Cat's DBN (A few more for the Brits)

[Cat]

Thanks folks!
 
And yes Herr Baron, the MiniFigs 2nd generation are the bestest!  We hateses the 3rd gen with their scale creeps and everybody at mad sprints and every horse in Europe, including artillery trains at full gallop all the time, grr.
 
Actually, I would be happy if any company was still making new sculpts at ~14.5mm toe to eye.  15mm has been abandoned as a size for Napoleonics, grr.  Essex started doing some new and improved sculpts awhile back, but then stopped.
 
Indeed, I am very wealthy in Owls rifles.  Originally painted for Empire III or Napoleon's Battles, and MiniFigs US sold infantry in blister packs of 24.
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[olicana]

Just noticed this thread. Thx for sharing.

Might I suggest that you invest £10-£15 in a coping saw for cutting foam board hill shapes and slopes. Far, far easier than using a knife and a very useful tool in any event.

[Cat]

Hmm, interesting tip. 

I have a coping saw.  I could see that being handy for more complex cuts.  The knife worked easily enough and cut cleanly with some small shavings falling loose.  I suspect the saw would create quite a pile  of staticky foam bits sticking to everything in sight.

[olicana]

Foam board saws well and the 'dust' isn't anything like as 'sticky' as polystyrene. For small jobs I cut inside and hoover. For bigger jobs  (say, cutting up a dozen 2'x2'x1" tiles at the same time) I do the cutting with a tarp / groundsheet laid down.

A coping saw is good for cutting anything up to a 1:3 gradient - that is shallow enough for troops to stand on without slipping down and is pretty close to the natural drop of a cloth laid over hill shapes. A fret saw is useful for cutting shaped edges deep across a tile.

Here is a blog link showing my process of cutting hill shapes:
http://olicanalad.blogspot.com/2015/04/take-to-hills.html

For straight cuts for anything 1" deep or less, the best tool is a Stanley knife and a steel rule.

I've cut up heaps of this stuff to make shapes to go under my 'table-cloth'. I've now settled on slope tiles (all with 1:3 slopes) and spacing tiles, all 8" wide and used up over 24 2'x2'x1" tiles so far. That's a lot of cutting

I can now make some pretty impressive ridges, etc. Here is my table for Vimeiro - the contours were done on the image (using MSPaint) to better show the hill shapes on the photo (the camera doesn't pick them out like the eye does) they are not the table.

[Cat]

Ooh, lovely table Olicana!
 
Scatter terrain for generic points games in DBN has size limits, which makes sense given the small size of the board.  Historical scenarios are set-up to whatever size is needed.  Then, there was another factor of wanting the top plateaus to be a minimum of 60mm across to hold an artillery stand which constrained total width at the base.

1:3, aka a 33% grade is definitely ideal, but was too luxurious for this.
 
So I did some slope testing with the stands for the game.  Infantry at 30mm deep would need to not slide off.  With 3/4" thick foam ~19mm high, going out to 30mm worked, even dropping to 25mm in a few spots.  Mostly a ~60% grade, with some parts going up as steep as ~75%.  This has proven to work well in games.  (For standard DBA games with close order infantry on 15mm deep bases, these hills would not work well at all.)

[Cat]

A handful of new stands ready for tomorrow's gaming.

A couple of stands of Foot Guards, 10 figures each for elite status.  They'll get some more stands and with flags later.  And some KGL light infantry in close and open order, plus a detachment for strongpoints (kneeling and prone poses help conceal the MiniFigs 3rd generation scale creep).