Terrain Build Update - Modular Sloped Hills, Finished

Carrying off from my last post I had a very pleasant weekend bringing this next stage of my 28mm terrain collection to a conclusion with the finishing off of my set of modular sloped hills.

Terrain Build Update - Modular Sloped Hills Part One

For those interested in how I put these together I have picked up from the first post and show the stages with a brief description of what each stage entails.

So once having everything sealed down with plaster and masking tape, the next stage was to add the first coat of scatter using a 50:50 mix of PVA and water painted on and then applying different grades of grit, ranging from the very fine 'Chinchilla Dust' a a very fine sand available in pet shops to a slightly more granular ballast available in most builders merchants.

Because these slopes will in the main have stuff put on them I kept the more gritty scatter located in the indentations I made to the polystyrene and then covered the bulk of the surface in the fine sand.

This first scatter cover is important as it not only provides the first layer of sealing and protection but also provides a layer of groundwork which provides texture for the paint.

Next stage is, once the scatter has had a good amount of time to thoroughly dry, to seal the whole thing with a mixture of equal parts chocolate brown house paint (the acrylic stuff that washes out with water), water and PVA.

When applying the watered down paint/PVA mix be careful not to go over areas already covered in the mixture, as water reactivates the original PVA causing your ground texture to be liable to move and form a sludge, hence giving the original layer a good amount of time to dry out and not re-touching areas already painted.

Next morning it was on with the highlight colour of golden brown acrylic craft paint simply wet-brushed over all that lovely texture to complete the look of the ground work.

This stage will really make those strategically placed areas of extra larger pieces of ballast really pop and contrast the areas of broken ground showing through the turf.

Soon after the wet-brush we can then paint on another 50:50 PVA wash to allow us to get on with applying the scatter, which in this case is Javis turf colours; which come in three shades consisting of dark green for putting around my broken ground, light green, generously randomly scattered over the exposed slopes, followed with a top scatter over the whole slope of medium green to finish.

Again this stage needs to be given ample time for drying and properly fixing the scatter before finishing the work with a final spray of  1:8 PVA/water which will lock down the scatter and cause the colours to leech into one another and give a more nuanced overall colour to the slopes.

The slopes now show of their gentle curves that will allow my figures to traverse them easily and the scatter right down to the edges soften their look on table whilst the areas of broken ground add a bit more realism to the look.

The final proof of the pudding is to get them on table with other terrain items to see how they look.

This initial work has now created a good base for my terrain collection and now means I can easily create games here in my room with my permanent table and now with a new slightly smaller cloth from Tiny Wargames take part of my collection to club to put on games there as well.

Obviously this is very much the first basic stages that creates a start point and over the next eighteen months or so I can add to this with other important terrain items that will gradually give a better look which alongside a growing figure collection will enable the creation of more interesting games.

So there we are, the first modular hills completed and now its on to the next piece of terrain, but I will keep that up my sleeve for the time being and focus next on getting the next unit of Sarmatian cataphracts put together, plus a post looking at historic Taunton.

Terrain Build Update - Modular Sloped Hills

A trial run with my new modular hill sections, all taped up and awaiting the plaster to finish off the slopes

Welcome to 2019 and JJ's Wargames picks up from where it left off with some more updates on progress with the 28mm terrain collection.

One consideration that any terrain collection needs to have built in is what sort of hills you intend using. This statement might at first seem a little strange, surely hills are hills, what do you mean 'sort'?

The first day of work with some sections of MDF cut to shape and with the white polystyrene affixed ready for sculpting

Well the scale of figures can make quite a difference on the type or sort of hill you should probably think of modelling as the difference in ground scale between my 18mm Napoleonic collection and my 28mm Ancients is dramatic when transferred to a 9' x 5' table.

That means I am quite able to model a two and a half by one and a quarter mile battlefield encompassing Talavera in the former scale and a lot less real estate in the latter.

Not only that but with a much lower centre of gravity with the seemingly diminutive but beautifully detailed 18mm I can put slopes under my mat with much steeper inclines that will still allow my figures to stand on them and give the impression of a major feature; whereas my 28mm figures will struggle to stay put on a slope incline greater that 1:3 i.e. for every one inch in vertical I need to have the slope climbing three inches horizontally, which means sloped hills in 28mm tend to have to be gently sloped and take up a lot of table space, but are not, unless you own an aircraft hangar, major features.

In addition the placing of the slope under the mat makes the likelihood of the figures staying put, once placed on any slope, highly unlikely due to the rather slippy texture of these new style synthetic materials that are tough, easily washed and ironed but quite slippery for figure bases to stand on with any slight incline.

Tom helped me saw up the MDF into 6" x 6", 9" x 6", 12" x 6" and 12" x 9" rectangles which were then shaped as seen by my drawing on slope number '7' above then I cut the shape and sanded it.

The other alternative is to dump the scale side of things and produce 'styalised' hills with two or three inch vertical cliffs and deem them passable to your metal warriors despite the eye querying such a possibility in reality. 

I don't dismiss the  'styalised' hill approach, only that I intend to capture some of that look by having free standing cliff sections, with suitable access points, that can sit another level up on top of my gentler slopes.

The other factor I wanted to include was the ability to create many different looking tables with one set of hills, hence the decision to build them in a modular style, tessellated to allow the different sized sections to be joined up in multiple different arrangements either along the table edge or in the centre of the table as a free standing feature.

I have worked in Lung Disease Centres and seen the results of damaged lungs so can't stress the importance of wearing a dust mask when cutting and sanding MDF. At this stage all the shapes are cut.

As with all my projects, I work in a similar fashion, i.e. 'Begin with the end in mind' to quote a very clever chap and the five 'P's' which another very clever man explained to me meant, 'Propper Preparation Prevents P..s-Poor Presentation', note that it is five words as one important word is hyphenated!

An example of the Five P's in action

So with those guiding principles in mind and having already explained what hills I was planning to model and why, the next stage was to draw out a plan on graph paper of my different sections working to a three inch plan that corresponded to the incline formula covered.

Cutting up my 3mm MDF board in this manner enabled me to take advantage of the straight edges to match my table edge and to use for a free standing hill, whilst cutting out the sections around the edge left me spare board for other projects in the pipeline, perhaps some of those cliff sections discussed.

Here all the slopes have been sculpted and now I am checking that I have managed to get them to meet!

Once the sections were cut and the white polystyrene affixed I then had to cut the slopes.

For that process I created a slope template from card from an old cereal box, that would allow me to duplicate the same twenty degree incline on each piece to allow the slopes to meet faithfully with another piece.

The test came as seen above when multiple sections are aliened in different combinations - phew, what did I say about 'The five P's'?

Examples of the different sized sections

The modular plan also started to reveal its possibilities as I started trying out different combinations of slopes along the table edges and, as seen in the picture at the top of the post, trying out slopes on top of slopes for added height.

As well as free standing hills the sections can be lined up on opposite sides of the table to create a valley, like the one at the Iron Gate of Tapae!

A lot of the scenarios in the Dacian campaign feature battles with slopes, hills and valleys due to the nature of the mountainous terrain and my new slopes once textured and adorned with other scatter pieces should help to capture that look.

The slopes are inclined enough to give a sense of a foot hill or ridge but they are not mountains. In addition I will keep them relatively flat on top so I can put other sections on them or plenty of scatter terrain or buildings and forts.

White Polystyrene is not the toughest of building materials and although fine for this kind of project still needs to be toughened up for handling by me and other wargamers, so a few added finishes in addition to the next stage of terrain covering were added.

The corners of each section on the slope side were cut with a template to make sure they would match another section

To further protect the slope edges, a likely weak point, and the rear straight edges that will be likely rubbing up against other sections and the table edge, I simply placed a section of masking tape to seal it. This in turn will get a coat of PVA and paint to bond it still further and having used the technique before with my Oporto table should give a long lasting protection.

The corner of one of the straights cut to meet the incline of two corresponding slope sections

One straight needed two sections of polystyrene which I taped the gap to ensure better coverage with the scatter.

These hill sections also need to be a combination of functional as well as easy on the eye, so although I plan to leave the surfaces fairly flat and free of terrain scatter such as grass clumps and rocks to enable other terrain to sit on them quite easily. I decided to put in a few indentations using the sand paper that finished of the slopes.

As stated I have designed the tops to be flat to allow items and other hills to be placed on them but have sanded in some slight indentations to give a more natural look rather than a golf course

On larger higher hills or cliff sections I would use the denser pink or extruded polystyrene used for wall insulation and much tougher than this white stuff, that is quite serviceable for these low sections

To make the sections more durable I have taped the straight edges with masking tape 

The slopes are also a potential weak point and so these were given a protective smear of plaster, that also smoothed off any unnatural groves or scrapes to complete the look before adding their terrain covering.

As well as taping the straight edges the slopes have all had a coat of plaster before being toughed still further with the PVA scatter and paint covering. 

One of the larger slopes with the plaster now dry and good to go

So that's it for this update and I now have a weekend to look forward to just getting these slopes finished off and 'terrained' up ready for a few table-top pictures to give you a final impression of how they will look during a game.

All the sections are now sculpted and prepared ready for a weekend of terrain scatter and painting to get this ready for table service.

Next up, Mr Steve and Steve L have been getting to grips with the new ACW rules from Stand to Games, 'Over Malvern Hill' and have put together an AAR of their first game, plus I will hope to get these there hills finished to show you followed up by a bit of a scratch build project that has been long in the 'gestation period' and now with materials ordered and on their way should be the next terrain build to feature.

Terrain Build Update - The Table is Back with New Terrain!

If you have been following the blog over recent weeks you will have seen a few posts covering work on the new terrain collection and room adjustments which are linked by the fact that my room needed first to be rearranged to accommodate a new collection of larger scale figures and terrain and then the terrain needed to be created.

Of course as I tend to work on projects in planned phases, the first phase of the terrain collection was started with the building of my MDF Roman buildings and marching fort earlier in the year.

Roman Marching Camp Update
There's no place like Rome

There really wasn't much point in going any further with that first phase as I needed to clear out my loft to create new storage space before hand and that work had to wait until the summer had passed with cooler weather allowing work in the loft to be done comfortably.

Thus I have contented myself by adding to the figure collection in the meantime which has seen sizable groups of units added to both the Roman and Dacian collection.

In September I was able to get on with the loft rearrangements which then allowed me to make changes to the wargames room which even now are only partially complete, but with enough progress to allow the start of the second phase of terrain building.

As regular followers of the blog will know I like to work towards running games even with a partial collection and so the terrain, just like the figures has been constructed in that manner.

As mentioned the marching fort was completed in the early part of this year, but I didn't want to picture it until I had completed the set of tents that were always intended to occupy part of the interior.

Those tents were included in the second phase build and here they are with the fort and a few figures to give an impression of it when I finally get to deploy it in a planned game.

This style of fort is perhaps more formidable than a simple marching emplacement in that I wanted to create a structure that was not permanent but that had been further improved to act as a staging post that would have no doubt guarded a major supply route in one of Trajan's campaigns.

In time I will construct some Scorpio bolt throwers together with crew to occupy those towers together with additional individual auxiliary spearmen that will be used along the stockade.

The second phase also included my watch-tower recently acquired from Grand Manner and now sealed and finished ready for its table-top debut alongside the beacon and the small hillock I put together to mount it on.

Finally I mentioned that I picked up a second set of river sections from Products for Wargamers at this year's Warfare in Reading and that I intended to finish them off to my own preferences, so once the trees and tower were finished I completed phase two by getting my river sections done.

As we go forward I have plans to build some purpose built sections to include a ford or two and some bridge crossing points but a simple river is all I needed for the time being and I think they work really well on my table.

Did I mention the table? Well since showing off my new cloth from Tiny Wargames that has been waiting on table to greet the other terrain items I thought I would set the whole thing up ready for the first game featuring the new collection and recreating the 'Hold the Pass' scenario and table set up from Warlord Games' 'Romes Dacian Wars' Hail Caesar companion book, but first I thought I would show you the fixed up river sections out on the table.

And finally the new look table with the fruits of my terrain building work for this year.

I am really excited about next year as with this foundation I can add to the figure collection to stage bigger and different games and gradually add more to the terrain to produce even more interesting tables.

I'm really pleased with the look of the tree and scatter terrain with the the colours working really well with the new mat.

Tom and I have plans to start work on a set of modular hill sections that I will be able to place along the edges of the table to add a variety of height and to bring together to form complete low hills in the centre of the table.

The next time I put up pictures of this table set up I hope to show the units out on it from the first game.

Next up, the Sarmatian Cataphracts are done.