Lego Talisman

While I do get enthusiastic about things pretty easily (I like to think of it as a childlike sense of wonder), it's not often that I'm reduced to gibbering excitement. This is one of those times.

Just. Look. At. This!

Yes, that's a full Talisman 2nd Edition board made out of Lego!!!!

Michael Christiansen is the genius behind it and you can see all 104 photos he's posted at this album over on flickr.

A. Ma. Zing!

Can't see the bloodbowl for the trees

Busy Rab is busy! But at least I've managed to clean up my sprawl of loose flock and random junk after the mammoth terrain building of earlier this month and get access to my painting table again. To celebrate I based, base-weighted, magnetised, and spray undercoated my main roster players for my orc bloodbowl team. I haven't sprayed the stars yet, and I still need to get hold of a non-duplicate blocker and Varag, as well as stripping Morg, a goblin and Fungus, but progress is being made.

Terrain boards - 07

Aaaaaaaand that's the groundwork finished, folks!

Terrain boards - 06

Things I have learned flocking these boards.

1. You need more scenic cement. No, more than that. 
2. You don't need as much flock as you think, but you do need variety

Other than that, I'm rather pleased with how they look for their first layer. Some bits need the gaps filling, other bits have a rather stark colour change, the edges need thickening up, and the large "village" bare patch needs to have the edges feathered with some earth blend. Getting there!

The process I've been following is to mix up some flock (Woodland Scenics burnt grass fine turf, weeds fine turf, mixed earth blend, burnt grass coarse turf, Javis bright green meadow scatter, a couple of bits and bobs that I had already but long since lost the labels for) in a tub, brush on some scenic cement, scatter the flock on thickly, let it dry for a couple of hours, stand the board on its side and tap the back firmly, gather up all the flock that falls off, repeat!

The flock:

Terrain boards - 05

Another day of holiday, another step closer to being able to play on these boards. This time, the initial drybrushing, followed by the spotting of blue foam that somehow escaped paint, dammit!

I did several layers of drybrushing, all with a cheap 4" brush from Wilkinson's (a quid, I think, grey handle and black bristles). First I used the main base paint I'd used in my board coating mix (Valspar "Norwegian Wood"), then increasingly added some of a sample pot I'd got free with a voucher a couple of years back,

Terrain boards - 04

Gettin' dirty! I've been looking forward to this stage, the point at which all the splatters of filler, the cork bark and the blue foam get brought together and become a unified surface. In a word, gloop.

Terrain boards - 03

Today? Bark.

Sorry. Of course I don't mean that bark. Rather, I mean the use of cork bark as rocks in terrain building. Because the free rocks in my garden don't look enough like rock. Apparently... No, tradition insists I hold back on making 28mm cliffs until a parcel (with a clipart lizard jauntily emblazoned across it) arrive suggesting a sudden enthusiasm for the comfortable sleeping of my non-existent gecko...

And who am I to argue with tradition?

Terrain boards - 02

Hills. Rolling countryside. A realistic landscape over which medieval, fantastical, and futuristic antagonists can pursue their goals. That's what I'm after, anyway. I'm learning that it's just as tricky as one might expect from the preponderance of flat green battlefields that dominate gaming events and internet photographs!

Nevertheless, it was to the internet that I turned once again to help me de-flatten my terrain boards. In particular I referenced three fabulous projects, two of them by the same person:

1 - Captain Blood's French & Indian War board
Anyone who has even accidentally stumbled across the Lead Adventure Forum will be aware of this hobby giant. Not only does he imbue, among others, his War of the Roses miniatures with an almost luminous quality of colour (they've appeared in at least one print magazine as well), but he also produces fabulous and realistic terrain boards.

The full build log can be found here: LAF link

Terrain boards - 01

A good spot of holiday geeking today. Last year I built a gaming table, complete with shelves and a sunken surface to hold terrain boards. It has seen some action (Inquisimunda, X-Wing, Knights' Quest, Dragon Rampant, and Blood Bowl), but it hasn't reached its potential yet because it was missing its terrain boards.

Time to do something about that!

My intention, since the start of this project, was to produce four terrain boards that could be rearranged to give multiple configurations of three of them. One would be completely flat, the other three will have more or less river and hill and are shown below.

It begins...

Unexpectedly, the boys have opted to watch a film (Fantastic Mr Fox, if that's important to you), and the delightful Mrs Rab has chosen to join them. Good, wholesome, family fun.

And it leaves me free to start world-building in the cellar games room :)

I'll talk more about plans etc. in a later post (not wasting time now!), but here's the start...

While I'm at it, I also installed a new light so that next time antipixi comes over to play, he won't go half blind squinting in the darkness...

Right, wish me luck!

Rab