A hill is born

Summer Time, Terrain Time

     Summer finally hit, and its moving along, so I started doing things in the garage.  Spraying primer and building terrain becomes an option for modelling time.  I've been thinking of hills and terrain features besides the 1" stepped hills, usually one or two levels high.  If you watch the spaghetti westerns there is always some elevated position where a shooter, sometimes with a really long brass scope, takes a shot; but those are almost never in wargames.  Obviously space is an issue and as I think about it most rules don't have anything to cover really high terrain (some do, usually skirmish games).  The topic of more realistic terrain came up on a Meeples & Miniatures podcast and I agree that more "realistic" terrain is needed.  I can contribute to the cause!  The other driving force for my building this year is that my carefully horded pile of styrofoam is really in the way in the garage and either needs to be used or tossed.  Now, since I didn't pay anything for the foam other than the item it protected I'm loathe to throw it out.  The time came to either build with it or toss it, so building it is!  I also cut up my last 4x8 piece of mdf into big blobs with which to base my terra forming projects.  

     The first piece I worked on is a sloping, wide hill that looks like a plateau that has 3/4 of it eroded away.  I have to be careful to make game terrain "gamey" instead of "modelly", it needs some flat spaces for figures and mysterious steps to give the small creatures a way to get to other parts of the hill.  I've made a few buildings that have too much rubble now that I look at them so I want to find a nice middle ground.  These uber-rubble buildings look ok but not really flat enough for groups of minis.  I want to avoid terrain where it looks like some cleaning crew came by and got rid of all that pesky rubble.  So what did I create?  Here's the final product.

The left side

View from the front, facing the enemy

The "working side"

     And here's how I got there. I started with one of the mdf blobs that I prepped by applying stain to both sides.  Once it has dried I figured the piece would be heavier than most pieces I have and I didn't want it to flex in the middle and split the piece like a 6.5 earthquake.  I grabbed some scrap 1x2 and glued two pieces along the length.  I used Gorilla Glue adhesive that comes in the caulk-like tube.

Support glued on

     I built up the hill with styrofoam.  Since this is going to get plaster over it, the regular loose foam is ok, I didn't use any pink insulation foam on this project.The pieces were glued down with Modge Podge.  The foam that would cover my strengthening strips had a channel cut so the foam would be flat.

The base of styrofoam

The glue of choice

     Here are some in-progress shots.  These shots were taken before the painting began but after construction.  First I trimmed it and took off sharp corners with hot wire cutters.  The basic shape stayed the same but I tried to eliminate obvious 90 degree areas. Once that was done I did covered the foam with Woodland Scenics (used for almost all of the construction, WS from now on) plaster sheet.  Once that dried I started gluing on rocks that I cast up from lightweight hydrocal and filled any gaps with WS casting plaster.  A coating of WS Shaper Plaster was applied to the bare plaster sheet to cover the grid pattern of the sheets and in between rock sections to soooth gaps.  The gray in the pictures is "anti-skid" paint (paint with sand in it).  It gives a nice scale sand look and is my go to product for texturing buildings.  It was applied to flat spaces so I would end up with a rock formation with dirt for the horizontal surfaces.  It saves me from having to use sand or grit for the whole project, it was only needed to touch up areas or build spots up.

    After painting, using house paint from Menard's (hardware store), I put some vegetation around and a bit of flocking for grass growth.   The Modge Podge bottle gives a bit of scale to the hill. 

Quite a height to fall from 

The business end.  The dino is an Acheson 28mm spinosaurus, a Reaper ogre, and some Foundry African figures

A native scans for invaders.

     The piece is about the size of a small kitchen table, not too heavy, and taller than most terrain I've seen or made.  Three of these pieces would fill a 9x5 table pretty well.  It hasn't been bloodied in battle, yet though so it may be a dominating piece of ground. I play and plan for skirmish games usually so having figures separated from each other isn't a big deal.  In a game with movement trays it would have limited places to put troops though.  Because figures could be much higher (a real 12"+) than those on the ground, range could be an issue if ranges are short.  If guns shoot 12" you may not even be able to target someone below!   A couple of rules I like won't have this problem since they have some significant ranges for shooting (A Corner of Hell, Spectre Ops, and others).  It'll make a nice spot for snipers though and take their targets out of the short range band.  

     So overall I'm happy with it.  I'm sure it cost me a good amount of money but to have a unique piece that changes the battlefield is worth it.  Building it also gave me the chance to work with materials I haven't used or had a lot of experience with.  I look at each piece of terrain as a learning process.  Mistakes can be learned from and better ways of doing things found.  I think I'll end up buying some bulk hydrocal from a building supply house and I may have found a good source of big blocks of styrofoam (stay tuned for that).  

To space!!

Klingons off the port bow!

     I'll admit I really like Star Fleet Battles.  That may get me committed in some states but I bought it about a year after it came out and my role-playing buddies joined me in littering space with hulks of starships, it didn't hurt that we were huge Star Trek fans (and I still am).  The original series had enough ship battles to fill my young wargaming mind with plans to command cruisers along the neutral zone.  At that time we just played with the counters and paper mat, I don't think we even knew where we could get little ships but that would have been the ultimate in toy-game-friend time.  We had a couple of expansions but never went beyond that or got into tournament gaming.  Over the years we moved to other games and SFB started it's growth of rules, exceptions, and errata.  I did purchase the Captain's edition and had a 3-ring binder of rules, which wasn't played (no surprise).  Fast forward to 2016 and during one of our RPG sessions we discussed Federation Commander.  It certainly looked nice and now I had the means and ability to buy ships!  So I got it and a couple of the boxes of ships, Klingon and Federation, from ADB.  As I read through the FC rules they sounded a lot like SFB, only  prettier, so I broke out my old SFB, it's one game that I won't get rid of and has gone to Japan and back, and I started reading.  There are some differences between the two but not so much that if you played SFB you'd be confused by FC.  

     It's 2018 now and other projects had pushed my Starfleet plans to the back burner but I finally got down and started painting.  I have to paint up some minis before I play just because I have them.  I could play with the counters and have a perfectly fine game but to me the minis are the chum that brings in the sharks.  It's easier to picture the ships moving in to attack while the tense Star Trek music plays.  So what was I painting?  

The battle force forms up

The left wing

Lead ship

I like these flight stands

      So now for the gritty details. 

         -flight stands are from Corsec engineering.  They use more powerful magnets and have a variety of styles, base sizes, and add-ons (on the left is a 2 dice dock, middle has a numnber dial).  I use these stands for any game that needs something to fly: WW2, space, modern jets, UFOs.

         -  The colored things are those loom rubber bands that were the craze about 8 years ago.  They are just looped until they don't fall down, usually 2 loops, and they allow me to quickly change colors as needed for identification.  Yes they can be seen as colored things flying along but I feel it's a nice trade off for playability and they're not that distracting.

         - The star mat is from Hotz.  There are mixed feelings regarding shipping and communications but I got this anyway and it's nice.  The hexes are 2".  

         - I put magnets in all my planes and these ships are no exception.  I get mine from KJ Magnetics who make a wide variety of sizes and shapes.  Perfect if you have to magnetize some small thin planes.  I've used them on my mi-24's in 1/300 scale.  What tools I use are pretty basic.  I bought a variable speed cordless drill ($20), a pack of bits, along with a pin vise and bits.  I drill in slowly, like milling, and check my depth frequently.  Some would cringe seeing that bit cutting its way in but I want my magnets secure, I've had glued-on magnets pop off before.  I've got some pretty sizable planes and drilling helps to keep them tight on the stand, I use epoxy to glue them.

        -Decals.  Yes I put decals on a lot of stuff, including 1/300 armor and 1/2400 ships.   I was a modeler before a gamer and things look better with decals, whether or not they are readable from 12" away.  So I searched and found some at JupiterIVdecals.  He prints to order so they are always in stock.  He also answers emails so if you have a question just ask.  I picked up Federation and Klingon sheets.  They went on without trouble and I hit them with a little Solvaset.  To me they really make them ships instead of just play pieces.  I don't speak or read Klingon but each ship has a different name.

Where's the beef, I mean targets?

    A lot of space game scenarios can be gleaned from actual or planned earth history.  One such idea is the convoy.  You can make the cargo as important as you want so you can justify any ship being in the escort group.  Likewise you can use  any  ship in the attacker role.  Want a "submarine" sneak attack or a full bore assault by capital ships?  Along with the SFB ships I purchased I got some freighters.  I don't recall many from the original series so colors and markings were my choice.  Most of the warships are going to be pretty bland (I'm focusing on Kilingon, Federation, and Kzinti) so I decided to use some of those often neglected colors in my paint racks.  

A small group on Corsec stands again

Topside

     For these I painted their base color and then did the structure with a mix of gunmetal and steel.  Being bright and pretty unexciting I spiced them up with decals.  BAM!  These particular ones came from the spares box, mostly an old helicopter kit but also some armor markings as well.  I didn't do anything too wacky so they can be race generic but I can easily see some marked with current company logos.  Maybe a giant load of Starbucks for some weary crystal miners?  Games should be fun and sometimes those silly details add a nice vibe to the game.  

Kirk's a no-show?

     Ok, so you've noticed by now there aren't any Federation ships on this page.  Yep, they aren't done.  They are being worked on though.  I had to do a bit of filling but the frigates and early light cruisers are primed.  They also got the magnet treatment.  Once the Federation gets done it'll be time to put on games, of both SFB and FC.  It's sometimes hard to get people to play SFB if they've only ever seen or heard of the later versions, but playing the original box game version isn't bad and it's under 40 pages.  The math required isn't tough, adding and subtracting, so I'm not sure where people think they are going to be doing accounting or stats.  So future updates will have some space clashes to report.