Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Samurai terrain: Roadside shrine


This turned out nice for the amount of time I out into it. I had a piece of wood, some plastic, a few pieces of rubble and an old 65mm base with green stuff carved into flagstones sitting around the work table. It all went together in less than half an hour. After waiting an hour for the primer to dry, it took all of another half hour to paint it. Then 10 minutes to vegetate the base. Done!

Ok, so it took longer than that if you count the time I took to carve the flagstones (I don't remember how long- if it was early in my green stuff career, then 45 minutes, if it was later, then 10 minutes.)

The rubble is from Gale Force Nine which has a few sizes of rubble to choose from (small - grit basically, medium and large -- what I used here.)

The small autumn tree was made using some floral stem scraps I saved over from when I first made my large trees.

The tiles on the shrine's roof is just some cut-up strips of paper.

I used the larger base because I wanted to be able to fit one of my 42mm samurai (on 40mm base) onto the shrine base; the shrine could serve as an objective for a capture-the-flag scenario, for example. Mostly, though, I made it because I wanted to make my games a little prettier.

Update: Whoa. So as I was uploading these photos to this post, I came across a random file labelled "Shrine Base" last modified in 2009. It was the very base I used for this shrine!

I guess when I build something with a specific purpose, it'll get used as such whether I remember or not. (Oh, and 2009, I'm guessing the base took me about 15 minutes to sculpt.)

10 comments:

  1. Great looking piece of terrain, love your Samurai stuff. Not sure about your construction time scale though, looks more like 5 years to me ;-)

    All the best

    Airhead

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fantastic looking work, very nice!
    Phil.

    ReplyDelete
  3. simple but good! with the samourai: it's excellent ! good job!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great stuff as usual. I really should get back to my 28mm samurai one of these days.

    The only issue I have (general comment)is a lot of people, yourself included, like the black edge on their bases. Whether it's new or old school bases, that black line is there. To me it's distracting, and makes my wilful 'suspension of disbelief' harder. So I would be curious to hear why you like this technique.(I can think of several). Just curious

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Since I don't game much, each piece to me is a little piece of art, and the base serves as a small pedestal and frame. I like each piece slightly "set away" from the table using that base.

      On occasion, I'll paint the lip of the base brown to "simulate" mud/dirt if only to kill the monotony of the black.

      I've also been gaming with the raised bases for so long that I don't notice them during play.

      My next batch of samurai, however, will be based on 40mm bases from Proxie Models. These bases have a much lower profile, so it'll be interesting for myself if I notice the difference, and if I have any preferences toward the new bases (which I'm already leaning toward for other reasons than profile).

      Delete
    2. I Certainly started with them on warhammer armies. I moved to washers to get rid of the lip so they would feel more grounded. I am always curios about people's approaches. One of the great thing about our hobby.

      Delete
  5. Very nice... I need to get me some of that tree stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very nice and poetic ! COngratulations !

    ReplyDelete