Well, I decided it was time I stopped painting figures for the LPL (
) and built some terrain instead...
- Partly this is because I haven't taken on a terrain project in a few years
- Partly because I have suddenly come into fresh copious supplies of pink styrofoam and cork bark (thanks to my personal shoppers, the eagle-eyed Silent Invader and Eric The Shed respectively)
- And partly because the appearance of the gorgeous new Lucid Eye 'Savage Core' range by Steve Saleh, has prompted me to finally tackle my box full of Copplestone (and other) cave people which has been sitting largely untouched on a shelf for a decade...
So I have decided to build a 'Cave Wars' table and game for our BLAM event in October.
(6 months should give even me long enough
)
I do already have a few Stone Age types painted, like these (well, some of them) seen in various LPLs in years past.
The objective will be to have around 60 figures finished to this standard in time for the game. As well as the terrain...
You can see my previous terrain project 'Quite a big African terrain project' here:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=20284.0That was also for a BLAM game - a Zulu War skirmish.
It looks like this:
Unfortunately, since then I think I've played on this set-up precisely twice. And that's a lot of terrain to have sitting on a shelf doing not very much.
So I took it into my head, that if I took the half of that African terrain that includes the donga or ravine, and set aside the more distinctively African half (with the kraal and the elephant grass), I could build something new BEYOND THE DONGA - giving me a more versatile (and thus useful) set of boards.
First, I thought of an Afghan hill village built into a mountainside for the North-West Frontier (I still might do that actually, as well).
But then I decided nubile cave girls were far more interesting than hairy Pathans, so settled on a Rider Haggard style escarpment, studded with perilous caves - and that these caves would be gameable. In a kind of Heroquest meets WWII German secret command bunker way (if you didn't have the Edai secret German base as a boy in the 1970's, I can tell you, you missed out:
http://www.hlj.com/product/ARI44481)
Right then. Down to business.
This is what passes for a plan in my world.
Not very thorough is it?
Not to scale, and not even done with a ruler. Shocking.
As you can see, there will be quite a bit of making it up as I go along.
In summary, I need quite a high stack of pink foam to house the cave system (3 x 50mm thick pink styrofoam 'space boards', designed for loft insulation - these are the same foam boards as the four baseboards that make up the original African terrain set).
This stack, 500mm deep x 1200mm long will be placed widthways across the end of the existing boards, then cut down to 1000mm across to match the 1000mm width of the short side of the existing terrain section. Thusly:
The end result will be a set of terrain 1700mm x 1000mm.
That's about five-and-a-half feet by three-and-a-half feet - which on a 6' x 4' table, is just about right. Leaving room for gaming paraphernalia around the edge of the game, but NEVER ON THE TABLETOP!!!!
As you can see from the cross-section plan, there will be a contoured 'lid' that sits on top of the cave system and caps it off until such time as protagonists enter the caves.
(That's assuming they can even survive the foothills and the donga and make it that far... )
You will also notice from the cross-section plan, that I need to build up the end of the existing terrain boards beyond the donga, because they currently slope downwards slightly - and to rise up to where the cave entrances will be in the hillside, I actually need the ground to rise quite steeply.
To achieve this, I'm going to use expanding foam filler to create an infill, and then carve it. I'm also going to use this to make the 'lid' to the caves.
I've been wanting to try expanding foam filler on some terrain for a while. I've used it on stage scenery and it's quite hard to control at the point of application, because it tends to expand off in wayward directions.
But it sticks irremovably to anything you apply it to, and basically, once expanded and set hard, it just becomes yet more solid styrofoam.
Should be an interesting experiement...
Okay, so here we have the 'stack' placed in position across the end of the existing terrain sections.
Looks like quite a jump up in height doesn't it?
You can see I've sketched out a rough plan of a cave system which I will cut out with a hot wire cutter.
Worm's eye view...
Having cut the topmost board to the correct 1000mm width, next job is to chamfer off the leading edge...
Still looks quite a jump up from the old terrain to the new terrain, but not quite so scary now...
Here's a bit of a cross section showing the gap that needs bridging...
And here's a line showing roughly the gradient I'm looking to infill with the expanding foam.
Looks steep, but there will be paths up it...
And so, we cut the first cave...
Once the 'lid' is lifted, there will be obvious 'open-topped' caves like this one (all will be more or less one figure wide, but with some larger chambers).
And then there will be connecting crawl-ways, arches and tunnels, which will not be open when viewed from above once the lid is removed.
There will also be at least one double-depth cavern cut down into the second level.
And more surprises which will not be revealed in this thread because I wouldn't want things to be too easy for anyone who actually ends up playing the game
And this is as far as I got with my hot wire cutter today: All the primary upper level caves carved out...
Honestly I have no idea if this is a project which is going to take me a few days or a few months.
Rather depends what else I have on, as to how often I come back to it and progress it. But updates will follow, so watch this space.
Although truthfully, if you look at my previous terrain projects, the techniques are all more or less the same, so there won't be anything too revolutionary.
Apart from the expanding foam adventure, obviously
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April 27, 2024, 10:16:00 PM
August 13, 2011, 03:20:43 PM
