Scatterlings

A couple of days ago I went off on a creative fugue about a possible future Infamy Infamy game that, were it ever to happen, would demand lots of marsh and bad going. As always the thought triggered a rash of concentrated modelling and I ended up with some new scatter terrain pieces.

These late Roman bow-armed skirmishers are behind a couple of flat bad going markers. The bases are cut from 3D printer rafts coated with wood filler. The rocks are cat litter (unused!), the grass is static grass over fine flock and the tall tufts were made from some static-grass-type fibres I bought years ago.

The Picts are picking their way through a marshy area. This is made in much the same way but with some commercially made tufts. The areas of standing water are irregular shapes cut from old business cards and painted glossy black.

Finally, the Turcos are passing through some generic broken ground. Same approach but with the addition of some stones from the garden.

Mixed in together we end up with about a square foot of cavalry-unfriendly countryside. Total cost - a couple of quids' worth of flock, static grass and tufts?

I don't know what it is but I like it

The Baroness and I were in York yesterday to take our son out to lunch. Beforehand we popped into a branch of The Works: it's always a good place to look out for crafting bargains.

We found this:

It wasn't entirely clear what it was but at £3 for a pack the size of a bag of icing sugar it seemed rude not to give it a chance.

I figured that if it was individual particles it would serve as an alternative to clump foliage and if it was in sheets it could be glued down to basing material to make fields.

It turns out to be an elasticated mesh material that, when removed from the bag, expands out to maybe the size of a handball. Sorry, I seem to be choosing odd size analogies today.

It looks like it should cut easily with scissors, maybe to form the canopy of homemade trees? 

The "bobbles" along the individual threads are not stuck on but are part of the threads themselves. As such I think this would be significantly more robust in transport than lichen or rubberised horsehair with glued-on flock.

The pics below show the whole pack with some 28mm Pictish skirmishers for scale.

As the title above suggests, I've no idea what this stuff is called aside from "Artificial Moss" but I think I might pick up another pack or two if it's available from my local branch. It will do for pretty much any job you'd use lichen for and looks more realistic in my opinion.

 

I have a peel tower!

I've always fancied owning a peel tower and now at last I do!

Back in 2012 I took a matched pair of Border Reivers armies (The Reivers and The Warden's Men) to the Berkley Hordes of the Things tournament. HOTT armies need a Stronghold that they have to hold onto if in the role of defender.  At Berkley both armies used a Stronghold in the form of a group of stolen (or recovered) animals. 

The Reivers with (at rear) the old Stronghold

I'd always intended that The Warden's Men should have a peel tower or bastle house as their Stronghold. The Reivers force includes a Sneaker element that includes a guy with a ladder and another with a burning torch - both handy for attacking enemy buildings.

Although I cut out and began scribing the walls for a peel tower at the time, it was only recently that I went back to it and finished the thing.

There are two doors, one leading into the ground floor space where domestic animals are kept in the event of an attack, and one to the first floor accommodation that's accessed via a ladder (now pulled up into the building.

The tower's made from foamcore and thin card on a hardboard base.

At last The Warden's Men have their own Stronghold to defend...

A couple of years ago we stayed at Hallbar Tower near Lanark and I think the experience may have been in the back of my mind when I finally undertook this construction job.

A River Flows Through It

Last week I popped over to Staffordshire to see how Richard Phillips was doing. We hadn't managed to get together in person since his health scare meant that he couldn't attend Joy of Six. It was great to catch up and see him looking so well.

I passed on to Richard some terrain that I no longer have a use for but that can potentially be useful at his wargaming venue, The Unit. I also took over some of my 3D printed TacWWII makers for Richard.

In return I was delighted when he presented me with a pontoon-ferry that would work really well with my Woebetides collection.

In fact thinking about it there's no reason it wouldn't also work for the American Civil War or the Second French Intervention in Mexico. Ooh, or the Napoleonic Wars in Livonia!

It fits nicely on my larger (9" across) river sections and would, with the addition of suitable ramps, work fine as a pontoon bridge too.

Other riverine work had gone on at Stately Counterpane Manor. 

When setting out the terrain for the playtest of "Ambush" or "The Princess Bride (not that one)", I'd realised I needed some more curved, 3" wide, river sections. 

Fortunately I had some offcuts of hardboard that could be made to do the job nicely. I had also started a couple of straight sections designed to allow a river to enter the table on a diagonal.  

My usual approach of raised banks made from filler with black paint and varnish for the water gave me over a metre of gently meandering river or, if the curves are rearranged, a single sweeping 90 degree bend.

Then with rivers on my mind I decided to revisit the replaceable ford modules. I wasn't entirely happy with the relative lack of visual difference between the second and third modules. I added a bit more in the way of Milliput paving sloping down into the water and repainted.

At the risk of giving away slightly too much in advance of the Steel Lard outing for the game, I'll reveal the effects of the progressive flooding of the ford. I'm sure you'll promise not to reveal this to any potential players won't you?

Stage 1 - Units crossing the ford roll 2D6 for
movement discarding the lower-scoring die.

Stage 2 - Units crossing the ford roll 2D6 for
movement discarding the higher-scoring die

Stage 3 - The ford is now impassable to wheeled vehicles
but a Leader may try to carry the princess across on foot.

Stage 4 - The ford is now completely impassable.

No scenario designer worthy of the title could refrain in such circumstances from designing a "Carrying the Princess Across the Ford Table".  Such I have done but, alas, revelation of the details is a step too far at this stage.

Upgrading past endeavours

Getting Steel Lard (and the associated mad rush to prepare and test a new game in too short a period) out of the way has freed me up to do some modelling purely for the fun of it. 

The French 1940 artillery tractors have already appeared here and some upgraded US HMMWVs were recently seen over at Andreivian Tales.

Inspired by how well those two went, I pushed on and did two more as well as an M113 armoured personnel carrier.

I've also upgraded some very long-in-the-tooth Char B1 bis models that have been in storage for far too long.

I'm in no danger of winning any points with the local IPMS chapter with any of these but I think they'll improve the overall appearance of any games I use them for.

This has got me thinking about past triumphs (and disasters) and how we really ought to revisit some of them to get best value out of the sweat and treasure invested in them. The Prague Summer, Andreivia and the Woebetides are three settings that I'd like to resurrect and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.

I suspect a Crisis Point 2027 is going to required.