Zombtober 2015 Week 3 A day late but hopefully not a dollar short...

Live by the cross.... well he didn't die from one but not for lack of trying. (Sorry Padre) The Padre miniature by Lead Bones.

Bob was an actuary for a life insurance company a statistical annalist. The sheer statistical improbability of a zombie apocalypse broke his mind. Now its Bob and his trusty ginsu knife (guaranteed for a lifetime) against the chaos. (Bob is a Hasselfree figure I started painting back in 2009. I still feel I got him wrong especially the face. I might do him over again some day.)


Astute readers will notice I missed a week of Zombtober I hope to make it up in the beginning of November.

This is a smuggled phone photo of the Lunatic and I using our super high tech ATZ table planning method at his lair. Don't tell anyone.

This Year's Lemax Purchase.

This is my third annual perusal of Lemax's holiday displays at Michael's and like the previous years I have come away with s few items at half off. Michael's always has the new Lemax Halloween & Christmas Village collections half off the first week they put them on display. Here is item I came away with this year,

New Board

Work has begun on a Tatooine board for my Star Wars game. I'm playing a game where the Hutts battle the Empire for complete control of Tatooine. There wil be battles against the Tusken raiders too. You will see screen captures from the enhanced Star Wars The New Hope film of Mos Eisley Tatooine's spaceport. These are my board reference pictures. Short post I know but there isn't anything worth showing at this point. I have ordered a set of photographic lights so I should have proper pictures in the blog in a week or to.

Experinents

I've been experimenting this weekend with mold making I haven't done any mold other than press molds in years so I got out and old jar of Woodland Scenics Latex Rubber to make a mold. I've had this jar lying around for 6 years or so. That's wasn't so good as its thicker than is should be, but I'm pressing on. I'm trying a wrap around mold (never made one before) on a plastic fence bit. These molds take a long time as they are built up in layers painted on with a brush. I'm going to finish it today.

The other Saturday experiment was snow. I made a snow base using baking soda and white glue it looks great as you can see below. So now I have a snow method I like for my Frostgrave stuff. Yes I've been bitten by the shinny bug and I'm digging up old fantasy miniatures to play Joe's game. At least some of the Frostgrave terrain will do double duty in Weird WW2. That's it for today Gentle readers.

Statuary Or The Making of a Toff.

Statuary; Toffs love it, the working class wonder at it and the destitute lean against it. Statuary in Victorian London took a decidedly Romanesque turn as the Toffs likened themselves to the Caesars of old. I wanted to capture some of that feel in my London Board with a public street column and a Toff garden. Fortuitously I was offered some spures of 1/72 scale bendy plastics by a fellow blogger. I had access to some old HirstArt fantasy molds the two together equals statues!

This is a Dark Alliance fantasy Amazon mounted on a pillar as my column monument. I realize that this isn't very historically accurate but my post apocalyptic Victorian London will be darker (if that's possible) than the real thing. And she looks damn good up there. The pillar molds contain some sort of runes which will be filled in with milliput so don't worry about them.

More Dark Alliance Amazons and an Atlantic Greek civilian for the Toff garden. I squared off the Amazon bases I think I'll have to do that with the column one too.

This is an Atlantic Greek he is historical but I'm not sure he is right for a column. I do have two of them and they might look better flanking the entrance to a building. Let me know what you guys think. I'm starting a terrain binge for ZI and Frostgrave. Yes Frostgrave I've been bitten by the new & shinny bug and I just can't help it.


 

Tips For Making Rock Cliffs

Six years ago I made this terrain table for a local gaming convention (the last time I've been to a game convention!!) when I joined the dreaded FB I joined some groups including Wargaming Terrain Tips (or some such name) and I posted this picture. Many members of that group, including that scoundrel Ray, demanded tips on how to make the rock cliffs in this board. So I'm going to do a very quick review of how I made the rock cliffs I'd like to make a proper detailed one but that will require making another board and then take proper step by step pictures. Here are some pictures of the rock cliffs painted but without flock.

28mm Infinity Miniature for scale

The cliffs are built up out of foam insulation...

Then the rock cliff "faces" are clad in cast rocks cast out of tuffstuff using Woodland Scenics rock molds. They are very durable and by placing a mold on a slight angle when casting you can get different rocks from the same mold. For large projects you are going to need several different molds. I used five molds for this project.

First I cast up a small ton of various sized rocks, you'll notice I experimented with adding pigment to the plaster while casting.

Then you star gluing them to the foam framework. Its very much like a jigsaw puzzle. You'll have to break up many of the rocks to make a nice looking wall, I started dry fitting them before the plaster fully dried it was easier to break them into the shapes you need that way.

Then I used filler paste (plastic wood as the case was) to fill in the gaps. Finally added small rocks along the cliff base.

That's it in a nutshell folks!

Selling Some Terrain

 I made this board some years back its a 4'x4' made of 4 2'x2' 1'' foam tiles.As you can see its a valley of sorts with cliffs around it. I made a number of trees and bushes to go with it see pictures below. This board appeared in the Infinity tournament during the War Store Weekend in NJ a few years ago. I'm looking to sell it to make space for my London board. What do you think I should ask for it?

During the Infinity Tournament.

Snowy Forest Progress

All day yesterday into early this morning is snowed again! On the first day of spring no less! But today the temp rose to mid 40's F so I've opened the windows to spray paint the terrain pieces. Earlier this week I smoothed them out a bit with several layers of PVA (Elmer's Wood Glue) this not only gave the surface a smoother frozen look it gives the pieces some durability.

Note the tan cast caused by the wood glue. Next step was to mask of the trees so I could spray paint the pieces white.

Now they are a uniform white. Next will be to paint up the cast rocks on the pieces. I'm also considering a light grey wash to give then some depth.

I remembered Belgium and much of Germany are Catholic countries so I grabbed this resign Crux for $1.49 at the dollar store.

I still have some cheap railroad trees left and some Sage brush for barren trees to make more forest pieces. And as you can see I need a lot more to fill a 4'x4' table. The biggest problem will be creating the burnt out vehicles as purchasing kits for that will get expensive right quick.

Forest Pieces Progress

Here are the 3 forest terrain pieces I started this week, the hill bit is missing its trees they are not glued on yet. I covered over the foam and cork with sculptamold a craft material used in children's art classes. I remember using it in art class when I was a kid which might be the reason why I bought a bag of this stuff years ago. I was looking for a tub of plastic wood to coat the pieces and found this bag instead.

Many bloggers are dealing with their lead pile in this new year I have one of those but I have a different issue I have all sorts of materials for terrain making literally boxes of the stuff I haven't used. So I'm trying to turn this stockpile of art supplies and just plain junk into terrain. Everything used in the above pieces, the cork, railroad trees, blue foam and the sculptamold have been collecting dust in my flat for at least 4 years!

Oh I mixed more sculptamold then I need so I made this with the excess.

I Got the Itch

I got the itch to build some down & dirty terrain for my Fiends in Jackboots Weird WW2 project. Now the Lunatic and I have a couple of concepts for our game which need to be reflected in any terrain pieces I make. First the world is a sort of nuclear winter due to Rasputin opening a gate to another world, second the war seesaws across the Ardennes for months turning the forest into a sort of post-apocalyptic landscape.So I did a quick internet search for some reference photos you can see them above. So I scrounged up some materials, I have a lot of terrain making materials squirreled away here. I though I had some hardboard around which is my preferred terrain basing material but it turns out I did not but I found a piece of cork board it will have to do as I have the itch. When I get the itch I tend to collect pieces and fit them together like a 3d puzzle I think of them as as 3d sketches. You can see my first piece above has cast rocks left over from an old project and cheap railroad bottle brush trees I got of of ebay many years ago. It will need Spackle of course but the build part is now done.

I'll be regularly posting on this blog every Wednesday and Saturday.

The Quest for Glue

Sunday I showed pictures of my London board progress and mention that the strange properties of the textured vinyl I'm using has been causing me trouble. So today I stopped by my local hardware store (not a big box store) and told my adhesive troubles to the owner a rather nice bloke. "Vinyl on wood?" he said and then pointed out this adhesive made to glued down vinyl floor tiles. I'll let you know next week how well it worked.

Adhesive Recap!!!!

 PVA

It would not hold you can pull the vinyl right off. 

Verdict NO GOOD

 CONTACT CEMENT

Not even an act of Congress will separate it once the vinyl is placed down but if you don't get the brick registry perfect on your first try (I didn't) you're left with a piece of crap. 

Verdict NO GOOD

  CA GLUE

Ca glue works great for sticking anything together I've had great success using to glue the vinyl to plastic card bases. But again no dry time so you need to get the registry just right and its impracticable for large jobs like the street boards. 

Verdict GOOD FOR SMALL JOBS

The vinyl mat glued to Rendra 40mm plastic bases with CA glue.

1/6th of London

Ladies and Gentlemen this is 1/6th of my London Board project pictured above consisting of 2 "building boards" in this case the church & churchyard and 2 "street boards". I'll need 12 "building boards" and 12 "street boards" to make up a 4'x4' table. I've never tired constructing such an elaborate board before especially one with so many built up areas. On top of that I decided to do this literally within weeks of buying my first Victorian figures. Over the course of about two years now I've bought, traded and yes begged enough materials to do this project. All I need now is to eek out regular hobby time again and we'll be off!

As some of you may have noticed I haven't had much time this holiday season to blog or keep up with everyone's very fine blogs. I should be getting back to that on a weekly basis again starting this week.

The project has also suffered an irritating materials set back as the Lemax brick matting I've been using won't stay glued with PVA it looked like it would but the corners came up weeks later and you can just pull it right off the hard board. I've successfully used CA and contact cement, the stuff you used for kitchen tiles, but I need a glue that isn't instant so I can make sure the brick pattern registers right. Once its on it does look great and I have more than enough for the whole project.

Church Base

Church Yard with sidewalk

I varied the brick direction for the sidewalks like I've seen in period pictures of the streets of Whitechaple.