Spodding

I’ve got the basic landforms done now and I’m just covering the foam with polyfilla and building up the cliff faces bit by bit. It’s coming along pretty well, but i am behind schedule and am starting to look for places where I can take short cuts to save time.

As usual with me, nothing ever gets finished and this table is no exception. I will take it to Melbourne ready for playing on, but far from finished in my mind. Ah well, at least I can bring it home again and work on it to my heart’s content (that is, until the next project comes along).

Here are some in-progress shots (they are quite large):

I bought the base for the game table today and thought it might be a good idea to spread out all of the terrain pieces on it – to get a feel for their placement in the landscape.

It brought home just how much work I still have to do on this to be finished by May! Panic time…

Here’s a photo of the table:

“Metal Tail” It’s a (somewhat cynical) term I have heard used by staff of a large gaming company to describe a range of models that supports a ruleset. The metal tail in this case is quite literal however.

I went away on a vacation for a few days before Christmas and when I returned, I had a package waiting for me on my doorstep from Nic Robson at Eureka Miniatures. Inside was this wonderful little model sculpted by Kosta Heristanidis – the start of the Jurassic Reich range (to be released in July I believe). I have just this minute finished painting it.

I think the only things missing from this model are a few saddlebags and ammunition pouches.

I have been working on the castle over the past month or so, but progress has been slow due to a strange lethargy that has been hanging over me. I can’t explain it, but I’ve just had no energy for so many things that I have committed to, and they all languished in the background while I wasted my time on Facebook.

Anyway, here are a couple of shots of the castle as it stands at the moment: The images suck a bit because I am doing this late at night and I’m too lazy to get my tripod out and set up proper lighting so I have to rely on flash or holding the camera dead still.

The Jurassic Reich table is to be divided by a small river that is crossed by two bridges. The river is impassable by vehicles but can be crossed by infantry and dinosaurs. The first bridge is high up the hill near the entrance to the castle and spans a deep gorge. As such, it needs to be imposing and give the impression of height (since we can’t really recreate a 200ft drop to a raging torrent below). The second bridge is down on the plain and should appear a little more homely and rustic. Both bridges need to be wide enough to take the widest vehicle I own (a Panzer IV) and should be removable so that I could swap them out for other structures in the future (such as a ruined version of each).

I spent the weekend making the first bridge and it’s almost complete – just needs a little more stone work doing and then it’s ready for painting. The second is on the workbench and I expect to start cutting it out today or tomorrow.

These pics will eventually be incrporated into a ‘how-to’ guide.

Well, I have discovered exactly how addictive Facebook is. For the past month I have been hooked on the damned site and its simple but highly playable Flash games like Farmville. Damn! “Spodding” at its worst – to waste time doing something that is ultimately useless while you should be doing something else.

Time to put that behind me and get back to doing what I really love and that is making wargaming terrain (detect any irony there?).

So I made some progress on the castle recently. The curtain wall has been sitting languishing for about two months, so this weekend I made the last of the battlements and started finsihing off the stonework. This bit is nearly finished and so I’d like to get it out of the way by the end of October. I also did some work on the tower roof:

Painting is a bit ’sporadic’ at the moment, but i will get it done a bit more once I do the windows of the tower and finish the crenellations at the top.

Very much a Work-In-Progress, so excuse the crappy paint job etc. Lot’s to do still – I had hoped to get it finished this month, but it turned out larger than I was expecting and I ran out of time, so it will spill into September now. Good job I’m a bit further along with the castle eh?

The beauty of this whole Jurassic Reich table is that I can switch from one model to another and avoid the boredom factor that usually plagues me with large projects.

So for the month of August I have been concentrating on the smaller models that will be scattered about the valley below the castle – the farmhouse, trees, fences and other sundry items.

The image below shows the farmhouse as it stands at the moment. Excuse the sloppy paintwork; it’s more of a ‘test’ paintjob that went a bit too far. I was experimenting with the colours of the stonework and I wanted to see what it would look like against the timber framing. The terracotta roof is made up of castings from the Hirst Arts mould. It is “over scale”, but will look ok when it’s finished (I hope).

The other image is a beaut little model from Bolt Action. It’s a German SdKfz7 halftrack gun tractor made from resin and white metal. I love this vehicle for some reason, no idea why, but it has a lot of charm (for a military vehicle) and, incidentally, was the ‘getaway’ vehicle in the Dirty Dozen.

I’ll post some updates on my Incursion 3D table too over the weekend, and perhaps (shock!) show some minis I painted.

My workbench is completely covered in mould(s)!

As a way of reducing the repetition and speeding up the building process for my Jurassic Reich and Incursion projects, I have made a number of master models and created moulds, so that I can repeatedly cast as many copies as I need.

In particular, I made a 7″ x 4″ section of random stone wall that I cast and use as cladding over a base made of foam or card stock. I also made moulds of a brick pillar, some steps, and several floor tiles for my 3D “Incursion” game table.

Guilty secret time…

As well as creating my own, I just bought two moulds from Hirst Arts for making terracotta roofs and cobblestones. Both of these are of the highest quality, but I think the cobblestones are too exaggerated and so I may not use it for this project.

So after years of sneering at people who use HirstArts moulds because they can’t scratch build their own terrain, I have fallen into their ranks. Oh the shame!

Pics to follow when I get near my camera.

The boxed mould is one that is still setting (takes a few hours). It holds some Incursion floor tile master models.

It’s a rare thing to see a painted mini in my collection, and even rarer for it to be shown to the public!

But I was so proud of this – well, the idea more than the actual paint job.