Swashbuckling on the fabulous City Canals & Harbours!

Presenting a Swashbuckling battle on a "Medieval" Urban themed Pedion city setup at the local Club. A feast for the eyes, the 4'x3' board accommodated a fight of the famous Musketeers vs. the Cardinal's Guard!
This time we will deviate from our usual "production" blog post, to share this incredible spectacle. Games like this are actually the reason I started Pedion, and why our Battlefields exist: beautiful, diorama-like games, setup in 5-10 minutes, carried at your local club in any regular gameday, and all carried away in 3 boxes. All other scenery and miniatures well enhanced, to a mind blowing result. And at the same time, we enjoyed a solid, full gaming experience, where scenics were not "in the way" of the game. In case you like the Urban tiles, you can still pre-order them for a few days more at the eshop

Rue Richelieu

Battle Info

We set the fight in Toulouse of 1627, with Luis XIII visiting for the inspection of the first miles of Canal en Languedoc - destined to eventually connect Toulouse (and its river Garonne) with the Mediterranean. But the canal waters "hide" the mismanagement and misappropriation of funds by Cardinal's Richelieu people!

Toulouse, Spring 1627 - River Garonne and the start of Canal Royal en Languedoc

Outskirts and the use of our Slope Elevation system to create an uphill street

Their Majesties (and the Cardinal) admire the Canal works

Musketeers Porthos and d'Artagnan lead a continent of their fellows, to inform Their Majesties, as they exit from the morning Mass held in the Basilica of Saint-Sernin. But the ever-present Cardinal was informed by Lady de Winter, and sends Count Rochefort with plans to stop them!

Porthos and d'Artagnan lead a unit of Musketeers and Servants to find the King (NW corner placement)

Lady de Winter and Count de Rochefort lead the Guard and their thugs to stop the coming Musketeers (SW corner placement)

Rochefort leads Halberdeirs and Matchlock carrying thugs to take position on the west end of the main road, Rue Richelieu

The main Cardinal's Guard makes sure their master is ok before trying to cut the Musketeers from the southern access. The Cardinal orders Captain Marcheaux to stop the troublemakers!

The Game

The Skirmish was between two warbands, Musketeers vs Cardinal's Guard, with the main purpose of one routing the other. We used the *EXCELLENT* rules of "En Garde" from Osprey Publishing/ Osprey Games which capture the single-miniature swordfights' spirit admirably!
Many of the terrific images have some battle info on their descriptions. But needless to say, the Musketeers once more foiled the plans of the Cardinal and his lackeys and carried the day!

The Musketeers see the coming Guards and choose to cross into Rue Richelieu. The waiting thugs open fire, but to no effect. 

Porthos takes position next to the bridge, waiting for captain Marcheaux to come to him

d'Artagnan joins the fight on the street, to help his soldiers

The Cardinal's Guard storms the bridge

More Thugs come up a side alley and daring swordfight occurs!

The 4th Musketeer lives up to his legend - thugs fall to his swordsmanship, among them Lay de Winter herself (the rascal, striking at women!)

Rochefort starts to get anxious, as more Musketeers come his way

Porthos shows that his fame as the most powerful warrior is not understated: he single-handedly brings down Marcheaux and his horse!

On the Nwest end we have the final showdown: d'Artagnan vs Rochefort. The two duel like there is no tomorrow, but in the end, Rochefort has suffered a Grievous wound to a simple Stun for the Musketeer. The count knows when he is beaten and flees, vowing revenge!!!

You want more detailed info (and photos)? Check out corresponding facebook post!

What we used

The terrain is of course the pre-painted urban wargaming tiles from Pedion, as well as our new lines of Bridges, Walls and Trees - just check http://pedion.ecwid.com to get yours!

Miniatures are from the collections of George Panopoulos and Panos Mountis, originating mostly from the "Musketeers" line of Redoubt Enterprises with additions from the Renaissance lines from Warlord Games. They were beautifully painted by Fedros Dimitriou, Andreas Panagopoulos, George Manis and Thodoros Galanis.

Le Carrefour

Buildings are mostly from the David Graffam excellent papercraft line, along with 3D UMBUM kits. Several details, like the market stand and the wooden pier were created by George Manis and Andreas Voyadzis .

Le Pont

Panos Mountis starred as d'Artagnan and Andreas Voyadzis as Porthos, against the machinations of George Panopoulos as the Cardinal and Fedros Dimitriou as Rochefort.

I hope you like what you saw - I can only stress how great it was for us!
Good gaming,

George

P.S. (Historical) - The works for Royal Canal en Languedoc commenced about 50 years later, destined to become Canal du Midi - but why let this stand in the way of fun ;)

Journal #12 - or, My Foray into Castings

Well, it has been a busy month... (yes, that's an understatement). But the Pedion Terrain adventure continues evolving! While getting ready to launch the Pledge Management interface later this month, I have been creating a number of molds to allow faster and accurate reproduction of tile features. So, in this post, I would like to share some of this procedure with you...

Molding Pedion

Much of the work done and presented so far on these pages is actually prototyping; terrain features and add-ons hand-produced and designed. However, to really enter a streamlined production of multiple boards, I needed to take these a step further. Therefore, I have had to create molds of the main features which are repeatedly found on the tiles, or are magnetically connected as add-ons.

This is not a simple process; that is, to select the best and cost-effective way to reproduce various features. One of the first parameters is that reproduction by casting can actually replace hand made articles, both in quality and in cost. You see, I really can sculpt hills, rocks, tree bases etc in a short time and from low-cost and extremely lightweight mediums. So the castings should be "worth" as much.

Also, the creation of molds is a big investment. The success of the Kickstarter campaign and the number of orders was such that provided the funds needed for such molds - but not on an industrial, tens-of-thousands copies level. So, I selected the more robust and small-industry solution of creating my own professional silicon molds for resin copies. For this I used the exceptional Dow Corning's 3481, for multiple resin copy production.

Then came the selection of casting materials. For the Sci-Fi crystals, I had to choose a clear resin that could be dyed, and have good UV resistances; My choice so far goes to polyester epoxies. As for creating copies of modular add-ons, I went with two-part epoxy resin, mixed with additional powder for lowering the specific weight of the final medium. Also, I started making the molds "hollow", so that the final castings would be lighter. On fixed features, sometimes I use gypsum instead of resin, due to ease of use. However, since the tiles must have high resistances, I use the special Giluform mix that acts like Hydrocal but with significantly increased hardiness.

But enough of talking; let me show you some pictures of the stuff I have been making!

Sci-Fi Crystal Formations in various colourings; you can estimate their size by comparing to the 28mm Space Wolf, the 20mm Sherwood Archer and the 15mm Alien terror

Especially for the Sci-Fi Crystal formations I did not sculpt the originals myself, but selected a more realistic approach: I used real Quartz Formations and Quartz "Needles" which I combined into several futuristic shapes; and boy, are these stones pricey. But I am extremely pleased with the result as now Pedion can sport a great variety of good looking and "realistic" Sci-Fi crystals, which of course have a magnet embedded into the polyester!

The Crystal molds

Check the dark blue and Cobalt blue colourings...

Two other pieces I will be needing great quantities of are tree bases and rocks for the broken terrain and forest tiles. In the pictures you can see the rocks made from Giluform, while the tree bases are made from resin (for durability) with embedded magnets.

Finally, I moved on to larger pieces. The first challenge I tackled was the add-on hill pieces, the ones you get when you order a hill tile. For those of you who do not remember, you can use this add-on piece either on the first hill to create a second level, or as a stand-alone hill someplace else on the battlefield. These pieces needed to be made from resin (to withstand lots of handling), to be hollow in order to be lightweight, and to be sturdy so they won't cave in when you put miniatures on them.

The hollow Hill molds

Resin copy of extra hill piece for Hill Tile #1

Resin copy of extra hill piece for Hill Tile #2

Underneath view of extra hill for Hill tile #2; hollow with 3 embedded magnets

And my molding efforts continue: the larger hill pieces, sidewalks for urban roads, large rocks for badland tiles, even whole tile sections for the coastlines. I hope to have more photos soon.


Good gaming,

George

Journal #11 - Last chance to pre-order Pedion!

Hello All!  I tried to take a couple of days off amidst the Greek summer heat. But now it's time for some Pedion Terrain news!

Only TWO DAYS LEFT to Pre-Order!

Get your terrain at http://pedion.ecwid.com/

I have to start with the more urgent business: in case you are already a backer and wanted to add some more things on your pledge right now, or you like Pedion Battlefields and missed the Kickstarter, there are only two days left on the pre-order extension through the eshop.

After the 21st of August 2015, I'll bring the pre-orders down and focus on producing the orders I have gathered so far (lots of backers have send their spreadsheets). Also, I have to prepare the final Pledge Management, which will probably go live on mid-September, and for which I was thinking of using the eshop interface instead of solution like Backerkit.

...and the Production is On!

Most materials are already in house and we have started preparing, gluing and painting the tile bases in mass quantities.

Lots of people asked about the narrow seam showing between the tiles, which is mostly created from the protruding 1mm magnets. So I improved the base tile design by creating depression into the tile sides to socket the magnets.

The small alcoves are created en mass and then the whole column of 200 tiles is spray painted with the base side tile colour depending on the theme: deep green for Spring grass, sand yellow for desert, light grey for snow etc.

About a hundred Spring Green tiles mass painted on the sides; notice the small alcoves for inserting the magnets

The only hiccup so far is a small delay on magnet delivery. Magnets are the only part that we import, from the UK; but the latest batch was designated as unfit for air mail by the UK customs (?!) and is transferred by ground mail, so I expect them to arrive during this week.

Check the impressive SciFi Modular Pedion PrintTiles

Though it does not regard the Modular Battlefields per se, this is Pedion related and we are very proud of it!

Pedion PrintTiles, our innovative modular gaming mat system, was used to form 4'x4' tables to exhibit the new HALO Fleet Battles game at Claymore 2015. The base 3x3 board was expanded with extra planet- and nebula-themed tiles (something you could not have done with traditional mats).
On top you will see the beautiful 3D terrain pieces like Asteroids and Gas Clouds from Dave and Anne Yeomans, and of course the new Halo miniatures!

Also, for the RPG buffs among you, check our modular Stone Floor 1" square grid PrintTiles in 4x4 layout:

Don't forget that you can already order the PrintTiles from our eshop!

So, enjoy the rest of your summer, tell your friends to pre-order, and -of course- good gaming!
George

Last 48hrs - and SciFi PEDION Modular Terrain available!

It is quite a thing to see your Campaign's counter reaching the "hour" format. You know that a journey is almost over, and you start planing what really matters: the implementation of your dream.
"Almost" being the keyword here; a bit less than 2 whole days can be a long enough time for good, innovative things to happen!

The clock is ticking. Pedion will be around, but this is your chance to get terrain in great prices and help us design even better stuff: support Pedion on Kickstarter, get the last terrain you will ever need!

Why now? Because Pedion has gotten better than ever: SciFi themed ground variations have been unlocked, Urban tiles and free stuff are just a breath away, and a new, "get'em all" pledge reward level is available!

How about some Science Fiction Battlefields?

By surpassing the £25000 Stretch Goal, backers may order their Set and Add-on tiles in two new variations, suitable to a more futuristic/apocalyptic setting: the "Red Planet" and the "Grey Wastes". The new paint/texture variations can be applied to all existing tile types, and they Unlock two new tiles: the Impact Crater and the Artillery Craters types.
The impact Crater tile includes one big crater, with the smooth style of craters cause by large asteroid impacts. The artillery craters are smaller, with the jagged edges of exploding ground. The Craters are an add-on, or you can Upgrade your Plain/Broken Ground tiles into them!
You can even "fill" them with some liquid, like water or lava... !

The Grey Wastes, Artillery craters tile

The Red Planet, Impact crater tile

Finally, another "upgrade" option unlocked for SciFi battlegrounds is the exchange of "normal" water on River and Pond Tiles, to Lava or Green toxic flows!

The New EPIC, Kickstarter only, Pledge!

Since we have unlocked a lot of new features (and probably will unlock more), we introduced a brand new pledge level, a great "get-them-all" reward for the 15 first among you! So, as a Kickstarter only Set, you may now get a huge 8'x4' Battlefield Set at £500, and it includes 32 Pedion tiles:

• 5 Plain Grass tiles, 
• 4 Broken Ground tiles, 
• 2 Forest tiles + 12 magnetic trees, 
• 1 Badlands tile + 4 magnetic Rock Formations, 
• 4 Road tiles (2 straight, 2 turns), 
• 8 Painted River tiles (1 turn, 1 Widening turn, 6 straight),
• 1 River Ford tile, 
• 3+2 Hill tiles, 
• 2 Crops/Orchard Tiles + 8 magnetic Fruit trees, 
• 1 Pond tile, 
• 1 Swamp upgrade + 1 magnetic Willow, 1 River marshland upgrade, 
• 1 Artillery craters tile, 
• 2x sets of Crop tile Fences. 

To this you may add 3 extra free trees and 1 free rock formation, as well any other SG freebies. So. do you have the space? For this is the wargaming board that includes EVERYTHING up to the £28K Stretch Goals! Full of features, either for 8'x4' epic battles or for multiple smaller configurations. Do not expect a photo of this monster, I do not have such a big table :)

Those SciFi/Urban tiles

The next Stretch Goal is tantalizingly close! At £30000 backer will be able to add a number of tile types more suited to an Urban environment: either SciFi, Modern or Gothic, perfect for wargaming in in such an enviroment.

The Urban tiles are mostly re-designs of the main Road tiles, with added texture and road options. Specifically:

1. To the existing 7cm Road width there will be another width added, 14cm; Such a wide road can easily be considered a double-lane road at 28-32mm or a highway in 15mm. 
2. To the existing Road surfaces (cobbled, dirt, asphalt) two new, futuristic surfaces will be added: Aluminum Hoverway (a bright, aluminum textured surface, that can denote hovercraft or spacecraft lanes and landing strips) and Plastisteel (Square or Hex grid in light grey or blue coloring)
3. Roadsides are expanded; apart from dirt (magnetic), now three more types will be available: raised 1" sidewalks (magnetic), sloped 1/2" black/yellow caution hatch (magnetic) and the impressive 1/3" LED illuminated roadsides (non-magnetic) - read more below*.
4. Tile textures are expanded with an urban range. So far, road tiles included the texture of their greater set (eg Green grass for Spring Green theme). Now, many more more Urban-appropriate textures can be selected for your urban tiles: Grey cement (all magnetic), Irregular cobblestone (all magnetic), Stone pattern (Granite or Sandstone, plasticard, magnetic hardpoints), Brick Pattern (plasticard, magnetic hardpoints), Futuristic Plastisteel Grid (Square or Hex, all magnetic)

WIP: Urban tile, with Aluminum Hoverway road, Illuminated roadsides* and Plastisteel grid texture (fully magnetic)

Backers can choose whatever combination of surface, roadside and tile texture for their Urban Sets. They can even choose some tile to be "transition" tiles from the rest of their Set; that means that tile on one side of the road can have an Urban texture and on the other the regular tile texture, like Grass.

The Urban tiles will be available as add-ons in sets, of 2, 4, 6 and 9 pieces.

Prototype of Illuminated Roadsides - LED strips clip to one another and transfer power*

*The Illuminated option roadside add-on is based on high quality, extremely low-voltage LED strips. One of the tiles is connected to a 12V power source (battery) and then the tiles snap one into another, so all LEDs can switch on and off. LED Strips will be silicon protected on final product. Manufacture and installation of lighting elements will be contacted by MP Illumination, the leader in technical lighting solutions in Greece.(www.mpillumination.com)

Who wants some Coastline?

And there is a new Stretch Goal as well! Many people love the idea of playing Sea battles or making D-Day scenarios come through. Pedion will deliver, if we reach £32000: we will unlock Tile designs for:

1. Sea/Water Tiles
2. Straight Coastline/Lakeside 
3. Curved Coastline/Lakeside
4. River Delta

What are you waiting for? Come and help us make everything true!

Good gaming,

George

Last Four Days to get your PEDION Modular Terrain!

It seems that after hitting the infamous "mid-campaign" sluggishness, the Pedion Kickstarter campaign managed to reach the £25000 pledge sum, unlocking the Pond/OxbowLake/Marsh Tiles.
Now, it is the last four (4) days of the campaign - for Pedion's to become even better and for you to get an even greater variety of battlefields. So, if you were planing on pledging, now is the time!
While Pedion will be available through our e-shop after the Kickstarter is fulfilled (this is the project's aim after all), backers will

1. pay less that the retail prices, both for tile sets and for the subscription service
2. get free stuff like trees, walls etc
3. receive their sets much sooner
4. help Pedion become even better.

Even if you think about getting lots of terrain afterwards, a pledge now can mean wonders for Pedion's future. And speaking of future, let's take a look at those Stretch Goals!

Pond and Widening River Tile, with Marsh Upgrade

The £25000 Stretch Goal unlocked a series of tiles and upgrades, which actually are based on the same base design, and their production will use the same mold. The two tile types are the Pond (small lake) Tile and the Widening River Tile; both tiles can be converted to include marshland!

The River Widening is a special river tile (a river Turn, joining to the rest of your river tiles) which meanders and the water is in the process of creating an oxbow lake.

Widening turn river tile (forming an Oxbow lake), painted version

The Pond tile is actually a stand-alone small lake, using exactly the same design without the river connections (thus saving some £ on mold design)

Pond Tile, painted version

What really makes the difference though, is that you can at anytime convert those two tiles into marshland! With the corresponding add-on, you can clip on and off swamp surface, creating either a partial marshland on a river side, or a full marsh on top of your lake:

Widening turn with prototype* Marshland add-on clipped on, turning the tile into a riverside marshland**

Pont tile with a Marshland prototype* add-on, turned into a full Swamp

Close view on the riverside marshland

*Expect the final Marshland add-ons to be made from much thinner resin, in order to fit more seamlessly on the river/lake sides, to reduce slopes and to keep the whole marsh on a lower elevation.
**The marshland motif has been drawn from Luisiana marshland images. The riverside marshland is formed at the wider side of the river. This is not common, since water flows faster outside, but it made for a bigger marsh; so let's assume that the outer curve would be the place with lots of alluvial which would help to create a marsh if the water would again erode the closer turn...

Next Stretch Goal: SciFi Themes and Crater Tile types

Although we are nearing the end, there is a number of Stretch Goals that we may unlock yet! 

The closest one, on terms of pledge total, is the availability of two new ground variations when we reach £28000, both more suitable to a Science Fiction setting: the "Red Planet" and the "Grey Wastes". These new variations will also unlock a new type of Tile: the Crater tile.

Actually, there are going to be two different kinds of crater tiles. The first is going to show a big, regular crater, usually the result of planetary Impact. The other will depict overlapping smaller craters, with ground devastated from artillery. Take a first glimpse of both the new themes and the crater tiles on the photos below:

Impact Crater Tile, Red Planet Theme

Impact Crater Tile, Red Planet Theme with 15mm SciFi minis

Artillery Crater Tile, Grey Wastes Theme

Artillery Crater Tile, Grey Wastes Theme, 15mm SciFi minis

Next Social Stretch Goal: FREE Walls for everyone if we reach 165 Backers

Since the number of 180 backers may seem a bit far-fetched, I do not want to end without another freebie :) So, let us reach 165 Backers first, and everyone with a physical reward will also receive some free walls! Specifically:

• For every backer who gets 1 to 6 tiles (through Sets and add-ons), he or she will receive 1 Hedge Fences Set (that's 2x 12cm or 4x 5.2cm Hedge walls, see add-ons)
• For every backer who gets 7 to 16 tiles (through Sets and add-ons), he or she will receive 1 Stone Walls Set (that's 2x 12cm or 4x 5.2cm Stone walls, see add-ons)
• For every backer who gets 17 or more tiles (through Sets and add-ons), he or she will receive 1 Magnetic Columns Set (that's 2x single connectors and 1 T-connector columns, see add-ons)
• All Wall System Starter Sets get ONE MORE Stone Wall piece

Future stuff...

We may never reach it, at least on this Kickstarter, but I wanted to give you a glimpse of what I had in stock for the SciFi/Urban Stretch Goal: a road tile upgrade with luminated roadsides... Check the early prototype - LED lighting on 12V Battery

So what are you waiting for? The time is now - pledge, spread the word, bring your friends in and get the last terrain you will ever need!

Good gaming,

George