Rut's Garden of War

[vikotnik]

After finishing Nosferatu, I felt there should be something colourful again.

Lurch from MiniaturicuM and me chatted last autumn about a colourful table with lots of artificial flowers. I immediately started looking for possible miniatures and thought that one side should be represented by undead. As I have nearly the complete range of Confrontation Undead piling in my lead mountain, the choice was easy.
The table should be easy and fast to build and transport (1mx1m) and not too expensive for a change.
The first game is to be held at our local convention 'Do or Dice' on March 13.

Lurch suggested using the Orphans from Zenit miniatures as the good guys and I immediately liked them, so these will be the good guys:

They should paint up brightly enough to be worthy antagonists to the undead, luckily, he had them in stock and sent them over.

The construction of the frame is already finished and the first undead are painted. If all goes well, I will post some pics this evening...

[Dr. The Viking]

YES!

I'm sure it'll be just perfect. The confrontation minis are excellent.

What is Rut's garden?! Just an idea of your own!?

[white knight]

Good call on the orphans, I've been keeping an eye on them myself for some time, but managed to resist their temptation so far.

[dijit]

Looks really interesting, I'll be keeping an eye out on this!

[Admiral Benbow]

Looks like an interesting next game, Vikotnik. Hope to see the table soon ...
 

[NurgleHH]

Very, very nice. Let us make a test game with lurch and grimm.

[dijit]

Very, very nice. Let us make a test game with lurch and grimm.

It's enough to make those of us north of the border jealous, that you can say things like that! The rest of us have to wait for you guys to present them at the various conventions, whilst you guys get to play them long before they're ready. Green I am, green, especially if it's anything like Nosferatu.

[vikotnik]

Thanks for your interest, guys! 
The pic above is from the website of Zenit Miniatures, forgot to mention that...


Last weekend, I started with the basic construction of the table. As mentioned before, this one should be quite straightforward and not too expensive, the opposite of Nosferatu...

I found these at the DIY store and the measurements of the table were instantly clear: 1m x 1m!


Some insulating styrofoam was bought to fill the frame.

Add to that a bottle of PVA and I spent nothing more than EUR 20,- for the basic table...

A basic frame was made from the wooden strips shown above.

The styrofoam was connected with Cocktail sticks and glued with PVA:


After that, the foam was cut to the measurement of the frame and glued into it. I left it slightly larger so that it had to be squeezed inside the frame to make the whole table more rigid. The edges were filled with some elastic acrylic I had somewhere in my workshop.


I went over the flat and boring surface with a miniature blowtorch to make it more irregular, a cavity for a small pond was added:


Some hills made from leftover styrofoam ware added. To give them a more irregular surface and to prevent these small particles from getting everywhere, I tried to brush them with acetone to melt a kind of 'rocky' surface into them. While at it, I tried to deepen the basin for the pond in the same way with the result of that devilish stuff burning right through BOTH layers of styrofoam! CURSES!!!!
Now I had a hole right near the middle of my table...

After calming down, I mixed up all the white glue I had bought, some water, a drop of washing-up liquid, lots of sand and a bit of colour to have this:

I know what it looks like, but I can assure you: It really smelled like PVA glue!

And spread it on the table:


While spreading, I sprayed the surface with a fine mist of water to keep it from drying. After the surface had been covered, I sprinkled all kinds of sand and gravel over it. When this was dry, I gave it a coat of thinned down PVA glue mixed with some sepia ink:

A close-up:

I already looks a bit like sandy potting soil! Man, I don't even need to paint it, how good is that? 

Some static grass was flocked here and there over the table. The edges are a bit harsh and the green is too intense but I will correct that later:


More in-progress pics some time after this weekend...

[dijit]

Looks great so far!

[Dr. The Viking]

Looking good. You're very effective.

How will you match the bases and the table if you don't paint it? Can the same technique be applied when basing?

I had never thought of applying propanone directly to polystyrene... I would have expected more "total disaster". But I guess I will have to give it a go.

[Sangennaru]

looks promising! i LOVE those orphans!

[Doomhippie]

But Rut's Garden looks a lot mote tidy everytime I see it. I mean the real garden. Don't let her see your masterpiece here or she'll get to work on it... (we're talking about the scenery here, guys... no giggling!).

Seriously, I love this table. Looks really good.

[Hammers]

Sand and PVA, that's so simple and effective. How much sand could you stir into the gop and still get a durable surface?

[vikotnik]

Cheers, Lars! I hope to see You in my basement for a testgame soon!! Mrs. vikotnik has seen the finished table this evening and was pleased. Phew! She especially liked how I arranged the flowers according to her advice.

Hammers, I stop adding sand to the PVA glue as soon as it does not drop from a spatula anymore. You can then almost sculpt it.

When the surface was finished, I had to think of something for inserting the flowers into the table. Over the years, I have seen many wargame tables and I must say that I do not like the looks of bases with vegetation on them that are scattered over the table. Not for this project at least. So I came up with this:


...and drilled a hole in the soil:


...the I hot-glued a piece of the black tube into it:


I scattered the tube-holes over the table where the vegetation should be. This was quite stupid work. The hot-glue melted through the styrofoam in one of the holes and I severely burnt my index finger, aaargh!!!
The pond was made using Vallejo Water effects, this time, I used the blue-tinted stuff:

Again, I applied it with a pallette knife and dabbed the surface to give it some direction. Easy and fast.

I listened to Cathedral's 'Garden of Unearthly Delights' during the process of building the table and found the text of the song 'The Garden' quite fitting. So I decided to write a part of it on the frame:

I did it quite fast, it could certainly be more elaborate. However, I will use that again in a later project where I will do his in a more sophisticated way. Before I did that, the frame was stained and the upper edge was painted black. A thin (Well, relatively...)golden line was painted around the edge.

There is another thread by Funghy-Fipps on this forum mentioning Cathedral:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=13918.0
Check it out!

Here are the flowers:


And, finally, some views of the finished table:





The colour of the water in the pond will even out eventually, looking less like plastic and more like a water-filled hole in the ground. The most interesting thing with this project is to keep it straightforward and not to loose myself in perfecting details that no one besides me would notice anyway... This time, no scenic elements on the table have bases of any kind, the skull, the pieces of wood and the stones are simply put on the table as they are, the wood and stones are not even painted.

In one corner, there is a very special plant, newly designed by Apple in California vikotnik in Schleswig-Holstein:
The iplant:



 

That's it so far, now off to paint some miniatures!!!

[white knight]