Some new terrain

Hello guys,

I've finally been working on some terrain for my games again. With all the posts about Salute ruining my days lately, I have also started unearthing old stuff that is either half made or still packed. That includes resin crates and barrels, some miniatures (I am putting off painting cultists as I'm afraid I'd never get colours same again :P) and lots of smaller scatter terrain.

Anyways, I have been thinking and planning about setting (some of) my Strange Aeons games in Slovenia for a very long time (remember the three bridges board idea that never progressed?). As this project overlaps with my idea of  "Slovenian mythology" games, set in Dark ages, and I thus read a lot on the subject lately, I've decided to play some games with what I already have in my collection.

Before I could start, I needed just one piece of terrain that defines the local area more than anything else I could imagine - a Hayrack. We call it "kozolec" which would be pronounced something like "kozolets". It's an awesome little device and while outdated, they can still be found on most of farmsteads in at least one of their forms.  I went with the most basic of the designs - single straight line (Check link above for more variants, some are really great). To make building it easier, I went with stone pillars instead of usual wooden ones. And I also used way too few vertical poles, that are used to hang on hay. As it was a rush job, the pillars are awfully crooked, but that's fine as I was aiming for backwater place anyways. I added some logical supports and talking of the vertical poles, I really should break one, to add the feel of neglect. I did, however, sculpt some hay on it, so that's a plus.

 The shingles are on a large side, which might not look as realistic as loads of little ones, but I actually prefer the cartoony "warhammer" feel they make. Don't unfriend me, Joe! :D

Below is a painted version. It's painted horribly as my craft paints seem to be kinda odd. Or I could blame the brushes.

As I was so inspired, I've also painted a very simple hill I've made last year. I kinda like it now that it's painted, but I was putting off painting it for so long for a reason unknown. It's just boring, you know...a hill. Yawn.

It's made for miniatures to fit on it and yes, I am aware I should put more effort in the overall shape, but it will do for a while!

On other fronts, after millionth try on the guns, I've decided it is time for drastic measures. As none of the guns felt quite right, I simply cut off all the putty from one of those, cut the nose and restarted from step one.

Keep in mind F2000 is only about 700mm long in real life, so 12mm seems about right. The guns above it are the "old kind" for comparison. Mine is a bit crude, but I have decided to call it done. If I'll try to have it cast and then polish it and add the gadgets.

I had great plans for my Whateley farm model - from housing an abomination from out of space, to secret laboratory of Herbert West (I never got to build an autopsy table, that I've planned - I should do that!), Church for an evil cult and...naturally, a distillery. I've even made a still for it. It never got painted beyond basic undercoat and seeing it now, I'll swap that wire for something just a bit thinner and I'll coil it more. I will keep the "pot" and the "barrel", I think.

Lastly, a photo of my current (okay, about a session or two outdated) sculpting "table". In upper left quarter are modern weapons and modern sculpts (kinda on hold for now), lower left corner is Kurent (came out too thin - I can't lose that habit!), which is essentially a man wearing mask, cow bells and a baton with hedge hog skin. Back in the days (so, when SA takes place!) the groups could fight each other, so it seemed like a good idea for a lurker - a mad man, hitting people with his club while making noise with the bells - yes please! The large guy is Horroclix's fiend (Frankenstein's monster) that Vampifan kindly donated. He will become a Slovenian demigod for the Dark ages myths games. In the right upper corner are dead bodies (disturbingly ugly sculpts, rushjobs), 4 beastmen, being turned into dog headed soldiers (that hate humanity!) and a "fire elemental" that will probably be painted by a stone idol or whatever. I've been "working" on this one for well over a year, but I'm not too satisfied with it. Lastly, the 4 GW wolves are a Wolf herder (mythological creature) and his pack. They are way too "undead" and certianly waaaay too large for my liking, but I got them as a bargain, so they will be used as a stand ins until I get my hands on some proper werewolves.

That's it for today. I've also played a game (yay!) and I will post report in mid week one day. It's gonna be a bit different than what I usually posted, but just as long, filled with endless blabber! :P

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

The three bridges board - part one

Well,
as I'm still painting my miniatures, I needed something else to post. I got some nice old photos for you, and by making a post about it, board is now officially a project! As I've mentioned it, I was thinking about this board a while ago, during summer. And that is when I went around to collect all those great photos of the place as it looked like from around 1990-1935ish.  This is when Strange Aeons takes place so this is what I wanted.  What I was trying to do was build a board (I am all jelly seeing Clint work on his boards all the time!), that would support my currently favorite game, so Strange Aeons, wouldn't have to bee too modular and could be used at the limited number of shows we do. So, having something as iconic as the three bridges (or the triple bridge if you prefer to call it that way) would be ace. Then, what we'd need are some young slovenes and a bad guy. For a bad guy, I need to make a profile for a so-called Povodni mož -  the (under)Water man. Unfortunately I can't find an english translation of this poem, but France Prešeren (remember this guy, he will be mentioned in this post again) has wrote a poem about a beautiful slovene lady, that was admired by every man and equally despised by every woman in Ljubljana. Long story short, she wouldn't dance with anyone on a party, because nobody was good enough for her - except for this great man, whom she ended up dancing with. He was the Water man turned in a gentleman and he literally danced away with her into the river - never to be seen again. So...who wouldn't want to play a scenario where bunch of brave hearts are saving an arrogant missus, right?

Here is an awesome photo of the bridges by some guy. The photo was found here, to make sure everybody knows it is not mine.

Before Jože Plečnik, an architech that has designed most of what is worth admiring in Ljubljana (and Prague and Vienna) buil what we know as the three bridges, there was only one bridge at that spot. You can see it in the pictures (and photos) below. Tramway was operating since 1901 and bridge was rebuilt in 1930, so we can assume those photos fit in that time span. There is a small square with a church and monument to previously mentioned poet. Monument has him standing and there's a muse above him. He was desperately in love with a girl twice his age that never really liked him.  The monument has bunch of profiles built around it, but more on that once I'd set to build something like it.

Photo below says "Ljubljana, (virgin) Mary's square - Monument to Prešeren". You can see the river bank is not regulated, but that was changed at the time the brides were built. It's all concrete now and there's a dam regulating the flow further ahead. The square is now covered in cobbles.

 Below is a same bridge, right after an earthquake in 1895 - so no Tramway yet at that time. The side of the river that doesn't have the monument (to help you with visualisation) has an old city centre and is clumped around a little hill with a castle sitting on top of it.

 Another photo of the square, this time overlooking the monument and a church. This church is now pink for some reason.

The caption below says "Ljubljana - Mary's square with a franciscan bridge", named after the church. Bridge was known by other names as well. Postcards (yes, that is where the pictures are from mostly) with german text are certainly older than 1918, as Ljubljana was part of Austro-Hungarian empire at that time.

And below are the pictures showing the other side:

And some after the three bridges were built:

 Oh, here you can even see Ljubljana's first skyscraper, now cleverly known as a "skyscraper". There's a caffee on top but I honestly don't know if it's open or not - I think it was reopened few years back, but most of the time it was closed because of its...convenience to make the last jump. It was finished in 1933 and now I'm thinking about how cool it would be to make a board resembling that caffee - who wouldn't want to fight in a cafee, overlooking the city? :O

 And few shots of a tram...not counting my modeling skills, a tram would be a must!
 There are photos of new and old kind of tram. There were probably other versions, too. The last photo shows 1933 tram, so this is what I'll be after...but I honestly can't remember when the carriages were changed.

Caption says "old tramway carriage"

 And here it is in a museum. For some reason, I've read taking photos of this tram are forbidden. But that might as well be old information, we're in 2013, after all -.-

 I haven't done any measurements yet, but the idea is, a bit less than half of the board (by lenght) would be reserved for a square. It would have some facades, wide enough for miniatures to stand on (perhaps a scaffolding on one of them) and certainly a monument - because it looks cool. It would also need a tram carriage, but as long as it looks old and it's painted red, I wouldn't be bothered by realism too much.  The rest of the board would be occupied by bridges and smaller part by the other bank. Now, I am not sure what to do about the bridges. There certainly have to be 3 of them, because that's whole point of the board. The board has to scream familiarity. I was thinking about making two bridges - main bridge and one foot bridge, with third only being half built...to make it more interesting - any opinions on that? The river was dry (I thought I had some photos of that too) at the time the bridges were built, as its basing was being strengthened by concrete, so water would be great. Plus it looks nice. Perhaps a little boat or sometihng, too.

This is all just thoughts for now, I already have a hardwood board (2x3 feet), but I have to go buy an insulation foam that I will use as a core. Once that is done, I will be thinking further on, as I'll have better idea of the space left on the board. I might ditch the buildings all together, as even front facade would use up a lot of space.

Feel free to share the ideas or thoughts!



Completely unrelated, but if anyone is interested, here are some photos of World War 2 border in a village that is now part of Ljubljana. As Slovenia was divided between the occupying forces, this is how border between Italy and Germany looked like at that time. Conveniently, my mother's family lived near by!

Well, that was another post with whole lot of ideas but nothing actually done, but you can't say there isn't lot of nice pictures to admire!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

Terrain, terrain and a CONTEST :O

Or the lack of it!

I have lost my enthusiasm with building the city table for modern zombie wargames (but I will pain those buildings that I have made in a closer future!), I was thinking about the terrain I should make for my Strange Aeons game. I haven't played for a couple of weeks no, been very busy, but still, lack of terrain doesn't help when one wants to play some more games!

Generally, I'd just like you to brainstorm some ideas for the pieces. Generally, I was thinking I got to order some crates and barrels and such, to bring the board to "life", but I would still need bigger pieces. I could probably do some more grave yard modules so I could cover around half a 2x3 feet board with it. With some more of those dried trees, I think I could get quite a morbid feel to the game, perfect for abominations and beings out of space!

Then, I was thinking about some buildings....I figured I'd would like to do something like those houses from Van Helsing (movie I didn't see when I got the chance, to be fair)

I saw those at Brummie's if I am correct. I really like them because they're dark and neglected. They're gothic, which is good if I ever (when I?) start (playing?) that period, too. I would probably build them from foamcore and coffee stirers (which I cant find anywhere here, in Slovenia, except by online order, which would double the price...) I would probably make the roof angled as they are here, for a bit of sillyness. I think it would make sense for strange things to happen in god forgotten village like this.


I was also thinking about some bushes and such, but then it ends. I would like to have a table with lots of things to climb, in more levels. The reason is, I'd want to use rules for the whip (Indiana Jones!) and there are rules for throwing or blasting people away (if shotgun doesn't kill, minaiture moves D3 directly away from shooter). This means it would be pretty awesome if you could blow someone off the balcony and such.


Then I got 2 more ideas for two more themes. Those are just wishes as I dunno where  could I store all this, but I would loooooooove to play SA games with copplestone's arctic explorers on totally white table....at the mountains of madness! Such table could still be made with separate terrain pieces, just painted white, lots of rocks and such...now I feel the need to invest in hot wire cutters and do one!
Well, back to reality, next idea is using The assault groups aztecs (or incas or some of those, please forgive my ignorance) as cultists and playing in a jungle next to ancient american ruined pyramids and such. Thats also cool and once I'll get PDF for playing a SA campaign in rainforest, it will make all the sense. The problem is vegetation. I've been to pet store and none of those flowers looked good enough to me. Anyone has any cool idea for building a jungle? Maybe just enormous tree trunks, but without actual crown (that is supposed to be a term for the branched part of the tree?). This would help playability, ease the terrain building and...well, make table look like a big natural disaster!

So, if there is anything that pops your mind, fire away. If it is of any help, I game Strange Aeons in 1920's, location worldwide. We're talking about global danger here! Which reminds me, god willing I have taken my last pregraduate exam today :P




To make things more appealing I can offer a humble reward for the one with the most realised ideas! So, lets do it this way. I will be building terrain until NOVEMBER 1st. So I can have more than a month and we're not waiting until new year's, plus its a good day for everything horror. On that day, I will check how many different pieces (so 3 templates of woods are still 1 thing, to make things balanced a bit) I've made, suggested by each participant.

Let the reward be a secret, as I will chose it later so it can benefit the winning individual as best as possible... and let me say I will do my best to make it something semi spectacular! 

Hope this buys you! :D

Mathyoo

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

Hello,

after I got rules on wednesday and played for first 10 minutes, I got this need to get the streets done as soon as possible. Paper was not enough!

So, I've decided it was enough of thinking (I was thinking if I should keep 2.5 cm spare on each side of the tiles or push road to one edge, thus giving me more space to make street parkings later on), and I had to do something. And I did.

I took out the tiles and started drawing the outlay. I've decided to divide 30x30 cm tiles like this: 2.5cm spare (mostly for fences to box in the parking lot, but also for flowers, or just random things), 5 cm sidewalk, 15 cm lanes (1 7.5 wide for each direction), 5 cm sidewalk, 2.5 cm spare.

Then I cut one tile on 6 straps for sidewalk. This gives me enough for 3 tiles, so I need 4 tiles of cork for 3 tiles of road.

I've put it on the board, to see how good I've cut it:
You can see I got sharp corners. I was planning on rounding them, but that would be pretty hard. And cutting round shapes with in cork...I was afraid I might do more damage than good. Nobody really drives on those roads, so there is no real problem, hehehe.

I went on with gluing, just used dilluted PVA. After I had all done, I put some intellectual weight on them, just to make sure bond is good. There was a little bit wrapping, but nothing really bad. I hope books didn't move any of the sidewalks, because that would end up bad.

I have left it to dry over night and went to apply sand next morning.

 After I managed to get the sand on (notes to self: apply in patches on bigger surfaces, let REALLY dry), I went on with painting blakc paint. I took three coats. Above is a picture of my workstatio nin my room. The thing is it started raining and I had to move inside. I strongly advise you keep things outside, all the sand that chipped from the tiles made my room my own little desert!

Picture below has just a (blurry) close up on the road tiles:

After the tiles were sufficiently black, I went on with grays. Sorry for the blurry pictures again, it was all messy and I had to take a pic and work on ASAP :P. So....the firs, I had sidewalks pretty dark. That wasn't good enough, so I went with ligher gray all over them. Here is before / now picture to see if I made a right decision:

 After a while, I saw I was drybrushing light grey too much over the roads. I gave roads a knock-back wash of dilluted black paint. Did same for the sidewalks, so you don't get blinded by all the brightness:

Next I went to paint some lines and such. I wanted to include some yelow paint in, just because I like it. Didn't want to do it too much, so I went for border lines only. Below you can see all nine tiles put together to form 90x90 cm square. That is 1.5cm short of 3x3 feet, but thats unnoticable. Here, you can see I didn't left any of the tiles blank. Those that don't have main street on them, have a strip, 7.5cm (so 1 lane) wide, of local roads. I am not happy with the rest of the free space painted. Its only greys and such, but I think I should go with green, could also use those as a rural roads then. Well, that's done is done, I only had black and grey paint (yup, 2 paints for all you see (minus white, red and yelow thingies), just mixed different amounts of grey in black and voila. 

 Here is a close up on a "detail". I've designated this square (otherwise identical to 4 others) for my box store, no-parking zone is there to give the space for loading docks. Check few posts back, where I've shown you the store - it has 2 openings on the back for storage. Don't mind my fabolous skills for making an even cross -.-

 Here is a close up on 3 tiles, two roads and a parking lot. I've played a bit, made one parking slot for disabled. Apart from color it is no different from others, all are 5 cm wide (because 7.5 seem too wide, nobody is going to park a bus here). Parking slots are 10 cm long, so you can see how I channeled the drive-in to allow for extra space needed. I now also reminded, I wanted to draw a disabled stickman on the parking slot, but will fix that some other day.

Well, that is it for now, those nine tiles allow for quite a variety of table set-ups. I will make curves one day, but for now, I think that is good enough. The bad side about mixing paints is, I have no clue how I will be able to make another tile just like those. To be honest, I was just slapping paints on, didn't think too much.

I wanted to seal it with matt varnish but it is raining outside and I am a chicken when it comes to spray paints. That varnish is my only can so far, I've even painted black by hand.

Overall I am pretty satisfied with how it turned out, but I'd change those areas of nothing to something nicer, marks are not the best etc...but it is my first board after all!

Now, while I wait I might as well go build some extra stuff, either zombies, "Joe's" fences ;), jersey barriers and some other junk to make the board look better than it is, heh.

Hope you've enjoyed!

Mathyoo