Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Green Fields of Ohio.


The resurrected 1998 cloth.

Well, it won't win any "marvelous diorama like terrain" awards but its serviceable, practical, flexible and I rather like it. All I did was use a little bit of scrounged green paint to freshen the meadow areas and some light blue craft paint to freshen the water. Oh, and I cut the straight edge of the top mat into a random series of curves. The trees still look a bit sparse to me and there's at least 1/2 dozen that could use bigger bases as well as more leaves and more trees but it'll be hard enough as it is to move figures around the woods. Some dead leaf coloured scatter on the ground and a few more bushes on the day will do nicely.


A wider angled look. Troops are not necessarily organized and placed as they will be.


and for those who don't remember what it was like before:







30 comments:

  1. It looks quite good to me (but then, I mostly use bare tables or simple plain green sheets in most of my games).

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    1. To be honest, if I wasn't hauling the game to a convention for others to play, I probably would not have bothered but I'm glad I did.

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  2. Well worth the effort and looking good I say!

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  3. Looks great I think. I like the more varied and stronger greens, adds some kind of depth or perspective somehow.

    I also like the painted river, looks more convincing that when a model river stands several millimetres proud of its surroundings, although I appreciate there's consequently a downside as regards flexibility of use.

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    1. I like mottled colours on my table top. The old cloth used to have stornger colours but they faded over time. I could have saved money and time if I'd thought of repainting it last year instead of starting over!

      I also like the painted river better and surprisingly its pretty flexible even if it was due to making do and not design. The cheap cloth only came in 5 foot lengths and I need to cover a 6 ft wide table with over hang for when I put hills under the cloth. The result was that I needed 2 pieces of cloth. I painted the river near one edge and by varying which cloth is on top and which way they are oriented I can have a river across any of the 4 edges or across the middle either way or cutting across a diagonal, or no river at all. Of course you get an awful lot of overhang in 1 or 2 of the odder orientations.



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  4. Looks good, Ross.

    And now you know what your next project is, don't you?

    Trees, my friend. Building lots and lots of trees . . . a veritable FOREST of trees (although admittedly a very small forest).


    -- Jeff

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    1. No Jeff, my next project is to find a wargame campaign that was fought on the Prairie, Veldt or Steppes so I don't need so many trees!

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    2. DAK 41?
      Ukraine 43?
      ;oP```

      Whatever you do, it's always enjoyable watching you do it, Ross.
      Thanks for letting us.
      Regards,
      John

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  5. Your terrain always looks good to me. Nice to see the fort in use.

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    1. Thanks Tim. Only 15 years between purchase and deployment. Practically hasty.

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    2. It doesn't do to rush these things.

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  6. Glad to see your old cloth terrain again. Of all your terrain setup options this is my favourite. I think it is both flexible and effective.

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  7. Ross

    Looking good. The new/old cloth really works.

    Cheers
    PD

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  8. Looks really good. I agree the mottled effect looks best

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    1. Actually the old one was mottled but with darker colours that have faded to the point where they were barely discernable, especially in pictures. It certainly looks better now.

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  9. So Ross, how do you "dress" the table?

    There's your lovely cloth, and... is it a few hanfulls of scatter material dropped on?

    Great job,

    Greg

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    1. Greg, it is various bits of scatter. Just a test scatter in a few spots here, there'll be more on the day, dead leaf coloured in the woods, various shades and textures of green in the open + bushes etc along the river.

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  10. There is something about the way you do terrain, Ross, that speaks as eloquently of period - of time and place - as the soldiers you use. In my view that is the hall mark of a successful terrain set up. It is the impression one wishes to create, and often (I find) it is the extempore that is more evocative that finely sculpted and detailed terrain. Your set ups always have a 'look' that draws one in.

    I suspect part of this has to with what is important in TT war gaming: the armies are the stars of the show. The terrain is simply the supporting cast, whose job it is to make the leads look even better than they are.
    Cheers,
    Ion.

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  11. Thanks Ion. I like your supporting cast analogy. I can see doing it the other way with small figures as an adjunct to a well modelled battlefield, but its the toy soldiers I like to focus on.

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  12. Ross: how did you applied the new green color?

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    1. Its just acrylic-latex house paint, thinned a bit with water and applied with a cheap brush about 2" wide. Spray paint would be nice if I could find the right colours and my wife was not so sensitive to the smell of spray cans.

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  13. It seem to be a difficult task! How do you avoid that the brush strokes become too visibles?

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    1. It is partly that the paint is very thin and partly that I swirl the brush in irregular patterns. There may be some brush strokes but not many and because there is no pattern and they are not straight, they do not show.

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