Hills, smaller hills, smallest hills

I am slowly preparing for yet another ACW game based on scenario from Partizan Press’ “Heartland” scenario book and guess what… I need to do some more terrain. I really, really look forward to a game where all I need to do is put together stuff I have and play!

In this particular case, I was in need of seven rather small heights. This made me think – on those occasions I needed some hills, they were sizeable terrain features. Since they were so large, I also made them rather high… at least for 6mm battlefield. And sure those high hills look rather impressive on the “battlefield”, but they also cause some problems – their steep slopes always make my minis act as if they are out on a training session for sled tournament. Up I want them to go… and down they slide again.

So this time around I decided to do things a bit different and make a couple ‘very small’ hills with very gentle slopes. This poised slighly different demands on materials I could use – standard expanded polystyrene sheets wouldn’t work, because you can’t sand them. And my default cheapo choice for bases – 3mm board – would also be a bad choice, because it would not hold the ‘edge’ at the borders. So instead, I had to do it 'standard wargamer style’ – 3mm MDF for bases and extruded polysturene (aka blue or pink stuff) for the hills themselves.

Step 1- MDF bases were cut out of 3mm MDF sheet and beweled with a sharp Stanley knife (here in Sweden they’re called ‘mora kniv’). Keep the knife sharp, watch your fingers and always cut away from your body. Seriously, be very careful when beweling those sheets, you can loose half a finger in a blink of an eye if you’re not carefull.

Step 2 – glue sheet material to the bases and leave for some time under pressure. This time around didn’t use PVA glue, but builder’s mounting glue. Dries in an hour or two, doesn’t seem to warp and my hot wire-cutter didn’t have any problems slicing throuth it as I trimmed off the blue stuff.

Step 3 – after trimming off the polystyrene, it was time to sand. Another health warning here – put on a mask before you start with this step! MDF dust is definitely something you want to avoid breating in and I can’t imagine that ground down polystyrene will do your lungs any wonders!

This was actually the first time I’ve worked with MDF and extruded polystyrene and I have to grudgingly admit that I now understand why these materials are prefered choice for terrain making – you can really shape that stuff into exactly the shape you need. It doesn’t show on the picture above, but the angle on the bevel of the MDF bases are no more than 20 degrees and it will stay that way even if bumped into something. Untreated board sheets just crumble…

Step 4 – paint with brown of your choice. Here I cheated and painted with a mix of brown household acrylic paint, grit, sand and gipsum (something I saw on Youtube and wanted to try out).

Step 5 – flock, leave to dry and presto… gentle hills ready for the gaming table! The thing that worried me a bit was the slenderness of those hills – 3mm MDF and 5mm polystyrene doesn’t amount to much. But I must say that I like what I see. For 6mm games maybe less is more also in regard of elevations on the table!

They’re bringing carts now!???

Well, it would seem so, Saxons have finally figured out that carts and loot fit together as hand in a glove!

Seriously though… one of generic raid scenarios in ‘Dux Britaniarum’ requires three carts of some sort. With this in mind, I’ve had a quick look around for something suitable. Offering from 4Ground was very much to my liking – their cart is made from laser-cut MDF, thus cheap as dirt and shipping it over the pond wouldn’t cost me my shirt neither. Also, those guys at 4Ground seem to be clever chaps and realize that something must pull those carts around. And so, they are kind enough to offer suitable draft oxen minis, sold in pairs.

Don’t remember how long it took for the envelope (yes, envelope, apparently 4Ground took the page from IKEA’s operations manual), but it didn’t take many days before my carts arrived to me. Here’s what I’ve got, in three sets.

First a couple of words about oxen minis. They were all ‘business’, but required some serious cleaning up and putty to cover up some serious holes in the casts. Also, as can be seen in the pictures, heads are separate and the fit isn’t the best I’ve ever seen. Once the heads and bodies were glued together, it became apparent that something had to be done about the gaps around the neck. Lucklily that’s what green stuff is made for.

Carts, on the other hand, could be assembled without any problems. In fact, I glued them together while watching a movie and was done before it was finished. Really simple assembly was made even easier by a nice, easy to understand manual.

The paint job was also a pretty straightforward job. With carts, I started with couple of base coats of burnt umber. Then I proceeded with successively lighter coats of burnt umber and white. I finished with couple of black, brown and green washes.

With oxen, I first found couple of reference pictures of the real things – I was a bit surprised over variety of “cammos” that oxen come in. In the end, I went with dark brown/cream white “ambush scheme”. I’ve also decided to play around with paints and made a very first attempt at wet blending. Not sure how successful I was, but I think I managed “game table” quality. But what do I know, judge for yourselves.

Anyway… I must say that I am quite happy with my first experience of laser-cut MDF and 4Ground. If you need a couple of carts to move your loot quicker around the table, I can recommend this stuff as affordable option.