No Smoke Without Fire...

  Every week, we, as consumers, fill our supermarket trollies with a myriad of products, take them home, put them away, use up the contents and then throw away the containers.

  However, we, as wargamers, by throwing away or recycling these containers, are missing out on a valuable and effectively free commodity, namely injection-moulded multi-coloured polyethylene. Or to put it another way - plastic bottles.

  The advantages of this material are that it comes in a variety of colours, shapes and translucency, is fairly robust and easily cut with a sharp hobby knife. However, it's not keen on water-based hobby paints and doesn't like glue very much, so whilst it's readily available, it seems that it may not be that useful...

  Another thing that had been bothering me recently was Area of Effect templates. These are usually supplied in big-box games and are, essentially, coloured circles of cardboard. Which may perform their task admirably, but are a little boring. Whilst certain manufacturers will sell you lovingly-crafted, fancy templates for their particular game, these tend to be quite expensive.

  So, utilising the specific properties of the humble plastic bottle, this is how you can make some more three-dimensional and interesting Area of Effect templates.

  For this project you will need: a plastic bottle, a sharp hobby knife, a sheet of sand-paper and a self-sealing cutting mat or similar. And that's it. I personally have a Swordfish self-sealing cutting mat, which prevents me from scoring lines in my dining table and incurring the wrath of my other half. However, a recent trip to Ikea revealed that you can buy a chopping board of similar size for 45p, so when my mat gives up the ghost, this is what will replace it.

  I decided to use the red bottle above, which contained a well-known brand of shampoo, to create a ring of flames. Our first task is to cut a ring from the bottle, of the requisite height. As I had decided that I wanted a standard 28mm figure to be seen through the flames, my ring was cut approximately 30mm high and looked like this:

  Now, the problem with cutting a ring out of a plastic bottle is that no matter how steady you think your hand is or how carefully you've marked out the bottle, you won't cut it in a straight line. Whilst this has no real impact on the top of your scenery item, as we will see in the next step, if the bottom's not flat, it looks wrong. This is where your sandpaper comes in. Holding your ring of plastic, rub the base of the ring across the sandpaper, until it's as flat as your happy with. Due to the nature of the material, you may have to run your craft knife around the rim afterwards, to remove any errant shavings, as they have a tendency to hang on, giving the edge a 'hairy' look.

Now comes the fun part. Place your ring down on your mat and begin to cut the relevant shapes along the top of the ring. Make sure you're cutting on the inside of the ring, as trying to cut on the outside can result in the ring shooting across the table and craft knifes embedding themselves places where they really shouldn't be.

  As we're creating a ring of flames, wiggly lines of various heights and complexity were cut from the top of the ring, resulting in the following;

  A little cartoony looking, but suitable for superheroic skirmishes as is. I then attempted to scribe flame shapes in the exterior of the ring, which looked okay, with the intention of running a wash of either yellow or orange of the outside, which would hopefully highlight the flame effects, making the ring even better. Unfortunately, this didn't work out the way I envisaged and looked, not to put too finer point on it, shit. Evidence of this can be seen on the interior of the ring in the next picture, as I worked out that I could turn the ring inside out with a little twisting, meaning that I could hide my attempts without having to bin the finished article. The purpose of the next picture is to illustrate how you would use it in play, with Flashpoint having encircled the Wraith in a burning ring of fire...

  No more arguments about whether a figure is affected by the area of effect - if they're in the ring, they take the damage, etc. Obviously, if the game you play has specific area of effect templates of a uniform size, you may find your self measuring the diameter of plastic bottles to find one the right size, but don't blame me for any funny looks you get in the supermarket.

  And this was just the start. Here's a smokescreen template created from an anti-bacterial wipe container, made in exactly the same way.

  Now you see the Wraith...

  And now he is obscured by the smokescreen and can no longer be seen by his foes from outside.

  It took me about 30 minutes to make both of the above items, so quick and simple to make, look better than cardboard circles and the materials to make them are free! Always a bonus.

  Now, I just need to decide what to make with the translucent purple one and the black one...

  Hope this inspires you to have a go yourself.

Can't See the Wood For The Trees...

  It all started with HeroScape...

  I was aware of the game, but had not bothered with it, as its RRP was outside my comfortable price range. However, Argos decided to sell off their stock at approximately half-price and this was posted on The Miniatures Page (www.theminiaturespage.com), so I decided to pick up a set, mainly for the terrain. This led to additional purchases of expansion sets, as it was quite a fun little game and building the battlefield was a bit like Lego for war-gamers.

  One of the sets was the Road to the Forgotten Forest, which came with four moulded plastic trees, which acted as LOS blockers. However, there were only four and they were all conifers. I posited on a HeroScape forum that Valhalla (the world in which HeroScape is set) surely would have deciduous trees as well and, whilst I found some likely candidates from TableScape (www.tablescape.co.uk), at £14.00 for 5, they were slightly out of my price range.

  So I decided to make some...

  As a father of three with all the financial responsibilities that come with it and with a wife who describes all tabletop and war-gaming as “that role-play crap”, I knew that any terrain that I wanted to build would have to be cheap, so as not to incur her wrath.

  For this particular project you will need; a counter-sunk wood screw, some baking foil, a piece of plasticard or equivalent, some air-drying clay and some scouring pads. Plus all the normal kit, such as glue, scissors, etc.

  The plasticard is for the base. I used a piece cut from a plastic ring-binder, which was cut into a hexagon, so it would fit onto the Heroscape hex, approximately 38mm across the flats. In the centre of this, superglue your screw, point up. The reason we’re using a counter-sunk screw is that it has a flat head, giving a better surface for the glue to adhere to. The length of the screw is up to you – I used one about 90mm long, as I play mainly 28mm, and wanted the tree to be about three times the height of a normal human-sized figure. So depending on how tall you want your tree to be and the scale it’s intended for will determine the length of the screw you use.

  Next, the baking foil. This is for the trunk. Cut a small piece, tall enough to cover approximately a third of your screw and long enough to wrap around the shaft of the screw at least once. Crumple it slightly before winding around the base of the screw, as this then gives your bark texture. You can glue this on, but due to the nature of foil, it will stay there without it.

  Now using your air-drying clay or equivalent, add a scenic base. I use Milliput, as I had some in my cupboard and find it useful for basing all my figures. This serves two purposes – first it adds some heft to the base, making it less likely to fall over and secondly, it helps secure the screw to the base.

It should now look something like this:

  The figure in the picture is a Heroscape Airborne Elite, who is about 32mm tall, so this gives you an idea of scale.

  Next, get your green scouring pads. These are the ones that you find in the cleaning aisle, sometimes called Brillo pads in the UK, and packs can be picked up very cheaply. Cut some rough circles about 40mm in diameter, remembering that trees tend to taper near the top, so make sure some are slightly smaller.

  Now, take you first layer of foliage (scouring pad circle) and screw it down the shaft until it butts up against the foil. Continue until you have covered all but the very top of the screw shaft.

  Twist the circles around until you’re happy with the overall look of the tree. Before we cap the screw with our smallest circle of foliage, put the nozzle of your glue on the tip of the screw and give it a squeeze. The glue will run down the screw, holding the pads in place. Finally, glue you last circle on the top of the screw.    

It should now look like the picture below.

 

 

  Now all you have to do is add the finishing touches. I roughed up the exterior of my tree’s foliage using a wire brush, then painted the trunk brown, with a brown ink wash, and dry-brushed the foliage with several shades of lighter green and painted the base to match the HeroScape tiles.

  And this is what you end up with:

I was quite happy with it, because it was cheap and easy to make, it’s pretty robust due to the materials it’s made from and it looks pretty good. Hope this inspires some of you to give it a try.