Spring Terrain Roundup Friday night projects.

Well it's Friday night and tomorrow we are going to Recruits convention but we decided to do some more terrain work. I didn't get pictures of everything we worked on because we were also packing up for the con and I had other things on my mind.

Here's a nice shot of the orc tents arranged among some terrain. I think they look pretty good but I need to at least get a couple fire pits soon or I could hardly call it a camp.

My wife finished painting this small cottage. I think it looks pretty nice. We also worked on two other village buildings. Hopefully we will have a small village done soon.

I worked on some new trees. I had some stands in progress but I didn't like them so I put these together. They are made from pipecleaners with foamcore bases. I added small rocks to the bases to give them some ballast and help them stand up. They seem quite sturdy at this stage. The next step will be painting them with brown laytex paint then I will finish the bases and add terry cloth foliage to the limbs.

Well Saturday we are going to Recruits so I should have a con report either Sunday night or sometime Monday!

Spring Terrain Roundup "Orc Tents"

We decided to bring a project home with us today. We are all going to Recruits Convention in Lee's Summit Missouri this weekend so we took a couple days off work to get some stuff finished. Our daughter is also on spring break at school so we thought it would be a good time to get some family time in. The project we brought home was the rest of our orc tents. Six of them plus the one we finished several months ago.

Just a quick breakdown on how these things go together. First we built the frames out of sticks from our yard and foamcore bases. We used hot glue to put the frame together because it was much easier for this kind of structure than a slower setting glue. We then covered the structure with scraps of muslin and terry cloth. We cut the muslin into odd rectangles that were not too big to look like they could have been stolen from the tents and gear of non-orc armies. The terry cloth we used to simulate heavy fur hides and some of them were even cut into hide shapes. We used Aleens Tacky Glue to glue the cloth to the wood structure. After that set up we coated the entire outside with some slightly diluted Emlers wood glue. After that dried we coated the edges of the foamcore with elmers glue and dipped the base in sand to texturize it and protect it from the spray paint. After the base dried we sprayed the whole structure with Krylon Ultra Flat Brown from their cammo paints. That's pretty much how we assembled and prepped the tents.

After that we applied the paint. We tried to add some variety to each section of cloth and fur. We used mostly dry brushing techniques to apply the colors. Some of the sections we even painted in wide stripes as if they had been taken from a large striped pavilion. We then finished up the wooden supports in the doorways and drybrushed the edge of the base with Delta Cermacote trail tan.

Here are our six new tents and the one we already had done. The basic parts to our orc camp project. We still have to add watchtowers, a boss tent with interior, a slave pen, a gate, and several sections of log palisade among other things.

We managed to paint the six tents in the afternoon and finished just in time for dinner.

Spring Terrain Project Roundup Continued

Well after the family get together my wife and I got back into the studio with plans to paint up the tiled table. It was looking pretty good with it's cool blue base and considering how long it took to get all the tiles glued on we were excited to see it comming together.

First I laid down a drybrush or ocre yellow. I wanted some warmth comming up through the layers of paint especially with the very cool base.

Here is the table top with the ocre yellow drubrushing. The yellow looks a bit more intense in the photo than it actually was.


We then drybrushed a warm grey over that. We almost considered stopping here as it looked pretty nice over the table.

Here is a closeup shot of the table tiles at this stage.

We decided to mix the warm grey with a warm off white for a final drybrushing. I'm really happy we went to this stage because the table does look much nicer with this final stage of highlights. We were also careful to do heavier drybrushing in some areas to give the surface texture more variety.

Here is a closeup of the finished table top. Colors are a bit off in the photo but you get the idea.

My wife and I took turns drybrushing so I took some time to glue palpatine to his base for my statue project.

Also I've been forgetting to photo the orc tents. We this is one I finished last year when I assembled the rest of the tents. Eventually I hope they all turn out as nice as this one.

Here are the rest of the Orc tents we are currently working on.

All these projects on the table are ones I hope to finish up by the end of this next week. Some of them may not get as much finish as I had intended but they will all get done is possible.

More Spring Terrain Roundup!

Well we got back into the studio this morning and got quite a bit acomplished in a short time. Our daughter is on spring break at school so I'm planning on spending extra time with her this week working on terrain projects in the studio. It will mostly consist of finishing old projects but I've promised her at least one new building for one of her characters.

We got the grassland table top done and I think it looks great! The hills were already painted like this and they look even better on the new surface. I'm sure glad I went back and fixed the problems on this board and finished painting it.

We managed to get the tile table top basecoated with a cool grey coat of laytex paint. I think it's going to look quite nice when it's done. This table has taken literally years to come together mostly because it's tedious to glue down all those tiles and not something anyone wanted to do for long periods of time but I think the work is going to pay off nicely.

With any luck I'll be able to get back into the shop tonight to do some more painting on the tile table and perhaps work on a couple other projects as well.

Spring Terrain Project Roundup!

Well spring is finally here and looking around the studio we saw that we had a lot of unfinished terrain projects so we decided to take some time to rap up the ones that looked easiest to finish. We're also planning on wrapping up some of our miniature projects that have been nearly done for several months or longer. Today however we just worked on terrain.

We've been playing games on this 4'x4' table top made from masonite covered with terry cloth and painted with laytex paint. The table was never properly finished. I started painting the table brown then drybrushing green over that then I was going to drybrush some ocre lightly over that. When I did the brown and green I did it under very poor lighting so I missed a bunch of spots and the white terry cloth showed through. Ever since then I've planned to give the whole table a wash and repeat the green drybrush and add the ocre one but as the table was playable we kept putting that off. Tonight we got the wash done so we should be able to finish it up by monday.

I had this old statue project made from a Star Wars Palpatine action figure and a hirst arts base. I had the base done for a couple years now and it's been on the shelf. Today I cut a foamcore top and glued the figures joints so it wouldn't move.

After I got the top cut I used elmers wood putty from a squeeze tube to texture it. The top piece here and the statue will be painted as a weathered bronze while the base will be painted sandstone color.

The girls started this table top over a year ago. It's covered in irregular tiles cut from scrap pieces of mat board. We were going for a lost civilization or ancient alien look. They managed to wrap up the tile work tonight. I can't wait to see what this looks like painted!

A few months ago we cut out and based about 20 of these little paper tents we found a pattern for on the Games Workshop web site. These were suppose to be used in one game but that game fell through so we ended up with the 20 tents just kinds sitting arround. Eventually we got around to painting three of them up as just white canvas tents for a D&D game but the rest just gathered dust. I decided tonight to paint up another three in a drab military style. I also finished up a tan one with a desert base but didn't photograph it yet. We also did some work on some scratchbuilt Orc Tents we did the assembly on last year but I forgot to get a picture of those. If you look through my game reports you should see the white tents in a few places.

Well that was about six hours of work today and quite a bit acomplished. We have a family get together tomorrow but we're taking the rest of the day to try and get these projects a bit further along. We might even go back tonight for a late night session.

Some terrain sets and other products I may start selling.

Hello wargamers! Nathan “Ironworker” Miller here with some questions. I've developed a set of very tough and attractive hills for wargames. I've been using my set for about 9 months and have played dozens of games on them not to mention that my 11 year old daughter drags them out several times a week and plays on them with miniatures while I'm working so they get a lot of use and after nine months of hard play they still look as good as new. I'm been playing miniature games for over 20 years and this is the first set of hills I've owned I have been truly happy with and that have held up to this kind of abuse.

I'm a bit of a mercenary gamer. I've sold a lot of painted minis and some terrain and I've even done a few greens for a small miniature company though I don't really sculpt at this time. I've never really considered offering regular products for sale until recently. Now I have several product ideas I've developed based on projects I have done in the last few years. These projects were all hand made terrain projects and the products I'm looking to sell will all be hand made as well just produced in larger numbers. The hardest thing to figure out is what kind of prices I should put on these products so I'm trying to do a bit of research on that.

The first product I'm testing out are my hills.

This is an example of what I'm calling my “Skirmish” set of hills. It's a six hill set. Three small single level hills roughly 8”x12” base size. Two medium double level hills roughly 12”x16” base size. One large double level hill roughly 16”x24” base size. I may go up to a triple level hill on the large one when these go into production. These hills are made from Styrofoam and will be mounted on Masonite (MDF) board. The ones pictured are mounted on chipboard but they are just prototypes. The hills are textured with terrycloth (the stuff towls are made of) and sand and painted with latex paints. This makes the hills much tougher than flocked hill. Miniatures stand up on the surface quite well and they haven't damaged any of my minis during play.

What do you think of these hills as a product?

How much do you think a set of 6 hills similar to the above hills would be worth?

How interested are you in owning a set of hills like these?

Do you think wargamers in general might be interested in owning a set of hills like these?

If your not comfortable answering these questions in public would you please pm me or e-mail me at: theborderprinces@yahoo.com

Here is a nicer shot of the largest hill I took just after I finished my 10 hill test set.

Here is a closeup of a miniature on the lower tier of the large hill.

I'm currently planning on setting up a merchant booth at a local convention this fall with these hills in sets and some other products as a public test run. If your interested in details on that please e-mail me at the above address.

Thank you!

Ironworkers Supply Expidition 03-01-08

Today we had a family trip to Springfield Missouri. The weather was nice and traffic was bumper to bumper because the entire state has been suffering from cabin fever. Of course any trip to any town of size for us is nothing more than an excuse to go buy wargame stuff.

Our first stop was Metagames Unlimited which has to be one of the nicest game stores I've ever been in. Clean bathrooms and they actually keep all the lights on. That alone makes it an unusual place to find racks and racks of miniatures and shelves of game books but it's nice when your use to wearing full hazmat gear any time you enter a store with a Magic the Gathering poster. My daughter bought a Reaper elf mini and my wife got a unit of Cygnar Long gunners for her Warmachine army. I picked up a pack of Reaper Savages and a Yeti as well as a pack of heads to use for conversions. I have another pack of savages and both them and the Yeti will be a part of my Astounding Adversaries project.

After that we stopped by Hobby Lobby and picked up a bunch of foliage for a jungle terrain feature. I also picked up some Testor's Model Master acrylic paints and brushes.

After Hobby Lobby we went to Toys R Us but couldn't find anything we needed. Actually we did find a great ship hull I wanted for my tramp steamer project in a Lego kit but the kit was $80 and after spending about $90 on game supplies at the other two places we decided that was a bit too much. I might check the Lego web site and see if I can get the hull as a separate piece and perhaps save a few bucks. I'll probably just make my first steamer out of foam core and cardboard instead.

We also went by the Bass Pro Shop international headquarters because my daughter loves to look at the fish tanks and wildlife displays. All I did was drool at some of the guns I wanted to purchase but couldn't afford.

Oh I also thought I would also show off another project real quick. It's a beer stein I panted at the local pottery shop. I hope to paint up several themed stein for my game room. This one of course is my stylish commie punk stein.

Projects for the rest of 2008

I decided I needed to put together a project list for the rest of the year. These are in the order I'm working on them but some are larger than others. Basically I'm trying to focus on each project for at least a month and some of them two. I don't expect to always get everything done for them that month but hopefully by setting aside some time where the project will get priority will help me get as much done as possible. The year is pretty split between Pulp adventure projects and some Sci-Fi armies for No-Limits. I'm trying to set up some army list for my own 23rd century space exploration setting. I've made the graphics below so that when I'm listing an update for a project it will be clear what project I'm working on it for. These are just miniature projects. I will also be adding three or four terrain projects soon but terrain tends to be a colaborative effort at our house so I'll list those seperately. My goal is to also have most of the figs for each project aquired and assembles/primed by the start of each project.

This was my January/Febuary project. My goal was to get my pulp adventurer collection up to 30-50 miniatures. At the start of the year I think I had five and now I have 26 unless you count the Pulp Figures Cops I just finished as personalaties. I know I fell short but I nearly got all my pulp personalaties on hand compleated. I have only 7 or so unfinished at the moment though I have a few more on the way. I think I can work the rest in during the comming months.

This is my project of March. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it because I have a lot of uses for such a project. I have 5 Tramp Steamer Sailors on my workbench right now and another 10 on order. The Tethys will be scratch build probably out of foamcore, cardboard, and wood. I've built a couple sailing ships but never a steamer so this should be interesting.

My April project will be Adversaries for my Pulp games. These will be creatures like mummies and dinosaurs and the like and perhaps a few villians as well.

This project is for May. I already have six of these guys painted up and another 18 or so based and primed so this project should go smoothly. My end goal is to have 20-30 Marines.

In June I plan to work on my small Freikorps army. I already have 10 done from last year and 30 more primed and ready to paint so this is another project that is looking good.

My July project will be French Foreign Legion. Unfortunately I don't have any figs for this project yet but I'm looking to do about 20-30.

This is my August project. I plan to build a rag tag force of about 30-40 space pirates and a few support weapons and vehicles. I have a lot of figs for a lot of lines and I plan to make these guys pretty diverse so I don't expect a problem getting the force together. This will be a No Limits force.

For Sepetember and October I plan on doing more of a modeling project. I'm going to be building some planes from the 20s and 30s as well as doing a few more pilots. I don't really have any kits at the moment but I know where to get them so I'm going to start collecting them soon.

In November I plan to do the Martian Soviet Socialist Republic. I have some figs for this project but I plan to aquire more and some support items as well. November just seemed like a good month for a communist uprising. This will be another 20-30 figure army for No-Limits. I'm going to focus on models with heavy build gear and over built support weapons and armor. Vehicles will be tracked and wheeled for the most part.

Finally in December I'll be doing the Terra/Lunar Alliance. These are the "Champions of Democracy" type forces for my 23rd century No Limits settting. The T.L.A. will be sleaker and more modern looking than the M.S.S.R. and will also consist of 20-30 figs. The vehicles will be high tech and hover/skimmer type craft.