Terrain Making
A regular section featuring simple tips and tricks for terrain and landscape modelling.
Terrain Board Design Competition
(Show No.3)
Sponsered by Antenociti's Workshop and Rattrap Productions
The competition is sponsored by Antenociti's Workshop and by Rattrap Productions. They have both offered some generous prizes and I am also going to throw in a couple of prizes as well.
I have been planning on doing a series of articles on building wargaming terrain boards, and I have also been wanting to build some new boards for my own use. I am getting into Pulp Skirmish gaming, using Rattrap Productions .45 Adventure rules and want a series of boards that I can use for a wide range of pulp scenarios. So I have decided to combine the two plans and do a series of articles explaining how I go about making my new Pulp gaming boards.
About a year ago I was given quite a bit of polystyrene sheet, in 3 or 4 thicknesses from 50mm up to 160mm.
Most of the sheets are 18inch squares, although some are 3 feet long by 18 inches wide.
Now, normally for terrain boards, I would prefer to work with 2foot or 600mm square boards, but as I got these for the best price possible (i.e. free), it will be 18 inch square boards, with possibly a couple of 18 by 36 inch boards.
The 160mm deep boards I have shaped as hills, being 50mm deep on 1 or 2 sides and going up to the full 160mm at the far side.
I have also cut one 160mm deep board into a stand alone hill, taking all 4 edges down to a 50mm plain and then having the hill slightly off set in the middle.
This is where the competition comes in. I want you design the details for these boards for me! I will be using 28mm figures on them. I want the designs to be fairly modular, so that I can put them together in various ways so as to keep the games interesting. I would like to keep at least three of the square boards plain open ground, but the rest I am willing to do more creative scenic work on. Whether it be dirt or paved roads, rivers, ravines, cliffs, coastline or whatever else you can come up with.
I intend to use these boards to depict various parts of the world, so for example, I don't want to have them all painted up as desert boards.
That's not to say that in my games there couldn't be a lost African valley with an Ancient Egyptian settlement and tombs dotted about. In fact I have all of the Grendel resin Egyptian scenic models just waiting for an appropriate use.
Also if a couple of the flat boards fade to desert at one edge, suggesting the vast open space beyond the tables edge, that would also be acceptable.
As I said earlier, I have already cut some of the boards into hills. I am happy to modify them further, but your designs will need to work with the pieces I have already created. I have put a series of photos of the boards on the website, with plans so you can see what you have to work with.
Finally, I would like you to design a single 18inch square board that can be Completely Over The Top! Whether it is a Nazi occult temple, a Chinese warlords castle, a secret pirates harbour or a super science rocket launch facility. This will be the centre piece for a series of scenarios and I want to make something that will really WOW my playing group!
Entries should be produced as a series of drawings or plans, that are presented in a reasonably clean and clear style that can be used in the production of my new boards. Any extra material, such as 3D elevations, sketches or written fluff, will all be considered towards the final decision, but without good plans will not be a deciding factor. Entries should be emailed to me at david@themodelmakerspodcast.com. They can be scans of drawings, or created on a computer. Please limit the file size to around 2mb per image, and if they are that big, please send each one in a separate email, remembering to identify yourself with each one. For the Centre Piece, I would suggest that you submit at the very least a plan and 2 or 3 elevations.
I will pick 2 winners, from all the entries submitted, one winner that I'll use as the basis for my modular terrain boards and a second winner for the best "Centre Piece" board design. Both categories could go to the same person, or go to separate individuals. There will also be prizes for the second placed designs.
All winning decisions will be made by me and are final and absolute. Both Jed at Antenocitis Workshop and Rich at Rattrap Productions will be involved in the judging. Jed giving invaluable advice on the practicalities of the board designs and Rich giving his input on the PuLp gaming possiblities. My decision will be based on the quality of the work submitted, including the usability, how versatile the modular system is, how appropriate the designs are for Pulp period gaming and the general attractiveness of the designs.
Once we have chosen the winning entries I will use their designs as my plans for my terrain boards. I will follow the plans as closely as possible, but as we all know, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so minor changes will have be accepted, although I will explain those changes in the articles that I present about the project.
I will build both the series of modular terrain boards and also the "Centre Piece" board, over the coming year and give regular updates on my progress in the podcast.
As prizes for the competition, I have the following items:-
The Modular Board Design Winner will get a $40 dollar gift certificate for Rattrap Productions, and a brand new copy of the Osprey Hard-backed Master-class Book, Terrain Modelling by Richard Windrow. Second placed design will win a $20 gift certificate to spend with Rattrap Productions
The winner of the Centre Piece Board Design, will win a £30 Gift Certificate from Antenocities Workshop and also one of my own resin model kits, either the Hexagonal Pill-box, a Mammoth and Howdah or the Halfling House, whichever they prefer. The second place for the Centre Piece category will win a £15 to spend at Antenocitis Workshop.
Building a Crannog
(Show No.2)
What's a Crannog? you ask!
It is a type of ancient house found predominantly throughout Scotland and Ireland, one has also been found in Wales and similar structures have been found in Scandinavia and across Europe.
A crannog is a round house built on a Loch, either on an artificial island or on stilts. The oldest crannogs date back around 5000 years, although they were still in use in Scotland up to the 17th century.
For more information about crannogs have a look at The Scottish Crannog Centre's Website .
For wargaming purposes they would have many uses, from ancient games with Romans, Picts or Vikings, right through to the various tussles between England and Scotland. The crannog would even make an interesting display piece on a fantasy battle table. The basic design could also be used to build more conventional land based ancient houses.
The materials you'll need include:-
A base board, probably either MDF or plywood, and at least 6mm thick, possibly 12mm if you do the stilted version.
Something to represent wooden logs or branches to use to build your crannog. I managed to find an old blind that was made of, what looked like very thin rattan or bamboo strips, around 1-2mm thick. As an alternative you could use barbecue scewers or even cocktail sticks although these may look a little too even and machine made for our purposes.
You will also need some thicker dowels rods, probably around 6mm, a 1/4inch, if you are going to build your model on stilts.
Some woven sacking - I got hold of an old nylon woven postal sack.
Some cardboard sheet
Glue - PVA, Superglue and Epoxy Adhesive
Modelling clay like Das or epoxy putty like milliput.
And possibly some styrofoam for raising the floor of your model without adding much weight.
The basic design on a crannog is a round house with woven hazel walls and a conical thatched roof, built on a timber platform, that is either raised above the water on timber stilts or sitting on an artificial island constructed of large stones and rocks piled in the water.
These buildings stand around twenty or thirty feet off shore and are reached by a timber walkway, which was often zigzagged to make it more difficult to cross during a fight. On some crannogs the walkway was actually just under the water, making it treacherous for strangers and also an excellent barrier for wild animals.
Ok, lets start constructing our model. I have built my model crannog to fit in with my 28mm figures and so the measurements I give will be based on that, if you want to build your model for a different scale you will need to adjust the measurements accordingly.
Firstly we need to decide on the overall size of the model, I decided to make the timber platform about 25cm or 10inches across, this would give me enough room for a walkway around the outside of the house as well as interior detail.
I cut a sheet of card into a circle of around 23cm and then started glueing on the stips with PVA glue, This was to be the log floor. I overlapped the edge of the card by about a centimeter at each side, to give the full desired size and to also hide the card support underneath. Once this was finished. I felt that a single layer of logs would not look substantial enough to support the whole building once finished, so I glued short strips in the opposite direction around the edge of the under side of the card. This gave the look of a double layer and it certainly looked much more sturdy.
Once the platform had completely set I moved on to constructing the walls of the house. I cut a strip of card around 30mm wide and long enough to loop right around the house, then curved this round to form the wall. I wanted it to sit about 20mm in from the edge of the platform, so as to make a walkway around the outside. Once I had the card sitting how I wanted I cut it leaving a gap of around 25mm for the doorway. Then using PVA glue I stuck it down.
Then I cut about 30 of the rattan strips down to about 30mm length. Going around the inside of the wall, starting at one side of the doorway, I stuck individual strips vertically about 25mm apart. I also did the same on the outside of the wall, but I placed the strips halfway between the positions I had placed them on the inside.
When the glue had dried on these strips I cut two lengths of the woven sacking to 30mm wide and stuck one on the inside and the other on the outside, covering the vertical strips. This gave a kind of wavy effect to the walls.
Now taking another set of strips I went around and stuck them on top of the sacking and in between the previous strips. This means you have strips both behind and in front of the sacking, making the whole wall look as though it is woven between the upright strips. Also the woven pattern on the sacking gives a very good representation of the woven hazel walls.
So far we have looked at the building of the basic structure of the crannog, now however we need to decide whether we are going to have ours on stilts or on an artificial island. The model I made was constructed so that it could be cast in resin to make a kit, and for that it was simpler to have it built on the island, so I will cover that first.
I wanted my island to be raised about 25mm above the water-line so I cut a disk of styrofoam about 24cm across and stuck the platform on to it. Then I stuck the whole thing onto my base board. Now using modelling clay I sculpted the rock island underneath the edge of the platform tapering it out slightly towards the bottom. To produce the rocks, I rolled out a strip of clay, and cut it into fairly even size pieces (although I made sure a few were different sizes just to add some variety). Then I roulled each of these pieces into a ball and pushed them into the area under the platform. Once I had completely covered the styrofoam I used a sculpting tool, and a paintbrush to shape the balls into the rock shapes and blend them together a little.
The stilted crannog would need a different approach. Taking the base board you would need to mark out the circle that the platform would cover and then drill a hole for each of the stilts to fit into. From a good look at the re-constructed crannog on Loch Tay, it appears that the stilts are quite tightly packed in and can be fairly randomly placed, at least once the outer ring have been placed. The dowels would all need to be cut to an even length, allowing the extra few millimeters to be sunk into the base board.
Several more dowels can be used as supports for the walkway leading from your shore line to the crannog, laid out in two rows, and of course, zig-zagged, if you really want to make things interesting. Then cut a strip of cards and glue it to the top of these dowels. You can then stick more of the rattan strips on top to finish it off.
Now we'll move on to the thatched roof.
This conical roof is fairly steep and comes to a point, without a smoke hole. When I visited the re-constructed Crannog on Loch Tay I asked why there was no smoke hole at the top and they explained that the smoke was used as a midgie repellent , anyone who has spent anytime near a Scottish Loch in the summer will be very familiar aggressive little insects. Apparently the walls are open enough to allow the smoke to disperse fairly well, but it does linger enough to keep the midgies down.
To start constructing your roof, you will need to use a piece of paper cut into a disk. Then cut a line from the centre of the disk to one edge. Then if you pull the paper from either side of the line in over each other this will form a cone. Tape the cone. Once you have done this make sure that the cone sits on top of the wall with a slight overhang. You will need to experiment with the size of the disk to see how big it needs to be to fit your crannog correctly. Once you have the correct size worked out with the paper, repeat the process with some fairly rigid card. Pull the two sides in to form the cone and then glue them together.
Now you have your cone, you need to thatch it. I did this with Magic Sculp epoxy putty. Firstly don't try to mix enought to cover the whole cone in one go. It actually takes quite alot of putty to cover it and it is far easier to do it in stages. Mix a managable amount of putty and thespread it evenly over the surface of the cone, it will only need to be about 2mm thick, so it goes quite a long way.
Once you have it nice and even you will need a to use a tool to put the thatched pattern on to the putty. A fine toothed comb, or even a rough bristled brush would do this just fine. Using your choosen tool drag it across the surface of the putty, moving from the tip of the cone down towards the edge. Uses fairly fast strikes and don't be too careful about getting them even, after all you want it to look like rough thatching, not a corrugated iron roof.
Repeat this process until the entire cone is covered except for the bottom edge. To do the bottom edge of the thatched roof, I shaped the putty over the edge of the card and rounded it off. The thatch over the door is raised a little to form a slight arch. The bottom edge of the thatch needs slightly different treatment to the test. Rather than using the comb or brush to give the impression of straw, I wanted to make it look like the trimmed ends of the straw, so using a wire brush I stippled the putty around the edge and worked a treat.
Once the putty has set the roof is ready to be placed on the crannog. This gives you a basic model, ready for use on the wagaming table. I will look at some interior detail for the model in a future show, but if you have managed to to get this far, you should be able to cope with that for yourself, at least for the time being.
Simple Water Effects
(Show No.2)
Ok, as a follow on from building the crannog, in Terrain Tips today I am going to look at a simple technique I have used several times create open water on a wargames table. I will assume you have built up the rest of your terrain and have the river or lake ready to be finished off.
Firstly I lay down a dark green, near black layer of paint, once this has dried I use a dry brush to lay on some mid-grey paint in light strokes following the flow of the river. You don't want to over do this, just keep it to a hint pattern on the river bed.
Next using a water based gloss varnish, I apply a thick layer all over the river and then I use a hair dryer to start to accelerate the drying of the varnish. The surface of the varnish starts to set and form a skin over the wet varnish underneath. This skin then tends to wrinkle and with a bit of practice gives a very good rippled water effect.
Once you have a reasonable ripple all over the river-bed, leave it to dry for several day, just to make sure that the varnish has dried right through. Then put another layer of varnish over the top. This finishes off the effect and should leave you with great looking river.
Simple Snow Effect
(Show No.1)
Whether you want your panzers to advance across the Russian tundra, or you want to give your Khador Warjacks the proper wintry look, creating snow on models can be a tricky business.
One simple trick I have used is to brush on a layer of matt varnish, on the areas that you want the snow to lay, allow it to partly dry, getting fairly tacky and then sprinkle talk over the model. Then lave the model to set completely. Once dry, blow off the excess talc and you should have quite a wintry looking model.
Obviously with tips like this it is always worth practicing once or twice to perfect the effect, before you turn your favourite model into frosty the snowman!
