Four Times the Fun [Terrain Completed Jan 19]

[Warren Abox]

Since the local gaming scene in town ain't much for a quirky gamer like me*, I've been trying to figure out a way to do more online wargaming.  After an convo with an online buddy who lives a full ocean and a half away from me, inspiration struck.  We both love the tactile nature of wargaming, so something like Vassal is off the table.  The question was "how to wargame via webcam"?  The easy answer is to have one guy host the game while the other sits and watches the table from afar.  The other answer was to have two setups, much like people who play chase via snail mail.  

A wargame version might look something like this. (Link.)

Or even this. (Link.)

Neither of those felt quite right to me.  Especially since I wanted to have enough physical goods to allow four guys on four continents to be able to play games with each other.  Serendipitously, I was even then in the process of winnowing out old figures that never saw much use...mostly Pendraken 10mm fantasy figures.  Literally on the way to the garbage can, the wargaming muse came upon me.  I had enough 10mm figures for four complete, if rather eclectic, forces.  All I needed was four sets of identical terrain.

And thus, Four Times the Fun Was Born.  Now, I'm not quite ready to spring my surprise on my good buddies, but I can show you lot what I've been cooking.  It's a simple set-up, small and skirmishy.  Everything will fit into a shoebox for ease of shipping. (And cost!  I love these guys, but I'm not about to send a twenty pound box halfway around the world three times.)

So far I've got a short length of stream with a bridge and a ford, a single house/hut, a patch of broken ground, a forest, and fifteen inches of hedges.  The canopy of the woods (made of green scrubbers) lifts off and will be drybrushed in pale yellow and white to break up the dull greenish color.  When done, it will look more like the hedges which are made of the same material.  The woods and broken ground are based on CDs, to give you an idea of the scale of things.



The houses are made from children's square blocks, trimmed, detailed, and painted up.  The roofs are basic towels stiffened and glued with PVC.



Thanks to the small scale of each individual project, the whole thing is going together ridiculously fast.  When done, the boxes will have what you see plus a fabric ground cloth 18-inches long by 22-inches wide, and a nice big hill to block line of sight.  It should be too much terrain to fit all on the cloth at one time.  I may even whip up some small wizard towers before shipping these off - it is a fantasy terrain set after all!



With the figures at hand, we'll probably run with something simple like "Song of" or maybe GoalSystem Delves.  I've been meaning to try the latter, but haven't had a worthy opponent.  Within a few weeks I should have three!

Any suggestions on quick and simple terrain items to add to the mix?  There may be room left in the shoeboxes, and I'd like to fill it up as much as possible before the end of the month.

*Good guys, but they chase the latest New Hotness Ruleset.  A good thing in that they keep the game shop in business, but just not my style.  I favor small scale and slightly more obscure games like those mentioned or the Osprey rulesets.

[Warren Abox]

Oh, and just for the sake of completeness, here are the four sets of figures to be included:

1 x Minotaur
1 x Ogre with rock
1 x Ogre with Club
3 x Skeleton Archers
2 x Skeleton Swords
1 x Mummy
1 x Skeleton Hero/Tomb King
1 x Dogman w/sword
1 x Dogman w/spear
2 x Orc w/sword
1 x Orc w/bow
1 x Orc w/spear
1 x Human wizard
1 x Human hero w/sword and shield
1 x Halfling Hero
1 x Dwarf w/axe
1 x Elf w/bow

That's if I can resist spending money on more figures from Irregular.  It would be nice to have a couple of actual themed forces instead of this dog's breakfast of figures.

[beefcake]

Nice idea. Will you be using something like a hex board to make movement easier (or even squares to make it even easier, N,S,E,W movement)?

[Warren Abox]

Nice idea. Will you be using something like a hex board to make movement easier (or even squares to make it even easier, N,S,E,W movement)?

I'm anticipating setting up webcams to broadcast things as they occur.  Since it's a casual game with good friends, I don't anticipate we will need that level of accuracy.  It'll all be done in real time, so we can chat back and forth about intentions and such.  That's one of the reasons I'm leaving the terrain more representative - that is to say, with hard lines that make everything as obvious as possible.  The woods are all perfect circles, the houses pretty much perfect squares, and so on.

If all else fails, we can resort to the magic 50/50 to settle disputes, but knowing these guys I don't think that will be necessary.  Heck, we'll probably just do gentleman's honor on the dice rolls, soo.

[Elbows]

I played Furt's excellent BOTS Gladiator game via Skype with a buddy across the country back when we had more time.  That's hex based so it's obviously much easier (and it's a Gladiator game so we only needed 2-4 figures).  It was a good time though.

[Gabbi]

Great project. Love both intentions/motivations and the results so far. Have fun!

[Warren Abox]

Added a hill to each box and succumbed to temptation.  More figs are on their way.


Still need to dirty-up the drop cloth and complete a couple more terrain items, though.  Just want to add a little more diversity to the potential battlefield:

[Warren Abox]

The terrain on these tele-play games is complete.  Now I just need to paint up eight complete factions of figures.

I figured that, this being a fantasy game, I should have at least one fantastic piece of terrain.  So I slapped together a big cork and a wooden sphere to make a small hedge-wizard's hut:



And here's the whole collection laid out and ready for play.  It's a solid little box of terrain that took just three weeks to assemble, not bad considering what's shown here is one of four.  Altogether the four boxes cost less than $20 including the plastic tub.  That's mostly due to an extensive bits box, but I did make good use of natural materials and free coffee stirrers for planking, too.  Anyway, this will do the job nicely. 

[white knight]

Very cool! I like this project very much.

[Reed]

I wish my friends did something like this for me