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I'm moving forward incrementally on those area terrain pieces... I'm a middle school teacher back at work now, so those summer weeknights of productivity are gone, replaced by a few weekend evenings when I've got any juice left in the tank once the family is in bed.

I moved the prototype forward, did a little filing and sanding, added some railroad ballast, and beveled the edges of the foamed PVC base. The tree is a twig from my yard... I'm toying with the idea of doing a couple dozen on magnetized slottabases so they can come and go as needed.



I'm pretty happy with that, so I moved forward with building rocks out of layered cork, glued with ModPodge.



I'm sizing the bases and details to fit a few trees and a unit of troops. The small bases will take a unit of 5 infantry, the medium 10, and the big ones 20. I play a lot of MSU, so I'm making sure my army has some advantage on their home table, but I want my friendly neighborhood ork player to have someplace to stash a big mob too. Here's a model for reference.



I also fired up the Dremel to bevel all the edges...



...and made a mess in the process.



So here's where the project sits: everything cut and beveled, only the prototype glued. Hopefully now that I've worked out the bugs I can pick up the pace and start mass producing.

Nice. More terrain is always a good thing.

Have fun back at school! Most important job out there, and you guys don’t get enough support or respect.

 Nevelon wrote:
Nice. More terrain is always a good thing.

Have fun back at school! Most important job out there, and you guys don’t get enough support or respect.

Thanks man! I love my job, and we appreciate your support (and the occasional funding measure on the ballot in November). I get to be the resident gamer nerd mentor and advocate... D&D in the library, MtG in my room at lunch, and the occasional pilot game of 40k when a kid inherits a sibling's or cousin's army. I guess I also teach a little world history.

 MacPhail wrote:
I guess I also teach a little world history.

Wargaming goes well for teaching history and geography. You learn where things are when you fight over them as battlefields. And most pivotal thing in history happened at the end of a sword/cannon.

How many of us whould know where some places were without Risk, Axis and Allies or similar games? I know I’d have no clue where Kamchatka was unless I needed to fortify it for the Asia bonus.

Small progress update after a few crazy weeks (houseguests, trips, etc.) with some headway on my area terrain projects for the Realms of Battle boards. I got my first two small pieces of area terrain built and painted. As pictured above, they are foamed PVC bases with beveled edges, cork rocks, and railroad ballast for texture. I experimentally glued a few washers to the base before painting them to match my Realms of Battle restoration project. These are sized to sit under a 25mm base so I can mount and magnetize trees for them. I had a few extra bases sitting around to test the fit, and you can see what it would look like without them. I'm wondering if this is too much effort, or just lame. I could just mount trees permanently, but I feel like this gives me some nice flexibility in both future hobby ideas and game play. If the trees are a hassle during games, I could remove them or replace them with bushes or more rocks. Thoughts?


Also, I had planned to do mostly natural woods and rock outcrops, but a dive in the bits box turned up a couple of scratch built bunkers I made when I was a teenager (20+ years ago). I feel like they need to make the cut for this table, so stay tuned there...

I think magnetizing the trees is a good idea.

Without the trees the washers look too manufactured/uniform on an organic base. Could you sink them into the base? Or carve up from below? Or hide the rims with debris at least.

I definitely dont love the look of the bare washers, but I can at least crank out a bunch of blank covers for them. I like your idea of recessed washers... I might have to try it with some scrap. These are only 5mm PVC sheets, so I imagine drilling all the way through is the only option. Of course, they all have to match so the trees and bushes are interchangable... here's where I'm wary of the return on investment. This is already the forever project...

Thanks!

The cork for rocks is very successful- really nice effect that I shall steal at the first opportunity!

Regarding the washers, depending on how strong your magnets are for your scenery, maybe you could glue down a thin sheet of cellophane (like from a cookie box wrapper) or even paper over top of them? It would smooth our their shape, but be thin enough that the magnets would still grip?

Great terrain though!

Thanks Meer_Cat! I think I could easily mask the inner ring so it's less donut-y and maybe a little less obvious what it is. A little GS before paint will do it. I'm actually planning on pretty weak magnets to act as a break-away device when they get bumped in play. I don't want a sleeve caught on a tree to upset a dozen minis. And yeah, the cork is amazing... I'm basically using a hobby blade, some coarse grit sandpaper, and ModPodge to assemble. Those two pieces were to get a feel for the work; the next few will be bigger and a bit more ambitious.

Nice idea with the washers, bases are looking good.

I would just make some "covers" for when there is no tree/bush. Some bases made to look like rocks or very small stumps, nothing to interfere with play, but could easily break up the unnatural shape of the washer.

Thanks Camkhieri, much appreciated. Got in a late session tonight with everyone in bed.

I decided to get the pond moving and try to put the two larger pieces through the process together. I relaxed my standards a bit and just started tearing off big chunks of cork and gluing them down as I fit them.



I built a second tier in the few spots and dropped a rock in the "pool."



I also added some grass tufts to the more finished pieces. Any strong opinions around white, brown, or a mix of both?



And, I couldn't resist grabbing a model and staging a quick scene. I have made dozens of bases over the last two years with this board only visualized, not actually built, so it's nice to see that my vision made a fair match.

Minor update: I pushed to get two pieces ready to prime this weekend so I could paint them in the evenings during the work week. I may add a bit more texture to the bottom of the pond, but not at the cost of the deadline.

How many of those you plan on making?

 Nevelon wrote:
How many of those you plan on making?

This round will be six pieces total. The two little ones are pretty much done except for building a dozen or so magnetic trees. These big ones will be another week or two, and I won't do the water effects until later. The last two will be more of a woods-meets-junkyard theme to tie in with my buildings, fuel tanks, etc.. All the cut-outs are laid out on the bench in a photo a few posts back, all of them out of two 12"x12" sheets of foamed PVC.

There's also a couple of big ruins I made as test pieces. I've been using them to figure out paint schemes, drybrushing and inking techniques, getting my homemade wash recipes right, etc. I'm realizing that they're probably good enough to use for gaming, and they represent a third sheet of 12"x12" foamed PVC. When I'm done there will be around 300 square inches of area terrain, about 10% of the table, with about that much area again in LoS-blocking pieces.

Managed to get it primed over the weekend, although I think I'll still tinker with the detail on the pond bottom. Now to make time to paint!

I got the initial layers of paint down on the next two pieces. The rocks have had their drybrush, so what's left is stippling on the earth and washing the rocks. I also took a shot at creating some illusionary depth in the pond and I'm pretty pleased with the results. That's blended rings of gray, blue, and black. Once the water effects go in I think I'll have at least some of the effect I was looking for.

 MacPhail wrote:
Small progress update after a few crazy weeks (houseguests, trips, etc.) with some headway on my area terrain projects for the Realms of Battle boards. I got my first two small pieces of area terrain built and painted. As pictured above, they are foamed PVC bases with beveled edges, cork rocks, and railroad ballast for texture. I experimentally glued a few washers to the base before painting them to match my Realms of Battle restoration project. These are sized to sit under a 25mm base so I can mount and magnetize trees for them. I had a few extra bases sitting around to test the fit, and you can see what it would look like without them. I'm wondering if this is too much effort, or just lame. I could just mount trees permanently, but I feel like this gives me some nice flexibility in both future hobby ideas and game play. If the trees are a hassle during games, I could remove them or replace them with bushes or more rocks. Thoughts?


Also, I had planned to do mostly natural woods and rock outcrops, but a dive in the bits box turned up a couple of scratch built bunkers I made when I was a teenager (20+ years ago). I feel like they need to make the cut for this table, so stay tuned there...

Removable terrain is always a good idea, i came across a MDF woods base that allows you to remove the trees ... https://www.4ground.co.uk/bases-and-movement-trays/4ground-large-tree-base

And the ability to change up scenery is an even better idea! About your bunkers, as soon as i saw them i immediately thought of Charlie Sheen in the Vietnam-era movie "Platoon"

MacPhail,

I agree with Camkierhi in that the washers do stand out. Less when painted, but still they look manufactured as compared to the rest of the terrain.

What about some ground up cork around the various washers to level them with surrounding terrain?

The terrain looks really great, but my eyes keep getting drawn to the washers.

My two cents,

CB

Thanks for the support and comments, everyone.

This is a long overdue update... I was good for almost every week there for a while, and now it's been a month and a half. Lots of family in town, sick kids, lots of work. Anyway...

I did get some twigs collected and prepped. I'm soaking them in (ahem) wood hardener in hopes of a bit more toughness, then some spray paint and mounting on bases with magnets. Hopefully these will adequately conceal the washers, hopefully look good doing it, and still disassemble to store or transport.



Ziploc bags will hopefully contain the funk of a soak in some intense chemical stuff.

Nice to see you still plugging away at these. Hope life settles down a bit for you.

Interested to see how those trees are going to look.

Thanks! I stayed up late last night to mount them on bases-- not yet magnetic-- so you can actually get an idea. I'm going to match those blank bases in the foreground, and probably crank out a bunch of those to cover the washers in case the trees are just annoying in game play.

I'm not sure what to do about paint. I want them to stand out pretty starkly against my orangeish-brown table, so I'm thinking gray primer, a light spray of black from above to stain the tops of the branches, and then a thin brown wash to pick out details... not sure.

'wood hardener'.

MacPhail,

For mine I simply primed them black, then a gloss black for strength and some durability, then another flat black spray, and finally a dry brush of white representing the ash.

For your more complete trees, a spray of brown added in a random pattern would lighten them more than the ones I did. Mine also had almost no branches left.

Hope that helps,

CB

Captain Brown wrote:
MacPhail,

For mine I simply primed them black, then a gloss black for strength and some durability, then another flat black spray, and finally a dry brush of white representing the ash.

For your more complete trees, a spray of brown added in a random pattern would lighten them more than the ones I did. Mine also had almost no branches left.

Thanks for the insights. I went and found some picks of your in your gallery, they look great. How were they in game play? Did it take you a while to stop knocking the whole area terrain piece over and dumping the models? That's my biggest concern, and yours look taller than mine.


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 Briancj wrote:
'wood hardener'.

You should see the look I got at Home Depot when I asked for it.

I got the trees based last weekend while a couple of friends played a pilot game of AoS for mostly the first time. I was fine with odd man out because I got sixteen of these done, with green stuff roots, cork rocks, and railroad ballast. I'm pretty satisfied, especially with the split trunks. Next comes a few different layers from a spray can and hopefully not much more.

Something is happening that has not happened in ages; The forest is awakening, and realizing it is strong...

 Nevelon wrote:
Something is happening that has not happened in ages; The forest is awakening, and realizing it is strong...

If that bush in my yard had awakened properly last spring, it might not be Warhammer terrain now...

I've always watched the ongoing informal contests and motivation threads... I finally jumped on the Dakka Painting Challenge here:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/767550.page

Since Gideon Lorr will be hanging out on my bench, I'll post a few progress pics here... not that I've started. I want to try to embrace some of this awesome technique I've seen in the P&M Blogs.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I had the whole army out of storage today for a quick inventory ahead of Chapter Approved. Somewhere over 150 models, most of them metal and acquired over nearly 30 years in the hobby. There's six adaptable Rhino hulls with bits for a mix of Immolators, Exorcists, and Repressors in another box... I've built a lot of stuff for this army! Still with the unpainted models, though...

MacPhail,

So are you going to start an the unpainted to build some more troops for the Beta Dex?

Cheers,

CB

Captain Brown wrote:
MacPhail,

So are you going to start an the unpainted to build some more troops for the Beta Dex?

Cheers,

CB

I'm starting to hear whispers that Mech Sisters and Blob Sisters may both have some merit post CA18, and that might lead those girls to completion.. I have 3 more Rhinos to build if transports +auras becomes the new hotness. I'll need to see the Betadex before I move too far... but there is an option to maybe paint up my remaining models in a flipped scheme (white robes, green armor) to unlock a second Order if it looks like running two Convictions has potential.