Silicone roads from Total Battle Miniatures

Well, it seems that two things have came here to stay – a complete dry spell when it comes to games and me being stuck with one terrain-related project after another.

Luckily, in this case, it was ‘quick and painless’. As I’ve mentioned on a couple of earlier occasions, one of the things I find really tiresome with those hex tiles from GHQ is the fact that as soon as you make some type of terrain, you need to make a bunch of extra road tiles.

The solution? Why, flexible roads of some sort, of course. Several companies offer this product these days, but since I like the stuff that guys at Total Battle Miniatures, I decided to go with their variant.

The initial batch I’ve ordered is perfect for 6mm – they’re two centimetre wide, long straight bits are thirty centimetre long and there is an assortment of curves, crossroads and T-sections which allow you to quickly set up whatever road system you require. Preparation is dead simple – wash the strips in soapy lukewarm water, leave to dry and drybrush with acrylic paint. I used three shades of wall paint – dark brown mid-brown and cream for highlights. The paint doesn’t really ‘stick’ to the silicone and can be peeled off quite easily, but with an occasional touch-up I should be just fine.

Balance Account for February 2012

New "feature" for this blog - a monthly account of my activities. The main idea is keep track of current projects and increase the number of posts with least possible effort. Why's that? Well, mainly because there isn't much going on at wargaming front at the moment. With the exception of a quick test of General De Brigade rules on bare table, I didn't manage to do any gaming whatsoever last month. Output from the painting table is also quite meager and can be beheld below - four 6mm buildings intended for the inaugural game of General De Brigade. Those few who follow this blog will recognize them as part of my purchase from Total Battle Scenics.

There really isn't very much one can say about those buildnings - as can be seen on the picture, they are very nicely sculpted and there were no resin bubbles or holes in the walls that needed to be fixed before I slapped the paint on. Only minor irritation moment lies in the fact that sculpt of roof tiles is so tiny that it is difficult to get the paint to run into all crevices, which results in white dots all over the roof once the paint is dry. The trick seems to be to keep the paint really thin and add a drop of dishwashing detergent to break the water tension.

The paint job itself? Well, painting buildings isn't very exciting and as the picture clearly shows, the technique leaves a lot to desire. With afterthought, maybe I should also have selected more coherent color palette - those houses in yellow and pink will have to be put far away from each other. Oh wait, this blog is not titled "Home and garden design in miniature", so I don't have to care about esthetics! :-)

First look at 6mm European buildings from Total Battle Miniatures

I won't say that it's my New Year resolution, but I do hope to be more active here than I was last year. At the same time I'm a strong believer in putting the bar as low as possible (nice way to avoid disappointments), so my goal at the moment is to double the number of posts per year.

OK, with the solemn declarations out of the way, let's get to the business of the day. Sometime in 2011 a relatively new company, Total Battle Miniatures, came to my attention. Their rapidly expanding product lineup consists of terrain pieces in all main scales, but I was especially interested in their 6mm European buildings. They seemed perfect for my General de Brigade project, so a couple of weeks ago I've grabbed the entire lot and here they are.

The first picture shows the smaller buildings in "of the shelf" state. I haven't done anything with them yet. The second picture shows the larger buildings with first coat of white primer already applied.

Why white primer, you ask? Well, the guys from Total Battle Miniatures were kind enough to include a little tutorial describing their painting method with the buildings they sent to me. Their approach is to first paint the buildings white and then follow up with washes of the subsequent colors. If one is to draw conclusions from the pictures of painted buildings at their site, the end result is very subtle and realistic. Since I liked that look, I decided to skip my usual hatchet job consisting of black basecoat and old-fashioned drybrushing once-over and give their method a shot. Results of this experiment will of course be posted here in due time.

In any case, based on my impression of those very nice miniatures, Total Battle Miniatures is a very welcome addition to the relatively small group of manufacturers of 6mm terrain. The buildings I've got are of the high quality I've previously only seen in products from Timecast Models.