Not that I am worried at all about anyone stealing (actually I prefer to say 'borrowing') my ideas...Hell I encourage it...I like sharing. I mean, I borrow plenty from others. Afterall if Picasso said "good artists copy, great artists steal," then surely theft is the highest form of flattery!!!
There are three reasons I decided not to make trenches. First, since my tiles can only accommodate a below surface depth of 20mm, a proper 28mm trench system would require some sort of construction above the tile surface and that creates all kinds of storage problems. Second, with tiles that at 300mm (12 inches) square I couldn't find a way to make a trench system that could accomodate my existing figure stands that would actually look like a trench system. Third, even though I have armies for periods that made extensive use of trenches (Crimean War, ACW, Great Paraguayan War, Russo-Japanese War and WWI), how many times would I really use them? Plus I already have a trench system that I made way back in February 2013 (link) - maybe I'll just tidy these up.
Instead I have made some rather boring plain tiles, because you can never have too many plain tiles, right? Four represent dips in the ground as I made last time, but unlike the others sets that are square to the tile edges, these run more or less diagonally. Four are just plain tiles.
Only one tile is a mildly interesting, a river section that widens to almost double my standard river size. It's not that I really needed any more river sections - I have sixteen of them already...enough to run my table length more than one and a half times - but this piece is made specifically to accomodate the recently presented Renedra pontoon bridge - you can see below:
This takes the total number of terrain tiles to 111, allowing me to cover table almost twice and more than enough for my needs.
Well, I love that pontoon bridge, with the engineers hard at work:)!
ReplyDeleteYes it is cool, eh? There is another figure set to go with this, but not yet in stock.
DeleteOne hundred and eleven tiles is a massive achievement, and they all look great Mark. Nice to see the pontoniers hard at work. If you were to have created trench tiles they would have had to have sloped upwards toward the trenches to fit in with the other tiles anyway, wouldn't they?
ReplyDeleteIt would be great to expand beyond thus with some special features, but storage is the limit. It was more the 300 x 300 tiles that limited a trench system. To makes something worthwhile they need to be 600 x 600 to get the angles right.
DeleteA very nice water effect on the river section.
ReplyDeleteThanks Peter. I used the same toilet paper/pva technique (with three coats of gloss varnish) that I used for my sea coast tiles.
DeleteMark, I agreed that 111's probably enough. The water effects for the bridging square is convincing. Nice to see the pontoon bridge deployed.
ReplyDeleteThanks Joe. It would be easy to take this further, but you are right, enough is enough!
DeleteBut I.....
ReplyDeleteI thought you......
Great. now my trenches are gonna look stupid because I have nothing to steal / borrow / shared that I can kinda copy, and i'll have to do it on my own and I have no skills. disaster!
😆😆
But these do look nice and 111 is an awful lot. Abioe ground trenches are quite reasonable and I'll be needing some of those in the future so I'll still be able to imitate something. 😊
I knew you would be devastated, Stew. I hope it hasn't turned you to drink.
DeleteIn a perfect world, where time, storage space and money were not limitations , I'd make many more than 111 tiles (I actually planned for 110 but the guy they made the frames for me threw an extra one in for free) in every type of climate - tropical, sub-tropical, temperate, semi-arid and arid - because I like making things...but alas time, storage space and money are limited.
They do look good Mark and I think an above ground trench representation is the simplest way to handle it for 28mm wargaming...at the end of the day, unless figures are based individually, the trench will have to be unrealistically wide to accommodate unit bases anyway, so even having them "in" the tile, they won't be all that realistic/accurate anyway!
ReplyDeleteThat was partook my decision...creating something that could accomodate stands but still have the irregular angles of a trench system was just too difficult. Even the creation of redoubts became problematic.
DeleteGreat looking terrain and nice pontoon bridge, I had a look at your old trenches, seems like a good system, did they work?
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Yes I have used them for Russo-Japanese, ACW and Crimean games, but they do tend to 'drift' during play. If I did them again, I would put them on a laser cut MDF base with dovetail connectors to hold them together.
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