Terrain Tutorial: Hedgerows Revisited.

     Back to the dark photos of my camera and some terrain making. I am usually finding myself making some terrain here and there for Kalissa and I's games when we are not making them for other people. In this case, I decided that we need to upgrade our standards for our Bolt Action Tournament terrain. It is not that most of our stuff is subpar by any means, but we have been using hedgerows from my first terrain making projects and they are showing their age after seven years. This new process of hedgerows is a combination of past work concepts and a little bit of new ones. So let's have it a go!
     First, we need our materials. Below are the following things you will need if you chose to make the same type of hedgerows.

1.  Hard Board.
2.  Tall screws. These are based on the height you want.
3.   A drill.
4.   An  orbital jigsaw.
5.   Hot glue gun.
6.   Super Glue.
7.   Glue Sticks.
8.   Scrub pads.
9.   Sea Foam armatures or lichen
10.   Leaf Flock like SuperLeaf or Noch Leaves.
11.    3m Spray Adhesive
12.    Black Primer Spray Paint.
13.    A Metal Fork.
14.   Light Green Spray paint (optional).

   The first item on our list is the hardboard that you can pick up at a hardware store in the lumber section. This also can be found in some craft and hobby stores, but you will pay more for it. The board I get is 2' x 4' at a 1/4" thickness for easy cutting. It might cost around $5.00 per sheet. It is great for making all types of bases. I used hardboard to make all of my American Civil War stands and woods bases. You can use an orbital saw to cut various shapes to make your future gaming boards more tactically interesting rather than sticking with round or square bases. This also opens our hedgerows up to new natural shape possibilities. The picture below illustrates this idea.

   As you can see, we can make some different types of angles and curves that a lot of terrain avalible pre-made tends to forget about. This picture is also part of the next step. I decided on a certain height for my hedgerows to roughly be and bought screws around that height. In the shapes I cut out, I pre-drilled holes for the screws and screwed them in with the points sticking up. I did not bother with dolling the tips or cutting them, in case I need hedgerows to defend myself in hostile situations. Actually, they are going to be covered with scrubbing pads. Besides, I would hope that gamers out there are not slapping your terrain at will.
    After you have made you shapes and added screws, it is time for you main base for you hedgerow. You take one of the scrubbing pads and score them with your fork that you plan on using on both sides. The plan is to break up the fibers to make them more fluff. Then, you can tear them and shape them more to your liking with out having boxy  pointed edges. Below are some photos of this.

This covers about two screws at about two inches apart.

     When you have done this to enough scrubbing pads, you can now hot glue them to the screws and base. Note: some pieces might rip off during your scoring. Keep those, because they might be useful for filling in areas. Also, I have been told that you could place scrubbing pads in a blender, but I honestly do not think that would be good for the blender or last long enough for the amount I plan to do. Below is were we are at in steps after some hot gluing.

       On the picture above, some of us my just flock this. And in reality, it would mostly likely look fine. But it is the extra steps that make a difference. This is especially true when you do not have that much more to do. This is where the Sea Foam armatures and/or lichen come to play. Lichen is pretty easy to find and cheap. You can get it in most every country in the world. The Sea Foam I use is from Scenic Express and cannot be shipping to a lot of countries. I know Australia is one of those on the list where it cannot be imported. Essentially, the Sea Foam is a dried up plant. I am sure there may be some other options in your local area.
     Either way, the Sea foam is to give the hedgerow a more natural 3-D look. I just hot glue them in various spots to break up flatter surfaces or areas the need work. This is useful for hiding some spot you might not be satisfied with. Once, you have your armatures and such glued on, you want to take it outside and prime it. You do not have to used black. Brown is also effective. The results of the before and after priming are below.

It looks like a weird sea cucumber!

You can also add happy trees to your hedges like Bob Ross did in his paintings. " I think a happy trees likes living between these bushes!"

The black makes sure there are shadows and it blends it all together.

     Now, we are really for a sign of spring. Let us add some leaves. Some people I have seen on Facebook groups like the Terrainiacs like to use hair spray. This does work, but I like using 3M Spray Adhesive. I use the 77 version. 45 is common. 90 is the strongest. It is pretty simple to work with. You spray you hedgerow until it looks like it was left outside in a frost. Then, you simply add you leaf flock. I tend to mix some different colors to give some depth. I am sure this process can work with smaller scales as well.  Below, is the results you are aiming for.

       As for optional paints, I find that light greenish yellow spray paint lightly sprayed over the top of the leafs gives a good impression of sunlight. I have not do this on these yet, since I plan on doing 60 feet of these. Either way, remember that you can do this. And hey! If you make too many, you can always sell some on eBay to get your material costs back! Just remember to have fun and you will be happy on how your project looks on the tabletop. Thanks for reading. 

AAR: Normandy Firefight: Scouting Mission

     After a lack of gaming for this month, Kalissa and I travelled to our local Hobbytown, U.S.A. to play a game. This time, we chose to play Normandy Firefight. It is relatively quick and does not need to much to play. I actually packed all of the terrain into one box and bought our army boxes to chose what figures we would play with. In this game, it was another face-off with British Paratroopers versus some German Fallschirmjaegers. This seems to be a classic team up of mortal enemies, since the first Normandy Firefight game. The combination of grenades and headshots tend to be the driving force to playing this game.
    Kalissa and I normally just play a random encounter type game, but Kalissa thought it would be a good idea to play one of the book's missions. We ended up with the Scouting Mission where I as the Germans get Registered, Presighted 50mm Mortar fire! And it was surprising that I had up to eight mortar rounds considering just how dangerous regular grenades are in the game. It was like a grenadefest on Crack!
     I would like to say that it went well for my wife and her British, but that was far from it. Her side was plagued with usual bad luck that a few people passing by mentioned as well. A couple of mentions. One, the deployed was rolling into my favor giving me a wonderful defensive position. Wunderbar! Second, she had two men with issues with their Sten Guns making them useless. One guy came within inches to roll a 100 with two D-10. In the rules, this jams the Sten Gun and can only be undone with two attempts roll a 6 out of one D-10. Obviously, it did not matter for that poor sap, since he was shot in the leg with a rifle at close range followed by a grenade blast from his own troops, thus killing him. The third was the amount of time that Kalissa's troops were pinned. They needed to radio for another squad or two to flank. Or just flat out call for a Sherman! Either way, the Germans won the day. Below, are the rest of the pictures. Enjoy!

Commission Mission Success: 6mm Board for Planes.

        It seems like November is a loss when it comes to gaming. There has not be much going on in the grand scheme of things other than finishing up back orders of work, retail holiday work, and my wife being sick for most of the month. However, I cannot say all is gloom and doom for November. I have decided to work on some terrain building in between work. Soon, there will be some new terrain popping up for main 28mm related terrain. Something I tend to excel best in.
        Now this post is a showcasing of some 6mm terrain. Or I hope that is what it is, because my few free buildings said they were for 6mm. If not, than a certain miniature company lied on the package. I was commissioned to do this project. Tomorrow, if I am not dead of sleep deprivation over Black Friday sales, I hope to play a Wings of Glory scenario on this board. So, in a sense, this is also a preview of a game I hope to play. Either way, I am happy with how it came out, since I do not make too many small scale boards. Enjoy!

AAR:Bolt Action: A Rather Large Bolt Action Game

     In a sense, this is like  Bolt Action rules revisited. Neither Kalissa or I have play these rules in a while, despite Kalissa running various Bolt Action tournaments. It seems that they have been a combination of reasons, but mostly staying busy. I have been working a lot and making multiple commission boards that I was behind on which has led to my earlier tradition of at least playing one game on a finished product out the door. However, since I was finishing this board for an American Civil War Board, I figured I could make it a WWII one as well. Hence, this game!
    As you all are aware for common visitors, Kalissa and I are not known to care about points as much. I like to think of ourselves as chaotic gamers: bring stuff and see what survives!. In this game, I was using a Tiger I E tank for my Germans which is actually a mobile handicap on my end. I do not think my ace panzer crews could hit themselves by dropping a shell on their feet! And this played out that way in the game. This was more or less a draw in the term of things. I ran out of space for photos on the phone for this game. I cannot figure out why my camera is so dark with pictures in our game room only, but the phone has no issues with the same lighting? Anyway, here were the first half of our game's photos. Enjoy!