Thursday, September 9, 2010

28mm Terrain Update

Earthquake Update
Before I begin a quick update about the earthquake.Christchurch is still being rocked by aftershocks and the damage is extensive, I still can't believe that nobody was killed! Life will take a long, long time to revert to anywhere close to normal for many people. We are lucky down here, only experiencing the stronger aftershocks, but even so our thoughts are with friends and family in ChCh as they deal with the aftermath of this unbelievable event.

Hirst Arts Terrain
Back here though I've been messing round with Hirst Arts moulds. As well as wargaming I run a weekly Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (a mix of 1E and 2E)- yep, a true, old school geek!. We use a battle map and minis quite a bit and so I've decided to use the new flagstone tiles to create new dungeon floorplans. I've decided against buildings walls as it would make joining things so much harder, not to mention storage.

I spent last night casting flagstones rather than wargaming and and pretty happy with the result.
The mould has 10x 1" square flagstones so it takes quite a bit of time to make enough for a standard dungeon room. Each tile represents a 10ft square and lat night I made:

  • 2x 30ft by 20 ft rooms
  • 2x 30ft by 10 ft corridors
  • 4x 20ftby 10ft corridors
  • 4x 10ft by 10ft corridors.
  • 6x pillars
I am starting to make 2x 20ft by 20ft rooms, and a few more corridors. Once that is done I hope to make another 2x 30ft by 20ft rooms and should then have enough for most reasonable sized dungeon encounters.

A word of warning: The Hirst Arts moulds are fantastic, I am already planning on getting a few more (pr- they are strangeyl addictive and more fun than lego!









And another ruin for War of the Ring





Moulds drying in front of the fire. I'm minaly making flagstones but if I mix too much plaster make a few columns or standard bricks. Each batch only takes about 15-20 minutes to harden. however don't use standard plaster of paris you need some high strength stuff. I use some I got from the North Island a couple of years ago when I was first considering this project.


Work in Progress

5 comments:

  1. Careful Craig, you are going to give me the bug if you keep posting like this.

    I can neither afford to want to rpg again (witness my other blog for my OTT worldbuilding mode) nor to get some of those moulds.

    They are really cool, aren't they? Do you know where you'd source the plaster if you were to do it locally?

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  2. Couldn't find anywhere in CHCH but there must be somewhere. I got it from a company in Wellington- and it cost about $60-100 for a 22.5 bag.

    I am seriously tempted to start manufacturing pieces for wargaming and putting them on Trademe- either as complete or simply as the pieces to build your own.

    Great stuff, can't recommend it enough.

    As for RPGs been running a weekly game for the past 25 years :)

    Craig

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  3. While not my scale, or even that RPGs are within my area of interest, I can see the terrain will look very impressive!

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  4. I envy you your weekly game, Craig. After we finished uni, it became very hard to coordinate four guys plus me to play, and I just let it go. We tried again a few years ago but it was a struggle to keep it going even for a year. Half of it was Chris' fault for being a busy Dr though. I guess I could play in a game, but I'm not sure I'd trust the DM to do it right!

    I think there'd be a market for those on TM. There even would be around your personal networks, if you let it be known that you'd commission as requested. I know I'd be keen for a few for my WOTR table, especcially if you get the pieces to do round towers. Even that square ruin you've done has come up looking very good.

    What was the painting process for those stone pieces?

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  5. Hey Jamie (& TWR)

    I agree- the pieces do come up nice for minimum effort too! Painting is simple- Britihs paints test pots.
    1. Black undercoat.
    2. dry brush a dark grey
    dry brush a very light grey
    Done!

    re: price- Not too much, will have a think. At this stage it is square towers only- and yet to try any.

    Not sure I'll get the round tower blocks- I like the look of the field stone so might get those next but want to get 3-4 at a time to make it a bit more cost effective.

    One idea is to simply do bags of what is needed for each terrain piece and sell those- put them together yourself. I'll e-mail you some prices. i hope to come up to the Cavs next week so maybe can bring a couple of things up to get some idea of what you guys might be interested in.

    I can't wait for the linka 15mm (technically 20mm) moulds to turn up as I intend to make a new Stalingradesque cityscape for FoW and have some BIG ideas for it!

    re: D&D. At is peak we had 10 players which was far too many- when I had a 3e D&D meltdown as it was impossible to DM effectively after level 7 or so, we parred it down to 4-5 players and have remained steady around that. It's really more like a poker night, sitting round talking crap (eg. plotting the demise of Stephen's DBA armies) and chilling. I was lucky to get in touch with a armless & legless RPGer (Nigel) after being down here about 6 months or so and have gamed each week ever since.


    Craig

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