Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

Jon, I've taken your advice to heart. You said not too long ago that a key part
of gaining popularity for Warrior was to improve the appearance of our games,
and that terrain was one of those areas where we need to move beyond "patches of
felt".

With Cold Wars coming up in a couple of days, I've made some upgrades for this
year. Nothing that will win any awards, mind you, and I have a lot yet to do,
but this is the beginning of a gradual process.

Ground cloth: I actually have one this time, and something that looks relatively
decent.

Hills: No more brown felt for me. I found a crafts store in town that sells
supplies mainly to little old ladies doing dried flower arrangements and the
like. They sell these rectangles of styrofoam that are roughly 15" x 36" x 1/2".
Cut these into three tiers, use sand paper to put a slant to the edge of each
tier, spray paint brown, and then flock green. Voila! A very nice looking hill.
Took me less than an hour to do each hill, and cost me about $5 per hill.

Camp: I finally made one. Again, it won't win any painting competitions, but it
is now something that makes the overall appearance of the army look better.

All told I spent about 8 hours in terrain preparation, etc. Would I have
preferred to spend that time painting more "Moogs"? Sure, but Jon is right; we
need to improve all aspects of the public image we project.

One thing I'm still stuck on is what to do about brush and woods. There's been
some discussion of this already on the list, but nothing that jumped out at me
as the ideal solution. The dilemma for me is that I don't want to do anything
that would slow the game down. Moving lots of trees aside or tufts of lichen as
troops move through just takes too much time. I want something that is quick to
set up, quick and easy to move around to accomodate troops, and visually
appealing. Haven't found that combination yet. Cheap and easy to produce for
someone with limited artistic ability would be another plus.

A final thought on improving appearances. Not every stand of figures in an army
has to be gorgeous. I have some fairly scummy looking figures mixed in with
mine, and some of these figures are approaching 20 years old (and showing their
age). But it doesn't take a lot of extra effort to have a nice looking command
stand, in particular an attractive standard. Flags/standards are one of the
first things passers-by notice when they look at an army, and if you can make
those look good it makes the rest of the army look better.

Just my $.02. Looking forward to seeing folks at Cold Wars.


-Mark Stone

--- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, Mark Stone <mark@d...> wrote:
> -Mark Stone

Good to see good terrain.

Here is a quick and dirty conversion from felt patch to brush:

Take your felt patch and put random white glue drops on it from dime
size to smaller. Leave about 75% of the surface clear. Now sprinkle
(cover thickly) the glue drops with flocking material. Allow for
much exess material. Let dry completely, then dust off the excess
flocking. You now have "bushes" that do not disrupt play or disorder
troops to badly.


For trees I take a base about 120mm x 60mm and attach three trees to
it. Flock the base once the trees are dried. On your green felt
patch, place 1 or 2 of these. They move easy and still lend
esthetics.

Also don't forget that spray painting felt lends texture as well. If
before making brush or trees you take your felt out and paint it in
some random "camo" fashion, it will lend depth without much work.

Wanax