LOTR SBG has been a fun hobby and part of my life for quite awhile now, and over the years it has always been a great joy seeing what other members of the community have made, built, and painted. There's always that thirst for more though! Always wishing that a member had posted just one more picture of their gorgeous terrain or newly painted army.

I figure now it's time to start giving back to the community as I haven't really posted much, despite always wishing that others would post more

So here I will be sharing my LOTR group's progress as we continue building and playing this great game. My goal is to post something here at least once a week, to help grow the hobby and give back to the members of this community who go out of their way to share their updates!

Setting the Scene

Our LOTR group is fortunate enough to be able to game on a 4'4' gaming table with an inset playing surface and box around the edges. It's perfect for rolling dice and keeping everything nicely contained (and safe from food and drink!) during play.

Here are some action shots of different board setups on the table. You can see that there is a long way to go in terms of getting things painted, built, and flocked, but this should give you a good idea of the current state of our group's table.

Very nice balance between terrain and play-ability. Your tall trees - just straws with lichen on top? Simple but effective.

Recently discovered this:



Kikkerland Biodegradable Paper Straws, Birch, Box of 144 for $10

Still experimenting with them myself - saw them and thought should be able to do something with them.

_________________
"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

Thanks Mapper; the tall trees are made from irrigation tubing with lichen on top yes. The eventual plan is to paper mache texture and trunks around the tubing to make them much more realistic. That's a good tip with the straws you found!

Modular Trees

For our group's gameplay taste, we wanted our scatter terrain trees to be based on large circular bases similar to the LOTR figures. We also wanted to be able to field a large amount of trees to make it feel like a dense forest on a whim. And so after picking up about $60 worth of model railroad trees, we were set to go!


A photo of some (not all) of the loose trees next to their bases.


I used a hot glue gun to attach the trees to 3" wooden circular bases.


Gluing sand onto the bases for texture.


Getting ready to paint the dirt.


We're getting close now!


Finally I used Woodland Scenics flocking and bushes to complete the forest undergrowth.


They turned out even better than I had imagined!

We're really happy with the end result - they are very sturdy (including a little flexible due to the hot glue, for when someone inevitably accidentally elbows them), look great on the table, and even obstruct line of sight underneath the trees which was a bonus goal I was shooting for.

All total we've made ~60 trees like this, with 30 more unfinished waiting for me to paint and flock them.

Very nice, I'm a big fan of trees and terrain on gaming boards.

_________________
"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

That looks incredible - Would love to play on that board

Thanks for the comments Mapper and Slinky! It is a very fun board to play on.

Brick by Brick

As part of my terrain-making operation, I have a procedure for casting many Hirst Arts bricks at once as possible. You can never have enough bricks! Any bricks that are miscast (e.g. wrong size, didn't fill in all the way, etc.) I use for making ruins.


I cast about 16 molds at once, so I use a large metal bowl for mixing the hydrocal (plaster).


Some of the molds.


After popping bricks out of the molds, I put them on these cookie cooling racks to dry out.


Here's an example ruin I made out of miscast bricks.


A closer look at a different angle. There are multiple windows and a platform up top for archers.


Here you can see that same ruin on an active battlefield (at the center top back of the photo).


And another closer angle on the battlefield. This was a 'capture the hill' objective game with 8 players (200 point armies each) so it was quite chaotic!

That is a lot of bricks at one time! If you want your miscast wall bricks to look worn, throw them into a paper sack and shake it for awhile! You'll have some dust to wipe off before you can glue or paint them but it gets rid of the defined edges and makes them look aged.

_________________
"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

I don't cast quite that many bricks at once, but I use a food dehydrator to dry them. Mine was a gift, for dehydrating food (which I have never used it for, ironically), so I don't know how much they cost, but I'm told it's pretty reasonable.

I love the ruins and the playability they have from the photos. Your group is certainly spoiled to have you making all those lovely things for them. They really strike me as having a jungle style, especially with the moss trees, so if you ever tire of LotR, you can swap out aquarium plants and dinosaurs and go pulp.

_________________
"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -Will Rogers

Ooh that's a great tip Mapper, I'll have to try that.

Thanks for the feedback GreatKhanArtist! The terrain does have a very lush feel to it, you're right haha.

Simple House

One of the types of terrain I've wanted to make for quite awhile, but never felt satisfied with a good method, has been village terrain. The idea of playing a scenario in a full-blown village with streets and multi-level houses sounds like a blast.

Now that I have the bricks though, this task becomes a lot less daunting and more fun to accomplish! I started out by building a simple house.


My messy brick assembly area. Sometimes you're just too excited about putting everything together to keep the work area clean


Slightly blurry shot of the inside of the house. The floor is wooden, and the house has a small doorway and five windows.


Assembling the roof. The legos are helpful for supporting pieces while they dry, and maintaining good 90* angles.


The front of the constructed house! I really like how the front triangle section of the roof came out.


The doorway is the perfect size for infantry to walk through.


The side view is plain, but workable. It will look a lot better once I paint it I think, with the details in the roof shingles.


Some Warriors of Arnor lie in wait to defend their homestead! In this particular game, Arnor had their deployment bonus of being able to deploy anywhere out of line-of-sight... Which the person used to deploy in the middle of the map inside this house! It was a clever surprise move that caught the enemies off-guard.


Bonus shot of one of our battlefields, the house is partially visible on the left.

Well done!

_________________
My This and That Again WIP blog: viewtopic.php?t=25598

"And they call it a mine. A mine!"

Inspired by Fëanor, the mighty elf's "Of Rocks and Mithril" Moria terrain (http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=683), I've been busy preparing new terrain for our LOTR group's upcoming kickoff game for the year. The theme? Moria!

The idea is to focus on twisty caves and corridors, along with dangerous walkways far above the near-bottomless abyss. Since most of our SBG battles have taken place on battlefields with plenty of room to manuever, this should make for an interesting challenge.


The new battlefield lies deep under the mountain...


To accomplish the effect I'm aiming for, I decided to make a series of modular cave 'islands' that will then be connected by a modular pillar-bridge system. To this end, I began cutting 2 layers of 2" pink foam stacked atop each other (4" total height) to form what will eventually be the modular caves.


With the help of a hotwire foam knife and my wife, the foam can be shaped into a nice jagged, curved, cave-like texture.


Here you can see our steadily growing stack of caves. The top 2" of foam has been carved out to form the cave's passageways.


Meanwhile, underneath the bottom layer of foam we carved hidden channels for some electrical work. These caves will eventually have flickering LED torches!


I especially loved Feanor's well placement in his caves; here I'm testing how it will look in our setup.


This took longer than expected to get working, but now we're cooking with fire! The torches are made from LED bulbs with the flames sculpted around the bulb with hot glue.


A sheet of plain black paper forms the abyss... for now


The LED torch and cave shapes make for some awesome visuals.


Sneak preview of the currently WIP mines... Dry ice may or may not be involved...

Stay tuned! Our first gameday is in a couple weeks, so this terrain will be ready by then one way or another. I still need to texture and paint everything, as well as build the pillar-walkway system.

I love it! I'm very happy to see I could inspire you to start this great project. I really like the idea of the modular cave-islands. Can't wait to see this project take shape!