The Hills are Alive

I'm off work this week but haven't achieved much. The family and I were supposed to be in Cornwall but the 'current' batch of Covid restrictions put paid to that, just like all our plans in 2020. I decided to have the time off anyway, as I'm still trying to get through my last years holiday allocation and figured I needed a rest. So I went into the week with big ideas, loads of games to play and figures to paint. Such are the plan of mice, men and wargamers! The wife and I have been getting out for walks and doing a bit of spring cleaning and generally taking it easy. I have however managed to finish one project.

Last week I shared an unboxing video of my newly bought hot wire foam cutter (here). Over the weekend I used it properly for the first time and made myself a set of edge hills for use on my small games table. 

The two large hills can fit together to make a very large hill. Many of the hills I already had in my collection were a bit battered and no longer fit for use. The high-density foam I use for these hills will hopefully last me a lot longer, and they were a lot cheaper to make than any commercial examples would have cost to buy. 

I have ordered some more foam and I'll be making more hills in a similar style, both grass-covered and some sandy hills for use with my North African desert games. I am working on some other models and if I can wriggle out of household chores I'll try to get them finished for next week. 

Spring Cleaning - The post Challenge tidy up

It's been about a week and a half now since the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge came to an end. Usually, the end of the competition is followed by a long hiatus in painting where I can't motivate myself to lift a brush and I try to get some games in instead. Well, I will be playing some more solo games soon but I have managed to get some stuff painted thanks to the Monday night painting sessions myself and fellow Posties Rejects have been holding for the last year. They have been such a good motivator we will be continuing them long after lockdown is a bad memory and we can get together for games again. But in addition to doing some painting, I have been getting on with some long-overdue tidying up!

The Operations Room has been both my games room and my office for the last year and bit by bit it has been getting messier and messier. With the workload of the Challenge behind me, I have been pottering around sorting out several bags of rubbish, cleaning surfaces (so much dust!) and reorganising my depleted supplies. I have also been reorganising my tools (and adding to them, more on that in a moment) and need room so they will be close to hand. When I moved in here 18 months ago I never thought I'd be spending quite so much time in this 7ft by 8ft room and such tight dimensions mean it was always going to be a bit cramped in here. Nearly all my storage was immediately occupied and new purchases have used up what little space was left. So one of the first things I did last week was start to move some stuff out again! I have been boxing up a lot of my building materials and have found space elsewhere in the house for them. 

Understandably little actual painting has taken place although I have started a small project which should be finished for next week. I have however started making some replacement hills using my new Foam Cutter. I did a quick 'unboxing' video for my YouTube Channel and I have now christened it with hopefully the first of many terrain building projects. 

Many years ago I bought a load of TSS hills made from Polystyrene. They did the job I wanted them for but they have taken a bit of a battering and most are long past their prime. I also have a selection of hardboard hills that I bought from various shows over the years (they featured in my recent Rorkes Drift game) but I wanted a selection of larger flatter hills that could be used on the edge of the table. I had half a dozen A3 sheets of High-Density Foam that I used to make some of my Frostgrave Terrain last year and decided this was the ideal material for my hills. It's soft enough to be easily sanded and shaped but dense enough that it will be tough and last longer than the styrene ones they are replacing.  

The Foam Cutter made short work of cutting out the hills and bevelling the edges and now I need to sand them, prime them and then I can add some grass. I'll try to get them finished over the weekend because I want to have a couple of solo games later next week while I have a few days off work.