Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Winter terrain commission

I took on a terrain commission a few months back to make some 15mm pieces for a Flames of War board. These included some summer wheat fields and well as hills and forests for a winter game.


The hills turned out okay. My approach to simulating snow worked well on small bases but not so great on larger terrain pieces. So the simplest piece (hills) took a long time and entailed a number of false starts. In then end, they will do. I wonder if foam hills painted white wouldn't have worked better than the more elaborate textured approach I took?


The five forest pieces, by contrast, went quite quickly. I bought some N-scale railway trees and frosted them with a bit of white spray paint. I then drilled out some magnets (sprayed white) and glued the trees into them. Each tree them sits on a washer I glued onto the base plate. This allows the owner to re-arrange the trees and also take them off for easier storage and to position troops in.


I decided to put a small number of trees on each base. Really, the bases simply denote the boundaries of the forest so all it needs to do is hint at rough ground and trees. Some rocks, trunks, grass and snow do the heavy lifting.


All of the pieces fit within an 8x10" box and I tried to make the pieces a natural shape.


I also did one that was thinner to represent more of a treed ridge line. Hopefully the owner likes them and they will stand up to play.


Up next: Some 1/72 ancient Germans have been patiently waiting for some attention. I also need to clean my hobby room as terrain making is bloody messy!

No comments: