Happy Christmas... well, Boxing Day.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS, Y'ALL!

   And now, to the loot! My younger son, who is a mini me, has begun DMing his own friends in D&D 5E, so I bought him a  ton of the prepaint minis and some dungeon tiles from Paizo. He also got some Starfinder stuff to help with that, including the hard to find Incident at Absalom Station adventure... but that's his toys, not mine.

 Merry OGRE-mas!

  I received several boxed sets for OGRE, as well as four singles of the Combine "Minotaur" Howitzer, and a Cigar Box Battle Mat marked in large hexes... That's three more OGREs and sundry smaller vehicles to help pad out the forces.

Leather Bound Limited Edition Hardback of two MHI books

   I lost a lot of my books in the flooding of Harvey here in Houston. So my family is working on replacing them for me! Good family. I got several Larry Correia books, which are a lot of fun, and some David Eddings novels (the Belgariad, original editions in paperback, just like the ones I had before). My mom also pledged a custom "Book of the Month" for me - I just send her a title once a month and she orders it for me! Yay!

   I also got an expansion for SmashUp, which brings me very close to having all of the factions for that wacky game.

Cigar Box Battle Mats

  Ever since first seeing them offered, I have liked the look of the terrain mats manufactured by Cigar Box Battle Mats. However, I was apprehensive about the material used. Described as "High quality durable fleece" on their website, I wasn't sure exactly what that meant.Mental visions of the fluffy fleece blankets that my sons enjoy danced - unappealingly - in my head. I imagined the same difficulties with felt - the clinging nap of the cloth causing figures and bases to snag as they are moved, pilling of the surface, etc.

   This past weekend I had the opportunity to see one of the mats in person at our monthly get-together. One of the good fellows, Jim Johnson, late of the US Army and currently a great guy and a salesman of things which I don't exactly understand, brought along a Europe mat. I'm not sure which one, precisely, but pretty certain it was the 28mm scale version. Certainly 4'x6' in size. And I was very pleasantly surprised by the material. It's quite thin, and drapes well over bare hills placed underneath. It's soft, doesn't seem to hold creases badly, and lightweight. Best of all, the material used lacks the dreaded stick-catching nappy fibers of felts!

   The scene of the action - somewhere in a rather wet part of the North African desert. Coastal Cyrenaica, perhaps? A patrol of LRDG chaps must rescue a downed pilot from advancing Afrika Korps troops. In the end, they would have succeeded had we not run out of time. Played using Bolt Action rules.

   I'm not precisely in the market for a new mat. I made a few heavy duty canvas ones a couple of years ago which are still serving me well. But, I am very attracted to the pattern printed on these. I might prefer the "All Fields" rather than the road-printed versions, just for a bit more flexibility, but I am Quite Impressed. Might just pick one up at Historicon in July...

Terrain Mat Photos

The Jungle Mat

   This is a 6' x 9' canvas tarp, dyed with a variety of greens and brown, and then misted with water to get the colors to bleed into one another just a little. Basically, I used a spray bottle with RIT dye in it to color the cloth, changing colors as needed, and then following up with a bottle full of clean water. If you do this method, DO NOT OVERDO THE WATER. I tried washing the first mat after dying it, and it was a disaster (see the other post on mats)!

                                   The Martian Mat

   This is a 5' x 9' piece of good quality canvas from the fabric store. It took the dye better and I think will last longer than the tarp. As mentioned previously, this was the first and suffered a series of mishaps. I am pretty happy with the results I came out with, considering all the mistakes I made. I think it looks Mars-y. And definitely more durable than the old felt mat.

   I'll be making two more mats in the near future: a European fields mat (5' x 9') and a smaller gray concrete area mat (3' x 5'). The smaller mat could be placed on a large mat for an urban area. It is going to be designed for a Car Wars autoduelling arena, however. I even have a neat idea for some bunkers to place on the mat, and gate markers. The concrete bunkers will get advertising posters on them! I may even get really ambitious and do up arena walls for the outside edges of the arena. I have some old styrofoam that woudl be close to perfect for that, and then I could build the gates into the walls... Sliding steel doors? That really slide, of course!

   One last photo for tonight, of some random jungle scatter I have been making:

That's a GW metal stegadon for WFB in the background, and its all on the new jungle mat. Just aquarium plants glued to fender washers and static grassed. Nothing fancy.

Canvas Mats, Part One

I have been busy working on a couple of terrain projects over the last week or so, and thought I would share with you my progress.

The main project began last Monday. I took a day off from work, it being the day after my birthday (38 now) and a mental health day being well overdue. My days "off" usually include a long list of projects to keep me hopping about, and this one was no exception. I did find myself at Hobby Lobby, and wandered into the fabric area. I have been wanting to make a canvas gaming mat or three for quite a while now, being slightly dissatisfied with my current felt mats. I just don't like the fuzzy factor.

So I picked out a bolt of nice cotton canvas. I also picked some liquid RIT dyes, and was looking at various tapes and glues to hold the edges of my fabric together. I asked a lady nearby her opinion, and she offered to serge and hem the edges of the cloth for me (she was a professional seamstress). So, with about $18 in the cloth (3 yards, 60" width), and another $12 for having it professionally hemmed to avoid fraying, I proceeded to color the mat.

My first mistake: I didn't wash the fabric before trying to dye it. The cloth has a sizing agent on it whe new, and this kept the dye from penetrating into the fibers properly.

My second mistake: Washing the fabric after dying it. Instead of mottled greens and browns, I ended up with a nice, uniform olive drab. Great for a WWII-era GI tent, but not so good for gaming.

So I ended up bleaching it back out, and now have a terracotta colored piece of canvas. Instant change of plans: no longer an Earthly vista, this glorious series of errors had produced the basis for a new Martian landscape!

I wonder, should I go ahead and just draw in the canal on the cloth? What do you fellows think?

More to come... plus, the other projects, too! Stay tuned!

Not Dead Yet!

Really... the blog isn't dead.

It's just that I haven't done a darned thing terrain wise in a month, unless you count buying one piece on eBay and picking up a few interesting bits of plastic that were laying around.

I have found a possible source for one piece of terrain I have been wanting to buy: the Cryx Necrotite Mining Rig for Warmachine. Now, I don't actually play Warmachine, but the piece looks just about perfect for my VSF gaming universe. Necrotite is a glowing green substance, and I have this stuff I call handwavium, which is used to create a chemically induced heat source for steam power, without needing oxygen. Perfect for long space flights - pardon me, aether flights - don't you agree?

Anyway, this rig looks just right for a large experimental handwavium reactor, or maybe a power supply for a small town, fort, secret laboratory, or what have you. I'm leaning towards secret lab, myself, waht with Herr Doctor Maton running about on Mars and all.

The other development is that I have begun looking into a supplier for a custom made Martian terrain gaming mat. Theterrainguy.com looks rather promising, and I have been in email contact with him. He thinks he can match up to my hill coloration rather closely, which would be great. He's also a nice guy and a fellow Texan, so there you go.

More later this month, I promise.