Villa Rides and Tigris Terrain Build

 Introduction

I’ve received a lot of questions about how I pack up my scenarios for travel, especially since I drive from Denver to Orlando at least once a year. Here’s a high-level look at how I handle it. For the bridge, I crafted it to be both durable and compact enough to fit in my travel setup. I also made a couple of caulk mats after seeing similar ideas on YouTube—these work great for quick setups and fold easily. As always, I relied on my good friend at Bill’s Gamer Garage and my cousin Bud at Bud’s Blast Markers to help with some of the larger terrain pieces.

Terrain

Let’s start with the Tigris River scenario. For the first battles, I used my usual Home Depot drop cloth, which has served me well for many games, but that changed for the Tigris scenario. I completed the new scenario early this year and played it twice—once here at the Colorado Military Historians (CMH) and then at the Colorado Springs Gamer Association (CSGA). The third battle at Hurricon 2024, was played using the new battle mat, made with the caulking method.

The second scenario, Villa Rides!, came together later as I prepared for the Fall games. It was played at CSGA and again at Hurricon in Orlando. The third Villa Rides! battle will be at CMH during our upcoming Vet Wars event in about a week.

In this post, I’ll walk you through the process, starting with the creation of the new battle mat and moving into the river pieces used in both scenarios. Bill really helped me out with some custom work—he made the flatter trenches and barbed wire featured in both scenarios. His palm tree bases for the Tigris setup are fantastic as well. If you’re interested, Bill sells these pieces along with some great-looking bamboo tree 8bases.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. I’m always happy to answer any questions!

Last Stand Dan

My battles are usually played on a 6 x 8 table. So I wanted a new blank slate to try and do the Caulking method for the battle mat. 

For the Villa scenario I cut out the elevations on both shores of the Nazas River. I used the Home Depot sets of 2 x 4 foam panels. You will see that these are strategically duct taped so the could be folded up for transport. 

On the Villista side of the river I need and elevated position to set the bridge end. More foam! Note in lieu of wood bases I use the the very hard pink to blue foam that I don't worry about any warping. 

This is Federal side of the river. Note the drawing on the foam so I can start building the town piece up. 

Stacking and gluing the foam so we can start cutting in the features. 

Carving with hot wire tools.

Once I started cutting it started to take shape of what I had in mind.

The buildings were made for me by Dr. Dwight Jones. He makes some great terrain!

Note the hard pink foam for a solid base. I will talk about the bridge build in a minute.

After I had the town hill cut out it was time to spackle it up.

Stealing this technique from my gamer friends, I started added the rock cliffs. 

Rocks were set all along the edges that gave it a great visual effect.

Started with the stucco all around the rocks and hill. 

This is where the bridge will connect. 

Both sides will have a sandbagged unit protecting the heights. 

So the final product was about 4 feet long and a couple feet wide. To transport I put it in a big trach bag to protect it. 

Using my foam board cutting tools I cut and glued down the town wall. 

Aerial look of the wall being put in place. 

Getting that texture all over the hill and used it on the wall.

After fitting the pieces together the river was cut using Runner Rubber material from Home Depot. 

A closeup of the rock and wall details. I think it came out pretty good. 

After getting many opinions of the river color here it is. It's a Behr paint called Ecological. 

1111

Coming together..

On each flank I built up some hills that had gun emplacements set on them.

Gun emplacement 1

Gun emplacement 2

1

A nice look of the trenches made by Bill Gamers Garage. These trenches are the ones we use for the Tigris scenario. I needed them as flat as possible since reading about how the Turk trenches were at times hard to spot. So there were used in both scenarios. 

So using a mixture of caulking, alcohol, paint and sand I spread it all over the drop cloth. Taping the edges will give you a very nice line along the edges. 

2

Close up of the texture. I did go over and did some dry brushing to make it "pop!"

Notice the water effect on the river. 

The Tigris setup.

I also made some river grass using the same runner material and artificial grass pieces. I used a camouflage non reflective green spray with some yellow ochre dry brushing. 

More views of the Tigris.

Another POV.

Tigris River - Ecological Green from Home Depot. Lay down the paint, then cover it with Clear Silicone, part of that process is dabbing it with a grocery plastic bag to give it the water effect. It dries sort of tacky, just brush on some glossy Modge Podge and let it dry overnight. Then it should be safe to roll up. 

Tigris Folded up.

This before I used the Caulked battle mat which I roll up. But you can see how portable it becomes. Add the terrain and buildings plus troops you can imagine it starts to fill up your car pretty quickly. lol. 
8

Nazas River for the Villas Scenario. Same paint.

Here is what the Clear silicone looks like when applied. At this point we dab it with plastic to get that water effect. 

River silicone drying up and clearing up.

You can see the texture coming out.

Get to the Boat! Part II

First of all I apologize for being out of touch lately.  Again, job, family and travel sometimes gets the best of us!  And on top of all that I have been deeply focused on getting this project completed that is taking up my gaming/work/boatyard table as you will see in the pictures below.  

And, oh, regarding travel, I am going to put out a post of my trip that my Wife Julie and I took to Normandy! One of my bucket list places to visit.

So what am I up too?

After putting on this scenario with my friends at a con in Florida and borrowing all of those buildings I thought I probably should make some of my own.  This project is getting closer to the end, maybe two more weeks and I will post more pictures during the upcoming play tests.

For this scenario I am going to use The Men Who Would be King (TMWWBK) just to mix things up at our big Club event in November.  The main reason for the this project is that I try not to borrow everything I need because when I want to put on a game it becomes a burden on others.  So I always try to be self sufficient whenever possible.  As I mentioned in the last scenario blog it would not have been possible without buildings and walls from Sgt. Guinness and Dr. Pasha Jones in Florida, thanks again.

So to begin this project I invested in the right tools!  Man that saved some time.  I purchased cutting tools from Foamwerks which allowed me to cut up walls production line style.  And then with some proper knives slicing in doors and windows was easy but time consuming.  My buildings are not perfect and not Ebay worthy like some of the "works of art" I see you gamers doing but it works for me.

At this point I still have to mount wood doors and window shutters, build one more building and finish and paint the Mosque and Government House.  In the pictures everything is laid out on the back of styrofoam board because it got messy!  But at first dress rehearsal I will remove everything in a particular order and then lay out my cool Cigar Box desert mat, water tiles and dock and reassemble the town you see here with all the trimmings.  lol.

I intend on getting two pre-games in before our game day at the club and then be able to transport this to gaming conventions next year.

I will post more details later, I just wanted to let my "Gamers in Arms" know that I have been very busy.  And my humble apologies on the delays with my Boat Production and Gunboat Rules.  As soon as I can finish this I promise I will be back in the Docks!

Here are a few pictures of a big mess...without the ground mat, palm trees, gunboat, etc...

Last Stand Dan

Last note:  If you have not read my last blog about this battle it might help put things into perspective.    Bottom line is that VIPs have to make it from the Government House to the Gunboat Cairo waiting at the docks while Dervish units appear at active hot spots all over the table.  More on the revolt later...

Creating the Plancenoit DBN Table

For the DBN battle I decided to contract another table for the battle. I used the Shako Scenario Book to design the table from that map.

For this DBN battle we changed the scale so that each unit were battalions.  So I was able to increase the size of the village and forest area to give us a better historical feel.  So this is a 2 x 4 foot table constructed just for this event at the CSGA/CMH 2013 throwdown.

So I built the usual frame using a 2 x 4 MDF board for the bottom and 1" x 2" boards for the frame.  I used #6 1 1/4 inch wood screws to secure the frame.  So I end up with a framed box with 2 inch sides.  I purchased some blue insulation foam from Lowes.  I purchased a 1 1/2" sheet and a 1/2" sheet.  The 1/2 inch sheet was glued to the bottom.  I then added a few foam pieces in on corner to give the next sheet some angle.

I next glued the 1 1/2" sheet (of course cut  a little shy of 2' x 4').  You have to take into consideration the frame.  I used a foam cutter for all the foam cuts by the way.  I let the foam sheets bond overnight with books weighing it all down. Then I added my hill and Village pieces and a few more small pieces to provide some curves in the surface.

The next steps are captured in the pictures below.

I taped it off with painters tape and cut out the Plaster Cloth.  I also gouged out the
stream in the foam before this step.

Then with a water bottle shot sections of the cloth and smoothed out the plaster over the
contours of the board.  

When the plaster sets, I take some of that very thin winter weather tape and
 taped out my roads.   Then using some spackle and a 1" plastic trowel I filled
between the tape lines.  It sets pretty quickly so you can remove the tape and
Voila!  Nice roads.  Then I round out the edges with my fingers so the road
edges are not so sharpe.

And many of you knew about this already but I just learned this from Historicon.
Pre-mixed ready to apply Tile Grout! Oh yeah, my new best friend!  I purchased some Earth
 color.  One small container is all I used.  It was sanded grout but it went on the surface
nicely.  You see the larger trowel I used. Here is the small stream and the village square.

Doesn't that look great?!  Already has color, nice hard surface that has natural
texture to it.  It goes on like thick mud or concrete.  And don't forget to use Surgical gloves!

So here I am trying to size the area for Plancenoit.  And I know there are many
renditions of what this board should look like but we wanted to keep it simple and
 not difficult to play with DBN rules. 

The tree bases were added at the end.  Just dropped a dollop of Grout and stuck
the base  in it.  Made sure the edges were covered and when it dried no problem.
This allows me to remove the trees for transport and then simply plug them in before the battle.  

More trees 

Gave the road a darker brown color as well as the stream.  Then I added water.

The water stuff takes overnight to harden completely. I added some rock to the bottom
of the stream.

I would have loved to leave it the way it dried but I had to add flocking.  I  brushed on
the water, white glue and a drop of dish soap solution to the non road, river or village surfaces
 in sections.  Then I dusted each section with flocking. 

After the first layer was set I then sprayed the same solution from a water bottle over
the entire board.  I did that twice to make sure the flock would stay in place.

Almost ready.  View from Prussian right flank.  You can see I painted the
sides of the table dark brown.

View from Prussian left flank.

Trimmed up the green walls and hot glued them down. 

Another view.

Prussian and French in the thick of it around Plancenoit.

You can't see it from here but eye level you can see the subtle curves I tried to
build in. If you look on the left you can see the handle I attached for easy carrying.
Along with some "bumpers" on the bottom and two on the opposite side of the
handle so you set it on its side.  I also put a handle at the far short end in order to
pull it out of my SUV easier.   I thought the terrain came out well and the game even better. 

 Thanks,

Dan