Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The Push - Part 1

As mentioned previously, I will be running an 1889 game at Cangames this year. With school work out of the way and things at work calming down a bit, I was able to get going on terrain this past weekend.
Dollar Store Goodies
An earlier trip to the Dollar Store gave me some of the materials to work with. Woodlands Scenics it isn't but the price can't be beat. One note: try to buy all you need of a certain item in one go - you may never see the exact same item in stock again.    

Red Weed
Plastic plants are always useful. As you can see above, most are made up of smaller sprigs that can be separated out. Be sure to wash all plastics well to remove any mould release agent especially if you will be painting or dry brushing later.


Stacked up ready to go
My rifles still needed some touch ups and I had purchased some guns to even the odds for the Martians. Saturday was pretty grey wet out so painting was the order of the day.


The bird houses were slated to become a Martian swamp village. Weapon ranges are rather long so the Martians need all the cover they can get. The first step was to give them a good coat of gesso.

Doors
The next step was to add some doors cut out of recycled three ring binder cover card and cereal boxes.

Garish....
 The back story material for Space 1889 talks about the Martians ability to fuse sand to create their canals. I thought that the same technology would be used in house construction. Canada is now, or rather was home to a rather ugly form of pottery known as Blue Mountain. I used that as a inspiration for my swamp Martian huts.  While Blue Mountain primarily used a subdued dark green, I went with brighter colours. I am going to rationalize this by saying that Space 1889 can quickly devolve into "North West Frontier in Space".  I wanted to mix some "strange" into it so that the players know this is not just India on another planet. 



Ready to move in.
Sunday was bright and sunny so construction moved outside. The various bits of plastic greenery were cut down, reconfigured and applied as thatching to the huts to produce the rather fetching trio above. Bits of ceramic fruit and silk flowers were used to add a feminine touch.... not sure why exactly but there you go.

Hedges
Other bits of  greenery were hot glued onto more recycled binder card to produce a series of hedges for the Martians to hide behind.

Cheap Walls
A final project for the day was to make up a series of broken walls out of recycled Styrofoam scrounged by a friend on garbage day. I used the beaded variety because it was what I had and the beads give a rubble like texture to the breaks. It is not particularly robust so for longer term use I would look for insulation board and possibly even add an MDF base for strength.

Next up will probably be the temple complex. Work is also ongoing on the unit cards and quick reference sheets.  When does a hobby turn into more work than your actual work?

No comments: