Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Aging Gracefully, the 28mm Dark Ages/Fantasy Fort grows up

I heeded the advice of the comments here and on TMP and added a very thin dark wash to the 28MM Dark Ages fort. As usual the Vox Populi was right, it does look so much better. I used the same paint that I am now using as a standard for all my terrain. This makes it look like it is part of the the groundwork. Thanks to all for the brilliant suggestion!

just enough color to take the edge off and blend it with the surroundings 

Thank You to the work detail

I promised photos of the stuff we got done on Saturday. The worst part of the job was finding someplace to put all the hills while the paint dried! Flocking or sanding was applied directly to an additional coat of standard latex house paint and, after being shaken off, was then top-coated with the cheapest hair-spray I could find (stuff works wonders, much better than expensive spray sealants).

Behold the wonders of our labors my comrades!

the Steep Hills selection, two UWSSU hold enough terrain to cover a 8x6 foot table 
safe from chipped corners or scratched flocking!

Monday, March 28, 2016

A big thank you

To Crowag and J&R for showing up and moving mountains (OK, it was scale-model terrain) on Saturday. We completed two boxes full of Rugged hills and two more boxes of steep hills, both enough to cover a 6x8foot table. Painted flocked etc.

These heroes get to pick the next half-dozen games..........

Photos to follow

Monday, March 21, 2016

New Beginnings......

I have decided to renew/refurbish all of my terrain, I am going to use one color for the base coat on all of my temperate climste terrain and a different color for my desert/arid terrain. All of my area terraain, hills etc will have a single theme. It remains to be seen if painting my ground-cloths will work in a satisfactory manner but I will take steps to fix that as well.

The other important factor is that all of the terrain will fit into a standard-sized storage box. Too many pieces have been damaged over the years from rough storage and random stacking in the terrain bin. From now on they will be neatly packed into the Universal Wargames Standard Storage Unit; more commonly known as a paper-box.


the Universal Wargames Standard Storage Unit
my "paperless" office generates about a dozen of these a month

Sunday, March 20, 2016

"Form a Work Detail!"

Saturday 26MAR16 everybody needs to wear their fatigue uniform, My much-talked-about terrain building session is officially slated for  next weekend. Trees will be re-based, hills cut and painted, the entire terrain system will be rationalized to fit into standardized storage boxes. This time I mean business! So dig out your paint spattered old blue jeans and t-shirts, things are about to get messy!

Friday, March 18, 2016

Martians Invade Warren!!!!!

The Housemartian has offered to bring his extensive collection of cephlapod invaders to my place for a game this Saturday at 7p.m.

Show up and help save Humanity (or not )

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Frontier Fort finally finished and painted

     It has been an embarrassingly long time since I updated this building project. But it also has been an embarrassingly long time in building. However it is finished at last. One of my oldest and dearest friends, The Housemartin, is playing D&D with his children and asked that I build him a model of one of his long-cherished ideas; the Frontier Forts of Kelnore. He provided a much-used copy of the original booklet which provided floor-plans. and I got to work (albeit slowly).  At long last I have finished the project.

     I will compile the postings and add them top the Adventures in Blueboard and Foamcore page. Comments, criticism and suggestions are all welcome.

the finished model

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

WAY too long at sea!!

I finally got my second tramp steamer done and decided to weather it. I got started and then just kept going. Now the ship looks an awful mess, too many years at sea without a proper refit are really leaving their mark! The only thing kept in a decent state of repair is the lifeboat (doubtless because the crew figures it will be needed sooner rather than later!) This model is smaller than my last one and takes up a fair bit less table. All the usual techniques were used building it (check here for the builds of the other ship models I have made) so I won't spend a lot of time on the blow-by-blow of the assembly.

the gaming mat under the model is one-inch squares 

Friday, March 4, 2016

Too Long At Sea

     I have been away from the blog for FAR too long. I have all the usual excuses; too many projects, too little time, too many thing demanding my attention in the "real world". I have got a few things accomplished however, as usual more by accident than deliberate planning.

     Below you see a by-product of my gnat-like attention span. I was working out some angles and techniques for making very small fortress models from blue board and I felt the need to work on something bigger. I had been in a discussion about a tramp freighter that was even trampier (?) than my last project so my thoughts turned to a short, stubby and shabby looking boat. A few minutes on the internet looking at "tramp freighters" through Google Images and this happened;

just a few quick cuts and a few passes over the 60 Grit, 
trying out ideas; 15" long, 5" on the beam