Monday, April 16, 2018

Wilderness Terrain "Tree Point Oh!"


I've played enough games on this terrain now to think I need a "final" set of "evolutions" to improve the overall playing and aesthetic experience. It's kind of a disease, actually. . . nothing is ever finished with me (huge eyeroll).

To improve ease of play, I'm making two changes. First, I'm replacing the grassy gradual slopes that cause my model soldiers to continually tip over with "terraced" hills. I haven't actually completed any yet but am actually just taking the concept of the cork "woods" tiles and covering them with fur "grass," a la:


Second, I'm changing the slopes, including the "woods" slopes, from 4 levels to 3, to make it easier to fit the bases of the models onto the terraces. Here are examples of the new tiles:




I'm guessing you already noticed the aesthetic changes. . . I added some green mossy texture and masses of "leaves" collecting along the edges of the terraces. Even without the usual logs, rocks and assorted scatter terrain, the following photos show how the new terrain starts to give the impression of mature old wood forest floors with the addition of a few "trees." And we still have plenty of flat tabletop for our model soldiers to fight over!








 Looking forward to some gaming!

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Still Boldly Going. . .


This is my new 1/2500-scale Enterprise NX-01. I bought the new AMT/Polar Lights kit of all the Enterprise versions just to get this new little model - and more importantly, the new nearly-full-coverage decals - even though I have all the individual kits already. Guess AMT knew its audience. . .

The "Aztec" decals just rock, and really bring the models to life. Here's a shot of the NX-01 alongside the AMT model Reliant, a later "movie-era" Federation starship in the same 1/2500 scale, photographed on my Cor-Sec game mat.


Note: if interested, you can see how I am adapting the 1/2500-scale models to the Star Trek: Attack Wing game system in some of my earlier posts labeled Star Trek.

Of all the Star Trek franchises to date, I find the Enterprise series the most enjoyable to re-watch. I like the way most all of the traditional foes were handled, including the Vulcans - who were foes as often as friends - in the early heady days of warp-capable human space venturing. The humans were refreshingly human, too; a little dirty and more complicated. So it would figure that my flirtation with Attack Wing starts in the Enterprise-era. Eaglemoss is helpful, here, as well, as some of their models are close enough to 1/2500 scale to be used. For example, here's a shot of the Eaglemoss Andorian Kumari and the Vulcan Ni'Var.


 Here's the Romulan Bird-of-Prey Praetus with the NX-01 again.


And finally, here's a shot of the Enterprise-era 1/2500-scale starships with their actual Attack Wing counterparts, to show the difference in size and relative scale between the models.



Now the reason for the "Blah Blah Blah" tag. . . 

I come to Star Trek first and foremost because of the starship design, and I want to play games with cool models. Even though I am not a physicist, I still had to get over the whole "immensity of outer space" scale thing (check out my earlier post about being in different cities with our little 1/2500-scale models, still in phaser range). Battles will/may be fought from hundreds of thousands of miles apart and at computer-calculation speed. Then there's the whole debate about weapons use at warp speed. Not much fun on the table-top and maybe not even fun on a computer screen! So I rationalize our table-top game as the way a computer might visually simulate the battle, with the relative scale and positions of the combatants altered for the participating humans to make the few necessary critical (and cinematic) decisions. At least until humans themselves become altered by space travel into something altogether different than our current versions. . .

Next up, French and Indian War terrain: Woods 3.0!

See ya!