Thursday 30 January 2020

Terrain Project 2a

As a part of my proof of concept for terrain tiles I wanted to make one more tile. This time I wanted to experiment with what could be done by going above and below the basic surface of the board. I decided to place a hill on half with a slightly sunken road curving around it (not a true sunken road but just a bit of a dip). I also wanted to experiment with and area to one end of the board that would have a cut-out into which could be inserted a number of pre-fabricated terrain pieces – fields, small farms, significant buildings like churches, monasteries or even complete villages.

Since I had the day off while my car was being serviced I took full advantage of an empty garage a quickly marked out what I wanted. I then got out the jigsaw to cut through the 4.5mm MDF to create the dip in the road and then the cut-out for the insert. This took me all of 30 minutes and I then glued the two boards, clamped them together and left the glue to set.


While the glue was setting I set about cutting the hill. This was cut from piece of 25mm thick polystyrene. With hills there is always that question of how steep is too steep for the figures to stand on, so I decided that the basic gradient had to be 1:4 or less, so I marked an inner circle on the hill 100mm in from the edge and with a sharp blade began to cut the shape. Once the basic shape was cut I extended the slope to within the 100mm boundary  just to remove the “flattop” appearance of the hill. Then I cut a bit of a gully on one face, not much, just enough to create some interest. This gully will flow down to the dip in the road.



Then I thought that since the surface of the cloth would be sprayed with solvent based paint, I had better protect the surface of the polystyrene in case it should dissolve when sprayed, so I gave it a thick coat of a rather horrible rust coloured acrylic paint that I had in a test pot.


When the paint was dry I glued the hill into position and when that was set (which was about half an hour on one of our hot summer days) I cut and glued the felt into position. I was particularly pleased the way that the felt formed over the hill without any wrinkling.


It was then left over night for the glue to set.

The next day was a forced day off for me because the parts required to fix the car were delayed so I made good use of a fantastic warm and windless morning to spray the board outside, where it could be left in the air (and sun) to dry.

In the afternoon I used some filler to create the dip in the road and the banks to the roadway and when that was dry I applied the sand and some gravel to the roads and the gully. Since I then had to return to work it was left to the weekend to dry.


Three days later, on the weekend, the roads were painted and some additional details like grass tufts, foliage, tree stumps, logs, etc, were added. The edges were then trimmed and the basic board was complete.

Below is the detail around  the gully.



Next I turned my attention to the insert piece. I had measured the cut at 300mm x300mm and being the frugal chap I didn’t want to waste the piece of MDF. However, when cut out the piece was about 1mm narrower on all edges (the blade width), so when put back in to hole there was an unsightly gap. How to disguise that gap? My answer was to put a lip on it. But what to use? Fortunately I have large number of Renedra 20mmx45mm bases that came with the dozens of boxes of plastic figures I have assembled and painted over the last year or two and have been sitting in a box - feeling the guilt of potentially sending all this plastic to landfill, I kept them thinking “maybe there will be a use one day”…and now there was!

Giving the the “lip” a bit of thought I figured that if I just put a straight lip all around it is going to stand out every bit as much as the gap would have. So I decided to give it an irregular edge.  I then began to think just what I actually wanted to do with this piece. The plan for this particular piece was to make an area of fields for use in the American theatre (AWI, ACW or War of 1812) so I had pretty much decided that there would be wooden rail fences around the fields. It couldn’t just be one big field because that would be plain boring, and I didn’t want them to be made to some sort of standard size because that would be equally boring. There had to be a variation. So I quickly sketched up a plan (below), with one small square field and two oblong ones.
Entrances to the area exist at the centre point of all four edges so that the piece can be rotated for variety.

This left a large empty space in the lower right of the sketch, which is what I wanted so that everything doesn’t look too regular, otherwise there would be just four fields in a square and that would be boring. But I couldn’t just leave it bare so why not run a bit of a farm track through the area past a couple of the gates and maybe some rough or broken terrain – something ground that couldn’t be farmed –  that could merge into the rest of the board. Then I had another idea why not make this area somewhere I could just drop a piece in place and maybe could I make two (or three) possible options for it: one as described above, a second piece may have some sort of dwelling on it, a third could be a small grove? Maybe like this:
The experiment was taking an interesting twist and I thought could I do the same for Field 1? If the basic surface was covered with felt and sprayed so that it looked like a meadow, could I make a wheat field or a corn field that could be fitted over top to give more variety? Where would this end? I got to work...but that will be another post.


8 comments:

  1. Looking good, Mark! On the terrain tiles I built so many years ago, I cut rivers/streams into the base boards too. I made mine geomorphic so that no matter how you turned the board, the waterway entries and exits always were in alignment with the adjoining waterway board. Mine are much cruder than your but, for me, they work.

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    1. Thanks Jonathan. Mine will be more or less geomorphic, but it does get a bit more complicated with rectangular boards. There will be instances where in certain configurations roads will just end at the edge of a board because there is no combination to meet them, but I will live with that and will develop pieces to match - maybe a farmhouse at the end of a farm lane or some fields that can lay over the road, etc.

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  2. Brilliant work, and really well thought out. I love the detail on the gully. Very effective indeed.

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    1. Thanks Lawrence. I have been thinking on this subject for some time and I have plenty of time to think on those long drives home - you will recall from your time here the absurdity of Auckland traffic. Usually when I get home I have a whole bunch of ideas filling my head and sometimes I actually manage to write them down and develop them!

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  3. Really enjoying following your thought process on your modular terrain project!
    Best Iain

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    1. Me too. It is one of those projects where you can do a little bit here and there, but still see things coming together. There will be no more major work now until I sort out the storage that still requires a bit more negotiation with Domestic Control.

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  4. More nice work on the terrain tiles Mark...looking forward to playing our first game on these!

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    1. It will be a while away yet. I need seven and a half boards to cover the table (that I don’t have yet) and I have only made four tiles so far!

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