Heroscape Terrain Ideas - Part II (updated tiles)

[john blackwell]

I've been working on different elements of my game board.  I just did up a 7-hex tile as an idea of what I want to do with all my other tiles.
Left-to-right are mirror tiles. 


Thoughts, comments, raspberries welcome.

Happy hunting,
John Blackwell

[Downslide]

That really does make the tiles look completely different. Your dressing up of the tiles looks fantastic. My only question is regarding the water tiles. Do you really want to limit some of them to shoreline?

[john blackwell]

My only question is regarding the water tiles. Do you really want to limit some of them to shoreline?

I thought about that too . . . I set aside around 40% of my water tiles for open water and am doing the rest with 1, 2, or 3 sides of shoreline.  Even large lakes don't have many 0-shore hexes at depth zero.  Do you think I should set aside more?

JB

[Lorcan Nagle]

That's the kind of look I want for our group's Heroscape terrain eventually.

[BARNESGN]

because of you I tried flocking a few heroscape hexes and they look great. Thanks for the inspiration.

[john blackwell]

Glad I can be a help.  Please post pics if you wish.  I would love to see how your work turns out.

JB

[john blackwell]

The water tiles are finished!  *whew*  I have Hougar to thank for the inspiration for waves.  It's only waves along the shore, but there are a lot of 'waves' to do.

Several of the finished tiles are presented here:



For comparison, I recreated the scene above:



Being curious as to how many tiles are committed to shoreline versus open water, I counted:

[NOTE: dark blue is Depth 2, medium blue is Depth 1, and light blue is Depth 0]


I'm thinking I might need to purchase a set of tiles for a bit more Depth 1 water, but that's for later.

Oh well, for what it's worth . . .

Happy hunting!!
JB


*EDIT: sorry Hougar - forgot to give credit where credit's due

[ApokalypseTest]

I hope I am not impolite by highjacking the thread, but its on topic.

Here my first rapid, sloppy prototyped roads - not nice looking, but you should get the idea I am aiming for.

[ApokalypseTest]

and another angle:

[john blackwell]

.

I hope I am not impolite by highjacking the thread, but its on topic.

Please, show your tiles away.  I'm not offended . . .

Very cool work!  I like seeing how the tiles turned out.  Road tiles are being pushed into the future, so I'm currently only gathering ideas for eventually building them.

Questions, if I may: Are you planning some 'corner' roads too?  *and*  How many total road tiles have you guessed you'll need?

Nice!
JB

[Ronin Actual]

What are you using to make the road tiles from?  Are those Heroscape tiles or something you made?  Seeing that makes want to get the paper train roads and stick them to a tile base.

[ApokalypseTest]

the tiles fit roughly with the heroscape tiles and are made from Plaster

[john blackwell]

I honestly thought you had acquired some arctic tiles for your roads.  Apparently you made a mold and can reproduce your own tiles.  Have you considered adding dye to the mold so the plaster tiles aren't white?  Forgive my ignorance - I don't even know if that's possible.

Nice job!
JB

[ApokalypseTest]

Yeah.

I made a master using some model clay (to avoid copying the heroscape tiles) and made it somehow fit - it doesn't hold like the original tiles but it fits into the spaces and is so compatible to Heroscape. From that I made a silicone rubber mould and use that to pour plaster tiles.
 
I doin't think plaster takes to dying as well as the much more expensive resin, but I spraypaint it grey - the grey is quite light though, making it look whiteish.

I tried to find white water for heroscape, but it seems it does not exist or at least is not available for sale. These tiles give me the flexibility to build whatever terrain I want and keep it compatible to my base terrain.

[Ronin Actual]

Are they brittle?

[ApokalypseTest]

Not too much - I dropped some on a wooden floor and they are fine - I guess a stone floor would shatter them.
They stand the stress of being slotted in and out of terrain well so far. I also made them thicker than the standard heroscape stuff to make them less brittle.

Here a pic with some more.

[john blackwell]

That's cool!!  I like how the roads can be straight even if the tiles 'zig-zag'.  Nice job!

JB

[Papabees]

The water tiles are finished!  *whew*  I have Hougar to thank for the inspiration for waves.  It's only waves along the shore, but there are a lot of 'waves' to do.

Several of the finished tiles are presented here:



For comparison, I recreated the scene above:



Being curious as to how many tiles are committed to shoreline versus open water, I counted:

[NOTE: dark blue is Depth 2, medium blue is Depth 1, and light blue is Depth 0]


I'm thinking I might need to purchase a set of tiles for a bit more Depth 1 water, but that's for later.

Oh well, for what it's worth . . .

Happy hunting!!
JB


*EDIT: sorry Hougar - forgot to give credit where credit's due

I'm Curious, did you paint the hex tiles before you flocked them? If not what did you use to adhere the flocking?

[john blackwell]

I'm Curious, did you paint the hex tiles before you flocked them? If not what did you use to adhere the flocking?

I painted the terrain tiles like wooded hexes and flocked the wet paint.  I later touched them up with a bit more flock and some hairspray (liberally sprayed) to seal them.

I used white glue to adhere the stones and buffalo grass to the water tiles.  Then I brushed some glue/water onto a tile and added ballast.  Afterwards, I used an eye-dropper to add more drops of glue/water to add another layer of ballast and thicken up the 'sand'.  Then a dousing of hairspray.

The ripples in the water were brushed white paint and water 50/50 - before the hairspray.

Any other shrubs I add to the terrain are either dabbed in white glue or glue/water with an eye dropper.  Then hairsprayed.

I hope this helps.


Happy hunting!
JB

[AnejoDave]

I'm wondering how much this costs.  For both the tiles and the flocking materials to do your 7 hex set.    I'd really like to get some Heroscape tiles for our battletech group, but I'm not a fan of the basic look of the original tiles.

Thanks
Dave

[john blackwell]

I'm wondering how much this costs.  For both the tiles and the flocking materials to do your 7 hex set.    I'd really like to get some Heroscape tiles for our battletech group, but I'm not a fan of the basic look of the original tiles.

Thanks for the compliment, Dave.  If I may, I'll try to break down the cost as best I can.

Heroscape hexes: $online auction
Flocking (fine turf for basic ground cover)
     Burnt grass: ~$4 a bag or ~$10 for the shaker (covers 3X as much as a bag)
     Yellow grass: ~$4 a bag
     Earth: ~$4 a bag
Coarse Turf (small ground shrubs)
     Burnt Grass: ~4 a bag
     Dark Green: ~$4 a bag
Ballast (shore sand)
     Brown Fine: ~$4 a bag
Aquarium gravel - too stark a contrast against the other colors (not recommended)
     ~$3 for a 32oz bag
Buffalo Grass - summer grass
     2mm-4mm buffalo grass: ~$7 for small sheet (enought to 'shore' many water tiles)
Kitty Litter stones
     An odd request of a friend with cats (rather that than buy a huge bag for a baby food container's worth of litter)
Elmers glue
     ~$3 a bottle

I think this covers my materials.  The cost does begin to accumulate, but I have done my entire diorama (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,424.0.html),
swamp tiles (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,6724.0.html and http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,14791.0.html),
and hundreds of other tiles (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,16977.0.html) with this material. 
I may have to buy more burnt grass fine turf, but we'll see how much more later.

Anyway, I hope this helps.  I've thrown in about all I'm good for as well as cross-referencing my work.  I apologize if I'm overdoing it.

Happy hunting!
JB

[AnejoDave]

Wow, thats an incredibly detailed cost breakdown.  Thank you.  Thats also a lot less than I expected to get such amazing results.

Thanks for the information!

[CJKeys]

I have been using the heroscape tiles for years. I am just getting around to flocking them. The flocked ones look great and suprisingly stand up to alot of punishment.

[Angelicon]

I've been working on different elements of my game board.  I just did up a 7-hex tile as an idea of what I want to do with all my other tiles.
Left-to-right are mirror tiles. 


Thoughts, comments, raspberries welcome.

First off, very nice work!

I will never put that much work into my tiles, but I have recently purchased a bunch of Heroscape terrain and will use some of your techniques to dress it up, so thank you!

Question regarding forest -- Can you explain what you've done with those forest tiles? I see they rest on top of the HS terrain -- what are the triangular bases made of? How are the trees mounted?

Thanks!

[tsmpaul]

Really impressed with the shoreline tiles, that looks great!

[ShadowRaven]

those are great. Brilliant idea. I've been meaning to try get more tiles, and so something similar as your water tiles for various depths.

[john blackwell]

Question regarding forest -- Can you explain what you've done with those forest tiles? I see they rest on top of the HS terrain -- what are the triangular bases made of? How are the trees mounted?

First of all, thank you very much.  I'm glad you can get some ideas from the work.  Let me link you to four threads that highlight ideas I have worked on to modify my Heroscape tiles:

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,7543.0.html

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,6724.0.html

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,14791.0.html

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,16977.0.html

Regrading the forests, I purchased some 32mm trees on that on-line auction site.  The styrene strips I used are .188' (~4mm) to fit between the hexes and .5mm thick styrene sheets cut as you see in the first thread.

I used a .04" drill bit and hand-turned holes into the styrene with a pin-vice (.040" is a bit small - maybe a .045" would work better).  Some crazy glue later and the trees are in.

I painted the styrene brown and applied the flocking to the wet paint. 

Really impressed with the shoreline tiles, that looks great!

Thank you.  I would avoid using the aquarium gravel though.  It looks a bit out of place (see the 4th thread above).  Maybe a dark wash would help.  I'll leave that to the painters - I have no talent with that.

Happy hunting!
JB

[Garfink]

Back in to the hobby after many years.  Aquarium gravel is fine, you just need to shop around for the right color gravel.  Gravel comes in EVERY shade of brown/red under the sun!  Makes great base flocking material if you fine one that is fine enough and of the right color.  One bag and you've enough for a lifetime.