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Showing posts with label Project: Waterloo Campaign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Project: Waterloo Campaign. Show all posts

Monday, 7 July 2014

Campaign Board Update

Having sculpted the mountain areas and reasonably happy with the look, I am still not sure how the final look with satisfy my requirements.  Time to do a mock up and see if it flies.


I could live with the look, however I need some different coloured clump foliage for the trees so they contrast better with the ground cover.

Sand colour used for the roads was the same as I used on the Salamanca Board but requires a second coat to hide all the blue of the board.  I am not too concerned with the width of the roads at this point as the brown covering can neaten up the paint work.  I have used a deep brown for towns as I am undecided if I will place down buildings (or even able to make such small figures).


Started a section to see what we are looking like on the actual board once finished.  Again different clump is need, its even clearer now.




Saturday, 5 July 2014

Burning Rivers: Landscape design and Sculpting

While I am still not entirely happy with the process I am using for my high ground on the campaign map, I am limited in materials and time for the moment and it is just a dumb map before I build the bigger campaign map.

So I gave the tracing a good think, and decided that I would just try and skip a stage.

I first traced the river systems on wax paper.  Including the high ground South Eastern section, I will place high ground around the rivers and not place rivers on the high ground itself.


It then dawned on me that I could use the Weller tool and trace the markings on the paper.  This would then transfer the heat to the foam and we are done.


Tests look good.

So I went to work on the major map, using the narrow straight tip in the Weller kit.







And after I was done the map pages lifted to reveal a map board that only needed a few tough up and it was done.  In hindsight I should have used the narrow "pencil" tip like point and it would damage the foam and paper less.


I marked the river crossings with black marker and with a quick paint job on the rivers taking care to not paint bridges I was done.

Following the same principles with the rivers on the base board, I flipped over the trace paper and marked a mirror copy of the base board into the bottom of the second layer board.  This would result in me being able to cut the foam with a hot wire cutter and know I am cutting out the river valleys.  When I was done I trimmed down the foam to about half size to make sculpting easier and pinned it to the base board to be sure.


A bit more wire cutting to trim down the hills and I was ready to start my sculpting.




Grabbing the Weller Kit hobby tool again (this is sounding more and more like an infomercial for Weller, but the tool is useful), I placed in the flat circle bit and went to work melting back the edges.




And here I am half way completed and stopping to write up this post while its still fresh.


Thursday, 3 July 2014

Pre-School helped me Wargame

Last night while hunched over my campaign map pondering how on earth I was going to get the detail accurately placed onto the foam board for me to start work on, I decided to crowd source some ideas so asked the wife.

All Rivers fully traced, I have marked bridges with a intersecting line so I can see when a river ends and when it is crossed by a bridge.
She got old school on me and grabbed some wax paper used in baking, a lead pencil and a picture book of a cat for our sons colouring-in book.  While I was explaining to her that Belgium does have a number of cats but the effect I was going for was a little higher up, maybe a pigeon or a Soviet Satellite would be better, she traced this.


Then flipped the paper over and drew with the lead pencil firmly over the traced lines.  Flipped it back over so the lead pencil markings were now face down on the foam board, grabbed the end of the pencil (rounded) and rubbed along the lines of the cat.


Its no Satellite but it will do nicely.

I grabbed some wax paper, enough to cover the A3 sheet I had to trace off, folding one end to form a perfect 90 degree fold, slipped the A3 page in and tapped.

This would enable me to trace the page with out concern of slight movements messing me about.

As I traced I found I still needed to hold the page flat but it was much easier with the page taped down.



I did this for both pages, focusing on the river systems first, I will paint the roads on free hand.


Now I can flip the page and retrace the rivers with Lead pencil and I will have copied the map onto my war game table perfectly to scale.

I am also going to test using my new Weller Hobby Tool to trace with a fine bit over the paper and see how much it impacts the foam beneath without destroying the wax paper.


Why flip the paper?
If you don't then you end up copying a mirror image of the map, try it and you will see why.

Wednesday, 2 July 2014

Project: Waterloo Campaign

I am planning two new projects, the first is a 6mm Quatre Bras battlefield that uses the scenario in my battle report, and the other (this project) is for a Campaign map for our 28mm Empire, Waterloo Campaign due to start in Jan.

So for the Waterloo campaign project I plan to do two boards, the first a smaller model of the final map using scrap materials from my other projects.  This will help me get the scales right and try a few new techniques.

This project will be different than the Salamanca board;
  • No cloth covering, I will paint and flock the landscape using clumped foliage for forests.  Mainly because we will only be moving on roads as such the flock will not be worn down.
  • No figures will be used on the board, pins will track army movements.
  • The function of the map could be covered by a paper map mounted on a cork or foam board.  But were is the fun in blogging about that :)
The Plan

I have located a couple of maps that I will be using to determine layout and terrain.

Firstly Napoleon 4th Edition board game map is perfect for our campaign (I have played the game but here it's a great way to play this campaign period).  This gives me great forest, roads and river layout however due to the lack of contour information  I have to look elsewhere.



A simple web search found me a nice simple high level topographic map of Belgium <here>



I have then roughly cut out the campaign section to work out the hills,

To a final plan that look like this.