From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 13:47:47 -0400
Subject: hills and deserts and rivers
1. Hills Foam - Adrian was, I believe, speaking of 4x8 sheets of insulation foam that comes in varying thicknesses (0.5" to about 2") which you can buy at your local builder. You have to see what you have access to. He talks of "blue foam" and there is "pink foam", "green foam", and "white foam". I find the white stuff too granular for my taste, and the pink too compressible. Blue and green both work well - Adrian uses blue, I use green. Now, being in the back end of the back end of the back end of nowhere, you might have to search for equivalent products. But it can typically be cut with a hot knife or hot wire, flocked with flock or painted green (beware any paints that include solvents! If you want to use sprays - go to your locale craft store and get foam safe paint!) or other colours with relative ease. And it makes great terrain. Geohex uses "white foam" but I have found it a little more susceptible to damage than my own terrain made from the "green foam". Mostly because the geohex terrain has some sharp (hence very thin) edges which do not like meeting any other object (such as box edges in transport, etc) very much. Things to look for: Cells in foam not too granular. Foam not too compressible (some stuff will collapse if a gamer decides to apply even moderate pressure). Not too expensive. Thin enough to be cut by your chosen tool. You may, I note, have to experiment. I have had excellent luck with terrain for Grey Day and other scenarios, but I had to try a number of paint types first. 2) Deserts Mike Sarno showed me the grassmat he uses. He took an green felt and then used either brown and black markers or paints to mark it up. It looks good once you add other terrain onto it. I too will be doing a desert mat soon. I expect I shall try to find a yellowish felt ( ideally one that looks like it has another colour of fibre blended.... these make the best starting point) and then I will use standard paints or maybe my airbrush to lay down (via holding the sprayer several feet off and doing this OUTSIDE) a speckling of black (very light), a speckling of brown (a bit heavier), and then I might use a large brush with some green paint on the tips (think not sopping, but a bit more than drybrushing) to lay down patches of green here and there via the vertical dab. To find what works, buy some of the 12" squares in roughtly the same shade, experiment on them before touching your large desert cloth. Then, you can use the "foam" mentioned in the hills sections to build some dunes (ideally you have a hot knife/wire.... a neat hot wire cutter can be procured for about $30 US) and (once you've laid a basecoat) follow the same general speckling technique to make some reasonably matching sand dunes or hills. Of course, you can cut some more aggressive faces in, and paint them a light brown and drybrush with a lighter sand to give you "sandstone" or use some of the craft "sandstone" paint to give a textured finish. I mean, if you own any FSE troops, where ELSE would the Legion Etrange Colonial be fighting than some gawd-awful waterless hot-in- daytime, cold-at-night desert? :) (And there might even be an Honest Abdul's!) 3) Rivers I saw these, and am partway done construction of my own. They don't flex like Adrian's rivers, but I actually like them better. Buy 1/8" hardboard, cut into sections 2-3" wide. Glue on a bank made from either plaster, putty, or hot- knife cut foam on either side. Paint banks brown/green and flock. Paint base of river dark blue, and gradually drybrush over other shades of blue. For artistic merit, stick a few pebbles along rivercourse and do some white water swirling around them (for geological correctness, all eddies from stones should seem to go in roughly the same direction....). Finish the river by applying 2 or 3 layers of gloss varnish. Gives depth, looks AWESOME. Might even wash final varnish layer with thin layer of blue ink. Thus, rigid, durable, easily transportable river sections.