Weekend Progress

Well, this weekend was not as productive as I would have liked, but it was more productive than most other days during the week, so no room to complain!

My wife threw out her back camping this weekend, we went up to Payson to tool around and do some shooting, the drive up her back started twinging...not a good sign. Long-story made short, rather than go to church, we stayed at home like heathens that we are and she rested while I modeled.

My paints were left at work (I like to paint on my lunch hour) on Friday, so no painting minis, but I did get some work done on my battle terrain - I had some old paints kicking around my drawer and was able to get my hedges and some other terrain features done.

My first project was a grove of trees recovering from winter - some small foliage on their branches, but still mostly nude. The project was easy, just used some trees in varying sizes from Woodland Scenics, used green turf rather than the clump foliage used for larger broad leaf trees. The result was a cool effect making the trees look sparsely ornamented with the first leaves of spring. On the ground I put green grass and some mud patches where the grass had been matted down. I put some wagon tracks through mud in a cool effect that made the area look like there was some foot traffic.

My next project was to to get my hedges up to snuff. Last weekend I had put the cut "Scott" pads on the bases and left it at that (time was limited last weekend). this week, I broke them back out, threw some light green paint and some buff color down to highlight the whole thing, put down the grass and they look awesome! I an excited to use them in a game.

With my hedges all done, I started a new project to make some low stone walls. This was as simple a project as there is. All you need is some hot glue, Talus rock and flocking materials. I laid down a strip of glue on the base, pressed it in the talus, lay another layer of glue, press it into the talus, make sure to shape it with your fingers so the wall stays straight, add a third layer of glue and rock, and you have your wall! Add grass to the exposed base and you are done. Instant wall. Paint the wall if you wish, but that was too much of a pain for me to want to do...so I moved on to my final project of the day, A simple broken ground area.

For the broken ground, I just needed something that would provide some small cover, not a full forest, but something bigger than a wall or fence. I cut the base out and flocked it, added some rocks, a small portion of a wall and a large tree. I thew in some bushes for color and it was done.

Terrain, I am finding, is a really quick and easy way to cut down on the cost of gaming. You can make most of the terrain yourself, saving you money that can later be spent on the more elaborate pieces, like buildings etc.

My next terrain project will be making some Wheat fields, streams/rivers and plowed, un-planted fields. I also am going to start working on a few bridges, some stone and some wooden as well as begin working on some earthwork trench defenses.

I will upload pictures of my terrain soon, hopefully as part of another battle report!