Topic: Midaski's Meandering Multitudinous Machinations .... Arise

[Midaski]

My hobby and gaming stuff has definitely suffered over the last year or so. The gaming buddy across the road moved further away; eldest son lives 120 miles away and comes home for fleeting visits and I cannot remember the last time I played a full game of warhammer.
This hasn't stopped me buying minis of course,    but with no gaming there has been even less incentive to build and paint, and as regulars will know, I need little excuse NOT to paint.

So I examined what chances I had to get some gaming in and I realised that my potential opponents had the same problem as me - time.
The days when my neighbour would come over at 7.00pm on a Friday evening and we'd play 2000pts with a few beers and pack up on turn 4 or maybe 5 at around 11.00pm, or my son and I would start Saturday morning and run a game all over the weekend had gone.
My best chances were some sort of game that would last from around 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

So what had we got?  Mordheim obviously, and then I have dabbled at Saga and quite like that, and Legends of the High Seas was quite fun a couple of years ago.
I have the Legends of the Old West, plus supplements of Blood on the Plains, and The Alamo, and I have some cowboys and indians, - and then recently I have been quite taken with Muskets and Tomahawks and the French Indian Wars figures and scenery.

So what we needed was a 4' x 4' or 1200mm x 1200mm board - an adaptable board to allow me to play some of these games on it.

I already have several square scenery bases with ruins suitable for Mordheim scattered around my gaming room, and these are all on something like a 6mm thick board, so I wanted a lip to hold the bases in place and stop them getting knocked.
New bases could be made to be used for more normal land.

So I had a board cut and lipped it, then I decided to paint it blue for a water effect.




So I had the sea or water, and now I needed to make some raised sections to give me varying amounts of land.
So I got some sheets of quite thin mdf board - around 2mm and cut them up into 300 x 300mm squares, and a few 300 x 600mm rectangles.
Getting them cut accurately was quite a task and I never got it exactly right.




Then I got loads of polystyrene and glued it to these bases and took a knife and hot wire cutter, and trimmed the edges, and then with a wide scraper smeared filler down the sides .............

....... and then realised it was bloody useless as none of the edges were straight. The polystyrene was very difficult to cut neatly and there were all sorts of gaps when I tried to put the various bases together in any sort of pattern.

 

[Midaski]

So - it was then, like most men with instructions they never look at,    I remembered the article that had inspired this sea board and went and hunted it out.

It is in the Foundry Compendium and written by Gary Chalk.

I had forgotten the intermediate step:







I used some simple 12mm x 44mm batten, and the added advantage was I could adjust the accuracy of the 'squareness' of the base boards, slightly overhanging the battens where necessary.

Then came the polystyrene, and I discovered it is quite hard to find 44mm deep polystyrene, so there was more cutting and shaving ........ 





After the trimming I got some ordinary interior use ready mixed filler and spread it all over.

[Midaski]

Then again following Mr Chalk's tutorial I got some nice dark brown paint and mixed it into the filler for a final top coat to cover the batten edges as well.
The theory is that if you have coloured filler, then any damage or chips will expose the brown (earth ) and not stand out.





I wasn't sure about the next step. Gary says that he takes a 20 to 30mm ( 1" ) wide paint brush and dips it in PVA glue and then brushes it gently into the brown plaster which makes for a much harder and more durable surface.

He talks about stippling and brushing it into a 'texture' but not overdoing it. I imagine if you have secondary bits of scenery like buildings or woods etc that are on their own bases the a smooth surface will actually help.

I had a go at brushing the PVA in gently but trying to keep things fairly level.



The plan is to have some dock sections at a halfway level between the sea and the land sections.
I'd actually made some of these first, and you may be able to see some Hirst Arts bricks, and the fact that I was right about how crap sticking ploystyrene straight onto the base board was. 
I need to go back and sort out the side edges: the longer back should not be quite so much of a problem as I intend to add more Hirst blocks to raise it to the same height as the battens on the land sections and maybe add ladders or steps.



The close up shows the slots where the wooden jetties link in.
Again the plan is to put some sort of Hirst cobble or tile bricks over the dockside surface.

I've kinda been inspired by DWhiteys French Indian Wars figures and his 4Ground buildings, as I have some too and I want to be able to put them on a decent scenic board.

So that's where we are today - and this may well never be added to for another year, or I might be inspired to do some more before Easter who knows. 

[Darknight]

Looking really good, Mids! For the dock sections, you might want to look at textured plasticard - they have some really nice designs which would work well.

[King]

This looks like it planned out by a master artisan Mids.  Very nice work.  I really wish I could play on this once its ready 

Any links for textured plasticard DK?

[Darknight]

Search for Evergreen and Plastruct - your local stores should have them. eBay generally has some good sales (but, of course, Mids, you and I are in different countries, so a link wouldn't be much use).

My FLGS has a little selection of the textured stuff.

[Midaski]

I've got some Hirst floor tile moulds and have cast several, so I have options.
I want to go over the top of those existing bricks to cap the slots my jetties link to.

I will then need to make some bollards/capstans for boats to tie up to.


 

[Shadespyre]

This looks great, keep at it!

[Commander Bernhardt]

you got way to far with this project to not finish it! keep on going!!

[Midaski]

Well some progress has been made .........

Finished the base filler and made room for a pond. 




Got the boards painted and a lot flocked.



 Evening comes and the shadows lengthen






Dock close ups:    The SKULLS are not glued down 




Got the dock fully covered now - the gap you see is for a set of steps up to the land level on a new board square I need to create.




The buildings are 4Ground Anglo Danish and Saxon dwellings



I've realised that the dock and the countryside do not go together. 

I want to have some sort of warehouse and dockyard buildings and then some "Town Houses" and so I do need to make some more boards to go between dock and countryside - and I also want some that are a sort of beach.

[TheHoundmaster]

Dock close ups:    The SKULLS are not glued down 

Needs more skulls! 

[ZeroTwentythree]

"So what game is this for?"

*looks at skullz*

"Oh, Warhammer!"

 

[The Peacemaker]

I have a suggestion:
See if you can file or carve in a rut into the roads. Wagon ruts would be deep and two on each side but if its just people ruts then the whole path has just a slight dip.
Would make it look more real but flat surface is better for gaming....

[Midaski]

It is still a WIP
The 'roads' are basically areas I haven't flocked yet.
I have considered some ruts, and as the base is mainly polystyrene that would not be too difficult, but I would have to score some grooves in the wooden edges.

What I may also do is slightly raise a centre ridge, and the two sides with the odd bit of grass to give the impression of two lines/tracks.

I may have too much roadway overall anyway - there are one or two sections that don't go together as well as others, so I have to find their optimum positions, and I may need to change the patterns.
The roadways were mainly to give some semblance of a centre road in a village, and maybe some side roads.

The next steps are:

To finish some more buildings.

Paint the dock - I have sprayed it, now need to drybrush it a bit.

Add some dockside extras - barrels, crates, sacks.

Build some extra squares for those transition pieces

[Midaski]

So I have undercoated the dock pieces with Halfords grey primer, and found a few bits of undercoated or half-painted accessories to add some atmosphere.





Then I have completed my 4Ground American Legends buildings - I think they are really quite good and excellent value.



So the board is coming along nicely - the base boards can go together better than this particular configuration.








Now I really must look at painting some figures ..................

[Delthos]

Wow that is really starting to look good. I really like that Covered wagon. That's gonna be a fun table to play on.

Can you take some pictures with miniatures next to them so I can get a good idea of their size? Their website doesn't list dimensions and I'm not familiar with the miniatures they have in their pictures.

[Shadespyre]

This really is looking good now, I still love the dockside especially. I really must sort out my own battlefield, but there are so many miniatures to paint.  Maybe when I've done my VC army, my WoC army, redone my Lizardmen, painted my RT Space Marines, and my pre-slotta High Elves and Half Orcs, and my collection of 1980s Dragons, and that 15mm SF project, and...

You know what, I'll just enjoy looking at your work instead. Keep it up!

[Shadowlord]

That's progress right there. 

Any viking/saxon buildings?

[Midaski]

That's progress right there. 

Any viking/saxon buildings?

Yes - I have some of the 4Ground ones.
I think I've made 3 and got a couple of others yet to do.

With the Bash coming up though, it will be a couple of weeks before I get anything much extra done.

[Kirgan]

 

[Gankom]

That looks fantastic! I may gave to steal some of the instructions to try my own.

[Midaski]

My last post was shortly before the May 2013 Eurobash and just a few days after I returned from Belgium my 88 year old mother was taken ill.
She caught shingles which can be intensely painful and she got it in her one good eye, which was even more upsetting. She went into hospital for most of that summer, coming back to stay with me at the beginning of that September.

So my hobby room was sacrificed to give her a bedroom on the ground floor, and we waited to see if she would recover enough to go back to her flat.
There had been some incompetent managing of her medication during her hospital stay where her underactive thyroid medication had been cut by two thirds, and she was lethargic and always tired and her partial blindness meant that 'going home' became impossible.
With my wife and I both working she seemed to lose motivation and her recovery was very up and down. She went for a break to a retirement home and after 10 days she said she wanted to stay there - she had a routine, 24/7 monitoring, and most importantly all the company she could manage, and she was happy.
She just hit 90 - we had a family party and she was almost back to her pre-illness sparkyness.

So those pics at the top of this thread were replaced by this:



and after mum moved out, Midaski lost out Big Time - the wife decided we needed a "Front Room" as a second living room so my son and his young lady had somewhere to go if they didn't want to share our taste in TV programmes.     

So now it looks like this:
My son has been in there once I think, and it's become the 'default' TV room if I want to watch football.



However I have managed to reclaim the other end of this room and so I decided I needed some new 'infrastructure' to reinvigorate my hobby interest.
So I found some old bits of chipboard and such, that used to be the shelf units in the gaming room, and out came the saw and the drill and we started cutting drilling and gluing ......................

and Hey Presto



You can see 135 holes ..............
But then when I had used a bit of caulk filler, and gave it a coat of grey primer you can see the rear view ..........



Behold another 52 holes for back up.

Then I thought an idiot's guide to arranging things would help a bit so out came some base paints to start it off .........



and here is the finished article in situ and with several paints in place.



Now that is a proper Paint Station 

So this is my painting area.



It must be well over three years since I tried to paint anything seriously, and those who know me well will point out that I have thousands of unpainted figures, and still keep buying new stuff.

I am planning for my retirement. 

[Zak]

WOW!! that game board is amazing sir 

[mottdon]

Nice studio set up, Midaski!  I'm impressed!  Looks like you have good lighting at your painting station as well!  Organization is a key to being able to churn out the models!  I'm looking forward to seeing some painted models now!   

[Midaski]

Might be worth sitting down before you read further ...............................




Ok ......................







I picked up a paintbrush today ........................................







............. and put some paint on some figures ....................