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Terrainfest – MCP in Southeast Asia

Terrainfest – MCP in Southeast Asia

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Project Blog by hpdandy

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About the Project

My circle of gaming friends have gone all in on Marvel Crisis Protocol and I felt it was a good time to jump into some terrain building. Just in time Terrainfest started up, which gave me another excuse to build. I wanted to do something different than the standard United States big city and broke out the files from a long backed Kickstarter for the Maeklong railway market as a starting point for a southeast Asia inspired board.

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Last day post...

Tutoring 1
Skill 1
Idea 1
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Well, Terrainfest comes to an end today and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish off everything on this project for the deadline. With loosing several weeks in December to work on the project the nail in the coffin for some of my final detail adds, including vehicles, was in the form of my 3d printer resin vat getting a hole poked in it. Normally I order two when it’s time to replace one, but I discovered I had failed to do so on the last replacement. The new vat won’t be delivered until after the weekend. Not to be completely idle I had worked on some palm trees, did more weathering on the second residential building, painted the edge of the board and started cutting some edging material for the six-inch gap from the board to the table edge. And with that I thought I would post up what I had either gotten done or started.

Before my main printer went down, I had managed to get the train a truck and a forklift printed.

Last day post...

When I had been at home improvement store on a different household project I had spotted double sided dry erase/chalk board and found I was quite cheap so I grabbed one. My idea was to cut the board into six-inch strips so I could use them on the boarder of the board making a nice clean surface to stage cards, models, tokens and dice. The board was white on one side and black on the other so you had options. Additionally, being dry erase and chalk board, you could write notes or keep track of stats as you played.

As the evening winds down here, and a martini is calling out for me, I’ll do a final photo dump for the project. See everyone for the upcoming Dungeonalia run…..

Working on buildings and market stalls

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Skill 2
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I noticed the actual Maeklong market residential buildings are all just drab concrete. Several of the buildings are painted in various bright colors so I decided to breakout My pastel paints and give them a try.

Working on buildings and market stalls

I found the pastels looked pretty good, in my opinion, but they did require many layers to get decent coverage.

I didn’t want the market stalls, especially the ones on the end, to have undetailed outer walls or out of place flat surfaces. I’ve used a technique with papier mache using tissue paper to detail and texture leather vehicle seats. I’ve used facial tissue in the past but I tried some single ply toilet paper as well here to attempt to make a tarp look. The most important thing doing this it to make sure your tissue paper doesn’t have patterns on in.

Facial tissue on the left, toilet paper on the right.

Close up of the toilet paper test.Close up of the toilet paper test.

First layer of paint to make blue tarps

So the plan is to push through with my free time till the end of the month. I’m printing the last of the market stalls and then I’ll be printing vehicles.

Getting back after the project

Tutoring 2
Skill 2
Idea 2
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Well, I’m trying to get back after this project after everything was derailed with the passing of my dad in mid December.

As far as the project goes, I’ve started working on some other tree options and getting paint on market shacks and buildings. The printers are back running to try and get the train and more scatter terrain done. I also have plans to dress the board and the six-inch perimeter around the board.

I dug out various palms to be assembled and painted to fill in around the board.

More market scatter items were printed and I played around with placement.

Growing the banyan

Tutoring 5
Skill 5
Idea 5
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I added play sand to the base of the banyan tree the same as I had for the board. I cut foam bricks and started glueing them around the base. Not as long a process as it might seem.

Once this arrived in the mail it was time to start filling in the canopy a bitOnce this arrived in the mail it was time to start filling in the canopy a bit

The banyan

Tutoring 4
Skill 4
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I wanted the banyan to be a large, playable piece of terrain. After a lot of research I found banyans basically come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. I decided for mine I was going to make its branches more on the wispy side and not have just a mass of impenetrable foliage. After a walk about the property, I had trimmed several of the invasive and bothersome cottonwoods in the area.

The banyan

With saw and clippers, I broken the branches down and started glueing them together. I decided I wanted to try and keep the natural bark from the branches as it looked almost exactly like the banyan trees I had researched, and that fine detail is something I would have a hard time replicating.

I mounted the tree to a foam base and decided I wanted to wall it in as if it was part of a park adjacent to the market. I continued to add air roots and made sure models would be able to play in and around them. I used spackle to meld the trunk together and build up its large roots.

And the market stalls...

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Skill 5
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Next I started on the market stalls I had printed out. The process is pretty simple and I like to add a little more detail to the corrugated metal by scoring lines through them to break them up and make it look more like multiple sheets rather than just one big one. Doing this also adds something during the weathering step in my opinion. The stalls were rattle canned a basic grey and then dusted with any shiny metallic silver. Brown and orange paint was randomly applied with sponge to look like various stages of rust and then weather powders were added. This is where the scored lines come in to add something to the metal sheets. When applying the powders to the scoring I place down a sheet of paper to accentuate the created separation between metal sheets. I also try and remember to run the weathering in a downward angle of the stall roof to mimic the way water would be running the rust and grim. I forgot to do this on one of the roofs, but it should be ok in the end.

During this process and waiting for more resin to arrive in the mail I was also starting work on the banyan tree.

Paint and weathering for the buildings and market stalls

Tutoring 5
Skill 5
Idea 4
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I researched a new technique for painting concrete and decided to try a layering system of a limited color pallet using a sponge to randomize and beak up any patterns.

Each layer of sponged paint was assisted in drying by use of a heat gun, which sped up the process a great deal. After the last layer of paint was dry, I broke out the weather powders. I have a few different sets of commercial powders, but I’ve found a cheap set of artists chalks work great after rubbing them on sandpaper. A cheap big box of makeup sponges works great for applying the powders as well.

Before weathering powder...Before weathering powder...
Paint and weathering for the buildings and market stalls
After powder...After powder...

I started on the market stalls, which is a fast and easy process…

Buildings and the market start

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I had been sitting on files for the Maeklong railway market for years and thought MCP would be a good setting to finally print them out. The files are from Atlas 3DSS and during the Kickstarter were listed as scale to 32mm. Perfect for MCP. I checked Atlas 3DSS’s myminifactory page to see if there had been any file updates and discovered the files had actually been scaled to 28mm. So, after some quick calculations, I upscaled everything to 114%. After the first print I thought it might have been a hair bit small. After a bit more thinking on the matter to obvious suddenly clicked in my mind. 28mm scale covers a range from 1/56 to 1/48. The files were in 28mm, but were on the smaller side of 1/56. Oops. After some model checking though, I didn’t think it would be an issue and it would allow me to use the buildings in other 32mm scale games that maybe don’t use heroic size. I was thinking this board and terrain set would work well with modern “historical” games as well.

I checked with a friend who is currently exclusively playing MCP and confirmed that the game doesn’t really do or need playable interiors to buildings, which was great as the buildings I was printing did not have playable interiors and would not be easy to convert to do so. I started printing out various items to fill the market because details are fun.

As the printing continued it was time to start getting some paint thrown about….

Getting started

Tutoring 5
Skill 5
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So, it was time to make some terrain. Inspired by the Maeklong railway market, I was going to build up a board for a generic southeast Asia for MCP. I broke out the rule book to refresh my memory as even though I have collected and painted a good number of the miniatures for the game, I had never actually played. First off, the game is played on a 3×3 foot gaming surface, which would work out great since I had a left over 4×4 foot gaming table left over from a Flames of War demo game I had set up years ago. This would give me a 6-inch boarder to place cards, tokens and miniatures on, freeing up the gaming surface. For the 3×3 gaming surface I went with one inch foam, cut and then glued together.

I drew out a basic idea of what I wanted to make for the board. Buildings, a market and I wanted to make a banyan tree.

Getting started

Once I had the foam glued together and dry, I painted the surface a general brown with craft paint. I spread out full strength PVA glue and even brushed it into the paint. I had picked up a 50-pound bag of play sand for texturing an evenly layered it on. Even after additional coverage in layers with watered down and sprayed PVA glue it took very little of the sand to give complete coverage and making the seams disappear. Once fully dry it was rock solid.

And with that the project had been started. Printers were running in the background, but this project isn’t going to be all ones and zeros…..