Terrain Log: Where we're going, we need...roads?

That's right. We need 'em, with all the tanks and buildings getting constructed around here. What better way to set up the table for a cityfight than by building the city itself? Buildings are one thing, but roads can really change the tactics used in a battle by adding all sorts of permutations to the general drill.

We've been doing what one of my good friends refers to as "Forbidden Planet" for quite some time - that is to say, most of our terrain resembles what you'd find in the middle of Motofrakkin' NOWHERE. Time for that all to change, with the arrival of our club's 40k roads!

Yeah, we're behind the curve. We get so caught up blowing the hell out of the landscape on our Forbidden Planets that we forget to make terrain. I've been trying to fix that for a while, and lately it's not been a one man effort! I'd like to take a moment to thank Jerry on behalf of our club for the generous contribution of 40k buildings he made, which you'll be seeing on the blog soon. His new website just went up, so take a moment and follow the link and see if you find anything titillating.

Anyways, here's a photo of the setup. I made sixteen sections of road, each one 12" x 6" long. They aren't very pretty, but then again - vinyl road?

They don't exactly line up straight - perfectly - but I forgive them. They are totally modular, and very sturdy. I cut them out of 1/8th inch masonite, and textured them with Rustoleum Aged Iron. I cut a road-stripe stencil and sprayed with Krylon Primer White. Take a look at the complete set arrayed around a building, and with more terrain on the board I think they will do their job just fine for quite some time.

They can be used on any of our boards we are currently working on, and work fine with the "Green World" we are used to playing on. Most of the new missions in 40k are jammed into the expansion books, Cities of Death, Battle Missions, Planetstrike and the upcoming Spearhead, and we want to plan for every eventual situation - all those missions come as standard on the Mission Generator we use! Now that we will soon be fighting bitter wars deep in the cities of the 41st millennium, the galaxy is a lot more dangerous as there are fewer places to hide!

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!

Ada Gaming Club 40k Tournament!!

Saturday May 1 the Ada Gaming Club had a Warhammer 40,000 tournament! Armies were Combat Patrol (400 pts with restrictions) but we had several games to determine the victor!

We played at Fentem Hall on ECU campus for about oh...6 hours? 6 and 1/2? Yeah...1:30 to 7:00 with a 45 min break.

Fellas, it was awesome. And I pretty much came in last. Tons of fun.

What happened? Well, my Alpha Legion were but few. I had a couple of good games, but man am I out of practice (against any non-marine army). Who would have thought I'd be the only marine player, of any flavor? Not I...and I was geared to fight MEQ's (marine-equivalent armies).

I have a pic of the army I took, and one of the club's cool boards.

Next time I visit the club it will be with a larger army!