Feast of Blades Terrain

Feast of Blades: Terrain Day Part 1

by Immortal

The minions of Duke have been hard at work preparing for Feast of Blades, and a large part of that preparation is making vast amounts of terrain. On a sunny Saturday we gathered in a dusty and vast warehouse in the industrial sector of Denver full of everything that one could imagine for various parties or gatherings. The warehouse, owned by a company called Creative Rentals, was the staging point and workshop that was a terrain builders dream.

We started with the basic building materials; large sheets of thick pink and blue insulation foam, cardstock, blocks of wood, bags of sand, and jugs of wood glue. With the blessing of the machine god under the direction of our very own fabricator general, those raw materials were cut, sanded, and shaped into the pieces that we could quickly put together into buildings and hills. Using hand drawn directions assembly lines started the Emperor’s holy work.

The Fabricator General, Damien

The Hills:

The hills that will be used are the flat top style discussed in Swags previous article here. These hills are great for breaking up line of sight at the same time allowing models to actually stay on top of them without falling over. Many of the hills have ‘ramps’ that a vehicle can ‘drive’ up and set up shop at the higher vantage point.

The basis of these hills are the commonly used 2” pink insulation foam. Rough shapes were drawn and cut from the large sheets. Most sheets have one of two hill tops crafted from the same foam glued together. These hills, roughly 12” to 18” wide and 6” to 8” wide, then had their sides rounded and sanded to create a smooth round top look. Once dry, these were coated with globs of wood glue spread with a large brush. Before the glue could set, there were coated with ordinary sand and set to dry.  

In one day we created 96 such hills, enough for 3 per 32 tables for the invitational tournament. All that remains is to paint them.

Building the Hills

The Ruins:

The Fabricator General (Damian G.) drew up plans for a general ruin layout that would be capable of holding troops and tanks alike with ease while it will be easy to keep your models from falling over or having the ‘vertical’ tank effect (Definition: A tank that looks as if it was bitten by a radioactive spider). The building blocks of these building, mostly precut card stock, was mass produced. Using the hand drawn plans and test building (pictured fully complete), we created an assembly line of creation that quickly put the pieces together, selectively sanded them, and set them to dry. 32 in total.

Assembly Line

Finished Product (Test)

During the course of the day no one was injured (seriously), great nicknames such as “Pancake,” “Shake and Bake”, and “Picasso” were coined,  and most importantly different gaming groups from across the front range gathered for one single purpose. We are all doing our part to make this the best event we can! My next part will be the conclusion of the terrain building madness.

Hope to see you all at Feast of Blades!

November 4-6^th, 2011

www.feastofblades.com

- Immortal