Early Buildings for Microarmor

I was digging through some old storage bins and found these buildings that I  made back in the 70s for WWII games. They were cut out of blocks of scrap wood. Crude and not all to scale, but did the job back then.

I Want One of These Machines...Now!

Life is a Highway

Prototype of a paved, two-lane highway :

Made from black foam sheet.  I scrubbed on some gray craft paint and carefully painted the line. Not too bad for freehand, eh? Not really...I used a straight edge ruler as a guide and then went back over it with a Sharpie pen. Once again, good enough for government work.

Finished Bridge

I was a bad boy today. Instead of working on syllabi and other equally exciting stuff, I stayed home and finished the last bridge.  There were plenty of house chores to be done, and if it wasn't raining for much of the day, I would have done some needed outdoor work  (it got up to about 50°F today).

Here it is:

South African Samil trucks from Scotia Grendel 

View of other side with river segments added

Of the three, I am the least happy with this one only because one side warped. It was probably due to the air dry clay, but it didn't warp the previous bridge. But, it's not awful like those hexagonal river segments turned out. I also managed to knock out several more dirt roads. 

Here are the three together :

Papa Bridge,  Momma  Bridge, and Baby Bridge

I am done with bridges for the foreseeable future.  Now, I need to get some paved road segments done and maybe a few more dense forests.  I move ever closer to the day of battle!

One More Bridge and More Forest

Backstory: I didn't realize it until finished but the last bridge I built was for a wider river section...did you hear this story already? No matter.  I bought a nice truss bridge from GHQ, but it's for a much narrower river. So, I set forth building my own. I made a template in a drawing program that was a lengthened version of the GHQ bridge. I was going to be ambitious and make it out of styrene strips. After much cursing and superglue everywhere but where it was supposed to be,  I said fiddle it, glued the template onto thin cardboard, and carefully cut it out with an Xacto knife. I glued glued styrene strips to the top and bottom and declared it done. Here it is so far:

Good enough for government work. I'll post another picture when it's all done.

Onto forests. I made my next big forest using the same technique but this time with  1" roofing nails for trunks. Its the bigger of the two in the box:

Box O Trees

I slathered the nails with caulk and the points stick into the ground to try to make them less obvious.  To me, they turned out ok, but a little thicker than I wanted. I suppose I could try thinner nails, but I might as well use the dowels.

Something that I noticed that bothers me is that the flocking of some of my trees have turned a sickly pale much like what happens to  broccoli when you leave it in the refrigerator too long. My models and terrain stuff are stored by a window, but these trees are in boxes and I have a bunch of trees for my 15mm games that are totally exposed to the light and show no discoloration, so it can't be due to UV light. I am not sure why this happened.  Any thoughts?

Happy New Year! Thoughts for 2016

Good-bye 2015, hello 2016.

I can't say I'll miss 2015 too much, particularly the later part. It was not my most productive year. I had a bunch of big plans, but few got realized.

For 2016, my main focus will be on my modern microarmor campaign. Its been my main focus for quite some time, but I want to sprint to the finish. My goal is to get all scenery done to have my first land battle by end of January and have some sort of solo rules in place for land, sea, and air battles around that time.

Additionally, I plan to cut down on spending. Much of my spending last year went to rules...enough already with the rules! Unless GHQ finally comes out with the M103 heavy tank, I have no real plans to buy any figures for the foreseeable future. I've even been toying with the idea of selling some lead on ebay, but that is just a hard paradigm for me to shift to.

The end of the old year and beginning of the new year is a time of reflection. I have been rethinking my various projects. I have not done anything with the 15mm sci-fi for awhile. Do I want to continue it? That might be the first to sell off, at least the unpainted ones. Same goes with my post-apocalyptic/zombie/sci-fi/whatever 28mm skirmish game.  My15mm fantasy is a sacred cow, but I do have a lot of unpainted that I really don't need. Naval gaming keeps calling me, but with he exception of buying GQ III, I've been holding that at bay. Starting up either ACW or AWI keeps popping into my head, but like a temperature convection cell, they rise to the top, cool down, and then sink back to the bottom.

For too many years I've made big promises and plans to accomplish X, Y, and Z but then it ends up that I'm lucky to have gotten X done. I will see what unfolds and be content with what is accomplished.

New Forest Method

Here is a test piece for a very dense forest.

I went the route that Architectsofwar.com and http://www.6mmacw.com/forests.html have by making a lift off canopy. I used thin, black craft foam for both the canopy and the forest floor. 

Here it is taken with the flash to show the tree trunks:

I painted them grey and than added a dark brown wash. The flash shows the gaps in the canopy where this is no foliage. In normal lighting, these gaps are much less obvious. 

Here is was it looks like with the canopy off:

Each square on cutting mat equals 1/4"

The main challenge was trying to get the trunks to stand vertically. This proved to be a mixed success.  I used craft sticks that I bought at a craft store, but I am seriously considering flat head nails that would have solved the vertical trunk issue. I probably could have stuck a lot more trunks on there. The two in the middle are to provide a little more support. 

Both methods in the links above used a hot glue gun to attach the clump foliage, which I did, which predictably was a mess (unless you are trying to recreate the spiders' lair in Mirkwood). Clump foliage is kind of expensive, but I used up only about maybe a fifth of a bag, if that, for this 6 1/2" by 3 1/4" forest.  I probably won't make any more that are much larger than this one. 

I am a lot happier with these than the hex-based forests that I presented in a previous post. Now to get cracking on that second bridge as I inch closer to having enough terrain for a battle.