Acquired some new items

Over the last couple of weeks I picked up some new items and they have arrived as of today. Which makes me excited!  Some cool new gaming things!!!

To start off with I picked up a copy of "To The Strongest" by Simon Miller.  I've read some good reviews for this set of rules and decided to take the plunge and see if they will work out with our group.  If interested in these you can order them from http://bigredbatshop.co.uk/

Along with the rules order I also picked up from Simon, three hills and 6 patches of rough ground that he uses for the above set.  I of course will use them no matter what.  Also on top of the hills and the rough terrain are my latest Spanish Knights for my Renaissance army.

This is the large oval hill.  It measures about 12.5" from end to end.

A close up of the hill and troops.

I also picked up two smaller hills. They are nicely done and the flocking on them is very interesting. Lots contrast!  I like that.  These hills are a little over 6" round.

More close ups of the Knights.  I would just like to say that I'm glad I'm done painting the knights. What a pain.  Each one had a different color set which made using a assembly line approach very difficult.

These are the rough ground patches.  I'm not 100% sure of the material used to make them but it almost feels like straw.

Now for something completely different.  About 3 weeks ago I stopped by Powells Bookstore here in Portland, OR and came across this book in the WWI section.  It's a travel guide written for people who wanted to tour the battle ground for the 2nd Battle of the Marne.  It was published in 1920.  The best part of the book are all of the great maps and each page has pictures on it taken during or after the battle.  This to me was a great find.  They had other books as well for the Western Front.

Great maps!

Impressive detail on the maps as well.

Fantastic photos on each page.  This book has been a joy to go through.  Lots of gaming ideas are popping up from this find.  :-)

Flexible Terrain Mat part II

Well today was the day to attempt the full size terrain mat.  On Thursday I did a smaller 4'x4' mat to try out a few other things that I learned or others had suggested from my first attempt.  This time instead of clamping the canvas down to the wood itself, I had two 8' 1x3 pieces of wood cut in half.  Using the canvas that over lapped the table I clamped those pieces of wood to the canvas giving me the full surface to work on.  However the practice canvas I did on Thursday shrunk significantly, almost 3/4".  So today I still clamped the boards to the canvas but I then drove some wood screws with washers into the edges of the plywood table to hold the canvas as well.  The clamped boards helped in pulling out the wrinkles and screws then helped in holding it into place. 

Now the other thing I tried differently was the mixing of the caulking, sand and paint mixture.  I stopped at our local Fred Meyer (grocery store) and picked up an $8 hand mixer.  I poured the paint, sand and caulk into my bucket and then used the mixer.  It worked great!  It cut my mixing time in half.  Unlike my first time I didn't put in any water just to see how thick the mixture was and it was pretty thick.  I used about a 1/2 cup of water and blended that into it.  That helped a great deal.

So my mixture contained

4 tubes of acrylic painters caulk

1/2 gallon of latex paint

1/2 cup of water

enough sand to cover the bottom of the bucket.  You don't need a lot of sand for this, goes far when mixing with paint.  

This amount covered a 4'x8' mat with nothing left over in the bucket.

 Today I also had some help from my lovely assistant Charlotte, who's my daughter.

The first time she stuck her hand in the bucket she freaked and said, "Daddy my glove has a hole in it.  I can feel the paint!"  I told her she didn't but what she was feeling was the cool temperature of the paint.  Soon she was smearing the stuff around like a champ!

My wife came out and took some pictures of us.  This process went very quickly.

The mixture has been applied.  You will notice that the edges were also painted.  So when the canvas shrinks the color will go right to the edge.

My daughter sifting the flocking over the paint.  Using a big metal spoon I picked from Goodwill and a strainer the flocking comes out nice and smooth. No large clumps at all.

The finished product.  I didn't take a picture of it but the closest edge had already shrunk some from the paint.  I'm glad I tacked it down with the screws and washers.  It will now sit over night and tomorrow night or Monday night I will hit it with some Woodland Scenics' Scenic Cement.

This mat will make it's gaming debut on 11/7.  Can't wait!

Flexible Terrain Mat

Well I finally did it. I made my own flexible terrain mat.  Some of you have read Tobi's blog post on making a  Flexible Terrain Mat.  If you haven't it's worth the trip over there.  I've had the canvas and some of the materials for about 6 months or so, I was lacking time and space in the garage to set this up and do it.  I was inspired by Tobi's mat to try my own but the only thing about his post was the lack of details on HOW he did it.  For example he doesn't specify how much water he mixed into the sand and paint.  

So to give this a whirl I bought a small piece of artist canvas and the supplies and decided to take the plunge.

The bare white canvas. Tobi drilled screws or something like that into his table to hold the canvas down and to stop it from shrinking.  First time out I just used some clamps to hold it place.  The work space is 4'x4'.

I stopped by the local Ace Hardware and picked up 50lbs of Play ground sand for $5.  Again no real proportions were given so I just poured some in remembering my scenery building days from theatre and a little bit of sand goes a long way. 

The acrylic latex caulk.  Inexpensive ones.  I did notice that some of the caulk had silicon in it so I avoided that type.

The paint! Again at the local Ace they had these quart sized cans that had been returned and my 9 yr old daughter helped me pick out two different colors we thought would work out.

The rest of the supplies. Gloves (very needed), water, underbrush foliage, static grass and fine turf.  Also a strainer and a pencil which you can't see.

The two buckets of paint, sand and caulk and water.  I used all three tubes of caulk about 1 1/2 in each bucket. I poured in the water and then realized I had too much water. What should have turned out to be a paste like substance was more like a thick soup. I added a little more paint to the mix.  I put on the gloves and mixed it all together. This took the longest amount of time.  The caulk does not break up easily in paint, sand, water mixture.  I'm thinking for the next one I will pick up an used hand held mixer at Goodwill and use that instead.

So I smeared the mixture onto the canvas.  The darker color was a lot more runny and I feared it wouldn't work.  I was also unsure how smooth the mixture should be on the canvas. I tried a few times to smooth it out but it only made it worse. Again all of this was applied by hand. No brushes or putty knives etc..

Now the flocking. Note to anyone who decides to do this. When opening up one of Woodland Scenics big bottles of Fine Turf, make sure you have opened up the shaker side first before you turn the thing over.  See that big dark patch, yep the spoon side was open. Oh well as Bob Ross would say, "A happy accident".

These three pictures show the different colors of static grass I used and the little bit of clump foliage.  To apply this I dumped some of the grass into my strainer and then used the pencil to stir it out so it would clump up and would fall where it wanted too.  It worked really well.

So I let this dry for 24 hours.  The following day after work I grabbed my bottle of Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement with the spray top and sprayed down the whole mat.

Again another 24 hours rolled along and when I got home from work everything was nice and dry.  I took the clamps off and there was very little shrinkage of the canvas.  I picked up one side to see how much flocking would come off and the barest amount fell off.  So far so good.  

I trimmed the excess canvas off of the sides and then asked my wife and daughter to come and give their opinion.  Essentially I wasn't sure which colored side I liked better.  I'm leaning towards the lighter side.  My daughter liked the lighter side but wife liked the darker side.

Which side do you like? I asking this seriously so when I do the larger 8'x4' canvas I will get only one color this time. I don't think I should go darker as it would hide the flocking but I could be wrong. Might need to do another test piece. 

When I was all done, I rolled the thing up and unrolled it and nothing fell off.

I learned a few things with this piece. 

1. less water!! 

2. need something else to mix it all together with.

3. For the bigger canvas, bolting it down will be better than the clamps. They took up too much room.

4. Instead of applying the static grass in separate waves blend them all and then sprinkle it on.  Will give a better more realistic look. 

New hills to go with the new forests

So after building some new forests for my games. I decided that I needed some new hills as well.  So I went to Kallistra to pick some up.  I've purchased a couple of their smaller hills once before and really liked them.  They are well made, sturdy and come pre-flocked in a couple of different colors.  So this time I went big and bought two of their 15 hex, 1 each of the 8, 7, 4 and 3 hex sized hills. 

The really nice thing about these hills are that they fit together nicely.  You can create and endless amount of arrangements with the hex design.  These lovely hills will be making their gaming debut at Enfilade in two weeks.