Basing Experiment: Huscarls for Hastings

Mark at t'club has become involved in a Society of ancients project to do with refighting Hastings, and since I have a couple of old armies that will do the job, I agreed to bring them in for the game.  The Normans are a sorry looking lot, because they were the last figures I painted using enamels, and so have really dulled down over the years.  The Saxons, though, are in a lot better nick, being the first army I painted and varnished with acrylics.  The problem is, they need rebasing, so here goes nothing:

These particular guys will come in two flavours for the battle: Harold's household guards, and the rest of the axemen spread across the front of the central fyrd.  The picture above shows the freshly rebased guard unit, which is made up of a mixture of Old Glory Saxons and some figures made by Simon from Prince August moulds.

I wanted a style of basing that is quick to do, and which works for England in autumn.  This is completely different from my tried and trusted method for Mediterranean/semi-arid bases, and the result is a bit of an experiment.

The look I'm after is grassy patches of different kinds, without distracting attention too much from the figures themselves.  In any case, I don't wish to spend any time on repainting the Saxons.

Although these figures are about fifteen years old, they are the first I've based for Northern Europe using more recent innovations in basing materials.

I hope the top-down shot gives an idea.

By chance, I came across this model railways landscaping material when I went in to D&F Models in Glasgow before it closed due to the owners' retirement.  I had already started using silflor tufts, but what caught my eye about this particular product was this:

Unlike tufts, it comes as a small mat of material, and although it seems pricey at £12.00, it probably works out about the same area as that cost in tufts because it is relatively compressed.  And here's the good part:

This is what it looks like from the reverse.  Unlike tufts, you just tear apart the mat with your fingers, which means that you can get any size you need.  It's ideal for fitting in between figure bases, and I'm certainly pleased with the results for the Huscarls.  I've just bought some more from Osborne Models in England and I have to say their service has been excellent.  It's well worth taking a look at their online catalogue; some of the other Faller landscape materials are lovely.

Terrain Tiles for Plataea

For a long time I have been meaning to construct a decent tabletop for our games.  The idea was to make a 12' by 6' table from textured cork wall tiles in 2' by 2' segments.  This would do for any game in desert or semi-arid conditions, which means basically anywhere we place our ancients games apart from northern or western Europe.  The table would also be scale neutral.

For a few years I have been using the annual Society of Ancients Battle Day game to concentrate my hobby efforts.  I don't have a great amount of time available due to work and family commitments, so I want to make sure that anything I do gains maximum return.  This gives me a timetable of sorts and a commitment to doing a certain amount of work.  The first time around, it was Callinicum, which I was able to present with all of my own figs after painting up some Sasanians and Arabs.  The second time it was Zama, so I took a couple of years to produce a large Republican Roman consular army from scratch, which I was then able to use for Magnesia.  The game in the third year was Khadesh, and Simon at the club was able to do that all by himself, which gave me the time I needed to complete the Romans.  The fourth time around (this year) it was Plataea, and apart from a few units of hoplites and some Persians, we already had all the figures between us, with some help from Donald at the Greenock club.  This gave me some extra time, so I decided to go for it and produce my table top.

The pictures that follow give a sense of how the project developed.  I decided to take them throughout so that I would have some sort of record of how it went.

I flocked some of the depressions on the tiles and then glued them onto cork backing to make them up to roughly 2' square pieces, disguising the join with sand.  This didn't work too well, because the cork is relatively flexible, making it almost impossible to hide the joins.  I was trying as far as possible to remove the grid-line effect common with terrain tiles, and it didn't work.

So I bought some 2' segments of hardboard and glued the tiles onto those, using plastic wood to seal the edges and to disguise the joins.  As you can see from the shot above, this worked a bit better.

I then flocked around the joins to help them blend in a bit more.  You can still see them, but at a gaming distance they look surprisingly effective.  The joins between the 2' squares are of course still visible, but the overall effect is fine.

Plataea is pretty much a flat battlefield, with only one hill of note and a couple of muddy river courses.  These were really easy to construct, because the cork is thin enough (6mm) to cut to shape.  Some of our club players were particularly interested in this part, because it could be used to make trench systems for Tobruk or whatever.

Above, you can see the flocked tile with the stream section running from top to bottom.

I then painted the river bed brown and sprinkled on some sand.  The kids loved to help with this bit...

The photo above shows the final product: PVA glue to create the water effect, and flocking to hide the joins between tiles.

Originally, I was hoping to represent Mount Cithaeron to the left rear of the Greek army, but I realised after some trial and error that it would take too much time and effort to get it right.  It would have made a nice scenic piece, but it didn't play any part in the battle itself, so eventually I just used some steep hills I already had.  Besides, this way I won't have to store it, and the idea was to make a tabletop that could be used repeatedly.

The finished tiles are not very thick, about 1cm in total, which will really help with the storage.  They are also very robust because of the hardboard, which also makes them a bit heavy.  That's probably a good thing because that way they won't warp so easily.  I'll just store them in the loft when I'm not using them.

Carronade in May was a trial run, without the hardboard, but I was able to finish the field completely for Claymore at the start of August.  I was quite surprised by the amount of positive commentary.  The Greeks and Persians make for an impressive display, and the colours really stand out against the sandy effects of the cork tiles.  Their relative brightness really helped with the overall look.  I was asked a few times how I made the river sections, and quite a few people commented on how unusual it looked - the "desert" effect went down really well.

Now that I have them, I'll maybe only need to do a little bit of work to make a few more tiles for variety, depending on the battle.  One thing we won't be doing, however, is Chalons, which is next year's Society game.  We just don't have the figures for that one.  Besides, I need a break...

Test for Plataea battlefield

This week I received the first batch of three for my attempt to make a full tabletop from cork tiles.  The idea is to have pretty much a fully interchangeable surface that will do for most Mediterranean to semi-arid areas:

 From the photos on the website of the company who makes them, Siesta Cork Tiles, I had thought these came in three elevations, but when I saw them, they really work in two - a sort of patchy level and some depressions. So I tested a couple by filling in some of the lower areas with textured paint and flocked them.  I know the flock won't look perfect and will come off in bits as it usually does, but it's a cheap and quick way to see if can get the look I want. The photo above shows a newly revamped unit of hoplites standing on the end result.  I'm reasonably happy with it so far - I'm after a sort of patchy, scrubby plains effect.  The thing is, these tiles will see a lot of use and abuse, so using more expensive terrain elements seems a bit excessive, which rules out silflor-type grass clumps.  I was originally intending to use astroturf, but it's a bit too tall and would simply end up coming off altogether.  So will flock, but that's easily replaced.

Idea for terrain boards

For a while now I've been somewhat dissatisfied with using cloths for terrain, even nice ones like those overpainted by Jonathan at the club.  Regardless of how well done they are, they are still very flat, and a criticism that is often levelled at ancients games is the billiard table look.  Now most battles in that period were not covered in terrain features, or at least not so much as seems to be the case for Napoleonics and certainly later.  Many gamers go with terrain tiles, usually made from polystyrene, but this brings up the issue of storage space, especially considering the area of tabletop coverage needed for a large game.  Cloths win out easily here, but for a while I've been musing about a compromise that would be portable, relatively easily stored and also a bit more interesting than the flat look:

A long time ago, I used cork tiles like the one above for rough ground.  This has always been in the back of my mind, and I think now is the time to commit to producing a full batllefield using this look as a starting point.  On the web, I found an English company called Siesta Cork Tiles that seems ideal here and the image above is taken from their catalogue.

The good thing about this kind of product is that it it is already rendered in three dimensions.  I reckon that if I drybrush a light sandy colour over the raised bark portions and put some greenery for variety in and around the lower sections, I could maybe produce a battlefield that is still technically flat, but that looks a lot more interesting than the usual.  I want a semi-arid look that can be used for just about anywhere from the steppes to the mediterranean, and that also matches the look of my figure bases:

I have been experimenting with my basing, most recently with wood bark chippings for the garden, although that didn't look right.  There was too much of it, and it made the bases a bit too dark.  However, Willie from the club gave me a sample of astroturf imitation grass, which you can see on the right of the photo above, with some 25mm Roman cavalry for scale.  This stuff would make great bushes, but I also think that if I cut it down it will go well on the cork tiles.  The experiment with the wood chips was not a failure, since it turns out that they make good foundations for layering my usual Ronseal plastic wood to build up small areas of ground that are higher than usual - another thing to keep in mind for terrain in the future.  That would make good areas of rough going.

Siesta provides the tiles in several sizes; I want to go with the largest possible because I want to reduce the number of terrain tiles as much as I can - too many grid lines can look a little strange.  However, this raises another problem, which is durability.  I'll solve this by gluing each tile onto a plain one, to double the thickness and make them less liable to be damaged in transit.  They will still be a lot less bulky than polystyrene tiles, which don't take kindly to too much rough handling.  I want to make these boards as robust as I can to cut down maintenance time.  Even quite a large number of these should fit easily into some cheap artists' carry cases for portfolios.

And here's the good bit: the double layer of tiles will enable me to make river or gully sections really easily.  I'll just cut one of the standard tiles, remove a bit, and glue the separated sections onto the base tile,  add some PVA and voila, a stream (or whatever).  For hills, I'll buy some cheap polystyrene tiles and face them with the cork, painted to match the rest of the tabletop.  The combination should allow me to represent areas like the hills and rivers at Plataea without too much trouble.

This will be expensive, probably well over a hundred pounds, but I think the result will be worth it.  I like the idea of trying this myself, and I will have the time.  We already have almost all of the figures we will need for Plataea, so this time around I can spend my time making a good tabletop.  I like to concentrate on one major project at a time if I can.  For the last few years the Society of Ancients featured battle has given me the impetus I need to keep going with figure painting; now it's time for the terrain.  I don't mind the cost, because I'd be spending that over several months on figures anyway.  I have felt for a while now that we have all of these nicely painted armies, so it's about time to spend some money on the battlefield.  Well painted armies are let down by badly painted terrain.  I have no idea how much my two-year Republican Roman project cost, but it's certainly a lot more than this tabletop. And that's just one of the arnies that fight across this terrain. If it works out, it will be permanent; durable; portable; and infinitely re-usable.  It can also be stored easily.

One objection would be that companies out there already make premium mats that come close to what I'm suggesting.  So why not just buy one of those?  However, I'll get a lot more than a single mat for the same outlay; mine will be much more easily repaired; and if a bit gets really badly damaged, I'll just need to replace a small section, rather than buy an entirely new mat.  Plus the DIY element of it means that I can produce the terrain types to match quickly and cheaply.

It will take me a few months to get all of the materials together, but I'll make this a series of Work in Progress posts so that anyone interested can see how it goes.  Wish me luck; I hope you can sort of visualise what I'm planning from the description.