Elfs on shelfs or elves on shelves?

 

Just a quick one for today.

Following getting all my toys boxed up and out of the studio I decided to revise my storage solutions and made some new shelves to hold the finished armies. Apart from a couple of deliberate spaces they are most definitely finished now... no space for any more!

Elfs on shelfs or elves on shelves?

The road to Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 1

This year I decided to take the plunge with Salute and not just have a stand but also run demo games of The Woods. That opens up a whole can of worms with needing to arrange bigger transport, get more helpers on board, stock up on books in the expectation (hope!) of sales... and the fun part- build a stunning display tale to suck people in!

I have wanted for some time now to build two boards- one based on Fairy Glen on the isle of Skye, the other based around the Giant's Causeway/Fingel's Cave. So, of course, I decided to roll them into one and do it all on a 2' square module. Madness? Well, yes. The real mission is going to be to make sure there's enough space to actually play a game!

I chose a 2' square area (actually 660x660mm square for reasons I will explain later) because I want these demo games to move quickly. Normally there's a couple of turns of 'positioning' before warbands can get into a fight. These are important strategically in the game but not necessary when just learning the mechanics. Hopefully the cluttered nature of the terrain will prevent one side wiping the other out immediately.

My first step was to divide the board not quite in half. The 'spine' up the middle will divide the two types of terrain from each other and provide the vertical height needed for the board to be visible above the sea of heads moving around the Excel Centre. Well, ok, not quite that tall but more visible than a flat board anyhow, hopefully. I used a couple of hexagonal wooden templates and a hot wire cutter to cut up lengths of styrofoam that were then cut to different heights and glued down to form the causeway. Real basalt columns are not this uniform in shape and size nor this big. However I wanted a 30mm round base to be able to stand on each column.

Back in the summer we got a large new CNC machine at work. We often get 3d topographies to machine for students which come from the DigiMaps archive, so I decided to experiment myself pulling files from OS data, manipulating them and milling in foam. Quite a few problems to troubleshoot along the way, but I ended up with something I could at least use. Not sure how much time it saved but it's a nice slope anyway. I have then gone around and sprayed expanding foam to build up cliffs. The path up to the top point was sprayed in three layers, with a foam core path laid after the first to provide a solid platform for models to stand on. The No Nonsense foam is softer than I was hoping it would be!

I have allowed the foam to overflow onto the styrofoam columns to build up the cave and replicate the cliffs of Staffa. It overhangs a bit too much and has slumped lower than I would have ideally liked, but you can't do much with expanding foam when it's foaming! Actually that's a lie. You can cut it back quite successfully mid-foam and give surfaces that look more like rock faces than expanding foam. I got the timing right on the 'land-side' cliffs but left the sea-side ones to it. The rock on top of the headland (supposed to represent Castle Ewan) was carved from styrofoam and placed once the expanding foam was set. I then sprayed a bit around it to fix it in position and blend the textures together.

I've chipped and slashed away at the columns in places to give a less-regular look, trying to ensure there are still level surfaces for models to stand. I wafted a heat gun across them to distort them and harden up the outer surfaces.

What do you do with a gaming board that's already short on space for models? Why, you pack it full of more features, that's what! After seeing the picture I am sure you have all seen of a set of mysterious spiral stairs winding down into a hillside I thought I should definitely have that on the table. I figure they probably lead to the back of the cave on the other half of the board. The picture (although it appears to be set into the top of a hillside) is actually of the top of De La Poer Tower.

I also wanted a little stream running across the open area and diving under the hill to join the sea. It's only a narrow ditch and definitely able to be stepped over, right? Unless it's actually a weird boundary between worlds...

All the parts of the board got a coating of PVA to ready them for painting. Those which would have models moving across them had a couple of coats of readymix filler and PVA to give them a more hard-wearing surface. The big expanse of expanding foam was coated with a mixture of PVA, readymix filler and Fillite (a filler powder for resins) to give it an extra-heavy-duty coating and slight texture which will help it look like rock once painted and protect the soft foam underneath. 

Dental plaster rocks from Woodland Scenics rock moulds were scattered around to provide a bit of extra interest and added texture to the landscape.

I also decided to include a cast from my roundhouse mould (a test for possible future mass production but honestly unlikely to get that far) and make the landscape look inhabited.

A windswept tree was made in my usual twisted wire fashion. Taking care to make sure the branches only spread onto the board and don't hang over the edges. I don't want to break the vignette by having things stick out beyond the confines of the board edges, nor do I want it being damaged by knocks in transport.

I added milled cotton flock fibres to the PVA/filler/water mix to give really gnarled old bark. Undecided how much foliage I am going to put on it, that's a decision for later.

I've put a stone (styrofoam supported by a couple of washers for durability) over the ditch clapper-bridge-style. Is this the only safe way across? There'll be a path winding up through the scene and over it.

Since I also want to use this board with my existing terrain modules I have used the same templates for the raised side and back of the board as for my Old Man of Storr and Puzzlewood modules. The land comes out far enough that two modules can be placed narrow-ways running down from it and continue the playing area. This just leaves me with an unsatisfying straight edge to the water area so I decided to also make a transition board with a stony beach sloping down into the waves. This will square up the edge and provide a bit of extra playing space if laid narrow-wise (below) or will round off the corner to merge into a module laid along the sloping side of the board (above). 

The plan is for the raised areas of filler to become dunes, fading into green grass by the edge of the board. It's a narrow area to fade satisfyingly so I'll have to see how that goes. I'll pour the resin on both boards at the same time to get the same colouration and depth.

Ok, that's most of the construction. On with the painting!

The road to Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 1

Valley of Stones, Mael Fen- Fimir on parade

Back in June, which seems a long time ago now, I got married. :) And so I moved from my lovely narrowboat (which barely fitted all my own stuff) into my wife's place. Being the compassionate and thoughtful soul that she is she has let me share her studio and I found a nice dresser to arrange my figures in to display the painted ones and inspire me to paint the unpainted ones. One day, whilst I'm away at work, I get this photo from home:

 



Yes, the blurry beast has struck! It seems our curious cat is very curious about these new things in his house. Time to think again about where I store my finished toys...

 



 

Enter the tall glass cabinet! Yes that's right Mr Kiwi, now you can't play with my painted little people. How disappointing for him. Only problem is, this cabinet only has four shelves and I simply can't fit my Fimir, AdMech and sundry other forces into it. But there is plenty of space between shelves. Time for.... dum dum dum... army display boards! Yes, the excuse and place to keep them are both now there, hussah! Priority number one, get the Fimir sorted out. Since BOYL and the arrival of Mr Saturday and Chilled Monkeybrains' heads (served in a carrier bag from a car boot by  Llamafish mwahahahaha!) I've been getting back into my misunderstood cyclopean bog dwellers and have a few new sculpts and conversions on the go for them.

 

 



 As all good Oldhammerers and Fimir-lovers (steady!) know, Fimir have their origins in Celtic myth and this beautiful Alan Lee illustration from a book of Irish folktales. As all excellent Oldhammerers and followers of this blog will know, my inspiration for the Fimir comes more than a little from these guys:

 



Both the Skeksis and the Mystics from the Dark Crystal are behind my concepts of the Fimir, their back story and culture and so, obviously, their clan home has to resemble a set from the film. Ultimately their aim is to rediscover the lost castle of Chulaine which bears a strong resemblance to the castle of the UrSkeks, but for the moment Clan Myeri reside in the Valley of the Stones, Mael Fen.

 



 

The first step in creating my display board was to plan out how all the models would fit. I didn't want them to be too crowded, but the bases actually mean there's more space than you'd imagine looking at these pictures. I'm reminded of a Frank Oz comment about the other great Henson film, The Labyrinth, where he said that the Great Hall of Jareth resembled Swiss cheese without the puppets in as the puppeteers needed so many points of access!

I didn't want to go down the route of just sliding in movement trays as this would make the footprint of the blocks of models too big and also give a regimented look to the display, whereas I wanted the idea that this is a daily ritual in the life of the clan and they are milling around. In caste and social rank order of course, but not regimented up and marching to war. I am lucky enough to have access to a laser cutter, so getting the right sized holes neatly in the right places was quite straightforward, but even so it took a lot of planning to account for tail placement, height etc. As it is I misjudged some of the access points a bit so getting to some of the Shearl who are lurking in the cave mouths behind is quite tricky.

 

This was to be a three-layer board depicting the valley and the caves lining it, with the human allies clustered around the top (not permitted to be part of the ceremony) and a returning scouting party winding its way down to the bottom of the valley. The main support for each layer is in the form of 10mm square section wood, carved with a craft knife to give a more rough-hewn look. This is dressed by the main feature of the board- the stones themselves.

 

For the Deathrace at BOYL I made these piles of rocks from Styrofoam to give a Podrace look to the desert section. These were quite big chunks of Styrofoam, sanded to shape and polyfillered for texture. For the Valley of the Stones I adopted a similar approach, but this time used very thin slices of Styrofoam and cut them with scissors, resulting in the layered 'flint-like' look which echoes the stones on the film set. I cut oodles of them and stuck them together with PVA glue, wedging them between the layers of MDF.

 



 

Part of the second layer represents a wooden walkway down which the returning scouts are winding, accompanied by their clan pipers. To achieve this I snapped some wooden mixing sticks (another BOYL trick- planking decks!) and glued just the very edges into the right curve on to the MDF base board. Then I used the laser to chop out the squares for the bases.

 

 

The stones between the second and third layer were done in the same way, except that I cut them in half and sandwiched sections of MDF between them to give the pillars for the third layer.

 

 

Then I used some polyfiller to texture the undersides to look like rock and fill in some of the gaps in the stones.

 

 

Because aerosols dissolve Styrofoam I used an airbrush to base coat and paint the board. I didn't go for too much variation in colour as I wanted the colours on the miniatures to stand out and not have the focus drawn to the board behind. The floor of the board was textured with builders' sand and my intention is to paint in the geomancy spirals which feature in the Mystics' valley in the film. A bit of interest was added by putting tufts of static grass and lichen around the rocky outcrops.

 

 

Lastly I made a plinth out of some crappy Wickes timber I had lying around from building shelving in the bedroom. With a pretty curve routered on it and a coat of white wood stain (to help show off the darker scene above it) it looks ok. The plinth slots firmly into the frame of the cabinet and the board drops into the top of the plinth and can be lifted off it for ease of removal. Sadly this picture is a bit dark, but I like the atmosphere! When I've got a few more troops to fill in the spaces I'll take some better photos.

Valley of Stones, Mael Fen- Fimir on parade