Captain's Blog

I recently completed a number of Terrain Features and was at odds on how to best display them. In the end, it was a no-brainer and I decided to base the features on some installation CDs that were taking up shelf space in the office.

The first piece is a representation of Stonehenge,  a prehistorical circular setting of large standing stones. Being circular, it was very easy to make the leap to mount the pieces on a CD. The model used is called  Stonehenge: Build Your Own Ancient Wonder and is available from Indigo or Chapter Books in Canada. I used two sets that were given to me as gifts and still have numbers numbers pieces left over. The kit was called to my attention by a fellow gamer from Halifax who used  the same kits to build a large standing stone structure to be a centerpiece for a large battle HOTT games. . A stand with two 15mm  undead archers is used for scale throughout this posting.




The 2nd piece is a desert ruin by JR Miniatures. It is a heavy piece and from the JR Miniatures' website I would guess that it is made from Drystone. Drystone is described as a polymer modified cement for casting detail parts. 
According to the website Drystone is durable and chip resistant and has a PSI of 10,000 as compared to plaster which only has a PSI of 2,000.  When painting DO NOT wash and using a primer is not necessary.

I purchased this piece from a local gaming store sometime last year to go with a 15mm  DBA army.

The final pieces are some resin rocks that were included as a freebie in a Armorcast river set I purchased on eBay years ago. The river  was one of the first posting I wrote about on this blog, three years ago.

Again the 15mm undead show the scale of the pieces.
 

This week I continued my plan to conmplete some projects that have been sitting on my work table, in some cases for almost a year. As they say, the devil is in the details and what I really needed to do was complete the details.  All three projects are related to tabletop terrain.

Project number 1: Armorcast River Pieces by Armorcast Battlefield Scenery

http://www.armorcast.com/

I had two packages of river pieces that I started painting some time ago. The first package included two 4 inch wide river sections. Total length of the two sections combined is almost 12 inches. These are listed as

In Montreal, we've had a week of hot and humid weather. A couple of nights I've woken up in the wee hours of the morning and was unable to return to blessed sleep. I was not comfortable with the thought of doing detailed work on my miniatures, nor did I want to read. I turned instead to a terrain piece that has been calling out for paint.

(Note: In the photo above notice the 3"-4" transition piece feeding into a 4" river section at the lower right hand corner of the image)


I had an Armorcast River. I started the river collection while I was still living in Halifax. I bought a 4" two piece package from Odyssey 2000, a store which I understand no longer exists. So there I was with 14 inches of straight river 4 inches wide. It was always in the back of my mind that I'd have to buy more.

Fast forward, the year is now 2007. I purchased at auction an 3" Armorcast Boxed River set. It was 4 feet long. It was still not long enough to stretch the length of my six foot gaming (dining room) table. I needed more!

By 2008 I acquired a 3''-4" River Transitions pack (2 pieces) that would allow me to run the two 4 inch river pieces into the 3 inch river boxed set and provide me with the needed filler to allow the river to cross the length of my table. Time to paint.

I followed the directions according to Armorcast. Earlier I cleaned the seams on the individual river sections and washed the pieces in warm soapy water. When properly dried I sprayed them with gray base coat (Canadian Tire Primer). Over three nights, for the loss of 5 hours sleep, I completed the majority of the work.

The paints I selected for the task were Raw Sinna (Series 1) for the river banks, and Cobalt Blue (Series 5) for the water. Both were imported by Omar DeSerres Inc. Once the riverbanks dried I inked the Raw Sinna with a Games Workshop Chestnut Ink. This was a KISS (Keep it Simple) principle job. I wasn't going to be bogged down painting different colours for all the possible rock variations.

The river is complete and ready to game with. It needs some more work. In addition to various areas of sand along the river sides, there is the plant life which needs to be touched up.

That's it for now. My next posting will be when I've completed painting my Arabian Spear men.