Saturday's post a couple of people had mentioned that they'd found small topiary balls in pound shops - I'd never seen any in my local ones. Until today that is, so I picked one up. I also picked up a couple of flower sprays in Wilko:

Bits from the topiary ball

The big petals and leaves probably can't be used, but the rest will add more variety and help to break up the green monotony a bit.

In The Jungle

I bought some things today:

No, I'm not abandoning wargaming for a new plant-based hobby. These plastic plants (from Ikea and Homebase) are a source of foliage for my Junglegrave project. I've also ordered a few bits off Amazon.

Some close-ups on individual bits:

I think this one will be used on terrain pieces as creepers.

I've made a start on grabbing bits from the balls and pots ready for use when I get some bases (of various shapes and sizes) to stick them onto. They'll also get dotted onto terrain pieces. I suspect that I'll have much more here than I actually need!

It's also provided a couple of "tree trunks" to mix in.

Over the next few days my plan is to work on some desert terrain pieces for use with my Nubians (and eventually Sea Peoples) as well as with the Buccaneers (note to self - must actually finish painting that army!).

SELWG 2015 - The Lootz

Soooo...

I was up bright and early (for me on a Sunday morning) to head Sarrff ov tha rivver to Crystal Palace for SELWG. I got there just as they were starting to let in the crowd of gamers, having bumped into Clint (link to his loot post) as I was crossing the car park. Within a few seconds of getting in, I managed to find Ray, Postie and Big Lee with his "Young Padawan" Emily (she's actually Sith Master to his apprentice, but we'll let him believe that he's the teacher). After a brief chat, I tootled off to do the rounds.

Usually I make the big mistake of buying lots and lots of lead before thinking to take pics of the games. I didn't make that mistake this time. I even managed to take pics of every game - I'll try to write the post tonight and schedule it to go up tomorrow.

After stowing my camera in my bag, it was on with the shopping. First a quick pass around all the traders to see if anything jumped out at me, then onto the serious business. I think this counts as reasonably serious:

My first port of call was Tole Haven for some Vallejo paints - two I don't have and one I was running low of:

I then got some D20s from Magister Millitum. Yes, these are for Frastgrave, or rather - Junglegrave!

Next stop was Foundry to pick up some Aztecs for Junglegrave. Except they hadn't brought the Aztecs with them! Eeeks! I did pick up some suitable wildlife though for that project:

A quick toddle back upstairs found the Evil Mr Tuffley extracting cash from my purse. I bought some mounted Crusties, some turret packs and a trio of hover vehicles for my NSL force.

He's not really evil though - he knocked a couple of quid off as I'm a regular customer.

My thoughts then turned to terrain for Junglegrave. As it's central America, I knew I'd need some cacti and I'd also want some jungle foliage - long grasses and the likes. I'd seen some of these at Products For Wargamers on my earlier trawl, so headed in their direction.

I'll also need some trees. I thought (correctly as it turned out) that I'd seen some Noch/Gaugemaster ones on the Timecast stall.

You might be wondering about the willows, but they were used around the edges of the chinampa fields to stop the soil washing away.

As I was mooching around after all those purchases, I suddenly spotted something I'd missed earlier - The Assault Group were there and they had their Aztecs (and Tlaxcala). Needless to say, their gain and Foundry's loss. I picked up enough figures to do a couple of Junglegrave bands. They even knocked off 10% so I was an even happier bunny.

I then locked my purse away to prevent any more acquisitions and took a wander around the games to see how they were going. And got roped into a game of "Outrageous Fortune" which was an Agincourt game (and the pedant in me was chafing at the title being from Hamlet not Henry V). Still, it was a fun game with lots of inter-player interference. My battle did make it into melee with the English, albeit with just one out of six bases left but my final base did eventually get killed with two other players left in the game.