Thursday, December 31, 2009

Acquiring Prime (Miniature) Real Estate

Stern Rake Studio acquired it's first piece of (miniature) real estate!

Four days ago I bought a terrain board from my friend Adrian, which he got it at a wargame auction. This particular board was a fixture at American Eagles, a gamestore in Tacoma, which sadly, closed a couple of years ago.

This board consists of 6, 2'x4' sections and looks like this when fully assembled:


According to Adrian, no one knows who made this winter wonderland masterpiece. From what we can gather it was made for a micro-armor (6mm, 1/285th, 1/300 scale), Battle of the Bulge scenario.

Here's a view of Panels 1-4:


View of Panels 3-6:


Looking up at the "Splatterhorn":


Another view of the "Splatterhorn":


"The road less travelled":

I plan on adding brown flocking to the roads in order to give them a more "dusty" look. I also want to add more color and acetate to the river:


I'm certainly happy with my new acquisition! I've always admired boar ever since I first saw it back at American Eagles.
However, like some greedy land developer, there are "improvements" I'd like to make.
My long-term plan is to repaint and reflock the the entire board so I'm not limited to a winter campaign.
So far, I've discussed with Adrian, two possibilities:
1. Repainting and reflocking only the snowy areas.
2. Repainting and reflocking the entire board.
This will also mean uprooting all the miniature trees, since they're all "frosted" to look snow-covered. I don't intend to re-attach the trees as they are now. I'd like to make the board a bit more versatile by not "nailing down" these kind of terrain features. (The roads and the river will maintain their respective courses).

2 comments:

DeanM said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeanM said...

Ted:

After taking a longer look at the board, there is a LOT of areas with snow (80% or so?). Maybe you should try spray painting or airbrushing the snow areas. Then adding flock as needed. Maybe you can also airbrush the trees green too - that way you don't have to remove them. I think it would be very time-consuming just removing them, not to mention putting them back on! Keep us posted. Dean