On the subject of hedges

When looking at my terrain collection I was amazed by the lack generic terrain I have for European set games! My collection currently lacks sufficient trees, hedges, fences, stonewalls and other bits and pieces. To partially solve the problem I have made some modular hedges using cheap grass mats and some flock I had lying around. The result is quite satifying for the amount of money and time spend. These hedge pieces will be used for some Very British Civil War games I intend to play well actually they will be Very Belgian Civil War games! As you can see the hedges are all made up in small pieces so you can easily arrange them as you I find suited.

I was wondering do you guys have sufficient generic terrain or is your collection such as mine a mix of styles and center pieces without a clear line?

Dark age village!

Hi, as some may have noticed there was a slight delay in posts as I enjoyed a great holiday in Salou in the past week! Now back in Belgium adjusting to the rather modest weather, I've decided to share some terrain pieces I've made earlier this holiday. I decided to make these pieces as I wanted some generic dark age houses for historical and fantasy skirmishes. First of all I made some dead easy A-framed houses based around a cartonboard core. The thatching was done by using my flax and PVA glue method which is easy but really messy. The planking was made out of stirring sticks which were extremly easy to cut as I've recently bought a really good multi-cutter.

I've also made a smaller granary using the same technics as in the previous buildings. The granary is elevated from the ground by poles.

Another shot of the granary.

I've also made some bush bases by using some fake plastic grass mat pieces based on a 3mm hardboard base.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures!

Part 1: Scratchbuild pirate ship

Hi, here are some pictures of a new scratchbuild! This time I'm doing an attempt to make a sturdy pirate ship. I was inspired to scratchbuild my own ship when I was going through some old pirate books. The hull of this ship was made out of a a mix of thick and thin cartonboard as is the upper structure. After I made the basic shape I decorated the hull and upper structure with scraps of thin wood and pieces of wood for the bow! The next step in the build is to decorate the cabin with small statues and all that sort of stuff. I'm also intending to make a railing out of push pins and pieces of wood.

A close-up of the cabin and the back of the ship. I've also started to build some small rowing boats which are each able to carry 8 sailors or soldiers. These boats are almost finished and will appear on the blog this month.

I hope you enjoyed this small side project!

Greets,

Small dark age farm

Hi, here's a recently finished terrainpiece that I've made to test some new materials and techniques I've found! The house was made by making a basic shape out of thick cartonboard, this shape was covered with wooden "placematts" ideal to fast construct wooden houses. The removable roof was also made out of cartonboard and was covered with dried banana leaves. The fencing was made by drilling holes in the base which I used to base the poles which support the twig fence.

Here's a close up of the fencing, which was first covered with two layers of diluted PVA, afterwards basecoated with three coats of scorched earth and drybrushed with a lighter tone.

The first new material I tested were dried banana leaves! This material is ideal as rooftiles for primitive housing as it looks really old and is very easy to cut.

The second interesting new material I used was some sort of garden fencing made of small branches and twigs. This material is ideal for woven fences which were mostly seen in the Dark ages but can serve through the ages in all kind of different settings.

I hope you enjoyed this small post about new materials!

African native fort

Hi, here are some photo's of a new terrain piece I've been making for my Mbuij Mayi/ Darkest Africa setting. This time I decided to make a Boma or a fortified place where civilians could hide during a raid of slavers. I was inspired when I read some interesting things on Wikipedia. I also did some further research on Congolese fortifications in books of the colonization of the Congo by Leopold II.

"Fortifications. Angolan armies at times made extensive use of fortifications. In a 1585 campaign against the Portuguese, the Ndongo for example constructed palisaded camps, each a day's journey apart. Use of strong defensive positions on hilltops or in forests was also common, as was the use of fortifications in offensive maneuvers. The Imbangala for example usually built a strong fort in enemy territory to bait opponents into exhausting their strength against it. Some of these positions could be quite formidable, with trenches, parapets, hidden roads, sharpened stake traps, mutually supporting bulwarks, and covered trenches to protect against artillery." from wikipedia

After some research I decided to built a generic round fort with parapets and palissades, here are some photo's. I started the built with the search of some old terrain I had lying around that was never finished.

Then I added the huts, the outer and inner pallisade. afterwards I filled the gaps between the pallissade with plaster to from the parapets.

Then I textured the piece with PVA glue and white sand and give it two basecoats of scorced earth.

Hopefully it will be finished soon!

Greets,

Old School Terrain, part 5

Hi, here's another picture from my collection of old terrain pieces! With these pieces I've stumbled into the model and terrain building hobby. This piece was as my the entire collection built and painted by my father. This building was built to represent a Rohan house for my Lord of the Rings skirmish games when I was completly fascinated by the trilogy. For the people who are waiting to finally see my castle of Helmsdeep ... Bad news the castle is still located on my closet and is still covered in dust!

Colonial houses

Hi, here's finally a new and decent post with some picture of my new terrain for my ongoing VSF-project. This time, two colonial houses which will be used as part of my British colonisation plans of Mbuij Mayi! These buildings were made as generic as possible and with materials which you can find in every household.

The houses some months ago:

The buildings are made out of cartonboard and based on soft hardboard textured with sand and PVA.

The houses some minutes ago:

The first house with a small shed, I really like the vines on the side which were made by attaching clumps of foliage with hotglue. The bases are decorated with the usual mix of flock and aquarium plants.

The front of the second house, the windows were made out of some sort of plastic material (really don't know the name even not in dutch) and were framed with pieces of used matches.

The two houses together, I've tried to imitate some sort of rusty tiled roof. In real the roofs are looking a bit better than in the pictures.

The mission post, will it be able to resist native attacks or will the post be overrun?

Greets,

Old School Terrain, part 4

Hi, here's a new part of my old school serie of terrain! This time, the barn as all of my old pieces the basic shape has been made out of wood and covered with scraps of woods and tar. This building has seen many battles, as kit was often the barn where the riders of Rohan stalled their fierce steeds. During such a battle all of the riders started on foot and were forced to fight their way through the village in an attempt to mount (gaining them 2 dices in a charge and the ability to trample!) My collection of Rohan cavalry consist out of 18 riders of which 6 are armed with bows and several heroes such as Eomer and Theodred. I hope you enjoyed the post as I'm unable to show any of my recently painted miniatures due to a painting contest in which you aren't allowed to post your miniatures online before the contest ends.

Greets,

Old School Terrain, part 3

Not much talking just a picture of the collection! This time the windmill of the medieval village! This is the highest piece of the terrain collection except for the massive fortress of helmsdeep. A cool feature of the windmill is that the blades can actual rotate by rotating a frisco stick on the backside of the windmill's tower. Stay tuned as I'm showing my fortress of helmsdeep in part 8!

Now, I need to dust off the fortress and it's surrounding hill, it has been up my closet for probably 2 years.

Greets,

Old School Terrain, part 2

Hi, here's the second part of my old school terrain collection while my small uruk-hai army's bases texturing is drying. Yesterday I've managed to paint up 15 uruk-hai warriors including a berserker and a four men engineer team complete with bomb! Next in the painting queue are some leaders such as Lurtz and 6 warg riders. I've also based a bunch of mutants, monsters and gang members for my Chaos on the Red Planet! Back to the terrain, here you can see a small cottage which is part of a larger group of farm houses. A windmill and large farm will follow soon, so stay tuned!

Greets,

Old School Terrain, part 1

Hi, here's the first piece of a rather large collection of terrain that my father built and painted for me when I started to play Lord of the Rings skirmishes in 2006. Nice to know is that my father had no experience in building model terrain before he started to build terrain for me with as piece de résistance: the massive fortress of Helmsdeep! All of the building were made around a wooden base decorated with pieces of scrapwood, cartonboard and smeared with some sort of tar (the stuff used to seal roofs).

The church was one of the nicest buildings of the collection! The roof tiled with handcut cartonboard rooftiles which was a very laborious task. The door was made out of a piece of dark hardwood, I guess and the cross was made of soft wood carved with a Stanley knife. This building was extensivly used in Lord of the Rings skirmishes in which Rohan warriors were tasked to defend their village against all sorts of invaders from Orcs and Warg to even Elves! I hope you liked this nice piece of old school terrain collection as more is to follow soon!

Greets,

More jungle bits

Well, I entended to stop building jungle terrain but I couldn't resist. This time I made four small vegetation bases and two large obstacles which will be used by natives to protect their villages against large predators or simply to block British railroads.

Maybe I will add more jungle. As I can be used for both 28mm and 20mm with a bit of imagination. But first of all I need to paint some miniatures!

The four small vegetation bases made with the same materials as my other jungle pieces.

The rear of the two rather large barricades, how large are those Mbuij Mayian predators?

The front of the barricades, the obstacles are made by using all sorts of twigs from my stashpile.

Obstacle 1, decorated with the usual mix of aquarium plants.

Obstacle 2, ready to hold of some predators or british supply trains!

Greets,

Outpost Henry finished!

Hi, here's my finished British outpost Henry! I started the build in June 2010, can believe it took my so long to finish the fort. The fort finally received his corrugated roof and foliage and is now ready to be used in some games (still need to finish off some porters, British and African warriors though!)

Some other post about the build:

Phase 1: http://wargameterrain.blogspot.com/2010/06/some-terrain.html

Phase 2: http://wargameterrain.blogspot.com/2010/12/outpost-henry-near-completion.html

I also plan to add a flagpole (thanks to Paul for the tip, I completly forgot that!) and some furniture for the inside of the fort such as field beds, weapon rack, supplies, a stove, ... when I have some good ideas and I'm in a terrain building mood

In this picture you can see a converted 28mm Wargames Factory British officer for scale purposes. He's located at the most fortified side of the fort which is enwalled with large tree trunks. This side of the fort also has a doorway which leads to the enwalled yard.

Here's you can see the front of the fort with the same 28mm figure.

On this picture you can clearly see the corrugated roof which I painted with a variety of grey colors and than added a Devlan Mud wash to represent rain marks.

Another shot of the fort, the foliage used to decorate the base was a homemade mix "woodfoliage", some ordinary green static grass and clumps of foliage. Before I decorated the base with flock I added some plastic plants to make the fort fit with my massive collection of jungle terrain.

And to finish, the fort with his removable rooftop.

Greets,

Outpost Henry near completion!

Hi, here are some pictures of my outpost I'm building for my 1880 British! The fort is now basecoated, drybrushed but is waiting for a small corrugated roof and some additional drybrushing, foliage and flock. I really like the look of the fort but I'm dissapointed with the removable roof as the cartonboard has warped a bit!

The fort which will be used as an outpost for the British expedition force in Mbuij Mayi.

The inside of the fort, this room will probably be furnished with fieldbeds, a fire and maybe a weapon rack.

Greets,

Teepee village

Hi, here a post about a recent terrain project "an indian village". The village consist of 4 teepee's, a campfire, some bowls and a rack that's used to dry and craft furs. I will use this village in several setting from the past to the far future as part of an indiginious way of living.

The teepee's were made by making a frame out of 6-7 sticks and hold together by rope and hotglue. After that the frame was carefully taped with papertape and covered with silicone. The silicone was applied by using a stick and textured when almost dry with my fingers. When dry I covered the teepee's with a light brown reddish color and drybrushed with a beige color. The decorations were painted using a cheap black hobbypaint such as all the paints used.

The teepee's are almost ready but I still need to paint the doors, bases, bowls and the campfire.

The entire village. The campfire was made with hotglue and bits of twig.

The bowls and jars.

I hope you enjoy the photos

Greets,

European trees

Hi, here's are some picture of a recent experiment on how to make cheap european style trees. They turned out quit nice and again they are simple and cheap to build. The most costly part of the trees is the flockage on the tree and base. The body of the tree is made out of branches pulled out a spare piece of fencing material.

Trees built?

- 6 small ones

- 3 large ones

Build time?

- Again an hour (excluding dryingtime)

The trees in an 28mm fantasy village.

Another shot of the trees.

A picture with all the trees.

Greets,

Some terrain,...

Hi, here's some progress on my colonial/VSF terrain. Currently I'm building the following terrain pieces:

- British fort

- 3 jungle trees

- Some bushes

- The riversteamer "the queen of Argyll" sandbags and upperdeck added

- Shanty town (15-20mm) now with some hardboard bases

Here's my British colonial fort, the fort is entirely build out of wood. More specified, twigs, wooden sticks and lots of woodchips. The fort is based on a soft sort of hardboard which can easily cut with a metalplier.

The fort isn't based on real colonial forts but is just a kind of blockhouse with an exterior artillery emplacement. The fort exists out of 3 levels, the floor, second level and flat roof of which there are two playable. The exterior artillery emplacement is walled with some twigs I've sawn to the same size.

The basic construction.

The side of the fort with firing holes.

A photo with some plastic 28mm British who are manning the outer defense line of the fort, this place will be used to place some artillery, gardners or gatling guns.

And at last some new jungle trees, you can never have enough of them! Here you can see them in the first fase of construction, twigs just glued to their hardboard base and textured with fine white sand. The most difficult stage of making these trees is to find the right shaped twigs! Now my special twig stash is used up.

Greets,

Keep on rock'in!

Hi, here are some pictures of an old but nice project. This time some rockformations, ideal for lotr and warhammer skirmishes because of their "made" look.

Tools used

- Hotwire tool

- Stanleyknife

- Brushes

Materials used

- Polystrene

- PVA

- Sand

- Static grass

- 2 tones of grey paint

How to

1) Cut the polystrene pieces into smaller pieces.

2) Carve the edges with a stanleyknive and the hotwire tool (and runes if wanted).

3) Add PVA and sand to the horizontal surfaces.

4) Paint the entire piece with a dark grey.

5) Paint the entire piece with a lighter grey.

6) Flock the piece.

7) Ready to use!

A close up of some of the larger pieces.

The standing rock with rune carvings.

The biggest rockformation of the entire set.

Greets,