Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 4-

 

I spent quite a few weeks thinking about how I was going to approach the water on this board. I checked out several 'realistic ocean waves' tutorials, some good, some not so realistic. I decided against foil waves and tissue paper waves as I wanted the transparency to them. These techniques look great on a small-scale model railway layout but they're a bit fragile and not all that convincing in 28mm. I had already done the resin pour, knowing that I wanted that layer or translucency to create depth- although as it turned out I over-pigmented because the green came out too strong so it's not as translucent as I would have liked. I did see an interesting video making a big wave from resin, which intrigues me but which had the opposite problem, it looks too big unless I want all my models to get swamped. However I wondered if I could combine two effects, making a silicone wave bed and a foil one (to test both approaches) and casting clear resin into it. Not having any silicone to hand I started playing with No More Nails... 

When messing around with the No More Nails I found it was pretty easy to work it into convincing waves forms for the kind of rough, crashing water I wanted. No point doing water if it's not dynamic! Initially I thought I would do all my waves with this and then paint where he light would come through the wave bright turquoise like the land descending below the surface. On my test pieces though this wasn't very effective. The crests were good (though No More Nails sets kinda creamish, not ideal but ok for slightly scummy water) but the body of the wave didn't look right. On previous builds I have done big water effects with clear silicone, but I wanted to be able to add foam and spray which wouldn't stick to this. A couple of other videos lead me to Fix All Crystal Clear which I could easily pick up from Screwfix. I did a couple of tests and instantly decided this was what I was going to use. It's quite blue tinted, which would piss me off if I had bought it for DIY purposes, but works perfectly for adding the layer of translucency I wanted from the resin.

Most people using this acrylic polymer product are cutting it with Isopropyl Alcohol which gives a kind of jelly substance that can be spread. That's ok for a leisurely flowing river. I kept mine neat because I wanted to lay it on thick and pull it around with a coffee stirrer, using the viscosity to make big ocean wave forms. It dries pretty fast so I could lay down a good bed, work it into small crests, then build big waves over the top after waiting ten minutes or so for it to harden. Initially I was laying it in quite fine ribbons across the direction I wanted the waves travelling, blending these together with a swirling motion. I soon found that this was producing quite a delicate rippling effect, not the dynamic peaks and troughs I wanted so I cut the nozzle right back to lay down big thick sausages. In hindsight before I did this I should have done the area up against the beach with the finer nozzle to create more delicate lapping, but I wasn't sure if I was going to have enough and wanted to prioritise doing the small bard as a test and then the demo board. As it turned out I had almost exactly the right amount, a bit left over.

Once it was set I used a blue ink to wash into the big furrows and under he big waves, adding more depth. This made the acrylic polymer quite dull, previously it was super-glossy. I went over these areas with Liquitex Heavy Gloss medium to bring back the shine and found that it set the Fix All much firmer. Not quite solid but definitely less spongey. I went back and covered all the water with the gloss medium. This added some extra small ripples and firmed everything up.

The Fix All allowed me to build quite tall waves in three or four passes. I may have got a bit carried away and forgotten that less is more... but DYNAMISM! This wave above I tried to copy as close as I could from a photo of water crashing into a similar cave mouth. The white crests I made with No More Nails which bonds just fine to the acrylic polymer and can itself be built up quite heavily if desired. I applied this with a coffee stirrer though as I felt the gun was a bit overkill.

I added a little bit of foam on top of the crests with dabs of No More Nails, but only on the bigger crests. Since it goes quite yellow when it sets I want to do most of the frothy wave tops with white acrylic paint. I did also go around the board at this point and put in where the waves would reach with the gloss heavy gel to make them look wet and slippery. I realised afterwards what I should have done was to paint this area darker where the water would soak into the rock itself. Might have to go back later and do that.

The foamy, frothy tops of the crashing waves was made from Woodland Scenics flake snow mixed into clear resin (very heavily, mix a lot in!). This was really easy to paste on in big, dramatic clumps using a coffee stirrer or lolly stick... so I went massively overboard and overdid it again. Didn't want to waste any! Ah well, fantasy innit. For future reference, less is definitely more! That being said, the big sprays coming crashing up through the gaps in the columns is definitely atmospheric and fun.

Here are some of the biggest waves with their foamy, crashy crests. The translucency of the Fix All really makes the wave look convincing. Once I had pasted the foam in place I lightly sprinkled over the top with neat Woodland Scenics snow. I thought this would make it look a bit more granular and whiter but I don't actually think it added anything. If anything I actually think it looks less like froth, but not enough that I'll scrape it off and do it again.

Because the breakers on the beach were more pronounced than I had hoped I decided to add a big wave to explain them. Actually, if this is the same body of water that is being pummelled onto the basalt columns it doesn't make sense for it to be gently idling up the beach, so that works ok. The mega wave was built up in the same way as on the Salute board but this time I did it in 4 stages, blending each one into the last, so I could make it curve up and actually roll over with a channel underneath. The neat Fix All hardly sags at all when pulled into place so it wasn't to difficult to coax it all the way over without collapsing. I put another big splash of foam in where it's crashing down.

I went in with some white acrylic and painted in the foamy bits around the edges of the rocks. I did also finally get around to using a sepia ink to 'wet' the stone where the waves are crashing. Just need to go over it with a varnish and put the glisten back. 

So here are some shots of the board pretty much finished. If you'd like a more 3-dimensional view you can check out the video coming soon to my YouTube Channel and, of course come along to Salute or join us for The Woods In The Woods games day this year. Details to be announced soon.

Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 4-

Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 3- Groundworks

 

Last weekend I spent some time messing around with flock. I wanted to put the groundwork on the boards before doing the water effects as it's easier to clean loose flock off smooth resin than off textured waves! I did also do some test pieces for the water, none of which I am totally happy with yet... more to follow.

The majority of the grass is static grass mat from Noch, the closest I could find to match in with the original boards I made from the Citadel fabric mat (stupid boy!). These paper-backed grass mats are great at flowing over lumps and bumps (wet the paper thoroughly with PVA, apply more glue to the base board, let them sit for 5 minutes so the glue soaks in and goes tacky then smooth/stretch carefully over the contours) and covering big areas quickly with grass that won't come loose. However they are pretty uniform so don't look very natural by themselves. I like to overwork them with an assortment of scatter material that I can also blend into the tight areas I can't get matting into easily.

The pictures on the left show the mat with patches of sponge scatter and a mix of sand and cat litter for the path applied. I like sponge scatter as it soaks in the PVA and firms up, staying in place where sawdust flock would fall off. I also think it looks more natural and mossy than sawdust flock. Static grass is great but it can be easily compressed by bases where the sponge scatter either sets hard or springs back into place. The pictures on the right have clumps of foliage and bushes added. I debated buying commercially-available bushes but on investigation they are just coir/coconut fibres dipped into scatter material. I can do that. So I bought rubberised horsehair (£2 for more than I will ever want, also available cheaply in hanging basket liners), cut it into rounded shapes, brushed on PVA and dipped into one of three bags of sawdust scatter I bought for the purpose. The whole cost me less than a tenner and I have enough left to this five or six times over whereas this amount of commercially made bushes would cost be £15-20. 

The bushes are important for creating places to hide without seriously reducing the amount of space to move around. I tried to place them in a way that could be used to make careful progress across the field. I've tried to be 'targeted' in my use of scatter materials so there are more dead leaves/mulch under the tree for example, bushes cling to rocks and the bank of the stream, there's a darker scatter directly below the bushes and rock faces to suggest shadow, the grass in the centre of the area is paler/browner to suggest it gets dried out by more sun and wind etc. Thinking about how the landscape forms and is affected by the elements is one of the keys to natural looking terrain. Of course, it helps to have a good library of scatter material to hand. I think I used seven different colours of sponge scatter, five different static grasses and four types of clump foliage on this board... and using such small amounts the materials last a good long time.

I gave the hut and tree a couple of liberal washes of ink. I wanted them to be more textural than painted and have added bits of moss etc. to blend them into the board. They shouldn't stand out as being 'placed' elements but look part of the whole. At this point everything is stuck down but still a bit loose. Before giving it a good shake off I sprayed the whole thing with isopropyl alcohol and ripped over heavily diluted PVA. This was the first time using the Isopropyl, normally I just add a bit of washing up liquid to the diluted glue. It did seem to increase the flow and firmness of the materials quite a lot so I intend to go back over my other boards and do the same. It is pretty smelly, spraying it is atomising nasty particles and combining the alcohol with PVA may be creating a nasty substance called Polyvinyl Acrylic which isn't fun to handle so open windows, wear gloves and put a properly fitted FFP2 mask on if you're going to do it. Close the room off from the rest of the house and leave it ventilated overnight whilst everything is drying and fumes are dissipating just to be sure. I did try flow aid as an alternative (as suggested by Mel the Terrain Tutor) because I was concerned about the alclohol on the foam even though it was covered up. I was using the airbrush reducer I used on the washes for the rocks and it wasn't working as well as the isopropyl so I stopped using it. Maybe Mel has a different/better flow aid.

Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 3- Groundworks

Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 2- Painting

 

Wotcha everyone. I have been cracking on with my demo game board. Having carefully planned what order I was going to do things in I immediately forgot and painted the water first.

This of course means that when I airbrush the rocks next I will get overspray on my water and have to repaint it... ah well. Most of this won't be seen as the water is being heavily pigmented but something will show through so best to give it a once-over anyway. I have faded to light green around the rocks to indicate other things going on below the surface and fading down through the water. Hopefully this will continue to be visible in places once the water is finished. 

The rocks were a good opportunity to try out the new airbrush setup. I first sprayed everything matt black, paying careful attention to the cave mouth and deepest recesses. I oversprayed this with a patchy raw sienna mix and a general grey, not worrying much about colour but trying to give a good overall coverage and pick out some of the main forms. I was worried this was a bit too purple so when it came to drybrushing highlights over I mixed the light grey with some yellow. This has helped bring the colour more neutral. I did a vigorous drysbrush over the whole thing with a mid grey, then a more targeted, lighter drybrush with pure white and a tad of yellow. Only looking to generate contrast in my tones at this point, not overly bothered about colouration. I drybrushed the rock pillars closest to the shoreline more heavily as on the photo reference I have these are lighter in colour.

To soften the drubrushing and add colour into the rocks I diluted some raw sienna and burnt umber with flow aid and dappled it in patches over the surface. I also did this with the black to knock back any areas which came up too colourful and reiterate cracks and shadows. I haven't used the flow aid (4011 Reducer) before, having just stuck with water in the past. The 4011 did make quite a difference, not running/dripping so much and drying faster so I could control the placement better. I was only using cheapy craft acrylics so thought the pigments might not dilute into a wash well, but was pleasantly surprised.

I did a bit of small brush work on the basalt columns to suggest a more geometric scarring on their surfaces and washed them heavily in black afterwards since the basalt is usually dark grey and should look a little different in colour from the rocks surrounding it. I have brushed some green 'algae' around the tops of the columns along the shoreline and will work into this more when I see what is left exposed by the water effects.

Speaking of which... here are my dams (thick, melamine-faced MDF which I have also covered in sellotape for a definitely easy-peel, shiny surface) in place and the resin (Easy Composites GlassCast 10) poured. So far so good... more on that in the next post.

Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 2- Painting

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