Monday 25 January 2010

Ishoo Firteen: My First Terrain Set

I work at a Secondary school in South Gippsland which, due to various mergers in the past sits on enourmous grounds. Since the government has decided to start spending huge sums on improving the education system, the local primary school is getting all new buildings. On our oval. And in a few years, we'll be tearing down out buildings and making shiny new ones on our oval as well.
The problem is that for the moment our students don't have much space to play and frolic at recess and lunchtime, so we've decided to run more clubs and lunchtime activities in the libraries (again, due to mergers we have two of them). So I said I'd like to run a Wargames club. And what would a wargames club be without terrain?
This gave me the perfect opportunity to do a step-by-step Terrain For Hippos Ishoo on making your first terrain set. You might recognise it; it's the 'My First Terrain Set' from the article on planning terrain sets I posted last year.
Anyway, making your first complete terrain set is no great difficulty (it takes a while, but not all that long!) in fact, it's so simple even a hippo could do it - take it away, Grot!

PART ONE: WOODS.











PART TWO: HILLS.








PART THREE: RUIN.











PART FOUR: POND.








And there you have it. A few cheap materials (and you can easily substitute old cardboard boxes for foam core of course!) and a little time and effort will see you playing over your first terrain set. You can easily expand upon it as you go, but this gives you enough for a decent game of Warhammer and is nicely versatile.
Of course, this is not all I built for my new Games Club, it's just part of it. I've inlcuded a picture below showing the whole set. It took about three weeks all up to build, but I did move house in the middle of the process...

Stay tuned for Ishoo Forteen which is all about making SciFi pipelines.

Ishoo Twelf B: Polystyrene Boats

Well, it's been a while since an Ishoo has gone online, and for very good reason - I've been moving house and fighting with my internet connection. Which does not mean I have not been hard at work, which might explain why TWO ishoos are going online tonight!
First up we have the long awaited Ishoo Twelf B: Polystyrene Boats. Making boats for wargames may look complicated, but as you are about to discover, it's so easy even a hippo could do it - take it away Grot!












And there you have it! Of course, this is only a very simple and small boat, but the same techniques can easily be adapted to bigger and grander vessels; like the good ship Wallowing Walrus here.