Experimenting with terrain

I have always had mixed feelings with felt as wargame terrain. Yes, it is cheap, and I cannot quite put my finger on it, but I always perceived it as being... cheap, in fact? Compared with the precious miniatures we deploye, and the often beautiful buildings and structures on our tables, felt never looked quite right to me.
Or maybe it was just a matter of execution. Some friends seem to be very easygoing and not too concerned about the silliness of some of their felt patches on the tabletop. But, after all, it is not the material, but what you make with it, right? So, I decided to experiment a little bit with felt myself, and I am glad to report that I am very pleased by the result.
I started with patches of brownish ochra felt, in order to recreate the effect of a summer field. Here's how it looks like.

Happy with what I see, I push the idea further, working with patches of dark green felt in order to recreate the effect of woods. I need more trees, and some bushes to do justice to the concept, but I was also pleased by the first stab in this direction. I am not a fan yet of the thin stripes of dark green used to underscore bushes along a road, or maybe a little countryside creek running across the ope fields, but overall, I am confident I can improve on that front, too.

Since I was on a roll, I embarked in the most ambitious project: to use thin stripes of green felt, of the very same type as my background terrain, to model the banks of a small river. Here the goal is to show some roughness and three-dimensional effect around the edges of the flowing water, something that I have never been able to accomplish in the past. I need to do better work with some glue here, but I was again very pleased by my first attempt.

This is a very rough first stroke at the whole idea, but I am won over. I think felt will become a recurrent trick out of my terrain bag. I just LOVE the effect on the river banks. I thought the corn fields were nice, and they did not feel cheap at all. And I see some potential is the dark green patches for thick woods and forests.
Overall, a productive evening.

I am back

I am back. I went five months without an update on my blog, but believe me, it was not for lack of ideas, projects, or progress on my miniatures and terrain. Rather, it was a complete lack of time; it didn't help, either, that I am now blogging for professional reasons. Quite frankly: if you spend many hours at the office thinking about blogging and writing for a blog, a blog is not exactly what you want to do when you come back home at night.
But anyway: I am back now. The goal is to post here at least once a week. Take it as my New Year Resolution. And if I will not deliver, feel free to come and poke at me in the comments!

In the meanwhile, as a teaser of things to come, two pictures from my SYW project now fully under development. Pandurs (above) and Austrian infantry (below).

And, oh, yes, progress also on the terrain front, as you see!

Building a bridge to somewhere (*)

As explained in PaperTerrain website, "There are one 3-arch bridge, two 2-arch bridges and two 1-arch bridges included in the set. Unlike most of our building models, these bridges are designed to have a reinforcing layer of foamcore or balsa wood in the side supports. The foamcore or balsa is not included in the kit and must be provided by the buyer. The bridges come in two different color stones: brown and gray. You may select all brown, all grey or a mix."

So, after I left the office, I stop at a nearby hobby store, bought one sheet of foamcore, and came straight back home to work on the smaller of the bridges in the set, the one-arch brown stone model.

As for all the other PaperTerrain models I built in the past, good instructions are included in the set, so all boils down to some skill in cutting the paper card-board. Not a big deal, and something I carefully accomplished in a few minutes.

In the case of this bridge, though, there is a tricky part: the additional foamcore board to make the structure more robust. Here's I ran into some troubles: apparently, my strong glue was not strong enough to glue anything but my fingers. After a few botched attended, I grew very frustrated and I turned back to my trusted Elmers. The problem is that Elmers is a "wet" glue, far from ideal for a paper structure -- although a strong cardboard paper, in this case.

Apparently the change in strategy worked, and I was able to complete the project. It became evident at this stage, though, that I had previously committed a sin of omission: I should have primed the foamcore in dark brown first, as now I will have to retouch some spots where the white material shows from the paper junctures. Here's a few pictures (unfortunately a little on the dark side) about the completed bridge.




I spent part of my evening on a little project that has been in the pipeline for some time now: building one of the PaperTerrain bridges.

A final note on the reinforced structure which supports the bridge. Because of the problem with the glue, I opted for some little nails to keep the structure together. I took a picture of the bridge upside down, where you can spot a nail that did not go through straight.



Conclusion. I really like this bridge, and despite a few headwinds I had to face during the construction, I think I learned a few tricks and that the next time everything will work in a much smoother way. The bridge looks good, and it will look even better after a few retouched. Overall, I recommend you to give PaperTerrain -- definitely worth it!


(*) "We don't need bridges to nowhere anymore: we need real bridges to take real people to real jobs" -- DestoFante speaking to the media in his professional capacity.

A wargaming mistery is solved - plus a few ideas about making terrain

There has been some investigative reporting going on by veteran wargamer Bob Cordery, both on his blog and TMP. In an old newsletter he found the following picture, and he did some work to identify the wargamer so concentrated on the developing game.

It turned out that this fine gentleman was a Canadian professor of sociology, Gerard De Gre, who apparently was a significant contributor to the hobby in the '60s and the '70s. Later, Prof. De Gre fell into oblivion -- until Bob started asking questions about him a few weeks ago. I want to thank Bob for the fantastic job in rediscovering the forgotten ideas of a pioneer in wargaming!

A close inspection of the picture posted above, though, spurred a few thoughts on my own. Look at his tabletop. In my games, I tend to have an emphasis on the "vertical" elements -- typically, houses, trees, and hills, plus, of course, miniatures. The only "horizontal" elements I depict are roads and rivers. Yet it seems to me that De Gre had used the horizontal surface to depict, in a two-dimensional space, some "vertical" elements -- look, in particular, to the banks of the river. Hence the idea: maybe I could integrate 3-D elements with 2-D drawings of terrain features. I am thinking, in particular, to all those details that would make a table look good, but whose physical presence in 3-D would slow down the actual game -- or adding to the cost of terrain. Elements like bushes, river banks, sunken roads, small walls, fences.

I did some research, and I found out that the practice of using miniatures over 2-D surfaces with 3-D effects is very popular among RPG players. (That's "Role-Playing Games", just in case...) There are actually special software programs that help RPG players in drawing their maps, dungeons and the like: Dundjinni, Campaign Cartographer, Fractal Mapper.

Here's an example, from the Dudjinni website:


My idea would be to use printouts like the one shown here to add character to the flat ground, and then add, on top, the "regular" wargaming elements in 3-D -- hills, houses, trees. I would expect the final look to be close to what appears on Prof. De Gre's table.

I confess: the idea is intriguing. I am not sure how much money and time I want to invest into this side project, but I definitely want to explore this possibility more.

Is paper the new black?

Of course it is not, nor I would ever dare to state the contrary. Yet, I think that for people in the right mindset, with the proper expectations, and for the right price, paper can go a long way on our wargaming tables.
Enter exhibit A.



This building was downloaded a few evenings ago from this website. If I well understand, the models are inspired by buildings in the French island of Reunion (which, by the way, I thought it was a penal colony.)
Yes, this is not perfect. It is not the solid, stocky building I would have bought at JR Miniatures. Not the excellent, hard cardboard models from the always intriguing Paperterrain. But hey, the price is certainly right: they are free to download! All I needed was a color printer, some glue, some patience, and a couple of hours during a rainy afternoon. And rest assured this palace will come handy again and again: I already envision it as the Prince's Palace in my XVIII century imagi-nation, the Principality of Saxe-Pape-Cyssor, and it will also serve as the presidential palace in Lopongo.
I hope, eventually, to refine my skills in paper building - starting with a not exactly simple project has probably affected today's final result, too. But again, with the right expectations and the right mindset, I believe this palace will be in proud display on the tabletop soon.

After-thought

OK, guys...

I am looking again at the windmill, and I have to say: it looks vaguely phallic... Painting it with a light flesh-tone brown didn't help, either. I tried to hid this fact by changing the angle of the photograph, but I am growing more and more uncomfortable about the whole affair.

I think I will go back and repaint it in some darker, grey-ish color. Or maybe I will just decide to be blatant about the similarity. I need some thinking on the issue.

Cruising dangerous waters: gris-blanc

I didn't have time to work on more comparisons among miniatures tonight, but at least I was able to get some painting on the WSS French I received yesterday from Minifigs. Of course, when we are discussing French uniforms from the XVIII century, it is impossible to escape the never-ending controversy about what is their "gris blanc" color. There are at least four threads on the topic on TMP, and some more in the yahoo groups for the "Seven Years War" and "Lace Wars."
At the end of the day, my take from all those exchanges is the following: it doesn't matter. If it looks good to me, it's good enough - after all, it is my lead being pushed on my table, and if you have a problem with it, stay at your home! But since these miniatures need to be painted, one way or another, I had to pic some bottles from the Vallejo box...
Here's how I proceeded. Gris-blanc is not really grey; but it is not white, either. It looks a pearlish off white when compared to bright white, but it looks white when compared to anything else. I then put on my palette some white, and just a minimal drop of a grey; at the end, I will "miracle dip" the miniatures with the more brownish Minwax Polyshade ("Antique Walnut Satin".) Hopefully, the final effect will be somewhat off-white, between grey-ish and cream. For the time being, here's how these infantrymen look at this stage of production.

Some work continues also on the Prussian fussiliers, but nothing worth reporting with a picture yet. Finally, I also dip the brush into some ground color for the mythical windmill... here, in exclusive, a preview for your eyes' only!

I do not have a windmill

The title says it all. How could I possibly live without one? How did I manage to live 38 years and never, ever have contemplated the purchase of a windmill before? I mean... HALLOOO?! Valmy, anyone?

So, here a few options, popping out from a quick Google search & some digging in TMP archives...

• 15mm from Hovel (does anyone know a US distributor?)


• 15mm from Monday Knight Productions


• 15mm from Stone Mountain (no pic)


• 15mm from Mainly Military (scroll down, middle of the page)


• 6mm from Irregular (see under "Scenic Rural Items"; no pic)

So many choices... and only three weeks until Historicon to make up my mind!

Responding to a few comments

Thanks for all the very valuable suggestions in the comment section under the previous post!
[Jeff- you're right, I made a correction and credited you for the RSMs suggestion! ... by the way, I need to stop looking at that website! :-) ]

One reason why I want to explore paper buildings is the chance to play around with the printer scale. I may end up with building in-between 10mm and 6mm, to avoid the risks of odd looking hinted by Alte Fritz. And yes, I do want to have at least three or four building per town/village, as recommended by the Prince of Hesse-Engelbuth, to avoid the lame visual I mentioned in my post.

Since we are talking about paper terrain: I found a very extensive collection of links to website that offer paper models at:

Miniature Wargaming

I am not sure whether to classify that site as a blog or just a website; either way, it's a great resource, which I check out frequently. Bookmarked!

Light blogging night - but I will be traveling tomorrow, so I may have the time of something more substantial while hanging at the airport.

On ground scale, and buildings

I believe I already mentioned I exclusively collect and paint miniatures in 15mm scale. The reasons why will be explained in the next couple of days, as I am planning to write a longer post about the logic behind that decision.
[That said, when Stokes a.k.a. the Grand-Duke of Stollen and Jeff pointed me in the direction of the 25mm RSM miniatures, I felt my knees weaken... yes, Jeff: I do want to paint some tricornes...]

Back on topic. Since most of my colonial games are semi-tactical in nature, I do not have a problem in having, on the table, buildings that are in true 15mm scale. But I have that problem for my napoleonic battles. These games are grand-tactical, and, keep in mind, are played on a 6'x4' table. True 15mm scale buildings are completely out of proportion, vertically AND horizontally. Just think: the recent release by Paperterrain is the S.te Mere Eglise Church, which is 15mm scale is 18" x 12" x 10"! As somebody pointed ut in the discussion at TMP, in most rules the length of the building would exceed rifle range! Of course, in my case, I might opt for the shortcut and claim that one building is really representing a whole village... but let's face it: that sucks. One building all alone in the tabletop is not a village: it's lame. I need at least two, three even better, building to realistically state: "that's a village."

I guess my question to my attentive readers is: how do you deal with this situation? The solution I want to explore: scaling down building. Which means: 10/12mms building to match my 15mm miniatures. I would be even tempted to go one notch further down. Paperterrain offers a European village pack in 5mm/6mm scale. As long as the top of the building roof is taller that the tip of a grenadier plume, I would feel comfortable to deploy smaller scale terrain in my 15mm grand-tactical battles.

Which of course only leads to the next question: where do I get a 6mm Valmy windmill??? :-)

Adowa playtest

I have a long-due play-test I promised to my friend EB, who is working on the second edition of... well, I am not saying yet: it suffices to say this will be a very exciting update of a popular set of rules for the colonial period. My job in the project is providing some data and play-test for section regarding the Italian in Abyssinia. I am not quite ready yet to deploy my miniatures, as I need to complete some preliminary task as filling the orders of battle, and rating the units so that the game can actually take place. Yet, out of the excitement for my new camera, I started working on the tabletop of what will be the battle of Adowa, or at least a bonsai version of it, due to the limited size of my East Africa collection of miniatures.
Back to Adowa game board. The goal is NOT to reproduce an accurate model of the ground, but to catch some salient features of the area. After experimenting with a few alternatives, last year I came to the conclusion that the old approach of cloth-over-books still works for me. So I started spreading magazines and texts from my library on the board.



There is a lot you can learn about me by checking out my reading materials, but this will be a wargaming only blog, so we are not going there.
I then proceeded to cover hills and mountains with my desert cloth. Today, I added a twist: I used some dark brown watercolor to highlight some of the features of the terrain. Here's a general view.



On the right, Mount Raio; on the left, Mount Esciascio. Between the two, the strategic Colle Rebbi Arienni. Again: not historically accurate, but good enough for an enjoyable game.
With this background work done, I believe I am in good shape to go on to the next steps in the coming days: completing the miniatures needed for the game, and add some scenery to the terrain. So far, so good. EB, here we come! This is going to be a fun play-test. Stay tuned.

My table

I am lucky enough to play my games in our dining room. Our very nice dinner table is protected by a plastic tablecloth. On it, I lay three 4' by 2' boards, for a total gaming area of 4' by 6'. Here's a picture of my setting.