Trench Warfare - part 6.

 

With not much time available to start bigger projects,  I turned my attention to the fleece blanket I had bought to use as the ground mat.

This was just a bargain £3 fleece from.my local B&M, I picked up a grey blanket at the same time to use for urban battles.

It looks a little flat as basic though...

So with an afternoon spare this past weekend, I grabbed a bunch of rattle cans and set about trying to spray some variation patterning onto the surface.

This looks a lot better.

It's a mix of Light and Mid Browns, some Death Guard Green and a little Medium Grey just for variation.

It's a very "old school" way of making a gaming cloth, and very budget friendly, considering I already had the rattle cans in stock, and most of them which I used were the end of life stage anyway, I wasn't going to get much priming done with them. 

I could have invested into a Neoprene mat, like they sell and use at Element Games, but I'd need to buy a 4'x4' mat, then trim one edge down to fit my table, which is 4'x3'. Then I'd have to go through the trouble of hemming the edge which I cut as I dislike the messy look it would have left.
Not to mention the fact that a Neoprene mat runs to maybe £30-£40, almost ten times as much as I paid for the fleece!

So, just like the rest of the terrain in this project, it's an "old school" scratchbuilt flavour, which I prefer as it ensures that none of my terrain looks like anybody else's. Sure the 3D printed parts may look like another project, but it is how we use the parts given to us which differ, and that most of the trenches and craters are all scratchbuilt mean they won't be repeated down the line.

I decided, as I had the lid up on the table for photograph's, to take some of the mat with trenches and miniatures in use.
So here are some of my Deathwatch Astartes fighting it out with my Tyranids:

Before spraying the fleece:

After spraying the fleece, doesn't it make such a difference to the look:

I'm getting real old-GW feel from this project already, remember back in 5th edition Fantasy, 3rd/4th edition 40k when they would always include a homemade terrain building section in the hobby area of the book.

Better times.

Next for this project, when I get some free time to invest, I think will definitely be a set of minefields and more craters, before I start on the opposite side trenchworks.
I also have another terrain project in mind, which would work well for this trenchworks table, and a desert themed table, nut that's currently coming off the 3D printer. 


Until next time, have nice day...