Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago

I’ve been thinking about this project for the last three months and the best way to present a table.

I had a table coutesy of Electric Love and I had the game, Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago.

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I wanted islands for the game. What was the best way to approach this? The initial thought was to create some irregular shapes and make the contours with foam. Although they would look realistic there was only one drawback, they would not fit together to create other shapes.

What to do?

I went back to the roots of gaming and thought about hexagons. Looking at how other people had made hex terrain I made a jig to cut the foam.

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Things would have been set, albeit with some hard work, to have a table ready for Salute. Then two things conspired against this.

My Wife’s Grandfather died last year. 93 with a full (SS on the Eastern Front, travels to Africa in a minibus, mountaineering, greatgrandchildren and good-health) life, before you ask. The family wanted to clear his house, including his workshop.

And at the same time we got a new neighbour who after moving in decided she didn’t like the wooden floor in her lounge. So it was ripped out and thrown in a skip. It was 20mm engineered, if that means anything to anyone, solid wood. Ever since doing the floor in the hobby room I’ve wanted a nice floor in the workshop. I’ve never had the money (can you hear those violins?) but now was my chance.

One view of how the workshop used to look.

Another view

The optimum time to strip out the workshop, lay the floor ready for shelving and tools was now.

Trimming wood with my new circular saw. I still have all my fingers BTW

First iteration of furniture arrangement

Possibly final arrangement

This obviously cut into the preparation time for Salute. Through previous Salutes and laser cutting I had met another gamer, Christoph. Previously of the Grune Horde and now the Tabletop Knights. He was also planning to run a table with GA. I proposed we join forces.

During this time I also started a couple of money making (success so far €4) projects. When I have time and unrestricted access to YouTube, not very often as The Clone Wars and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are wayyy popular, I have been watching Mel’s Terrain Tutors channel. One personal project this year is to make a large amount of hedgeing for Flames of War/Tanks. To do this I would need a large amount of clump foliage. Mel showed how to make it relatively cheaply.

The main expense was purchasing the foam and over half of this cost was postage.

Don’t get me started on postage!

My Mothers old Kenwood came in handy

And you end up with a cup of foam

Mixing with PVA and Poundshop acrylic paint

A by-product of the manufacturing process was moss and litchen. Ground up even finer it was ideal for this.

Different colours to be blended when dry

The second money making project was a flockbox. I was not very happy with the quality of the grass tufts I had been making. It was OK but I knew I could do better. Mel’s channel had a video showing how he made static grass tufts. In it he used a flockbox.

I considered buying one but I couldn’t justify the forty quid PLUS the postage.

Luckily YouTube came to the rescue.

So with the help of eBay and my genius neighbour I made one.

The results are great.

flockbox

Once all these jobs were done there was just about time to paint some scenery and paint my crew. See previous post.

Planning how to display my stock

The day of Salute arrived. The car had been packed the night before so we could set off without any panic or hesitation. Austrian Salute was at a new location, in Germany. The previous venue was looking for new owners, I wonder why? Christoph arrived and we set up. My heart fell a little. Although his modular terrain was a good concept the execution was not as good. No win for the best table then.

Walter giving his customary greeting speech

My tiny display table

Our gametable

The day went quickly although marred by another disasterous lunch. Why do culinary mishaps only happen to me?

On the plus side I did win second prize for the fantasy painting competition.

For the usual more eloquent description visit Sigur’s Battlebrush Studios site

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2018/03/show-report-austrian-salute-2018.html#more

I spent the next day wracked with a crisis of confidence. I make high quality products but nobody wants to buy.

Why bother?

Because I love doing it!

gawinter
Winter is here
This really needs no introduction and a lot more eloquent people have written about this.
cover
Frostgrave looked very interesting, never played it but never mind, but the only drawback that I could see was that all your scenery had to be winter themed which could be quite restrictive.
Ghost Arcipelago is set in a more tropical environment so the scenery can be integrated into other games.
At my rather casual reading of the rulebook it appears that it can be a sandbox of a rule-set. You want pyrates, OK. Savages, no problem. Dinosaurs, why not? It seems it can be a lot of fun.
I’ve put out a request for players on my local gaming forum, but no takers as yet.
http://www.diefestung.com/forum/
Next year’s Austrian Salute is looming and I’d like to try and win best gaming table again. I’ve set a standard so I have to go one better and I’m up against Christoph from Grune Horde who does his own laser cutting. To win I have to have an oustanding table AND play the game.
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I have my gaming table, thankyou Electric Love. And I have started planning out a possible layout. I wanted my island system to be as interchangeable as possible so I could go from small islands to large conglomerations.
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You can see on the right the first iteration of the design process. Looks nice however the pieces don’t fit seemlessly, there would be a little gully between each cluster.
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This led me to laser cut this little device which means I can have perpendicular edges enabling everything to fit together unobtrusively. Hopefully.
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Laser cutting some islands.
Lush tropical islands need to be accessorised.
Here are some scatter plants. I need a lot more. Thank heavens for eBay and cheap chinese aquarium suppliers.
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Some scenery from my bitz box. Who knows what eldritch terrors this statue has witnessed.
On a final note. I’m having to squint to type this so apologies for any smelling mistooks. I had my eyes tested and my prescription has changed very slightly. Trying to be sensible and grown up and looking after my eyes I took the new lenses. After a week of squinting at the computer, I thought my eyes took time to adjust. Sitting a metre back from the screen hunched at a weird angle trying to reach the mouse I’d have enough and went back to the optician.
“You didn’t say you wanted to read as well.”
Using the interweb acronym FFS!