Winter Trees

I was really lucky this winter season.  I acquired some trees from a former railroad hobbyist... THANKS DAD....and along with a few other supplies, I decided to go whole hog and create a set of trees for the Arctic setup I have.  I hadn't really fleshed out that set at all yet, so I was looking forward to getting something on the mat for an arctic setup, instead of just the cloud idea I have already.  These came together over a weekend, and I decided to make some, and use all of the winter trees I had been given.  All together 16 CD bases of arctic, tree filled goodness.
The tall trees are done with wooden skewers, that I sized up to 5-6" each, and the branches are odd cut shapes of scrub mats that I got from a former employee at work.  Poke a hole in the cut out shapes... hot glue down the painted skewer, and then top with snow.  For snow I happened to have a very dated diorama kit and just used the snow packet for it, but you could use anything.  A quick matte seal coat over the top and boom... trees for almost nothing.  If you had to buy everything yourself still under $20, less if you don't get the fake conifer trees.  For me... nothing says better than cheap.

Special Mission: Starport Assault

Playing with the set of clouds was rather enjoyable, I gotta say.  Just took a couple of shots on the setup and a few in-game shots.  I wanted to show the versatility of the setup, and man, was it great seeing my buddy configure the setup.  I can't believe it never occurred to me to put a bridge directly over one of the clouds, but yeah, it just reinforces the idea that I will only ever have a partial picture of the potential of the things I make.  That being said, the games we played were quite excellent.  We ended up doing 2 games on the special mission list. The setup was perfect for the "Starport" mission, and played really quickly.

Stronghold Assault - Version - Hipster

I posted the Cloud set I did up last night, and as I was uploading the pics, I got the urge to organize my picture sets.  Doing so gave me a headache, but hey, what else is new right?  I came across quite a few shots of past games, and tried my best to organize them such that my OCD to tag/label every iota of data was satisfied.  In doing so, I came across some relevant shots of a game from about a year ago.

I mostly just wanted to show off terrain that can really impact the game.  Buddies and I did a 2v2 game using this laser cut FORTRESS terrain from Warmill.co.uk found Here.  This set really shows what kind of terrain setup you can potentially have when you are not willing to give any effort, but instead just want to throw money at the problem.  While the buddy that got this setup as a gift only plays rarely, he was super excited to show it off, and other than the unpainted models all over the board, I think it looks great.  He even let me keep the scraps, so expect to see some extras from the set sometime in the future.

So long story still kinda long, we played this match up about a year before there were official rules for strongholds, and I gotta say, I was a great game.  Can't wait to start using it with the new rules.

Head in the Clouds

I re-watched the original Star Wars trilogy a few weeks back.  For the most part, it was background noise while I was building... the usual.  Then Empire came on, and the Cloud city on the Planet Bespin came up when Lando sabotaged Han and Leia.  I happened to look up when the ship was landing and saw the huge cloud-scape layout, and wondered if I could do something like that and realized I was already setup to do it.

I cobbled this first phase of this set together in a single night of playing around and building, and quickly realized not only could I do this... I had all the parts to do it for no additional cost!!  My dream build.  This couldn't have come together more easily, and when played out on the Icy Mat I have, the clouds absolutely POP.  I will do a follow up with how they look with the platforms and catwalk setup I have, but I just had to post these while they are still drying.  I laid them out and  couldn't be happier with them.  Easy big lumps of puffy clouds that make for PERFECT line of sight blockers, and impassable terrain.  They will compliment the Arctic set when that gets rolling as big snowy hills as well.

Made from Blue Foam, cut into random shapes, some in a few levels, and then a layer of glue followed by Poly-Fill Fiber.  I happened to have purchased a bag of this over a year ago thinking it was something else, and it landed in the closet of possible build materials.  I thought when building them that the blue foam would show through on spots, and in fact it does... but when it is on the mat, it is a perfect blend for the blues on the mat itself, so I think it works well.  Follow the jump for a few more shots.