New Year's resolutions

At this time of year, it's natural to reflect on what's been and what lies ahead. In the last few months of last year, I tried to set myself some realistic goals. Some I achieved, and others I didn't, but the thing is, it's all progress.

So to help kick off the year, I've tried to set a few goals that are realistic rather than ambitious and in a year's time we'll see how I've got on. So, in no particular order, I plan to :

• Curtail my Warmachine spending, and have all my Khadoran Warmachine figures assembled, based and primed.
• Play games of Warmachine with fully painted armies, even if that means not playing "killer combos", concentrating more on the experience of the game than the result.
• Assemble and paint a small (!) Confrontation army. Once again, aim for fully painted games where possible.
• Finish my two terrain boards that I've started. Rather than trying to get everything right first time, I want to get them done, and think of them as a learning experience rather than a quest for perfection.
• Dabble with WWII gaming. I've always been keen, and even have a largish collection of Flames of War figures. I've just never got any game time in. So I'll aim to try out Flames of War as well as I Ain't Been Shot Mum! and Nuts! The last two of these are interesting rule sets that are far from main stream but have received some rave reviews for their interesting mechanics.

Time will tell how successful I'll be this year, it'll be fun to find out!

Foam fitting

No that's not my holiday reading list! The books provide plenty of weight to hold down styrofoam while it's being glued in place. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself...

With all the lovely weather, and Christmas holidays, I'm making some progress with my terrain boards. After having to go and purchase a counter-sink drill bit because I keep loosing them, I was ready to put the finishing touches on the "construction" part of my terrain boards. The counter sink drill bit allowed me to put screws in the sides of the framing that wouldn't protrude at all - ensuring that two boards can sit nice and close together.

Once this was done, I took my styrofoam outside and cut it to shape. It's part of the process that I could do while watching the kids outside. My daughter was building snowmen in the sand pit. An idea she got from Hi-5. When you don't get snow in summer, you have to improvise.

So the foam was cut to size, being careful to always use a sharp blade. When you're blade is sharp, it's easy to cut through the foam with three or four cuts. With a dulled blade though, you'll end up tearing chunks of the foam off. A steel ruler is a must here to, I can't emphasise that enough.

Having cut the pieces to size they were test fitted, and needed a bit of trimming. Once I was happy with the fit they got glued in place, weighted down to help them stick - see the photo above. After the glue had had a chance to dry, I found a shady spot and drew out the roads I wanted. As a note, I'm not putting any hills or anything on these boards, they can be added as separate pieces on top, like this one I did earlier.

Here's the various combinations I can make with just the two boards. The key to placing roads is to ensure that roads on any board will match up with any other. The simple way to do this is to always have roads leaving the centre of the board. I've done this in part, but I also chose a second exit option for the roads. It means that not all road sections will meet up with each other, but the modelling options become a little more interesting.

The next stage will be to cover the boards with some texture - most likely sand. It'll either be glued in place or mixed with paint and applied that way. At this stage I'll no doubt add some extra texture to the board, a few rocks perhaps, or some coarser sand/rocks, just for a bit more variety.

Get Modular (or Sectional)

One of the Holy Grails which I've always been chasing is a table top that matches the quality of a fully painted army. Now I know that I don't often field fully painted armies, but some of my friends do, and I'm getting better at it.

The obvious solution is to fully model a table of terrain, lavishing all the attention to detail you desire on it. The problem here is that playing on the same terrain over and over again can get a bit repetitive, and we're looking to get the creative juices flowing here, not dry them up.

An answer is to build a set of terrain tiles (often called modular or sectional boards) that can be combined in multiple ways, thus creating a variety of playing options. These boards can be of any size, although common sizes are 2 x 4 feet or 2 x 2 feet. Much of my inspiration has come from the excellent series of articles here. Confrontaion is played in a 2 x 4 foot space, so I'm just building two tiles to start.

Any way, I'll deal with the mechanics of arranging these boards later, I mainly wanted to put up some pictures of my early progress. I'm building 2 x 2 foot boards, or 600 x 600mm. Actually they're 590 x 590mm as the MDF I'm using isn't quite a perfect 600mm. The base is 3mm MDF and for the framing I'm using MDF strips (which I didn't know existed until I scrounged around at the local hardware superstore). The strips are exactly 40mm wide, rather than the more approximate widths you typically get with dressed timber.

40mm is the magic number, as I'll be "filling" each board with high density polystyrene (styrofoam it's called here). It's sold for insulation, and is typically blue or pink in colour. So what we'll end up with is a timber framing for strength and durability, and a foam inner for modelling options - cutting out rivers, rises and gullies and so on. The early boards will be fairly simple, mainly flat affairs with roads on them. Extra terrain such as hills, forests and buildings (see below) can be placed on top for further variety. Later boards will be a bit more adventurous.

Happy New Year!

So it's a new year, and what's changed? I'm still a slow painter, and I still struggle to get around to painting at all. Despite that though, I am making progress. My painted Khdaor army for Warmachine now numbers around 24 fully painted models. This time last year it was more like 3.

I've played in a couple of local tournaments, the last one netted me a respectable second (thanks in large part to Sorscha), and I'm beginning to think I'm getting better at thinking tactically too.

I've also been introduced to the wonderful world of Confrontation too. Small armies, good painting encouraged, smaller than usual battlefields (2 x 4 feet) and beautiful miniatures too.