Island Natives from Firelock Games

Island natives are must when playing adventurous pirate games in the Caribbean. My buddy Jens got some island natives from Firelock Games to form a "crew" of their own.

Firelock Games released their Island Natives as part of their No Peace Beyond the Line kickstarter campaign last year. The minis arrived some time around April this year and Jens sent them to Poland based painting service Den of Imagination to have them painted. As you can see, the results are rather nice:

Vauban Fort from More Terrain

When it comes to pirate settings Vauban Forts are greatly iconic "buildings". I have been wanting to add such a mighty fortification to my collection of terrain pieces for years. In this post I take a closer look at my recent acquisition: the Vauban Fort from More Terrain.

Walls from Games of War

A few months ago, Games of War released some Spanish-style walls as the latest addition to their pirate buildings range. I finished painting my lot this weekend to show them off just in time as my last painting project for the year.

I have been loving the products from Games of War for years now - not only their nice pirate buildings, but more so the fantastic ships and boats, such as the British cutter, the longboats and small ships. With the release of these walls they have expanded their buildings range which should be interesting not only for pirate games such as Blood & Plunder but for a variety of other settings as well.

Battery by Slug Industries

In this post I take a look at the battery terrain piece which was produced by Slug Industries as part of a kickstarter project for their Spanish Fort.

In my recent review of the 28mm Spanish Fort I already mentioned that I also got the battery piece that was funded via the kickstarter project. The battery is a solid piece of resin. Aside from the main piece there is a planking piece, similar to the one that was provided with the Spanish Fort, and an MDF kit for a ladder - again, same as with the fort. So, beside filing off a few sharp edges and assembling the ladder, there is no further assembly required.

The battery, the planking (right) and the ladder kit (bottom right)

Spanish Fort by Slug Industries

The Spanish Fort by Slug Industries is a terrain piece modeled after the actual Fort Matanzas and successfully funded via a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. In this article I take a closer look at the model and present my painted version as well as some gaming ideas for the fort.

Walls from Empress Miniatures

To complement my Caribbean pirate town I recently painted up a set of walls that I ordered together with the Spanish Church from Empress Miniatures.

Simple walls like these can be used in a variety of settings. With the pantile roof of the gateway these walls fit nicely into a Caribbean piratical setting. Empress offers all the various sections and posts individually so you can order the pieces that best suit your specific needs. I went for nine wall sections, four corner posts and four intermediate posts.

Spanish Style Church from Empress Miniatures

No village is complete without a church. To complement my Caribbean pirate buildings I got the Spanish style church from Empress Miniatures.



I had been tempted to buy the Church from Empress Miniatures for quite some time. Then, while I was painting the pirate buildings from Games of War, I decided that those few houses would not be enough to form the nice little pirate settlement that I had in mind. The church would be the perfect addition to the lot.

Spanish Pirate Buildings from Games of War

A pirate gaming table for the Caribbean is made up of more than jungle and a beach. Interesting games require buildings so I got me some Spanish-style pirate buildings for my Caribbean pirate table.

Captain Blackbeard raids a Caribbean town

Aquarium Decoration Plants for Jungle Terrain

Aquarium decoration is a great source for all sorts of wargaming jungle terrain. I recently showed off some very nice ruins, today I want to share some useful plastic plants.

Plants form the core of any jungle-themed gaming board. The occasional palm tree is nice but what you really want is dense vegetation made up of many many plants. The best source of affordable and nicely sized plants is aquarium decoration supplies. I used a few aquarium plants for the jungle terrain sections that I finished recently. Now I found some very nice products on Amazon: Plant Mats from the "Hobby" range by Dohse Aquaristik. They come in four different versions:

Aquarium Decoration Jungle Ruins

Decor Brick Gate from
Europet Bernina (234-105382)

In preparation of some upcoming pirate gaming on tropical treasure islands I purchased a few aquarium decoration pieces to enhance my jungle gaming board.

I bought the first aquarium deco piece years ago when I first started pirate gaming: the Decor Brick Gate from Europet Bernina (234-105382).  I saw this item and a few others put to great use as 28mm scale terrain on the old website of Alex Bews (aka Witchhunter, which is sadly no longer online). For the base of my jungle board I got myself the beautiful 4x6 Beach wargaming mat from Deep-Cut Studio and now I need terrain to fill it. So aside from some jungle terrain sections I dediced to get some more aquarium terrain. Here it is!

Jungle Terrain Sections Finished

Many years ago, I built some jungle terrain sections which I never finished. Now, as I am focusing on my Caribbean jungle board, I took them out again and finished them.

The first step was to paint the bases and stones. Then, I ordered some aquarium plastic plants from amazon for some simple additional vegetation.

The jungle section after painting without additional vegetation

Aquarium decoration plastic plants

Some aquarium plants and simple grass is obviously not enough so I ordered some more stuff from PK-PRO: A box of Ground Detail Jungle Forest from Reality in Scale and various laser-cut paper plants by MIG.

Jungle scenery from MIG

Laser-cut paper plants from MIG

Finished Terrain Sections

Below are photos of the terrain sections with the various scenery and vegetation applied. I am quite happy with the result and will probably do a few more pieces like these.

Palm Trees & Jungle Sections

No tropical jungle withouth palm trees. For 28mm wargaming there are plenty of options for usable palm trees of a variety of prices and quality. To enhance my jungle board I was looking for good trees and found many options. For a long time I was going to buy the A type palm trees from Pegasus Hobbies, especially because of Anthony Karl Erdelji's excellent article at the Painting Clinic. Still, these trees are not very cheap and I would need quite a number of them.

Recently, after reading Matakishi's Jungle article I bought ten palm trees at the Baker Company. £1,50 each is a very good price but the shipping costs to Germany of £6,85 (for ten palms) are ridiculous and don't get even close to the actual costs. However, they included one free extra palm tree, which mildly made me feel better. I'm not a fan of complaining about shipping costs (such as on ebay auctions) as you know them in advance and it still is up to you to make a purchase at the given conditions or not. But I was annoyed to see the cheap post label on the package.

The palm trees consist of a rather unusual wire plus fabric construction, which does look great eventually:

So what to do with them? For some time I have been itching to try out CD based terrain pieces and this is the perfect opportunity. I also have a few 40mm flat round bases from GW which are useful as one-offs. I used modelling putty to fill the holes of the CDs and put one palm tree in the middle, others were glued onto the CD. Then I added stones of various sizes and lastly sand.

And ready for base-coating:

Update February 2018: I finally got around to finishing these pieces as you can see in this post.

Jungle Board

For Christmas 2008 my girl-friend gave me this marvellous four piece tropical beach set by Battlefield Architect (check out his ebay store for all of his cool items*):

With a length of 48" it is perfect for the skirmish gaming table.

I also ordered this set of five jungle terrain pieces:

Island Natives painted by Andrew Thomson

Although I used this scenery in a few photos for my pirate figures (most notably Redbeard's Sea Dogs, beautifully painted by Tom), I never got around to actually using them in-game, because I lacked a proper jungle board to go with the beach. Inspired by the countless posts of CD-based jungle terrain on the Lead Adventure Forum and Matakishi's Jungle article I chose to purchase some palm trees and finally finish start my jungle board. So after looking into aquarium terrain I will now do some jungle terrain for my jungle board...

to be continued...


*Update 22.09.16: His website and ebay shop is no longer available
 

Aquarium Terrain

The aquarium terrain of pet shops holds many excellent pieces of scenery for even the 28mm wargamer. The settings that are best "supported" are Egypt (sphinx, abu simbel, temple ruins, ...) and jungle (trees, rocks, temple, mausoleum, bridge, and - of course - plants) as well as ancient pillars and even temples. To top it off these pieces come perfectly painted to boot. Using aquarium plastic plants for jungle terrain is surely nothing new and has been done by wargamers for many many years. However, the use of aquarium decorations for architectural terrain seems to be surprisingly under-used considering how perfectly many of these items suit the standard 28mm scale and how affordable they are (especially when compared to similar resin products made specifically for wargaming). The above pieces are just some examples of the many goodies that are to be found at pet shops. And if you don't have a good pet shop nearby then you can easily find these items on ebay too - chances are that they are even cheaper there.

Inspired by the photos on the Lead Adventure Forum and especially by Alex Bews' pirate gallery I was really curious to find out how well they would work. I had wanted to do a jungle board for piratey games for quite awhile now and I already have a few cool pieces that want to get played on more often, but I lack a proper gaming table to use them for. So as a nice change from painting the (marvellous!) Tabletop World buildings, and because I am playing pirates now more often, I decided to try some of these items and placed an order.

I ordered three pieces from a very cheap ebay seller, but unfortunately he only one and couldn't ship the other two (which really annoyed the heck out of me). This temple cost EUR 10,40 and it is just great:

I have to say, I am very happy with this piece and I can very well recommend this stuff to anyone playing in a jungle setting, be it Lustrian Lizardmen, pirate treasure hunters, Indian expeditions or what-the-heck-ever. Actually I think with the availability of terrain pieces such as this jungle boards are the most cost-effective gaming boards you can create. By this I mean spending just a little while still achieving great results (as opposed to being super stingy and achieving "okay" results at best). Maybe a desert table with a few Egyptian statues, ruins and temples is even cheaper and easier because you probably need less terrain overall. On the other hand, aquarium plants are super cheap so that shouldn't be much a problem. Anyways, definately check out your nearby pet shops and let the available stuff inspire you.

Next time I'll post some pictures of my jungle board in progress - or photos of the Blacksmith's Forge from Tabletop World. We'll see where the muse leads me...

Til then