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).  

Spectre Runthrough

A test game of Spectre Ops

     I'm a big fan of modern/near future games and Spectre miniatures has a set of rules, Spectre Ops, that we gave a test play of.  The Spectre minis are comparable to Eureka and Empress.  The poses and various factions are great and would be a great addition to anyone's modern forces.  Very fine casting (yep, separate NVG to glue!) and well thought out equipment loads.  The Spectre Ops rules feel like a mix of Skirmish Sangin and Black Ops, enough detail for rivet counters but not so much that large force battles bog down to a stop.  Weapons are grouped by class and the thing I like most, ranges are long and damage is lethal.  Being hit is a bad thing, no hit points to absorb point-blank shotgun hits.  The game we played had two SF teams infiltrating a militia camp in Lbotu (my African imag-nation).  Their goals were to kill/capture the militia leader, rescue a doctor and nurse, rescue the chief's daughter from the guerrillas, and kill the guerrilla leader.  This was not meant to be a balanced game for points and it was unlikely the SF groups would get all the objectives, it was just  to see how the rules work, what we didn't understand, and get an overall feel for it.  Terrain is important in the game since ranges are long and when hit the effects are harsh.

  The board at the start.  The SF teams will come from the left and bottom.  The fur area is dense jungle and the Any area of scattered foliage is concealing terrain.

    One group of bad guys, guerrillas in the barracks.  They are unalert.

    Rebel army troops on stand-by near the supply dump.

   HVT in the form of a rebel leader, and bodyguarrds.

 The doc and his nurse, and militia overseer.  One SF team came in from the far left of the pic.

 HVT militia leader and local chief's daughter are in this 2-story house.  A gathering of militia troops are also present.

 Another view of the camp.

 A collection of tango casualties.  Sorry no in-game pics, too busy making sure we weren't doing something really wacky with the rules.  It is less than half of the total enemy force on the table.

     Some game notes:  high quality troops are better than low quality, and you'll notice it.  We played a narrative style game where I played the bad guys and Chuck & Bill played the SF teams.  I like this style play instead of point games as it allows for unknown tango reactions and hidden forces.  The tangos play as I've got it scripted in my head and "what would they really do", and I don't care if the SF team wins or not, just that we have fun.  With that said, I don't fudge dice or just walk into mg fire either, but if they are equipped with AK47's that's what they're getting, not restricted to a total point value.  Explosives can kill outright if you're in direct contact with them ("are hit") and also do damage to those in a radius.  The hit results are harsh compared to some games, lots of chances to be down and bleeding out.  Terrain therefore is vital to the game because of the range increments. and the hit results. That's not a problem for me since I like to make, and have a lot of terrain bits.  We didn't use snipers or have any fixed mg positions, we also didn't use IEDs or vehicles (those were just obstacles).  Overall I really like this game and the players had fun.  It plays quick but not in a way that it feels like just a roll off of dice.