[Sigur]

Hey guys,

The past week I've been sick as a dog with a very annoying cold. Therefore got hardly any painting done (much to my annoyance because it messed up my schedule) so I focussed on doing "rough" stuff, meaning: terrain. Given the fact that I do commission work on all kinds of scales and settings/periods and of course play all kinds of different periods and settings at all kinds of different scales I always lack terrain. You name it, I don't have it. So I decided to get at least some very basics done, starting with 28mm stuff.

This is more or less a preview picture of what I got done over the past week. In total I made 10 sections of the fences (about 60" total), 7 smaller sections of walls/hedges (about 3"-4" each). Not sure I'm 100% happy with the hedges. So far I finished three sections of 28mm dirt roads, between 27 and 30cm long and 9cm wide. I currently have one more straight section, a straight narrower section and a bending section for the wide road settling downstairs. First stab at making these flexible acrylic roads. Seems to work alright so far even though it seems that the second batch of roads ended up a bit too thin.

I also started working on a bunch of sectionf of two more kinds of fences - I got I think six sections of tall, planked fence and six sections of low, nice garden fence. Let's see how that works out.

The aim of course is to get terrain that's as generic as possible, in terms of periods and possible settings. More specialized stuff I can always do lateron.

 

[Old Man78]

Looks tops to me mate, and the models are sweet to boot!

 

[Svartmetall]

Nice terrain, and love the colours on the Pz.IV H

 

[Sigur]

Thanks very much, guys. I really only took what ever models I had at hand and because I couldn't find my Napoleonic Austrians.

There's a review of these Artizan 28mm German Anti-tank soldiers coming up soon!

 

[Sigur]

Alright, some more scenery I made. Today - white fences, a.k.a. (light) cover, not blocking LOS:

Aw, look! The little door actually opens up in case Lt.Perkins here thinks the war isn't going too well and it's time to go home.

It's almost enough to surround that little patch of plowed field I made a few months ago.

The reason why it's not too long in total and why the single pieces don't have the same length is twofold: First, I didn't originally plan to have a little door in there. Second, these pretty much are just a by-product of the tall, LOS-blocking wooden fences I'm working on (7 sections of 13-and-a-bit cm each, about 48mm tall). It's probably not hard to tell that I made these out of coffee stirring sticks.. Very simple pieces of terrain, quickly done, highly recommended.

For the tall fences I'm still not quite sure how to base them. I even considered making two sets of bases with just pins sticking out of them and sticking the fences on when needed. So I could switch between say "standard grassland bases as you see on these fences above and desert/steppe like bases, maybe for something urban too. The thing is, I pretty much need terrain for all eventualities and I barely have a set of regular grass/woods one. So the whole prospect of making up a proper collection of terrain is kind of daunting and I try to keep stuff exchangable and /or generic.

These white fences above probably are the least generic stuff I've got but as I said, they were just a byproduct and I wanted to make something of the rounded ends of the stirring sticks. And they still probably fit for 19th, 20th, 21st century. I mainly made them with the US in mind so they'll work for the American Civil War as well as the American War of Independence and ...well, maybe some other stuff. Zombies, alien invasions, something like that. To be perfectly honest, a certain image I had in mind whilst making these ...

I'd love to do an X-Com thing on the wargaming table some day. Oh well. As you may be able to tell, I'm already kind of in a Halloween mood, so all kinds of ideas are bubbling up. All for which of course I have no time what so ever.

Anyway, enough talk, hope you like the terrain.


P.S.: Oh, that Artizan Designs German WW2 anti-tank dudes reviews is up too. Check it out!

 

[Tawa]

Lolly sticks?

They're pretty nifty looking fences :good:

 

[Sigur]

.... It's probably not hard to tell that I made these out of coffee stirring sticks.. ...

Almost.

 

[Moriouce]

Just think about it! A X-Com miniture wargame. Who Wouldn't love that?

 

[Sigur]

Absolutely. According to Boardgamegeeks there used to be a boardgame for which the rules you can be downloaded ....somewhere. I tried but it didn't work off BGG's site.

And of course FFG will release this thing with the app you gotta use and all of that. Not sure if I'm a fan of that. But that's beside the point because this will be a board game which may or may not be any good (probably will be good because it's bloody FFG but oh well), not a wargame. The new X-Com game pretty much already is a turn-based miniatures wargame. The devs often pointed out that they took a lot of pointers from miniature games. It's very simplistic any it lacks a bunch of trademark things the old x-com games had but the "two actions" thing is a pretty good basis. It reminds me a fair bit of Infinity which uses a very similar system of unit actions.

In the end though, my preferred set of rules would be Tomorrow's War. Not that it models any of the game mechanics of the old games but it does one thing well - modelling firefights between 10-50 men a side. Khurasan do pretty good "Greys" and crabmen too in 15mm. I think they also do snakemen. Ultimately though one would have to sculpt their own range of minis to get the look really properly.



Sorry for being off-topic but this is about X-Com.

 

[Moriouce]

The fences looks great by te way! Nice touch with the little gate.

 

[Sigur]

@Moriouce: Cheers. Yeah, that little gate makes the fence.




Alright, because I'll do anything but prepare for this Saturday's wargames show I'll be showing off stuff at I finished these fences!

Took me a while to finish them because I wanted to figure out a way to have them on swappable bases for even more varied application. In the end I went for magnets. Because these fences aren't only handy for sooo many games but also can pop up in lots of periods/settings. I got ten sections of 13cm each, so 1.30m or 4ft 3" of LOS-blocking goodness.