Quar Smorgasbord (trench board Pt 4 too)

 

Or perhaps you would prefer a potpourri?

Epic Hobby Weekend

Ever feel like you were just spinning your wheels wasting time doing a bunch of small projects only vaguely related? little progress here, little progress there, but nothing feels complete? 

Then things kinda come together and finish at the same time in one epic hobby weekend.

It's a rush!  Things jump forward with multiple endorphin hits.  

It's like one of those cooking shows where five simmering pots and pans and the oven timer goes off and suddenly things are done at once.  

Now I have something to blog about, and it makes me happy.

You have something to read about, and that makes you sad.

Just the way of the world.

Service today is a little Miniature Gaming Medley.

Enjoy!
(The Swedish Chef is the only cooking show I enjoyed)

Miniatures

Once can't make terrain all the time (even though I kinda have been), and in between I put paint to miniature when there wasn't anything better to do.  Six more Quar Crusaders join the cause today.

Close ups

These are my first of the newer hard plastic range.  I find it...challenging... to get the arms in the right places.  But other than that I really like the miniatures.  

In fact I'm very much enjoying the whole Quar project.  I'm SO into it I even joined Facebook for the first time just to I could be a part of the Quar discussion group.  I told myself that I'm joining Facebook for my daughter's sake, because she's gonna want to be on it soon (being 11) and I had better at least have an idea of what it is.  Being an old out of touch dad is lame.  

I can totally see how Facebook is a giant endless rabbit hole.   Also Cool, because it dials you into the groups / areas that you find interesting.  Also scary, because a computer program learns you VERY fast.  

Bridge

According to the plan for the "This Quar's War Trench Terrain Board" the third board would also feature another bridge, but smaller.  I don't know why.  'The plan' was conceived so long ago that I don't remember what I was thinking.  But let's assume that past me knew what he was about. 

I didn't have another bridge laying around, so I had to make it.  I wanted the bridge done first so that I could assure that it fit over the trench; that it would be easier to cut the foam to the bridge than construct the bridge to the foam.  I dug out my Hirst Arts 'Fieldstone bridge' mold that I got years ago and casted up all the blocks.  It takes forever.  And I'm out of practice.  A skill more remembered than relearned.  

Bridge built.
Still in it's pale plaster white.
The same color that my skin defaults to. 
This one is 2" wide.
And since it's from the same mold it matches the larger one
seen in previous post.

The wood pile behind it is my ever-growing pile of planks for use later.

After I took this picture I tidied it all away in a Ziplock.
Started to take up too much room on my hobby desk
and kept reminding me of my backyard.

Trench Board

With the bridge done, I could move onto the third board construction.  And the Epic hobby weekend cumulated with the wife and daughter leaving town for a night and two days, leaving me with just the two boys.  Making sure to run them around ALL day outside in the heat, they went right to sleep at bedtime leaving me with an extended evening to cut foam while listening to inappropriate music.

mapping it all out.

The third board will feature a T junction for the big wide trench, a U shaped WWI style trench, the bridge, and a rocky cliff face (I also cast a bunch of rocks from molds while casting the bridge).

All cut out.

stone texture craved into the foam to mark where the bridge goes.

It's a big leap forward and the end of phase 1with the boards is in sight and soon I can start to make them look pretty versus just stuff glued together.

Surprise Convention:

I was not planning on attending Pacificon this year, the only out of town con I usually attend.  Bills being bills and times being what they are, I didn't think 3 nights in a hotel was a necessary expense. 

I probably bitched about it a few times, because my wife got me a ticket as a Father's Day present.  Before I could complain that it wasn't so much the ticket price but the hotel (besides, if I hosted a big enough game I could get in for free anyway) and I thought we were trying to save some cash she told me that she had worked it out with her parents that I could sleep at their house (which is about 45 mins from the convention hotel). 

-truth is- I had already thought of that and rejected the idea.  I get along with my in-laws just fine, but they are the sort that would 'wait for me just to make sure I got back safely' even though I'm in my late 40s and the caretaker of 3 of their grandchildren....  plus, I'm in my late 40s and I'm gonna couch surf at my inlaws?  LAME.  but it was decided for me.  I have a nice wife.  

The week after my friend Mr. DR. told me that I could stay in his hotel room for free.  He's a nice man.

So I'm going.  And since I have paid admission, I can wait to the very last second to decide if I want to run a game or just be a player the whole weekend.   

Blog Birthday

This Terrible blog is 7 years old this week.  This is the 181st post.  

Thanks to everyone whose reads this Terrible blog and double thanks to everyone whose wrote a comment to let me know they read it.  I KNOW it's mostly a waste of time, but hopefully the blog is at least mildly amusing so that:

Sometimes I think that my blogging time is ending.  But then I think "what else am I gonna do while at work?"  

Till Next Time

More fun with foam (Trench Terrain board Pt3)

(Sing it!)

Trenching time, trenching time,

Time for a trenching time,

Time to get your Proxon and your ruler.

trenching time, trenching time,

Lots of fun with trenching time,

Time to let Stew he do another

                 trenching post for you.

-Good job, you nailed it.

More Trench Terrain Board

Can you believe it?  So soon after the last installment.  That's what happens when your two oldest children go to their grandparents for a few days and nights.  Amazin how much time opens up.

The first 2x4 board being done as seen in previous posts, it was time to move on to the foam stage of the second 2x4.  The plan for this board is there will a trench pit for some guns teams, the ridiculous large trench will continue to wind it's way across, and there will be a bridge going over it that will make a nice objective.

I happen to (rumble bang) have the stone bridge (shift, screech) right over here (clang, rattle) under all this stuff (clatter shatter)....Ah, there it is.

Tadaa!
made from Hist Arts years and years ago,
but still holding up quite well.
Unlike me.
My elbow hurt today for no reason.

This stage actually went somewhat fast.  Some of it is practice effects, but I was also greatly aided in my Proxon upgrade from Shifting Lands:

Shifting Lands Guider Pro 2.0
An MDF construction while not complicated to build, 
does take some thought.

What it does is make cutting things straight WAAAAY easier.  

Yes, I added it to the hobby expenses list.

As the cutting and shaping went fast, and because I'm sure you all find this as fascinating as I find long discussions on the proper color of pompoms in the late summer of the 1806 campaign in wherever...

It'll be rapid-fire-picture-caption time.

Go!

Virgin foam placed next to the previous terrain board.
I placed the bridge where I thought it would look cool,
and drew in with a sharpie where stuff would be cut out..

 

Protip: label everything.
I should of labeled more.
Because after cutting you get random shaped pieces of foam and you're like
"is this a keep piece or a scrap piece?"
bridge is also outlined.

main trench cut out and bridge test fit.

Cut out the gun pit area and made stairs using the method described in the previous post.
The depth is 1/2 an inch again as in the last board.
I just cut a half inch off the top.
The idea is that even with some build up later on with wood and ground covers and maybe sandbags
the Quar will be able to stick their snouts over the trench line.

The two boards placed together.
Some Quar added in for scale.

The pink panther giving me the thumbs up is very reassuring.

Then the areas under the bridge and stairs get the stone texture treatment
as seen in previous post.
This time I took Dave Stone's advice (ooo, Stone on stone) and skipped the sharp part
and just used a pen and pushed very hard.

Looking adequate.

I'm not intending to attach the bridge or even use it in every scenario, but the stone wall will serve as reminder of where I thought the bridge should go, and will be another break in the side of the trench wall from being all wooden planks.  

Speaking of wooden planks.. 

... (grumble grumble) they can't all be gems....

As I was SAYING, speaking of wooden planks

I haven't been painting a lot;
instead, I've been cutting down long sticks into shorter sticks
in preparation for the next stage.  

Don't know how many I will need except it'll be somewhere in between 'lots' and 'a zillion.'

Least while I cut sticks I can hang out with my wife and watch some TV show she picked about murder.

It's always about murder.

Thanks for reading.

Double thanks for writing a comment.

Till next time.

Trench Terrain Part 2

 

More Trenches, More Quar, More Fun for Everyone.

Just so.  Blogging IS so much fun.  Most fun you can have on the internet but don't test that statement.  

Let's get on with it.

More Work in the Trenches

Last we left off; the hero of our story had cut out a large trench and added a defensive trench that ran along side.  See previous post HERES for Part One if some inclined.  Yes, I am the hero of this story, I don't need to be saved, and you don't need to laugh so hard.

Where we left off.
The arrow indicates where we'll focus our attention today.

There should be a way down into the big ol trench.  My first thought was a waterslide.  Waterslides are fun.  But a waterslide doesn't really fit the theme so instead I'll add some stairs.  Stairs are less fun but probably easier to make.  To double the fun we'll make two staircases.

The Foam is 2" high.  I decided that the stairs will be 4" long.  In almost all skirmish games I've played a miniature can move around 6" (give or take) So 4" I thought would be a good length so a miniature who started their move near the top or bottom could move all the way up or down and not need to stop in the middle.  The stairs will be 2" wide, as that will accommodate most bases.  

Cut out a 2" by 4" block of where the stairs are gonna be.

My wife took this picture.
She said I was 'adorable' playing with the new machine.
By 'adorable,' she obviously meant HEROIC.
Even wearing my Christmas PJs in July.

MATH TIME: Math is not fun, though I'm told that certain types of people do find math fun. I've also been told that certain people find it fun to put together puzzles.  I've even heard tales of some people who think it's fun to paint miniatures.  These people are called boring.  There's all types in the world.

4" = 100mm.  10mm is a good size for a stair for a 28mm miniature, as it's just bigger than the foot.  

Seriously, go look at one.  I thought about this for a while, I spent time on this.  Because stairs that are too big or too small would look out of scale and stupid.  If each stair is 10mm long, then 10 stairs will fit into a 100mm length (10 into 100 is 10!).  The height of the staircase is 2" = 50mm.  If I want each of the 10 steps to be it's own layer, then the height of each stair should be 5mm (10 into 50 is 5).  

Did that make sense?  Course not.  Math is hard and mysterious.  

take the 2" by 4" block, and just slice into layers 5mm (ish ) in height.

then just take a layer and slice off 10mm increments to make stairs.

Like that.
Stairs.
How fun.

We'll transform these into stone stairs
by carving in a stone pattern.
Now these are looking fun.

Carving a stone pattern was super easy and there's a lot of youtubes about it if one is interested.

in summary:

1) use a sharp blade to slice in the outlines.

2) use a ballpoint pen or dull pencil to trace those lines to make them deeper / more distinct.

3) use a rock or ball of aluminum foil and smash it all over the foam to make a bumby rock like texture.

4) use a pair of tweezers to rip out small parts here and there to increase contrast.

Commit 

With the stairs done, it was time to make a commitment and actually attach all this foam to the wood.  Using liquid nails, I glued it all down trying my best to make sure the foam lined up with the edges of the terrain board and added foam scraps in any large gaps in the middle.

Tadaa!

For this board, I'll declare the Foam stage:
Complete.
2 more boards to go.

I'm still deciding on what the next stage should be.  Spackle to close the gaps? Add the wooden planks first?  The ground texture?  Move on to the next terrain board now that I've gotten down the basics of foam construction?  

While wallowing in indecision I did the most boring thing a person could do and painted some miniatures.

More Quar.  What else is there? 

These are Crusader Snipers.
I always say sniper like this:
sniPAH.
It's more fun and amusing.

Fun's Over

All fun times must come to an end.  Usually that's when your children are born, but in this case, just the end of the post.

Thanks for reading

Double thanks for writing a comment.

Till Next time.

Trench Terrain Boards Part 1

By my count, I've painted 40 miniatures in the past 2 months.

Incredible speed that is, inhuman even, Olympian.  

Nobody could keep up that pace.  

I certainly can't.  At least not without performance enhancing drugs.  

The kind of drugs that government agents take in the movies in order to withstand 'vigorous interrogation' by the enemy, because painting endless miniatures is a form of torture.  

That's just a hyperbolic way of saying 'I don't like painting miniatures that much and want to do something different.'

It's terrain time.  It's off to the trenches!

It's also a post that I feel like I type a lot but do very little.  

WW1 Trenches (Kinda)

My "This Quar's War' project is off and running with a bunch of newly painted miniatures, but I don't have any Quar-specific terrain.  While Quar are strange creatures, their technology isn't and it's basically at the WW1ish level.  WWI always screams trenches to me, and to me trenches always look super cool when they go into the ground rather than sit on the table.  Which means it needs to be a terrain board with foam to dig into.  I've always wanted to make a terrain board and try my hand at some serious terrain modelling.  When I goof off on youtube I don't watch vids on miniature painting (BORING) but watch vids on terrain making.  

After asking myself the fateful question of "How hard can it be to make some terrain boards?" It was time to get started.  

It doesn't have to be faithful recreation of WW1 western front; just something WW1 Trenches Kinda.

There are lots of good resources out there on the internet on how to make terrain boards so I'm just gonna copy all those people.  Very little original thinking required, which is the way that I like it, because my brain has grown soft from watching too many children's cartoons with my kids. 

On blogs, I will direct you toward the master of all things terrain board and foam to Anton's Wargaming Blog.  There's a section called 'adventures in blue board and foamcore' full of examples and he's also currently building a trench board (extremely quickly) that I'm paying close attention to. Very close attention.

Enthusiastic Amateur Hour

I don't know what I'm doing.  Don't take me for an expert or someone skilled.  I'm like a teenager going on his first date after getting a lot of advice from the internet, and I'm really excited about it.  

Taking some inspiration from some Quar illustrations...

Images lifted from "tales of the Breach" available as a free PDF from https://rhyfler.com/.

I then drew out a plan on graph paper.

The plan went through several revisions.

Main idea: the table will be 6x4 comprised of 3 2x4 terrain boards. There will be a very wide, very deep trench that runs along it; something more for travel than defense; to move troops and such, but also so wide and deep that tanks / vehicles can't drive over it (making any bridges good scenario objectives).  Not sure if something like that ever existed in real WWI trenches. Branching off from that there will be more traditional defensive trenches.  I'll also be adding some modular step hills with trenches that can be moved about.   

In my imagination: It's not a trench system that was designed for the front lines, but a long existing trench system belonging to the Coftyran faction (Royalists) as part of the intricate border defense and the Crusader faction is moving in.  The front lines have come to it.

The big trench will be 2" deep, and 6" wide.  

First this board will be used for skirmish games, but with an eye that it eventually could expand into big battle games.  

Time to go to the hardware store.

Indeed Boromir, indeed.

Got myself 3 2'x4' sheets of MDF, some 2"x1"x8' wooden boards, and 2 sheets of 8'x4' insulation foam that were 1 inch thick.  

--Originally I wanted 1 sheet of 2" think insulation foam, but the one sheet the store had was all beat to hell so I got the other stuff.

I had to ninja drop kick the foam sheets in the parking lot in order to break them down to a size that fit in the car.  Everyone was impressed with my ninja moves I SWEAR, and no one pointed out that next time I should bring a utility knife to cut the foam like a normal person.  

Construction

The first step is to create some battens / frame around the 2x4 sheets to add stability and help prevent warping.  

Cutting the 2"x1" to the proper length.  

attach the frame to the sheet.

The braces were attached with liquid nails and after that had dried for a few hours the boards were flipped over and screws were added to hold them in place.  And you only see two boards because I ran out of wood and had to go back to the store to get more.

Indeed.
Same goes with Wargaming Projects

--Fun Fact: Wood does not come in precisely the sizes it is advertised.  My original idea was to create a 2" frame and have the 2" foam nested inside. I thought this would protect the foam and ensure that the boards would line up better.  But 2"x1" boards aren't actually 2x1 but more like 1.5 by .75.   I couldn't find a board that was actually 2", go figure.  Also the sheets of MDF that were sold as 2'x4' are actually just slightly bigger.  I found that out the hard way, because I cut a brace 2' long brace and placed it down on the mdf sheet and found it didn't reach to the end..

So new plan.  The braces will be on the bottom, and the foam will be on the top

3 boards assembled and looking pretty flat.
So far so average.

Let's start adding foam.

Foam Stuff

I knew that for this project I was going to be cutting a lot of foam.  Thick foam too.  So I invested in the tool that all the terrain Youtubers and cool bloggers seem to use: a Proxxon Hotwire Cutter.

tadaa!
I admit, It don't look like much.

Trying it out.
I glued two 1" pieces of foam together to get the 2" height I want.
It is SO MUCH easier to cut with the hotwire than a sharp knife.
Though that REDHOT wire is kinda scary.

OK, I can feel you attention starting to flag.  I don't blame you, and I haven't said something funny in a while.  Let's rapid-fire-picture-style the rest of this post.  Watch the pink foam dance.

I cut 4 slabs of the 1 inch foam roughly the size of the board.
glued them together to get a 2" height.

used the Proxxon to straighten out the edges.

Cut out the profile for the large trench.
Sketched out where the regular firing trench is gonna be.
I used some Quar miniatures to get an idea of the proper size.

Cut that out as well.

Well this bit is important.  At some point I figured out it was easier to manipulate the foam through the Proxxon if it was in smaller pieces, so started cutting everything in half.  

I'm also extremely anxious that the foam won't line up to the edge of the wooden board completely, and that will result in things not lining up with the other boards with big gaps and everything will be terrible.  A tip I remembered from Mel The Terrain Tutor is that it's easier to cut things down the middle, line up the pieces at the edge, and fill the gap in the center.  

Building up the firing trench.
The Quar need to be able to see out of this trench.
So again, using Quar miniatures I tested what the actual height should be.
Quar a little shorter (and pudgier) than usual 28mm miniatures.
A 1" deep trench is just over their heads.

A 1/2" deep trench looks to be just about right height
that they can poke their snouts over.

Almost lastly, cut some ramps so miniatures can travel up to the firing trench.

And lastly for this post, 
start using scraps of foam to plug big gaps in the middle.
We'll just have to trust that spackle will fill any small gaps in a later step.

Slow Burns

This board is gonna be a slow burn, take your time, no rush project.  For a few reasons:

1) As stated, I don't know what I'm doing and I'm kinda feeling my away along.  Before any progress is made there is at least 20 mins of me just staring at things making thinking noises before I do anything.  And I do it very slowly.  

2) It's big and takes up a lot of space, so only gonna work on it on nights when I'm able to stay up late and devote enough time to make it worth yanking it all out.  And there are 3 boards to make as well as some more traditional tabletop terrain.  

Which means that in the meantimes, I guess I can continue to paint more miniatures.

More miniature painting.... yay I guess.

Thanks for reading.

Double Thanks for Writing a comment.

Till next time.