[Terrain]¶
Modular Fence System¶

I worked on some more bases today, I have 20 in total ready, now I need to wait for the balsa wood.


[Terrain]¶
Modular Fence System¶

I bought the MDF sheets last week, and started Saturday to work on the bases. The ordered balsa wood was on backorder, but should arrive this week as well.

I started to cut the boards using my Proxxon KG50 using the spacer. This makes sure the connecting edges are all the same width.

The rest of the way I cut with a coping saw.

The undersides where then sanded, so they were flat.

Next I drew two lines on the top side, the area between them will remain flat, the area to the outside will be sloped down.

I started the sloping by cutting a ~20° (the diagonal from the lower corner to the line marked on top from the center 10mm strip) angle at each corner, again to make the seam between two segments as even as possible.

The rest was cut freehand and then sanded.

All pieces done so far:


[Terrain]¶
Modular Fence System¶

In our recent game (and first ever) of Warfork Fantasy Battles - Warhammer for Adults it became apparent that my supply of linear obstacles is quite limited - the walls you see on the photos in the AAR are all that I have. Among them only three corner pieces and no gates. Also, I do not have any sections to represent destroyed parts - which would have been of use with the cannon rules. Besides, these walls were done around 1998 - a time when my skill was a lot less developed than today.

Lets do some terrain!

What I do not like about many linear obstacles that you find pictures of online or which are even available to buy, is to recognize them as linear wargame modules. To illustrate what I mean lets take a look at the first fences I built for Warhammer 40,000 many many years ago:

The way the fence posts are placed is not as you would find them in reality, the posts would be evenly spaced, not two near each other as where two sections meet in the model fence.

So when designing my new fantasy fences, I thought of how to design them to disguise the obvious joins of the sections. The joins will be visible anyway, as there will be a physical join and I probably will not manage to line them up perfectly - what I am trying to achieve is to not have the joins obvious at first glance.

In the end I settled for the following design (designed in OpenSCAD):

The idea is, that the half posts on both ends join up to form a full post, like in the following two pictures:

The balsa wood for the posts and logs is ordered, the base plates I plan to get from the local DIY store. I will ask for sheets of 5mm MDF in 6" width - this way all the sections will have the same width. The long sides I will then cut by hand to get them in irregular shapes.

Let's see how this will turn out.


[Warfork 40,000 - Rogue Confrontation]¶
Trazior Underhive¶

The wall sections are cleared of flash...

Trazior Underhive

as well as the tower levels.

Trazior Underhive


[Warfork 40,000 - Rogue Confrontation]¶
Trazior Underhive¶

The girders supports were all deflashed, which took forever. The outsides were quickly done, but all the insides... When I was finally done I glued them together. I used Lego blocks and an additional baseplate loosely fitted on top to get them straight.

Trazior Underhive

The top row are the ones where I cut the pins in half, the lower row are with uncut pins. I am missing one girder, probably still in the big box...

Trazior Underhive

The support beams were just a matter of minutes to remove the flash.

Trazior Underhive

I now started with the wall section, which are quite quick compared to the girders, as there are only 4 smooth sides to deflash.

Trazior Underhive


[Warfork 40,000 - Rogue Confrontation]¶
Trazior Underhive¶

I am quite far with my rules medley "Warfork 40,000 - Rogue Confrontation", a mix of the original Confrontation rules as published in White Dwarf, Stargrunt II (main mechanics), Necromunda (mainly the campaign stuff) and Rogue Trader 40,000. Far enough, that the first play test can happen soon - only over which terrain?

Time to use the plastics from the Maki Games Kickstarter to create parts of Trazior Underhive.

I sorted all the parts and started to remove the flash from the support beams.

Trazior Underhive The whole first batch.

Trazior Underhive The pins fill the complete height of the base plates. I can imagine layouts with walkways on the second story, where I would need to stack two support beam pieces - which would not be possible (see next picture). So I decided to cut the pins down to just below half length. This will lessen their hold, but allow stacking.

Trazior Underhive Top shows the original length pins, which are not stackable; the bottom shows the cut pins which stack nicely.

Trazior Underhive All the work done today. The pile in the lower right is the cut off plastic.


[Terrain]¶
New Basing Sand¶

After around 10 years, my bucket of sand I used for bases and terrain was nearly empty:

As you can see, there are also left overs from various projects mixed in, like the plastic sprues you can see - these fell off terrain pieces when I shook off the excess sand. The larger pieces are glued together lumps of sand that formed over time.

Back then, I took this sand from some childrens sandpit in the neighbourhood. When out shopping this week I came across some deco sand in the 1,- EUR shop, and I thought for 5,- EUR worth of risk I will not go rogue again ;-)

I choose two different grains. I like to paint bigger grains on bases in grey as rocks, to break up the monotonous brown not only with the green sand, but with a second colour. So I choose one tube of bigger pebbles, and four bottles of fine grade sand. To help with painting, I choose the colour brown - that way, if I miss a spot it will not be so obvious.

I managed to get three bottles of the fine sand and the larger pebbles in my bucket, with one bottle of fine sand left. If my sand consumption continues unchanged, enough for another decade and only 5,- EUR :-)


[6mm]¶
A gaming board in a weekend¶

The buildings were finished by painting the windows Extra Dark Green and the doors and hatches in German Grey.

The smaller hill I cut into two:

I also removed one arm from the river:

To finish the hills, I added static grass:

It is now 11:43 pm and the board is ready for gaming (well, except the varnish drying on the hills and buildings):

Mission accomplished :-)

One gaming board done in one weekend, and that although we played BattleTech yesterday and had visitors with us today.


[6mm]¶
A gaming board in a weekend¶

I cut the felt and placed it on the board together with the other pieces. The island in the river was cut out of a whim.

I still need to add some static grass and paint the windows, doors and hatches of the buildings.

The smaller hill is too big, it does not allow the Orks to advance on the Imperial position from behind it too much - and over it puts them in the line of fire. I think I will cut it in half, allowing more manoevering space behind it.

I am also not sure yet if I will leave the river with the island... at the moment, having to cross two arms is slowing them Orks down further... Either I will cut the left one away or I need to paint more items on the Orks red... because Woz red wunz go fasta!


[6mm]¶
A gaming board in a weekend¶

The buildings were base coated in grey, then the lower half was sprayed white in preparation of the yellow coat that followed. After the yellow was dry, I placed a 1mm tape strip around the building, and then sprayed a dark brown coat over it. This was then covered by a 2mm tape strip, placed (theoretically) centrally on the 1mm strip. Then the building was sprayed in a sand colour, and received two drybrushs.

Then it was time to remove the tape strips... drumroll...

Well, the two buildings on the left turned out as intended, with the two buildings on the left I did not place the strips correctly... :-(

The board was drybrushed in the base colour, then in sand and finally in white.

The hills were painted in anthracite grey, then drybrushed in a brown grey and finally in white. The sand areas were painted the same way as the board.