Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - now with my first Swahili buildings

[Diablo Jon]

Thanks guys.

I've started experimenting with epoxy resin for water features to model better looking water.  Oddly enough the water, in the photo, was made with probably one of the cheapest and easiest methods a modeller could do. PVA glue, a roll of bog paper, some blue and green paint and some gloss varnish.

[Diablo Jon]

It’s taken a while, not least because I had a fun week tracking down the source of an electrical trip in my wargames room/ garage that turned out to be the ancient strip lighting and then replacing to old lights with some funky new LED ones, but I’ve final completed the hill tiles for my modular gaming board. Theses are a combination of flat double height tiles and slopes from Sally 4th I gave the slopes some rocky outcrops for fun and because a lot of photos I’ve seen seen of African Kopje seem to have a lot of rocks. one double height tile and one slope also had a road modelled on. other than that they where finished in the same way as my previous tiles.

This picture of a south Africa hill was my inspiration for the rocky outcrops on my hill tiles



and some photos of my tiles

[OSHIROmodels]

Lovely 

[Hu Rhu]

Very nice.  Do you plan to add a Kopje or two?

[Diablo Jon]

Thanks guys.

 I have built a small stand alone Kopje

[gamer Mac]

Lovely job

[Plynkes]

Does it count as a kopje if it's in Malawi, though? 

Nicely done, Jon. Is that a home-made baobab we can see in the background there, or a commercial product? Brings a bit of African flavour, either way.

[Diablo Jon]

Does it count as a kopje if it's in Malawi, though? 

Nicely done, Jon. Is that a home-made baobab we can see in the background there, or a commercial product? Brings a bit of African flavour, either way.

Its a interesting point seems if I search for the term Kopje on line I get pictures of hills from all over Africa as if the term is basically now used for African hills, especially rocky ones, but I always thought it was an Afrikaner term and really something you'd find in southern Africa where a Boer had been.

Nice spot on the Baobab tree is was my first attempt at modelling one (I have another half finished on my painting desk) I wasn't really sure if I'd got the look or size right but I guess if you knew what it was suppossed to be I can't of done to bad a job 

[Plynkes]

Those things are effing massive, Jon. If you do them to scale with the figures, they will probably look way to big. I guess you have to find a nice compromise.

I have some nice toy ones I bought from the internet. But they are the other kind. The wide fat ones, rather than the tall slimmer ones.

Can't remember the make, but I quite like them...



I think yours looks great, though. And you don't see too many on people's gaming tables, I don't think.

[Diablo Jon]

Those things are effing massive, Jon. If you do them to scale with the figures, they will probably look way to big. I guess you have to find a nice compromise.

I have some nice toy ones I bought from the internet. But they are the other kind. The wide fat ones, rather than the tall slimmer ones.

Can't remember the make, but I quite like them...

I think yours looks great, though. And you don't see too many on people's gaming tables, I don't think.

I remember seeing yours a while back while searching the internet and thought it looked brilliant. I did go looking for toy ones, after that, I found one by Collecta but they where £30+ which seemed rather expensive. I think yours is an OOP Schleich one at the moment one of those is going on eBay for £300     being a cheapskate mine was made from some PVC pipe, a Kinder egg and some wire 

[Plynkes]

Yes, Schleich, that was it.  Didn't know they were OOP. Good job I snatched mine when I did, then.


Kinder Eggs, eh? Is there anything they can't do? Way back in the day I made a 40k heavy bolter pillbox/emplacement out of a Humbrol paint pot with half a Kinder Egg on top of it. 

[Diablo Jon]

Yes, Schleich, that was it.  Didn't know they were OOP. Good job I snatched mine when I did, then.


Kinder Eggs, eh? Is there anything they can't do? Way back in the day I made a 40k heavy bolter pillbox/emplacement out of a Humbrol paint pot with half a Kinder Egg on top of it. 

Ahh early 40K the scratch builders golden era chuck a few bits of plastic junk together stick on a GW plastic gun boom instant sci-fi death ... the best part of using kinder eggs is the excuse to scoff chocolate

[Diablo Jon]

Moving on to the river tiles for my modular African gaming board I thought it would be a good idea to do one tile as a test piece rather than jumping head first into doing all five at one. I did this because I wanted to modify the Sally 4th river tiles to make the river deeper and I wanted to make the river with epoxy resin. This gave me plenty of opportunity to balls things up so I figured wrecking one tile was better (and cheaper ) than wrecking five tiles.

I took a drill with a hole cutter to create a half circle, in the middle of the original river tile depression, for a deeper river (which you can see on the third picture down) that then meant, the original depression to represent the river on the tiles, could become steeper river banks which you often see, during African dry seasons, as the river level drops.

I had some fun with the epoxy resin as my attempts to block the ends of the river weren’t quite water tight which got a bit messy. I added a small amount of Tamiya mud green weather powder to the my first resin pour for some colour and then added a second clear top up layer of resin. The resin dries smooth so I used a gloss acrylic medium over the top to add some water flowing texture.

I added some plastic plants and used more green flocks closer to water of the river working out to the browns and yellows, of my other tile boards, at the tile edges. In theory when all laid out the river should look like a small streak of green life next to the water in a mass of dried out brown. In the end I think it came out pretty well so I just need to build the other four tiles now.

[Hu Rhu]

That is an excellent piece of terrain and certainly looks the part. If you were looking for some variation you could try and stretch out the sandbanks on either side of the water which is a very African scene.

[Diablo Jon]

That is an excellent piece of terrain and certainly looks the part. If you were looking for some variation you could try and stretch out the sandbanks on either side of the water which is a very African scene.

Yes when I was searching for pictures of African rivers there where quite a few pictures like that especially during the dry season when the water levels drop. Originally something like, the picture you posted, was going to be my plan the main issue was the Sally 4th laser cut tiles are only 12" square, and already have the holes cut for the river bed, so there wasn't really the room to do the wide river with sandbanks justice. Like most wargames rivers mine is really more of a stream. I haven't discarded the idea yet though as Sally 4th do beach and sea tiles which I could use to make a larger river (or lake) that I could get boats on....