Terrain Tips

Cheers Russel for the kind comments and feedback, always welcome :-), regarding the terrain the overall aim was to create a flexible piece of multi use boards as opposed to a static scenic effect. The boards themselves are 18 mm MDF, being based in UK I bought these at B&Q, who will cut the boards to size on the spot for you bless em!. So i went for 2 ft by 3 ft purely based on what fits in the back of the car.... oh the precision of it  all!, yes the board are a wee bit on the heavy size as opposed to say 12 or 6 mm thick, but i was going on the assumption that the extra weight would avoid any warping later on and most importantly that they wouldn't budge or tip with people leaning on them. Sure enough the boards worked fine on both accounts at salute.

We looked at a lot of possible alternatives for sea boards but in the end budget was the governing factor, there are some outstanding products out there and hats off to the quality involved but we simply didn't have the budget for the scale of game we envisaged. So...."Blue Peter" time...... not exactly sticky backed plastic... but almost.

MDF board, pasted over in a 50/ 50 mix of water and PVA glue, you can use just PVA but I find it works better diluted in this case. Then  I use crumpled up thermal blanket, the type used by runners, I bought  load for a pound each off  eBay, simply paste this onto the board with a second coat of PVA / water mix on top and allow to set. two coats of Metal/ Wood general household primer and it should all be sealed in and well bonded ready for painting. On the boards we used household emulsion, again all from B&Q.

The islands were made using 3 mm ply, however warping has been a problem, so if I were to do it again I would be looking at some form of plastic/ acrylic sheet to get around this. the next stage involves using rolled up newspaper to form the folds of the terrain and simply using Parcel tape to secure it all down to the board, the beauty of this system is it is dry with no water, so cutting back hugely on time and mess. With the islands I wanted to go for a pacific theme so the volcanic mountain peaks are simply discarded tree stumps from nearby woods shaped and glued down, again a coat of primer and then painted with emulsion....


highly recommend the tester pots of the Lawrence  Llewellyn Bowen range....


Pearly Princess, Hunky Bunker, Fluffy Bunny, Pinch of Posh and Choco Chick Lit...... yes the names are real.


Hope this has all been of help... hoping to ad a tutorial or two with photo's in the near future as soon as i get time . Cheers Russel and good luck with the demo in New Zealand.

Trouble at mill

We seem to be having teething problems with the blog, not aided in any way by my own complete inability to grasp anything involving a keyboard!,  will be attempting to bring back the list of  followers ( sorry guys), as well as working out how to post replies to comments. Thanks for the kind comments guys all very much appreciated. John, in reply the rules we are using are the "Aeronef" rules available from Brigade models http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/ in a PDF format

The rules themselves are an excellent introduction to the genre as well as forming the basis of a fun game with huge potential; we are in fact in the process of looking at ways of tweaking certain elements prior to running the demo game again later in the year.

On the modeling front, Lexington, Sarratoga and Yorktown are at last nearing completion, and will be up on the blog in the next week or so, then it's onto the Kaga and Akagi..

Hope this helps John

cheers 

Following the rush of Salute, the dock hands at the slips have been having a bit of a break to date, however so far USS Olympia, the US destroyers and the Pathfinder Digs are all being rigged so hopefully pics soon for these.

Next up is completing the US escort carriers, Lexington, Sarratoga and Yorktown, then it's onto USS Enterprise, this is hopefully going to be something special and will be the centre piece of the fleet, rounding it off. So as with the Japanese Carriers I'm thinking of using an existing 1/700 model as a starting point and then kit bashing with additional parts to give it a retro nef feel.

At the moment thinking of using something like the Hosho, which was Japan's first carrier and does'nt look too avante garde. My personal view of Aeronef sees Japan as the fore runner in design, with efficient, huge designs, possible due to enormous r-matter reserves in Manchuria and China, hence the potential scale of her carriers. America, conversely is rapidly seeking resources so her carriers have to be much simpler. I'll hopefully be looking at scenarios around this, looking at ideas for the little known second Spanish American war, and the US - Chile clash of the early 1900's.

Anyway, not too much news at the mo, as life and work seem to be taking up all my time at the moment, so all the best for now.