Treasure Island

A few Weeks ago, my son asked (as he's doing quite often lately) if we could "look at ships". Of course we can! So I put the stuff I have on the table and even got the ocean mat out to really get us going. He's only three, so there is not yet a possibility to really play anything with him in my terms, but we're fine, for now, just looking at stuff and admiring it. The I asked him how he would like to build an island with me. Of course he wants to build an island for the ships! But it must have a castle. We really did that. In 2 weeks and small snippets of 10-15minutes I regularly got the stuff out for us to construct the island. (I actually ended up making three. You know, while I'm at it, I might as well...). I still can't believe how smoothly it went considering his age. So now I have some terrain for my Black seas table! 

Bark from our local forest rethought as Stone cliffs. Works wonders!

Very proud of the little terrain builder!

The requested castle on top of the cliffs

The Finished Islands

Of course I did the majority of the actual work, but I was surprised how fast the process was. If you would put a time stamp on the three islands I'd guess it took me and my son way under 3 hours to complete these. Drying times are excluded. I used AKs Water effects. Clear water, Atlantic blue water for some variation and an effects paint for the foam. The vegetation is Clump foliage. In this scale it really gives the impression to be trees even.

The smallest island.

The large island.

The shoreline.

Smoke Markers

When you shoot with your ships, you should mark them somehow. Warlord Games provide you with cotton for this effect, which really works well, but I needed to take this a step further. I first saw the effect being used in a game by the guys at littlewarstv. You should really, really check out their videos. It is definitely the best channel out there for the historical miniatures hobby. Then I saw it again when Linus used it in one of his games and I decided to do it as well. Linus really makes wonderful ships and with him as well it's all about the immersion. I really lie his stuff. Discovered him on Youtube and then on Facebook in the official game group, where he posts very frequently. So the markers were very quick work, just as the islands. Littlewarstv list you all the materials you need, including a (this time not so) strong beverage as always. I have out together 3 of them. I think those will do for now, as my fleet is still very small, but I should really build more. You can see the islands veeeeery very faintly in my video here: thelaughinghelmet

Battlescene using my new terrain and smoke markers.

The Smoke markers are such a great effect!

My battle mat

When I saw Linus' video I really started to dislike my ocean mat. It's actually a really nice and wasn't cheap but the more realistic one he uses makes me want to create one myself. Maybe some kind of caulk on cloth technique? I'd really like my mat to be all glittery water! If I do it myself and use cloth I could actually use the whole table, which I would find quite fitting for the ocean. Even if you just play on a small part of the table in the end, the ocean is quite large, you know? It would add a lot to the feeling. If someone has any tips, please contact me :) 

More to come. 

So long and take care.

The Laughing Helmet