Base coating the plastic Ogre miniatures

After priming all of the Ogre miniature plastics, it’s time to start base coating them. I’m taking the quick and dirty route, with Krylon Fusion spray paint.

That’s about 5000 vehicles, plus another 450 or so Ogres. I will start detail painting these in batches. I’ve decided I’m just going to follow the paint scheme I have always used for the metal miniatures.

Game Table Expansion

I've had this table that I use for Ogre miniatures gaming for many years. I picked it up at a surplus sale from my employer, where it had been used as a conference table in the boardroom for many years. I think I paid $25 for it.

It's mahogany, and extremely heavy. At one point I refinished the top, but it has suffered a lot of abuse over the years. The table is 42" wide and 96" long.

The other day I decided to figure out how to add an extended table top to it, for a larger playing area, without damaging the table top any further. Here is what I came up with.

I purchased two 4' x 8' sheets of 3/4" MDF and cut them down to 4' x 6'. From the cutoff pieces I made four locator strips and attached them to the undersides.

After attaching the locator pieces I flipped them over onto the conference table.

Now instead of 28 square feet of playing surface I have almost 50 square feet. The table is now 6' by 8'. Lots of room for Ogre miniatures games!

The nice part is they are removable and can store in my garage if I need more room. There's at least 30" of walk space all the way around the table though.

 Here it is with some Hexon II tiles laid out on it.

And now with some Hexon II terrain features added.

More trees! More trees!

I decided the boards were still too bare, so I ordered another 200 trees in a lighter color, which I hope makes the boards look a bit better. I think I like it. They are more yellow, but the two colors seem to blend together.


I know I am amazed they can make these trees so cheaply. I also added some dead trees using a super secret process which I shall reveal at a later time.

Here are some new pictures:

First Ogre Miniatures Game on the New Terrain Boards

Jonathan and I decided to set up a quick game to see how things look on the new boards.

This is the view from the Combine end of the board. (Ooh, look at all the laser towers!)

This is the view from the Pan European end of the board.

Another shot from the Combine Command Post POV.

 And finally a shot from behind the Pan European lines.

Trees for the Ogre Terrain Boards

Well I decided I didn't like the terrain boards as bare as they were. They definitely looked like a battle had occurred, but just looked too empty. I needed something to break up the monotony of the desert. So, I added some patches of grass and trees, and I really like the way they look now. The trees will make them harder to store and transport, but I'll work that out.

A shot of the first few trees being installed.

I got these trees on eBay, very cheap, about $20 for 400 of them. China of course! (Free shipping)

Hmm, looks like a golf course...

Well, a golf course with radioactive sand traps, anyway.

Fully populated with trees!

And a shot from the other end.

OK, these trees are a little too alike in color, guess I'll order some more in a lighter shade...

I do think it looks pretty good though, poke a hole in the foam, dip the tree trunk in white glue, insert!

Close-up, I think these trees look very realistic, twisted wire, flock, and brown paint on the trunks.

A shot from a lower elevation. The glue dries clear and you cannot tell it is there.

I'll take some more pictures during our next Ogre Miniatures battle!!

Water for the Terrain Boards

I decided to make the dry riverbed into a wet one. I did some research on the subject of modelling water and settled on this product. It is cheaper than the stuff sold by Woodland Scenics and a lot easier to work with.

The big thing to remember is to pour thin layers, maybe 1/16" to 1/8" thick. The polycrylic dries in a couple of hours and then you can pour another layer.

It starts out milky, but dries clear.

Terrain Board Storage System

Well I finally got back to working on my terrain boards, and figured out a way to store and transport them.  I used some scraps of the 1" x 2" lumber to make some corner brackets. I added some spacers to keep the terrain boards far enough apart to prevent damage to the terrain features.

 

 

Closeup of bracket:

The terrain boards take up a lot less space stacked up like this, maybe I'll add some wheels for ease of transport.

Ogre Terrain Boards #3

Well, I've been working on these terrain boards for quite a while now, and they are starting to look pretty good. Well, to me at least. There are some amazingly talented people out there creating breathtaking terrain, and I'm not one of them. Anyway, I took the boards I made previously and carved some craters and depressions in them, and glued on some low hills.

I had thought about creating some mountainous terrain areas, but in Ogre scale, a 1" tall hill is pretty high. I used a hot wire foam cutter and a hacksaw blade for the rough shaping, then sandpaper and finally a green scratch pad to clean things up. What a mess! Thank goodness for the shop vacuum.

Once everything looked fairly smooth, I took them out to the garage and painted them with some light yellow latex paint left over from another project. This was just to seal the boards, and give something for the terrain materials to stick to. I let the boards dry for 24 hours or so.

I took one board at a time back down the basement and laid it out on my work table with lots of newspapers underneath. I made up some thinned glue mixture in a spray bottle. I used about 35% white glue, 60% water, and the rest was denatured alcohol to make sure the glue spread out easily.

I sprayed down the first board thoroughly, as in really wet. Then I started sprinkling some brown craft sand I picked up from Hobby Lobby. I covered the whole board with the sand in a thin layer, and let the board dry for about 12 hours.

The next day I lifted one end of the board and let the loose sand slide off. I tapped the board a few times to dislodge all the loose sand, then poured that sand back into my container for reuse. I sprayed down any areas that looked thin, and reapplied the sand. The board edges were especially tough to get covered well. This process was repeated for the other 3 boards until all were covered. I sprayed another coat of glue over all the boards to lock the sand down. I let them dry for another day or so.

I moved all the boards back downstairs to my work table for painting. I used a thin brown wash to highlight the craters and dry riverbed, then I got out my airbrush and sprayed a couple of lighter sand shades on the hills and wherever the sand looked too uniform. I'm still debating putting any kind of green on these boards, like thin grass or a few trees. Maybe later.

I think they look pretty good, although I am considering adding a few wrecked Ogre miniatures and debris here and there.

The next big step is coming up with a way to transport these to Origins in my car. Some sort of frame to allow stacking them is probably the way I will go.

I thought I'd put up a picture of my last terrain attempt, a replica of the original Ogre crater map using Heroscape tiles.

It still gets used occasionally. Maybe I'll make a GEV map to go with it someday.

New Ogre Terrain Boards #2

As promised, here are a couple of pictures of the terrain boards under construction.

You can see clearly here how the 2" foam sticks up a bit above the 1" x 2"s that make up the framework.

Hopefully this weekend there will be time to get some hills glued down and some terrain features carved. I am also working on an idea for a frame to allow easy transport of these boards. I think I will use some removable posts at all 4 corners to allow the boards to be stacked, while maintaining enough separation to keep the terrain from getting damaged in transit. We'll see how it goes.

New Ogre Terrain Boards

I saw a great tutorial on the Quindia Studios web site for terrain boards, and decided to construct some for Ogre Miniatures play.

I drew up a couple of quick sketches in Visio to get an idea of what materials would be needed.

Fortunately I already had a good supply of scrap insulation board, so all I needed was the MDF sheets, 1 x 2's, and some wood screws. Time for a trip to Home Depot!

I found pre-cut 2' x 4' pieces of MDF for about $7.00 each. However, when I checked the measurements in the store, I found they were actually slightly oversize. That's OK, I have a saw and I know how to use it. I still have all of my fingers too, mostly.

Screws were easy to find in the size I wanted, I needed 24 per board, so 96 total, and I'd probably lose a few, so better get a few extra. 13 bags of 8 screws at about $1 per bag.

Now for the 1" x 2"'s. I found some really crappy looking ones in the lumber aisle, but I wanted these to look better. In the trim aisle I found really good looking ones (select pine) for $4.50 each. I can get two (24") ends and one (46.5") side out of each 8" piece, so I needed 6 total.


I hauled everything home and got to work cutting. Cutting MDF makes a real mess so I did it out in the garage. I cut about 3/8" off the ends of the MDF to make them truly 2' x 4'. Then I cut all of the 24" and 46.5" pieces of trim as well. I cleaned up the mess and took everything downstairs to the basement for assembly.

Jonathan wanted to help, so I let him drill some of the holes and drive some of the screws. I used wood glue on all the joints to make sure everything would be nice and solid. I used some clamps to hold the edge pieces to the MDF while I drilled and countersunk the screw holes. The whole project took about 2 hours to complete, and I took my time.

I let the glue dry for a couple of days and then started cutting foam to fit inside the cavities. I actually had enough scrap to fill each board with one large section of foam. I sprayed adhesive (3M Super 77) inside the cavity and on the bottom of the foam and pressed it into place with Jonathan's expert help. As I completed each board I set it on top of the previous one to help weigh it down. This phase took probably 30 minutes to complete. I set a piece of scrap foam on top of the pile and put a couple of heavy boxes on it and left them to dry.

The next step is to start carving the foam and adding terrain features. One of the hardest things to get use to on these boards is the wood forming the border. I keep having to remind myself that the trim gets covered up by the terrain, so it won't be seen when these are completed. The cool part is that terrain features can go below level, so you can have really nice water/canyon areas.

Since these boards are for Ogre primarily, they are going to be in a dry, dusty desert motif. I imagine that lobbing nuclear artillery shells all over the place did not leave much in the way of grass or trees.