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Friday 28 October 2016

Project Battle Cry - Making Scenery

Painting of the ACW troops continues and good progress is being made; I have almost finished the Union forces and artillery limbers. As the paint dries I have turned my attention to the scenery. Having purchased a cloth mat from Hotz Artworks, I now needed to think about hills and rivers etc. After considerble deliberation I have decided to go for MDF hexagons and the very nice people at 'Warbase' up in Dunfermline quickly produced some 5 inch diameter hexes to fit the mat.



I followed the pattern of the terrain hexes in the board game using a simple paint design as follows:





In all I painted around 30. As long as the painting matches the edges of the hex they fit together quite well; here are some of them:

For fields I have used some Astroturf, picked up cheaply as a door mat from the local garden centre, as areas of crops:


For buildings I plan to use 15mm scale structures as these will fit in the hex and leave space for the troops to fit in the hex.


I am considering making some road hexes, which are not used in the boardgame, but, I think, would add to the scenery.









6 comments:

  1. Aren't the Hotz products great? The additional hexagon features you have produced to fit your mat look wonderful. Please share a photograph of two of your inaugural game using all of these features.

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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    Replies
    1. Those mats are very good. I will post some pictures of the first action, which of course will be Bull Run.

      Bob

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  2. Nicely done. I like the Hotz mats but its annoying that most companies supplying hex bases or terrain are metric while the mats are imperial. If I get serious I should think about a custom order.

    Btw I like the look of this project.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Ross, yes you are right, but Warbase will cut them to any size, so mine are true five inch hexes.

      Bob

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  3. The tiles look very nice! Are you going to make hill tiles real hills? A friend of mine just used thicker, hex-shaped tiles, but I was thinking sloping the edges to look more "hill-like" would be better. On the other had, putting several next to each other would look a little strange with gullies everywhere....

    Best regards,

    Chris Johnson

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    Replies
    1. Hi Chris. I am indeed going to use thicker hexagons for the hills. I have an order in for some 12mm and 18mm thick hexes. Will see what that looks like. I am going to stick with vertical edges - old school style!
      Bob

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