Big rock for the table

While taking the son to a model train show I picked up some rubber moulds for making rocks made by Woodland Scenics (part no. C1234 and C1240).  I got two moulds, one a single large rock and the second has three smaller rock moods.  It is suggested to use the Woodland Scenics lightweight Hydrocal (plaster of paris with cement) but I thought standard plaster of paris would be fine as the rocks would be sitting flat on a table, not stuck on the side of a hill.

Bare plaster and base

The moulds need to be wet down first with soapy water (to help with plaster flow and mould release) and then the plaster is poured in and tapped to settle.  The best way to do the wetting is with a spray bottle.  After the rock is pulled from the mold the base is sanded down with some coarse grit sand paper.  You can be a bit faster and use a belt sander but it will be like you dropped a bag of flour for the next 30 minutes.  Best wear a dust mask.

The detail on the rocks is fabulous.  Great stratification of the rock which will really show off a good paint job.  In the past my technique of doing rocks has been to paint the whole thing one colour (mid grey of course), wash with a darker shade and then dry brush up.  Simple but when I looked at the terrain setups at the train show their rocks actually looked like rocks.  Some learning was needed.

Great levels of detail

Luckily Woodland Scenics are very good at supporting their products.  They have an extensive video tutorial library (of the "here's one I prepared earlier.." type) on their web site and on youtube.  I checked out their tutorial on painting rocks and was amazed at the result they got.  Real looking rocks with a very simple leopard spot painting technique with washes, followed by a black wash.  I recommend viewing these videos as the results look great.

However I went for a slightly different approach.  I first painted the whole rock with Vallejo Game Colour Earth.  I used an airbrush to do this as the coverage is much better for such large areas.  Following this I applied a wash for Army Painter Strong Tone (25% dilution with water) followed by a wash for Army Painter Dark Tone (50% water dilution).  This was then put aside to dry overnight.  Then the rock was dry brushed up with Vallejo Game Colour Khaki and Model Colour Iraqi Sand.  Depending on the dry brushing I would then put down another diluted coat of Strong Tone to tone everything back together.

All finished

Since the rock is made out of plaster of paris it can't be used as it.  The edges will chip very easily.  Instead I attached the rock to a piece of white coat masonite with PVA glue.  On the base I applied a mixture of scatter, static grass and grass tufts.  On the rock itself I used an olive green scatter to represent small plant growth.

The Marsh of uneven ground (but not impassable)

If this was LotR there would be dead faces...

Another piece of resin terrain I purchased from Fernvale scenics was the resin marsh base.  I wanted a piece of "bad going" terrain that was obviously rough ground but not bordering into impassable.  A brackish salt marsh fits that description exactly.  The piece is roughly circular and 20 cm wide and the resin was a nice bright safety orange colour.  A quick black undercoat fixed that.

Seeing that I had recently got an air compressor and air brush I was eager to try it out.  The marsh would be my second thing to paint.  For the water sections I used Vallejo Game Colour Scurf Green.  Then on the land section I used cheap craft paints and painted all the land a light tan (to show the blighted ground in which nothing but evil grows).  Then in more the central land areas I highlighted with a darker brown (where something might grow) using just the airbrush.  The seamless transitions between colours you can achieve with an airbrush are almost magical.  There can be (if done right) almost no line between the colours, just a change from one colour to another.  Think the ultimate wet blending technique but in 10 seconds.

With the colours (all three of them) sorted it was time to detail the marsh.  Originally I was going to keep things pretty plain but the wife rebuked me into action.  So the plan was to add water reeds (something I've never done), water effects and lastly some clumping foliage (which I had just purchased).

Water reeds

Knowing I wanted to do water reeds didn't help with the making of them.  My first few attempts with PVA glue were a little below total failure.  I tried putting down a blob of PVA glue and standing the reeds up in it but they just fell over.  So a quick trip to the googlesphere and youtube land was needed to see how it was done.  The most used technique is to twist the bunch of fibre together, put a drop of superglue on the bunch and trim as needed.  I put the superglue in the middle of the bunch and then cut the bunch in two so I would have two reeds of the size I wanted.  To add them to the march base I drilled out small holes and glued them in with PVA glue.  As I wanted this terrain to be playable I didn't put in too many reeds.  I needed space for the figures to be placed on.  Much more in the school of representative terrain than realistic terrain.  Covering the marsh in reeds and grass would look much better but then the piece would be more an impassable feature rather than a "rough going" type.  Seeing how nice the reeds I later purchased a pack of three colours of reeds for the next project.  Really it was just an excuse to buy more terrain making materials.

For the water effect it was back to my new friend Liquid Gloss.  For more on this two part resin have a read of my previous blog post on it.  I was counting on the viscosity of the resin to stop the resin from running off the sides of the water ways.  To hedge my bets on this I made sure that the resin was poured only 1-2mm thick.  In the ponds it was more at the 2mm level and at the edges I scraped/brushed it on very thinly.  Also the day was a bit cool which helped keep the resin quite tacky.  Since the water reeds were in the water I had to be very careful not to get any resin on them.  I had one slight failure and got some resin on a reed but in all it worked out.

Lastly I used some of the new clumping flock to add small bushes on the edges of the water.  These were glued on with PVA glue.  Again I went with only a few bits to keep the amount of usable space on the piece to a maximum.

Every bit of painting or piece of terrain I make I have a mind's eye view of the end result.  This was one of the few that the reality and idea came very close.

Terrain boards for both 28mm and 15mm figures

A gentle bend in the river

I have made a number of terrain boards in the past.  For 28mm I have a few 2x4 foot 12mm mdf boards with rolls of static grass paper stuck onto them.  Simple and cheap, and it makes the playing area look so much better having a consistent ground colour.  However after 10 years the mdf is starting to bend as the boards have to be stored propped up against a wall.  For my 15mm HoTT armies I made a dozen double sided 1 foot square 6mm ply boards and painted them green.  Then I painted a number of the with roads and/or rivers with the entry points in the same place on every board.  That way the boards can be put in any kind of layout and all the rivers/roads match up.  Nice but the painted ground doesn't look as good a static grass.  For my new boards I wanted the best of both.

2x4 foot boards are nice, but I wanted to avoid stacking them against a wall and having them warp over time.  1 foot boards are great but to get a playing area for 28mm figures you would need too many boards and they would all shift around during play.  Having figures disappear between tiles isn’t on.  Measuring under the bed I could get a 1.5 foot square board in there and they could lay flat to avoid warping.  My target of board space was 3x4 foot for Saga.  Other skirmish games (e.g. LotR) normally recommend 4x4 foot, but the placement of figures is usually 6 inches in from the edge.  Ie the playing space is 3x4 foot.  So why not just make the playing area 3x4 foot and have figure placement on the edge of the table?  Too easy.

To get 3x4 foot I would need six boards (for 3 x 4.5 foot).  They would be double sided and made out of 12mm mdf.  All the boards on one side would be plain (i.e. open field).  On the other six sides three would be river boards (two straight sections, on curved) and three road boards (two straight, one T intersection).  I would also paint the board edges flat black to any gaps between the boards would be masked slightly.  

Routed and primed

To make the river sections I routed out the mdf down 3mm.  I recommend that when routing mdf do it outside.  MDF atomises when the router hits it and goes everywhere.  It’s also toxic.  After sanding I undercoated the rivers in mdf primer.  I also undercoated the sides of the boards in preparation for painting them black later on.   The rivers were painted a light blue which got darker in the centre of the river so simulate the deeper section.  The wife then suggested to add sand to the banks of the river bends where the water would be slowest.  Like most of the wife's suggestions around terrain and painting it meant more work but a much better result.  I used a mixture of small rocks and fine sand for this, which was then painted tan.  Since the ends of the rivers were open I needed to stop the resin from running out the edges.  Some small scraps of wood covered in grease proof paper (the silicon wax paper variety) so the resin wouldn't stick to it did the trick.  Finally I mixed up a batch of Liquid Gloss and poured away.

Of course it's better to know how much you need to mix up as wasting resin just burns money and not making up enough will result in tears.  The easiest way I found to do this is remember that a cube that is 10cm x 10cm x 10cm = 1000ml = 1 litre.  Good old metric system.  So for one of my boards I just varied the three variables to suit.  My river board was 40cm long, the river was 8cm wide and 3mm.  So 40x8x0.3 = 96 = 96ml of resin needed.

Sand bar ahead

The three river boards went very well with only half of one river going a bit rough due to the "too much water" issue described in an earlier post.  You need to be extremely careful that the board is dead flat and spend some time with a spirit level to make sure.  Otherwise your river ends up with a slope.

For the roads I undercoated the mdf with primer then painted then covered them with texture paste.  I found you only need a very thin smear of paste to get a rough road effect.  Once the paste was on I used an old brush to dab the paste and create a more realistic mud road look.  This was then painted a tan colour and dry brushed a few times up to a light sand colour on the ridges.

I cut out some static grass paper (they come in various sized rolls) and glued these down with a half PVA glue/half water mixture.  While gluing down the paper I found it stretched as the glue absorbed.  It took a few minutes of pressing and then re-stretching to get all the creases out. Then I laid some heavy boards on top to keep everything flat.  Left to dry overnight the next day I came back and trimmed all the edges in the places where the grass paper over hung.  To hide the gaps between the rivers/roads and the grass sheets I painted on some more PVA glue and sprinkled some static grass.

All that was left was to paint the edges flat black and finally setup some figures.

Water effects good and bad

An oasis in the painting table awaits...

This resin piece is done by Fernvalescenics who I came across at Cancon a few years ago.  It's nice and simple and was quite cheap at around $8 from memory.  I aimed to do a simple paint job add texture and also wanted to try water effects. 

At that time there was no game store near me so I ended up looking in Hobbyco in the railway scenic section and online to see what other people did.  Hobbyco had the Ziterdes “Water-Drops (colour)” set for sale and it seemed like quite a good product.  Seemed.  The key point on this approach is that you have to melt the plastic beads (clear and coloured) in the oven, then pour.  After 40mins your kitchen smells really bad and you have a pourable molten plastic mix.  So you have to be very careful on what you are pouring into for warping due to heat and melting of paint, etc.  The end result is quite nice and since it can be coloured (something most other water effects can't) I thought this was a winner.  However in Australia it gets quite warm, and the plastic used doesn't set or ever fully harden.  Really it is more a semi cooled plastic with a low melting point.  Ie it can be reused just by heating it up again.  So in a 40 degree day the entire piece gets quite tacky.  I left another piece of terrain on top of my oasis and now I have a nice bit crease mark across the pond.  Bit of fail whale there.  I also did a small test river section on a terrain board and left the board propped up against a wall.  The next day half the river had slid down the board!  Time for a different approach for terrain board rivers.

The head waters

Another product I had seen mentioned was called liquid glass (and other similar brand names).  It is a two part resin that is mixed at room temperature and self levels.  It is made as a replacement for multiple poly coats put on wood, etc.  Unable to find any in hardware stores I found the Liquid Gloss brand in Eckersley’s art store here in Sydney.  It can be coloured with inks during the mixing process.  It takes a day to harden and seven days to be fully cured.  After that it's rock hard and can even have hot items placed on it without marking the surface.  You do have to mix the product very well (5 minutes of constant stirring) but any air bubbles can be blown out with a propane/butane torch.  Just be careful as all those popping air bubbles does make the flame flare up briefly.

Before I did any river pieces I did a number of small trial runs to work out the drying time.  I also wanted to sculpt the surface to create a ripple effect for the river pieces.  Dead flat water isn't natural, so a gentle ripple of the entire river catches the light and makes the piece look much more realistic.  At around 22 degrees Celsius the ideal time to sculpt was approx 2.5 hours after pouring.  Wetting my finger so it wouldn't stick I would depress the resin and it would hold the shape.  But the resin would still try and self level, so any depression would be a quarter the size after a few minutes.  So I would have to repeat the procedure a number of times over an hour or so.  If left too long before sculpting the depressions wouldn't hold to the level I wanted.  Also too much water would give the surface a milky and rough looking finish.  This is why it's best to do some trial runs first.  Better to ruin a few small batches then an entire river board. 

With respect to colouring the resin I found Citadel inks worked well.  The resin had the same ink mixing properties as a similar volume of water so I could use water to work out how much ink was needed to get the colour I wanted.  In all cases it was much less than I first thought.  My first experiment used a single drop of blue ink which resulted in the darkest blue water ever seen.  Rather than using a pipette dropper I ending up using a small brush and smearing a small amount of ink in the mixing pot.

In the end I had a solution for water effects that was reasonably priced, sturdy and repeatable in behaviour.  Next steps would be making terrain board tiles with recessed rivers.

Rippling river action

28mm people take small steps

I've been gaming for some time, which is slowly creeping into a 'long time'.  Originally board war-games (i.e. Avalon Hill) and RPGs (Runequest among others), PBMs (in a time before online gaming) and in small part miniature gaming (Warhammer Fantasy 3rd).  After a break of ten years I got back into miniature wargaming with 15mm Hordes of the Things (HoTT), Warhammer 40K and LoTR but always wanted to get into historic miniature wargaming.  However the figure count needed in the WRG style rule systems stopped me.  I considered DBA but with HoTT I basically already had it.  I considered 15mm the true scale for historical miniatures until I saw a game of 7th Ed Ancient played with 28mm figures.  After that I was a convert to the insanity and cost of historical 28mm, but still not willing to make any investment with metal figure prices being what they were.

After a few years the 40K armies were sold off as they failed the "haven't played with for 3+ years" test and the LoTR games became less frequent with the arrival of small people into my life.  Plus my other personality got into electronics as a hobby a lot more (over at http://randombot.blogspot.com) . Thus my painting became more a meditation of doing a couple of misc figures (mainly RPG related) than any serious army painting.  Then Nic of Eureka miniatures mentioned Saga to me (while selling me the Beowulf figure set) at MOAB in September 2011.  Come January Cancon 2012 in I had a copy of Saga, a Viking and Anglo-Danish army, cool looking dice and lots of plastic figures to put together.  I finally had made it to historical miniature gaming (well, at least at the skirmish scale).