"Pics of my new Terrain cloth" Topic

Thanks to the advice and guidance of the War Artisan, I finished my new 200x 140 cm. battlecloth and could not resist the tentation to throw some miniatures on it…
Enjoy!

drumsandshakos.blogspot.com

Nice one

Very effective and usable at more than one scale if you leave the roads off….. I see potential here for 1/300th and 15mm – well done.

Really like that…

Thank you guys, it took quite a lot of effort, but I'm sure that the second cloth will take much less. I'll go for an "arid" landscape..

i need one for the Crimean War, mix of arid and cultivated

Nicely done.

Nice
Clif

I like it, and about roads I know most go for a full width of a stand but ground scale that could make it as wide as a 4 lane highway.

Great looking terrain mat, and thanks for the link to flikr. Some superb work on display in both locations.

Quite inspiring, and a lovely blog. Please go into more detail of your process and the challenges you face when you do your next one. I will look out for it!! :)

Rubber undermats and teddy bear stuffing hills – is this the way of the future? Looks better than my carpet tiles and polystyrene hills……..

And there are some great vids on Youtube about making flock of various kinds, to keep the cost down.

Try this for how to do the terrain mat:

link

A very good job. I need to remake myself one of those soon…. I'm going to have to eBay the flock though because there's no place that sells it around me that I know of…

Very nicely done, I assume that it can be rolled up when not in use, very practical.

Hi,
Is this latex just known as emulsion paint here in UK or is it a gel like consistency? Any idea where to buy in UK?
Thanks,
Mike

@1815Guy: thanks I'll post a tutorial quite soon. And about flock consumption, it is really a little quantity if you have the patience to use a small vacuum cleaner – as I did – color by color and then recycle it…
@Painter Jim: yes it can be rolled up and even folded.
@spartan66: the product I used is "Acrylic Liquid rubber" (translating from Italian) and it has the consistency of… mayonnaise. Unfortunately I don't know about UK availability.
@138Squadron RAF: I strictly followed your tutorial, thanks so much ;-)

Spartan – its Brown Acrylic Mastic or Window Frame Sealant – the stuff they put around your double glazing.

link

link

Dont forget your1gloves for smearing it around!

Not sure where one gets canvass sheets from in UK…..

A good substitute for the sheets are avaialble from most Wickes or B&Q – look for painters drop cloths!

1815guy – try Fred Aldous. Sells pretty much everything. Shop in Manchester or website (can be difficult finding stuff both in shop and website – at least at the shop you can just play 'dumb' and ask for help (I do all the time)

I'm sort of surprised that no one out there makes a product like this yet. I know there are battle mats, but I mean a mat that has the fields, roads and streams, etc laid down on it already. There has to be some method to do these quickly…

@forwardmarchstudios
maybe I have the answer to your question: just for the material I spent about 50 euro (24 for the liquid rubber, 6 for the cloth, 3 for the pins and – say – about 17 for the flock (I spent much more but I recycled a lot) NOT considering the foam rubber (about 40 euro). If you add some work (it took about 3 days to complete the battlecloth) and a margin, how much should one ask?

There has to be some method to do these quickly…

Not necessarily, and perhaps there shouldn't be.

I designed this method with specific goals in mind, like using only inexpensive and commonly available materials, requiring no special tools, special skills or experience and workable in normal residential spaces (i.e., no toxic chemicals or strong, unpleasant odors). The whole point was to craft a method that would allow any gamer to make an inexpensive, customized battlefield that would greatly improve the look of their games, rivalling the visual effect of rigid terrain boards while remaining more storable and less prone to damage.

The method does not lend itself well to mass production, and I view that as a plus. Not every gamer wants the same battlefield. The colors, the location and size of the features, should be tailored to each gamer's individual taste and should fit the specific type of miniatures and other terrain pieces that he uses. Add to that the additional attachment that someone feels toward something in which he has invested his own time and effort (although in this case it's not much compared to what it takes to prepare an army of miniatures for battle) and you have an item that will enhance a gamer's enjoyment of his hobby.

I have had many people (including my wife, bless her heart) insist that I should have kept the method to myself and gone into business with it, but I saw it more as an idea that could improve the look of the hobby (both for the participants and the outside observers) and increase the enjoyment of it, so I began explaining it to anybody who cared to listen. My first public game using this technique, at a Historicon back in the 1990s (although it was on flexible foam tiles, and not cloth) attracted quite a bit of attention, and I spent much of the convention explaining how it was done. At the next year's Historicon I spotted four games using the same technique, each slightly different according to the individual gamers' needs and aesthetics,and I could not have been more pleased. It is my gift to the hobby.

Judging from the excellent first-time results I have seen, like Sergio's and Elliott's linked to above, and these . . .

link

link

link

. . . I would conclude that the technique is much more approachable than some would assume from the look of the end product.

Although I'm sure there would be demand for such a product from those who doubt their ability to achieve as good an effect with their own hands, or who have more money than time, I think this is one of those things that is best left in the hands of individual craftsmen.

Jeff
warartisan.com

I wonder if the same technique would work using a large grass mat like those used for model railways? You could use the base green flocked mat, then use this technique to add accent colors to make it more realistic.
Great ideas though with great results.

tshryock-
That's a really good idea! That would really cut down on the total time/materials required. Does that stuff lay over objects as well as other cloths? The thickness of the cloth here is actually really important. If its too thick then you can only get larger hills and valleys. And if its too thin you can get a droop. It does take some experimentation.

Probably not -- the one I use is fairly stiff. You could get some hill/valley effects, but they would probably have to be more subtle than what you could achieve with cloth -- but then again, having never made a canvas cloth, maybe the stiffness is the same when complete.

Liquid rubber or latex is very flexible and follows quite well the batting beneath. See my latest table on:
drumsandshakos.blogspot.com