Thursday 20 January 2011

How Many Swamps Must A Man Wade Through.... Part 1

Will post a proper update of Teddy later on or tomorrow as he's getting closer to being finished. Been working on some Malifaux scenery in the mean time when I've gotten the chance. Had plenty of family drama this last week though so it's been a very rare and valuable commodity!
Again, nothing interesting to see yet but thought I'd keep tthings up to date!

One of the projects I'm working on is a 4' x 4' swamp board. Not a lot to see here so far but a blow by blow account all the same. The Bayou area plays a strong part in the background of Malifaux so seemed a logical place to start for the Malifaux scenery as I've wanted to try my hand at a swamp board for a bit.

The board is built with two layers of foamboard to each 2' x 2' square. The top layer has the shape of the swamps cut out so as to be able to create a realistic depth to them. To start with I drew the planned shapes of the swamps on the top layer to cut out. I realised that I'd have to make the banks from filler myself so drew an outline around the original shape to give me the space to do that without shrinking all the swamps below the size I'd planned on having them.

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After that the shapes of the swamps were cut out, this was relatively easy, not least as I didn't have to be especially tidy as there will be lots of filler around the edges I've created.

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The top layer was then stuck to the bottom layer so as to create the bases of the swamps ready for them to all be filled which is what I'm currently working on.




Another scenery project I'm working on but more in the planning stage is a little Pioneer town so that my gaming club has something to tie in with the nice western theme there. Not got anything to show for this yet other than a train that I've managed to procure!

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Every Wild West style town needs a train running through it! Was quite hard to get this one. The trains for 28-32mm gaming need to be roughly 0 scale to be the right size from what I can understand. I don't know if anybody has an interest in model railways here but those trains are exceptionally expensive! Anyway, I stumbled upon a company that sells these train sets but they seem to be relatively easy to find over there in the States but night impossible over here! Managed to find an old listing for one in the UK on ebay that had finished without bids so I got in touch with the person who'd listed it and they still had it. So, after much searching I have the train for another Malifaux board! Going to repaint sections of the train and add some shading & weathering too just to make it look less like a kid's toy but it goes backwards and forwards on the track and plays train noises too apparently... (WIN!)

2 comments:

redmanphill said...

Looking nice, its strange to have the modular swamps though. Are they recombinable?

Elazar The Glorified said...

Thanks! No, they're modular as is. I've gone that route because I think with Malifaux it's fairly safe. The sheer number of strategies and schemes, mixed in with multiple deployment types mean that no two games even with the same players and crews are likely to be the same. There's also going to be plenty of open space that needs to be filled with other terrain elements that need not be modular, such as trees and buildings etc. Throw in the special events and locations and I think it's a safe way to go. Malifaux is very much story driven and I wanted to create a feel to the terrain that becomes more and more difficult to achieve by making things less modular.

Anyway, thanks for your comment! :)