Terrain (Back) Log: Green World Woods!

Greetings!

I've decided to document the terrain we built this last year in the same manner I intend to document further creation of terrain, such as with the "Brown World" project Skim and I will be beginning soon. I've actually got a design spreadsheet with nothing but terrain interactions and iterations guiding these projects along, so it's already conveniently broken down.

Many astute Wargate veterans will notice that these woods in their current iterations were actually much earlier this year, and for that reason these articles will be labeled the "(back) log". We'll be starting the (back) log with this article.

I love trees. Especially on the tabletop battlefield, nothing says 'this is a nice table' quite like trees. I'm not sure why...probably because they jut up from the ground in a very phallic manner.

See what I mean?

We have two strains of Green World trees, coniferous and deciduous! Yeah! Variety rocks! The old pine trees have seen their share of duty, some of them are at least twelve years old. Some of you may remember the Ice World table of the late 1990's we had, and those trees are almost all that remains of that old set. Also, all the bases in this article are reused from the last iteration of terrain we did in 2000-2001 ten years ago. Recycling does, in fact, rule.

The deciduous trees were bought from China earlier this year. I got a bargain on them, and was able to build 4 more bases of woods. I learned to differentiate woods in Battletech - that is, usually you can categorize woods as 'light' or 'heavy'. At the Wargate we use the 'house' rule that if a piece of terrain has clump foliage on the base it is 'heavy' woods and thus difficult terrain. If you look at the photo below, you can see only 1/3 of the pieces are actually light woods (the pines on the right).

Yes, the woods are quite hairy around the Wargate.

There is also a deadwood, made from old Woodland Scenics trees. I used the wrong kind of adhesive on the trees way back in 1998, and the clump foliage you're supposed to use to flesh them out into deciduous plants just fell off. I think that's where the "foliage on the base" rule started, actually. Anyway, now they are dead, and they look cool. (Sez I).

That's it for now, but we'll be posting some nifty articles later this week. Just remember what we've learned today here at the Wargate - don't poke the underbrush, unless you've got an assault cannon.

Terrain Log: Green World Marshes!

Greetings from the Aether!

It's been a minute since my last entry, so I thought I'd take a moment and talk about this blasted water terrain I've been working on.

See, many years ago it occurred to me that to be more realistic we'd need some water type terrain on the board. It was a lot harder to do model water then, most of what I found involved making a resin and doing some other strange rituals and black voodoo over the piece to make it look correct. I decided to take an easier route.

We made some marshes from hardboard by painting some "water" on the surface. It was just blue with a little white thrown in for movement effect, courtesy old Bill the Neiman way off back in the Brook. We put some gloss coat on it, flocked around it and called it done. We had two marshes for the games!!

That lasted for a while, but those pieces took a hell of a beating and I moved them into a special "this terrain will eventually be reworked to look good like the rest of our stuff should eventually look" box. They have languished there for about a year, and whenever someone opened that box to put the wooden ziggurat or the unfinished and dusty old gloss-swamps on the board I'd cringe. Embarrassing. They're gonna see my swamps...

Anyhoo, I saw all kinds of stuff online about new kinds of model water effects, especially after good old Games Workshop produced their Water Effects bottle. I couldn't ever get ahold of one, and after about a year of talking about it I finally bought at twenty dollar bottle of Water Effects from Woodland Scenics. Great huh? A week for shipping and I got out those old swamps, dusted them off, preened the dog hairs out of the flock with tweezers and re-foliaged the foliage.

Then totally failed. You see, Woodland Scenics Water Effects is absolutely nothing like Games Workshop Water Effects. I was too silly to realize that it wasn't what I had seen (though I knew something was wrong) and tried to use it on one of the swamp pieces...

It didn't work out too well. I was discouraged at my own silliness for a fortnight, then sprung another twenty on Woodland Scenics Realistic Water. Which is what I thought their Water Effects was. That is, Woodland Scenics Realistic Water is much like Games Workshop Water Effects.

So what are Woodland Scenics Water Effects for? Well, a whole crapload of stuff you can't use Realistic Water or GW Water Effects for. Like an adhesive for things beneath the water, ripples, eddies, current, rapids, splash or even waterfalls. I'm gonna experiment on these in my next pieces, but I should tell you about the new swamp and mire terrain!

Sorry for the poor photo, I was in a hurry. These two pieces are the old swamp pieces, remade into these new swamps, with actual water type stuff instead of gloss! However, I was new at using the Realistic Water, and I got the coat too thin I think.

This mire piece was easier, and I did a better layer of the Realistic Water. A few imperfections due to rogue flock particles, but it's minutiae. Then again, as a judge on this I'm biased. This mire will be impassable terrain with clear LOS.

Next time we get a game together, put these on the board and get your feet wet!