With two more weekends before the Joy of Six show, I felt under positive pressure this week to get the final bits completed, the key item being the mat.

The idea this year was not to use terrain boards, as I have done previously, but instead try to do a terrain mat that contains most of the terrain features (see some background here and here). I had this rolled up piece of plastic backed drop-sheet with the acrylic paste on top – all dry but a very heavy 8′ by 4′ mat.  Having been rolled up for about 2 week I did notice some cracking and a few strange folds, but nothing scary.  It was time to decorate.

Remember the objective (upside down compared to the previous postings).

Marking it all out and getting stuck in there.

Drybrushed and ready for some static grass and flock!

After static grass, flock and river detailing (and a good vacuum clean!) – I am actually very pleased. Dark green areas will be covered with trees and I will make some small bridges to put over the river crossings, and some buildings for Lesnaya and finally some features to show the elevation on the left.

Some details (note road space exaggerated – to allow a basewidth through!)

I think it will be good enough for the day! It took some time but I think it was worth it.  It took two relatively long sessions to get it done.

Plan B

As you are aware we have two tables at Joy of Six this year (16th July in Sheffield, see more details here) – the Lesnaya Battle as show above but we were also going to do some French-Indian War using the Sharp Practice 2 (SP2) rules with the help of Neil Shuck, of Meeples and Miniatures (see, or actually listen, here!) fame; “Hello Neil!”.  Neil and I ran the Saga games last year and we had a blast.  However Neil is not able to make it this year so I decided to change the plans slightly and run something with the Little One.  We have too little time to get up to speed with SP2, to give it a fair go, so we decided to go with plan B.  As you are well aware we have grown very fond of the Dan Mersey rules and as there are no other fantasy games on offer at Joy of Six this year – we went and figured.

I will do a little presentation of that game next week but you can see some background in previous posts (here). In addition I decided to do a few more units and here are some work in progress shots (Ogres and Treemen from Irregular Miniatures, Elves from Baccus and Centaurs from Rapier Miniatures).

/ Take care and hope to see you at the Joy of Six(tenth July)