Field Day!

Now that I have a solid core of buildings done for my village I need terrain to go around them. I have a scattering of trees but I'd also like to add some fields, hedges, and stone walls. First off is an experiment in making a plowed field.

Several years ago I made a set of flexible dirt roads out of silicon caulking so I thought I'd try the same technique here. They had the advantage of being flexible enough to mold to an uneven playing surface and still looked pretty nice.

I cut out a piece of stiff felt to use as the base. The cloth works as a reinforcement so the caulking is a little more durable and doesn't rip as much. Normally I wouldn't use something quite so stiff but I found this laying around in the basement.

Next I covered it with the silicon caulking. I chose a chocolate brown color so that as it gets banged up the base color won't be so jarring. Basically you just want to spread it on thickly like icing a cake and make sure to overlap all of the edges. After it was fairly smooth I covered it liberally with sand to texture it. You can use your hand to press the sand into the caulking a little. Then I used an old straight edge to press in the furrows of the field.

I let that dry overnight and shook all of the extra sand off and peeled it off of the saran wrap. I neatened up the edges a little with a knife then the whole thing got a coat of watered glue and some more sand was sprinkled on to cover up any mistakes.

After drying it was painted up pretty simply with browns and drybrushing and then some static grass and flock to blend it into my usual basing. All and all I'm pretty happy with it. I have several more pieces of felt and some caulking left so I'll make at least a couple more.  

Esoteric Order of Cthon

 Next up some more Khurasan Minis. These four friendly fellows are listed as Octopus God Cultists and they definitely make nice cultist figures. I've always liked tentacle face guys ever since running into mindflayers while playing D&D. I guess these guys are probably part of the inner circle and either came a little to close unspeakable powers or maybe are some kind of hybrid creature. Either way I imagine life with a tentacle face could be a little difficult. Not too many nights on the town.

Heading down to the pub.

 They come with separate heads to give you a little variety, but some of the heads don't fit as well as others. I needed to fill a couple of gaps with green stuff to avoid having weird giraffe necks on a couple. As usual with Khurasan miniatures they painted up easily. I wanted them to fit in either as with a standard Cthulhu sea cult or also to go with all of my worm creatures, the Cthonians. I opted for green robes and a variation of the worm flesh.

Looking at the above larger picture its also become evident that I need to replace my dark green paint as it appears to have some particulate in it. Not as noticeable in real life though but one of those hazards of photographing little figures. After all the actual miniature is less than half as large as the one in the picture.

Disagreement with the local Vigilance Committee.

Neo Jovian Rockets

Many years ago I discovered a game called Bloodbowl. At the time I was in high school and my friends, brother and I played many a league during that summer. Those days of managing a team of and leading them to victory or more often defeat left an indelible mark on me. So I went out and bought a copy of Dreadball. Why not just get some more Bloodbowl guys and paint them up? I have no idea but I'll probably due so at some point as well.

In the mean time Dreadball has some nice looking figures, and the mechanics seem rather clever as well. I also like the idea of doing a Sci-Fi style sports game. I could putting together a team of Star Wars type aliens but to start with I'll just go with standard figures.

I bought the base game that comes with the humans and Orks (or whatever Mantic calls them.) I also picked up the other two original teams. Now my plan when I got them was to try to get them painted up for the holidays and get a game in with my brother, but the reality of life quickly shattered that dream. But there is always sometime this summer or maybe next holidays to get the game in.

So here is the first of the human team: The Neo Jovian Rockets.