Terrain Weekend

Bryan and I took some time to paint up and assemble some of the buildings I had cut out with the laser.  I have to say that the painting took longer than expected.  The assembly on the kidney shaped building did too.

The results?  Here are some pics of the building and catwalks we assembled. 

Learned plenty on this weekend.  The prime and paint we used made the process of painting these buildings longer than it needed to be.  There were some problems with a few of the building segments that we found when we assembled them.  We found that very thin segments could be quite brittle.  There's a set of windows with a thin sill that are just waiting to be broken by a misplaced hand.  Also, the kidney shaped building was a fail.  Took a lot of time to design, cut and assemble and the finished product looks cheap and amateur.

The buildings we did assemble have the designed effect.  Cheap, simple, effective terrain that's strong, fully functional and storable.  Below are some pictures of those buildings in storage mode.  All the buildings are storable in russian doll mode.

The building below is all three buildings stored in one.

Next steps:  Lots of touch-ups yet to do on the paint.  Plenty of other building, painting and assembly to do.  I have an L-shaped building and a balcony building designed.  I'd also like to recut the roof of one building roof that's pretty sloppy.

Laser Cut Buildings

I've always has trouble with making buildings for wargames.  The problem is in the windows.  Drills make round holes in wood and mortising tools are not nearly as good as they promise in their ads.  I made a full Russian Tank factory once and had no trouble with the factory but the office windows were a debacle.  Drill, saw, drill, saw, saw, saw, drill -- took forever.

To get around the window problem, I tried cutting out a building wall from a piece of MDF but found that my tablesaw cut straight but couldn't cut square especially for small pieces.  Not a good tool for making miniature terrain.

After seeing all the recent startups using lasers to make buildings, I looked around and found one for rent.  First step was to design a throw-away building I call Building 0.  I have no intention of making any/many of these but it's here to build some skills around the drawing program and make the mistakes around fabricating.  Here's a cut-out of the roof of Building 0 and a staircase.

 

Once cut with lasers, the walls come out like this: 

 

It's a very simple setup -- 6"x6" building with 3" floors.  Here's what it looks like with just the base plus the roof section.  (I will apologize right now for some truly lousy photography)

The roof has a balcony around the top with cutouts to allow for walkways to be added.  I also made a middle floor that I can copy to be floor 2, 3, 4, etc.

I learned several things with this building. First and foremost -- the engraving I did on the outside of the building takes a LONG time to print. Plain old cuts take much less time. Granted they're less interesting but for quantity, I need to lose the engraving.  Also, the joinery I used presumed the MDF was uniformly 1/8" but I found it's a few fractions of a millimeter smaller in most cases.  The holes I cut for holding things together (mortices) need to get a little thinner.

Here's the simple building with a staircase going up the side to the second floor. 

After putting it in play, I found that my proportions were off. It looks good but the rise needs to be steeper and the stairs need to end higher.

 

I also built a 6" walk way to go between buildings.  I don't have a building for it to go to -- so it's just propped up against a middle floor for Building 0. 



The walkway's a little off in the ratios too -- the railing is too low and the walkway isn't very interesting overall. Needs some cutouts or a railing.

 

Here's what the building looks like with the base, the middle floor and the roof.

The next step is to print a few more middle floors and paint it up.  Look for another post in about a week.

Historic Wargaming

This is what I did this weekend:  tried out a set of self written American Civil War game rules.  Overall, not so bad.  Took 6 pieces of feedback to improve the rules.  Now I just need to get them arranged well and tighten up the verbiage.

Trip to Historic Wargame Convention

On May 19, 2012 I went to the Drums at the Rapids, a historic miniatures wargame convention.  Here are some pictures from the games.  Some of them are in focus but it's a new phone/camera so some are pretty blurry.

The most impressive game I saw at the convention was the Russo-Japanese Naval Battle.  Here are some of the pics:

Pretty cool huh?  Yeah, I thought the models were very good until the gamemaster told us they were scratch built.  Every smokestack, mast, line, flag and wave modeled on the base was made by him.  That makes this fleet ASTOUNDING in my mind.

He also had plumes of water exploding out of the sea where shots from the main guns went wide of their targets.  It was great to see the Russian fleet in flames and surrounded by these water eruptions.



Below, Vikings raid the fishing village.  The Longboats are further off past the river.

This was the French Foreign Legion board.  What was striking to me was how good the village looked.

I need to work on my Menoth village more. His stuff just looked too good.



This is a small small section of the huge Prussians vs. French board. To give you a sense for size, the table was three times the size of the gaming table in my basement. Packed with models.

Here's a Gladiator arena -- scratch built -- and the Gladiators that compete in it.

And this is the stuff I came for.  Very juicy game of ACW in 20mm.

The game I played was in 6mm and I unfortunately took NO pictures of it.  Oh well, next time.

New Mosh Pit

I had a chance to finish off that Mosh Pit project I started a long while back.  The pit is an MDF disk that's 16" wide.   On top is a set of ancient block and sand in the pattern of a ruined temple.

I had a few things in mind when putting it together.  First -- it had to be interesting to play on.  It had to outline the play area and not add any effects that would withdraw from the Mosh Pit. 

To that end, none of the blocks or ruins on the pit are tall enough to count as an obstacle or obstruction.  Those can be added as seperate terrain pieces later.  Another effect on the pit is a 1" zone around the edge.  When Mosh Pit was originally released, there were two pit widths quoted -- 14" and 16".  For old schoolers that like the 14" width, players can ignore the outer width and just use the sand line as the outer boundary.

There are some effects on the pit that are artistic.  It's hard to see in this pic but there are two semiburied stone faces on the pit.  

Looking forward to playing on it!

Tournament Model Tray

Got inspired to make a tray for transporting figures while at a tournament.  The idea was to have something that would allow magnetized figures to stick to it but also provide some amount of setting for them to be standing on.  The game group batted around ideas and this is what came out: 

It's a cookie sheet painted green and flocked.  There are some dirt patches in the middle and tufts of grass growing up throughout. 

Figures don't have to be magnetized to use it but it helps keep them steady while you're walking around.  Here's a small battlegroup (25pts) on the tray.

The terrain is magnetized so it comes off to be used on the battlefield too.  The beauty of this type of tray is that it folds flat and slips in the side of my miniatures container.

In this next picture, you can see that there's a few imperfections I need to fix.  Bare metal that needs additional flocking.

This is how a big battlegroup looks on the tray.  I could see getting another battle engine or some terrain piece on this one but not a lot more.  Another troop unit would make it pretty crowded.

The next one will be bigger.  I'll probably add a layer of sand before painting and flocking it -- just to make the ground more uneven.  Might even add a stone cliff on one side (magnetized on bottom with a sheet steel top) to add some character.

Here's a pic to show the value of magnetizing the figures.  The figs are stabilized by the magnets but not stuck to the tray by any means. 

I didn't go crazy with the magnets because didn't want the figures to get additional wear from being pulled off the tray.  The connection is a bit weak though.  If I add another layer of material to the tray, the magnets I used on these models might need reinforcing or replacement with larger ones.

Objective Markers

I've always wanted to have some finished 40mm objective markers for scenarios so I got off the pot and built some.  Granted, my objectives also objectify. 

I figure other players can go for a flag or crates of goodies and I'll be honest about my goals.  :)

These will get used for WM/H and possibly 40K or other systems.  I put this nice storage/transport box together because they'd be somewhat useful and I can't control my OCD.