the Miniature World of Mike Peters

The Long Road to Partizan

Too Busy to Blog!

I had a fantastic time at Partizan last year. It was my first time at the show, and I was very pleased and extremely surprised when we won the Duncan McFarlane Award for the best demo game with our Robin Hood Ruckus game. I was doubly surprised to win this award as due to RL issues we had very little time to prepare and used the same mat and terrain as we game with every week however Wi lent us a rather fine castle at the last moment, and I believe it was this eye catching piece of terrain that won the day.

I was determined that this time we should produce something a bit more bespoke, crafted for the moment as you might say. But what game should we take?

I have been collecting Reivers figures from Flags of War for some while now and they are beautiful sculpts by Rob McFarlane, lovely to paint although the low relief and normal human proportions means that they require a small brush and intense concentration to get the faces right. In the FoW range is the Queens Envoy, a figure that bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain sarcastic, conniving, wheedling TV character from a popular Renaissance comedy and of course his rather scruffy side kick who can be counted on to come up with a Cunning Plan.

So…this year we are going to present a Ruckus of Reivery, a game of high skullduggery set in the Borders in the 16^th Century involving a plot to ambush and kidnap the Queens Envoy on his way to the Regent with a proposal from Queen Elizabeth.

I mentally listed the different aspects of the game and what we would need to buy and prepare. Figures- we had a plentiful supply of FoW and the Assault Group. Buildings- I wanted a Bastle House and Pele Tower. Ruckusteer Chris Bailey, a 3d printing wizard, found just what we need and printed them. Terrain- Hills I have one old hill made from plaster and wallpaper nearly forty years go and I thought a second would be good. I had seen a pic of Smailholm Tower perched on an outcrop of rock and it looks so dramatic I thought I should create something similar.

Smailholm

And... a mat I wanted something bespoke and impressive. With a built in road.

The Mat

I had a rough idea of how to proceed, for some time now I have wanted to create a teddy bear mat like the one that James Morris knocked up a few years back and so I bought a large piece of green teddy bear fur for this purpose. However, it looked like a lot of work to convert the rather wiry teddy bear fur, you have to paint it and treat it and comb it and brush it and do all sorts of things and processes. You can find details about how he made it on his blog https://mogsymakes.net/blog/

And then I found Tobruk models and Terrain on You Tube and he uses Faux Fur which needs less preparation you can see how he does it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnU_zG4Er2kS

so I decided to buy faux fur instead. This is very much like a fine fur already, so I thought, less effort. I couldn’t get any in a suitable green colours I bought a 3 metre by 1.5 metre piece of orangey brown from Fabric land for £15. And cut it down to a more manageable size.

I bought a 500ml pot of green acrylic paint from the independent hobby and craft shop Craft and More in Bristol for about £8. I didn’t realise when I bought it that it is actually fabric paint.

The mat was quite resistant to taking the paint. It has to be well worked in. Initially I mixed some brown into it, but the fur itself lent a brown tone and it looked too muddy so I stopped and just used the neat green.

I realised I couldn’t do it all in one session as it was soaked with paint. I hung it to dry and regularly returned to it to comb it through and remove the clumps.

then the weather changed. I could not finish the painting so I had look at how the finished mat might look. A folded blanket is taking the place of the second as yet unbuilt hill and there is surrogate piece of paper standing in for the as yet uncreated Bastle House.

I used this picture to map the road and potential stream.

Red =road

Yellow =tracks

Green hatching =forest

Blue = stream

and then the sun came out again! I finished the mat with the green and hung it to dry

I kept popping back to see how it was doing and each time I gave it a vigorous combing to stop the paint from drying in clumps.

I practiced highlighting the grass on an off cut. I thought it looked pretty effective.

I am quite pleased with the result.

Also from Craft and More. I found that a little goes a long way.

The best way was to use a very small amount and wipe most of that off before lightly applying it and immediately combing it through.

The Road Goes Ever On

The You Tube video I watched used an electric razor to shave the mat for the road, nice and easy , quick too.

However, the faux fur was way to fine for that, it didn’t touch it. Neither did any other shaving device that I tried.

My wife suggested these. They were cheap so it was worth a try but struggled to cut the fur and holed it in several places. Luckily , I was testing them on the practice piece.

I tried painting the mix of caulk and paint and sand directly onto the fur but as it dried I could see it did not look good. It did not look like a road. It looked like faux fur that is matted with paint and caulk and sand.

The only thing that worked was nail scissors. Larger scissors just didn’t have the control. It was hard, laborious, monotonous work that I could only do for an hour or so at a time.

After half a day of this I had made some progress but I was not sure which direction to take the road. I decided to paint the road in so that I would have a reference.

This seemed like a good idea. I took it into the garden to dry.

Oh dear! That is the brand new wooden floor! Ooops! I hadn’t thought that the paint would soak through!

Luckily it will come off with a bit of alcohol.

Oh DEAR!!! That is the door curtain which I brushed against carrying out the mat and unfortunately I did not spot so it was very dry by the time my wife saw it later that evening!

She was ok about it, in fact she laughed! Lets face it if this kind of thing was a problem for her we would never have married.

I used the mix of Burnt Umbre acrylic paint and cheap builders caulk and spread it liberally with an artisty spready tool thing. I hope I cut the fluff back far enough, it still looks a little spikey.