Howto - making agave cactus plants

The agave cactus (Agave americana) originated in the Americas, but was transported to the Mediterranean in the 16th century and is now commonplace across the region.  I remember these plants from my childhood living in Cyprus, so wanted to create some for my terrain table. I did the usual: trawling through Amazon to try and find suitable plastic plants, but could not find anything. I then started making some out of different materials such as paper, card, plasticard, but none of them really worked out.

This image came from Marc Ryckaert at https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7209445 and is a great example of agave cacti.

A recent visit back to Amazon turned up these beauties.  At £4.99 (including delivery) for 50 pieces, they are an absolute bargain and really look like agave cacti. My only gripe is that they are plastic and bright green, but that can be rectified on the painting table.

One thing that I learnt when browsing through Amazon recently is that it seems as though Chinese manufacturers or vendors will sell an identical product under different brand names but at wildly different prices. The most striking example that I can find is when searching for "static grass applicator". There are dozens of items for sale, most of which look identical (many use the same photograph to advertise the product) starting from as low as £18, running all the way up to £38!

Anyway, back to the cacti. I made lots of small bases using offcuts of 2mm MDF that came with tree bases from 4Ground.  Once you have popped out the tree bases from the rectangular piece of MDF, you are left with the "waste".  Very little actually goes into the bin in my wargaming shed - most things can be recycled in some capacity to make something useful for the gaming table.

I used some small (and very sharp and very strong) gardening pruning snips to cut the MDF into some interesting and non-regular shapes.  Then I drilled some holes using a 2mm drill bit so that I could poke the stalk of a cactus plant into it.

Before inserting the plants into the base, I roughly coated them in a thin-ish layer of generic polyfilla and immediately dipped them into my Mediterranean basing sand. The example below shows a couple of larger stones stuck into the polyfilla prior to applying the sand.

This is what they look like immediately after dipping. The polyfilla does not hold the sand particular well, but allows enough to stick on until it gets sealed with diluted PVA glue, applied using a spray bottle.

Drying in the garden after a liberal coating of diluted PVA. All of the bases below came from the offcuts of a single 4Ground large tree base.  That's what I call value-for-money! 

Once fully dried, I painted the exposed edges of the bases with a pale terracotta paint, dipped in sand and re-sealed. It is worth the extra effort of spraying a couple of times; they are bullet-proof afterwards and will stand up to a lot of handling on the gaming table. Whilst the bases were drying, I used an old can of Plastic Soldier Company (colour: WW2 Armour) spray paint to prime the bright green plastic plants, then left to dry and got on with some other jobs.

After the base coat of spray paint had dried, I painted on some Wall Green base paint from 4Ground (I don't think they sell it anymore, so any pale, mint green coloured paint from a DIY shop should suffice) onto the plants. I dry-brushed a highlight of Vallejo Dark Sand onto some of the leaves so that they weren't a uniform colour. They look darker than they actually are in this photo.

The plants were then pushed into the pre-drilled holes in one of the bases with a tiny bit of superglue applied to the hole. I have pushed these three plants through by different amounts to create some shorter and some taller cacti, then snipped off the excess using side cutters so that they are flush with the bottom of the MDF base.

I think that I will probably apply a little bit of additional flock and clump material just to finish off the base, but I think that these have turned out OK.

Howto - building a terraced hillside for the Mediterranean

I posted up some reference photos a few days ago as inspiration for a terrain piece that I had had in my mind for quite a while now: a terraced hillside.  

Hills (badly done!) on a wargaming table have long been a pet peeve of mine. Many tabletop terrain slopes are either too steep to perch a miniature on or just look unrealistic.  Building well-proportioned hill terrain, but still suitable for gaming on, is one of the trickiest things to pull off, IMHO. I think that I have discovered the solution...terraced hills!

Terraced hills have been employed by farmers all around the world through the ages, but are common in many parts of the Mediterranean as way of turning unusable land into being suitable for agriculture. The steepest hills, with terraces cut into them and buttressed with retaining walls, become productive land for vines, fruit trees or other crops. It also means that you can place minis on the hillsides without them falling off/down and they look real. You be the judge!

Materials

• High density roofing insulation board (or something similar)
• Cheap polyfilla or similar; I bought a big bucket of super cheap, low quality wall filler
• PVA glue
• Cat litter
• Paint for the stone walls; I used some small pots that 4Ground used to produce, but any sort of acrylic or DIY-store paint will probably suffice
• Sand
• Coloured tile grout
• Flock, clump, scatter,  etc

Tools

• A large saw
• A spatula or something to spread the wall filler
• A spray bottle
• Paint brush

Technique

I cheated slightly at the start of this project by recycling a large hill from my winter table (you can see it in photos of this battle report) and used that as the base for the whole terrain piece. 

If I hadn't up-cycled the foam hill, I would have started off with a block a bit like the bit below, which is approximately four inches thick. I peeled off the silver foil and then cut it into a rough oval shape (the outline of the hill) using my wood saw.  Wear some gloves and a mask if you are cutting this stuff up - it's not the sort of dust that you want to ingest or inhale.

Then, I cut chunks of the square edges off using the full length of the saw cutting into the foam starting off at a 45 degree angle, then a shallow angle, then shallower again. The idea is that you cut the squareness off the block and create shallow slopes from the base up to the peak.  You should be able to see what I mean by looking at the green parts of the hill in the photo below i.e. before I started cutting the terraces into it.

Using the saw again, I cut into the hillside, level with the base, to create the "floor" of the terraces, then cut downwards to create the "walls" of each terrace.

I sealed all the bare foam with the cheap wall filler and left it to dry for a few hours.

Don't be too concerned about making it look that tidy. It gets completely covered in other materials later on.

One thing that I learnt during this project is that cheap, low quality wall filler shrinks when it dries, which caused the foam insulation to warp. Who knew? ;-(  I think I will go back and rebase the whole terrain piece on something that has a nice, flat base.

The next step is to apply the walls, which are made of cat litter and plenty of PVA glue. I have written a separate tutorial on how I create my rough-looking Mediterranean stone walls, so I won't repeat the how-to here.  Here are some photos of the work-in-progress though.

Once the walls have dried (lots of diluted PVA), then the base coat of paint went onto the walls and it was left to dry.

Before painting any more of the walls (mid coat, top coat and highlights), I applied lots of PVA glue to the surfaces that were not walls and liberally sprinkled a mixture of sand and tile grout to create a realistic looking ground covering. The white in the photo below is PVA glue.

The sand I used was a blend of yellow sharp sand from a builder's merchant, mixed with a very red sand (I cannot remember where it came from, but it is excellent material for making Mediterranean soil), mixed with a little ivory coloured powdered tile grout. 

I covered the whole hillside in this base "soil", then tipped off the excess onto a sheet of newspaper, then put it out to dry for a bit.

This is the tile grout. This 2.5kg bag cost about £7 to £8 from B&Q.

Whilst the base sand was still wet, I sprinkled, dropped and threw pinches of white tile grout onto the damp surface. The "throwing" of the tile grout creates little mounds and piles, which simulates rocky outcrops poking through the soil. Once I was happy that I had created enough rocky bits, I sprayed the whole thing in diluted PVA using a spray bottle.  This is what the whole thing looked like with the reddish base and then lots of little patches of white tile grout.

It looks a lot whiter in these two photos (above and below) because it is not yet wet with the diluted PVA sealant and the areas that only had a light dusting of white look a lot whiter than they end up being.  You can see the little "rocks" of tile grout in the photo below prior to it being sprayed and sealed.

When wet with the PVA, this is what it looked like...not quite so white. After spraying, leave to dry completely.

Once it had dried, I applied a thin dusting of both the red coloured sand and also some more white tile grout. The red sand was lightly dusted over most of the hillside again and then a track was marked out using more white tile grout.  The effect of adding a light dusting of red sand, once wetted with the diluted PVA, was the red "soil" sits in the crevices of the tile grout "rocks" and creates a really nice realistic effect.  Adding the white tile grout to create a farm track at the same time meant that I could balance the two colours against each other to achieve the effect I wanted.

Again, after applying the sand and tile grout, it was sealed with diluted PVA glue from a spray bottle and left to dry. With only light dustings of both colours, I didn't need to apply quite so much PVA on this coat, so drying time in the sun was pretty quick.  You should be able to see in the photo below the edges of the terraces, where they sit atop the wall; I piled up a little extra red sand so that the terrace overlapped the top of the wall.

And that completes the basic build. Onto the decoration. Before applying any flock or scatter material, I painted the next few coats onto the walls to finish them off.  A detailed tutorial on how I made the walls is described in another blog post, but the basics were:

1. Mid grey colour "wet-brushed" on; leave to dry
2. Whitish colour dry-brushed very lightly onto the upper half of the wall; leave to dry
3. Pale terracotta dry-brushed a little more heavily across the whole wall to make it look a bit sandier and to blend all the colours together

Once the walls had been done, I started on the really fun part: growing some vegetation. I have used a real mixture of all sorts of material, most of which comes from Woodland Scenics. I referred back to my reference photos for some inspiration on how the vegetation spilled over the walls and in between the stones.

Here is what it looks like finished off and ready for the gaming table.

The larger bushes were created using some fibres from a coconut liner for a planter, dipped in neat PVA, then dipped into flock/scatter/clump, left to dry and then stuck into place.  There is a better description of the tools, materials and technique on this earlier blog post.

Next up, I think, will be to revisit the tree-making and create some more trees on individual bases, which can be placed along the terraces.

How to - Making Vineyards

 A staple terrain piece for every Mediterranean wargaming table must be the vineyard (alongside an olive grove, of course). This is what I am trying to replicate, though I ended up with a vineyard that was a little more established than this early season growth:

Here is how I created my version of a vineyard in 28mm with a step-by-step guide, materials and tools required. It is worth giving a nod to Pat at Wargaming with Silver Whistle who published an excellent book on creating terrain for the Mediterranean. His technique and materials are slightly different to mine, so worth checking out to compare and contrast.

Check out some of my earlier posts on my Crete terrain project for details of the specific items that I use or have purchased. I'll get round to creating a central page to reference the common items at some point.

Materials

• 3mm MDF board for the base
• Brown parcel tape
• Cuttings from a hawthorn tree
• Some matches and some bamboo skewers
• Polyfilla
• PVA glue
• Superglue
• Sand
• Tile grout
• Brown cotton
• Woodland Scenics Foliage sheets
• Some flock, clump, grass tufts etc

Tools

• Spray bottle filled with diluted PVA
• Something to cut the MDF board with. I purchased a scroll saw - see this earlier post for the details of the saw and MDF boards
• Something to sand the edges of the MDF board
• Scissors or sharp knife to cut the parcel tape with
• Drill and drill bits (optional, but makes the job so much easier)
• Old paint brush for spreading glue
• Small spatula to spread the polyfilla
• Side cutters to cut the matches and skewers

Technique

I cut the MDF board using the same materials and techniques described on my how to build walls blog. I chamfered the edges so that they blend a little better when placed on the tabletop i.e. not such square edges. The MDF boards I have got are A3 in size, so I only cut them in half to make two A4 sized bases.

Due to the size of boards, I placed several strips of brown parcel tape on the back. This tape is inflexible and limits the extent that the board warps when one side is coated with wet material such as polyfilla and PVA. It doesn't completely prevent warping, but it helps.

On the top of the boards, I marked out where I wanted to drill holes for the end posts and the supports. I decided that two end posts, with two supports in the middle, looked about right. I also left plenty of space between each set of posts to place miniatures.

To provide additional support for the end posts, I also made some additional marks where I intended to drill holes for the angled posts. To determine where holes these need to go, grab one of your matches and cut the top one-third off for the angled support piece, leaving two-thirds of the same match for the post. Hold it in place to determine how far apart the holes needs to be.

I cut a 45 degree angle into the shorter piece of the match to help it fit against the upright longer piece. The burnt bit goes into the hole in the base MDF board.

Using a drill and appropriately sized drill bit, drill all the holes. Place a waste piece of wood underneath your MDF, so that you aren't drilling into whatever is underneath! Also, with the supports for the end posts, drill the holes at a 45 degree angle to help angle the support posts more easily.

I used circular bamboo skewers cut to approx 2cm. The matches and skewers were then glued into the holes using superglue.

The angled supports posts were glued to the end posts using superglue too and then left to dry for an hour.

Once the posts have all dried in place, grab hold of some cotton thread and tie a little noose in one end, then hold the loop over one end post and then pull the "noose" closed, then wrap it around the post a couple of times.  Keep tension on the thread and then wrap it around the first skewer a few times, then wrap it a few times around the second skewer (keeping tension in the thread) before finally wrapping it around the last end post a few times.

On the final post, when you are wrapping the thread around it, you can keep the tension in the thread by wrapping the thread on top of the previous loop, go around again and wrap it on top of the thread. It is difficult to describe, but works so that you don't have to tie a knot whilst trying to maintain tension on the thread. If you do it right, you should be able to let go of the thread and it stays in place, whilst you tie knot at the end. Once each thread has been attached to all four posts, give each post a dab of superglue to hold it all in place.

Next up is the stem (stalk?) of the vine plants. I think this is where my technique differs from most other tutorials that I have seen on making vines. I love to use free materials wherever possible and right outside wargaming HQ (my shed) is a hedge of hawthorn trees (Crataegus monogyna). Hawthorn is a really tough wood and when it dries it does not become brittle like some other natural materials can do, so I think it makes for an excellent terrain-building material.

I snipped up some hawthorn twigs into lots of smaller pieces focusing on where the twig had an offshoot or two. The bigger pieces at the top of the photo below will be turned into some trees at a later date.

Get your drill and drill bits out again and size up each twig to the matching drill bit and drill a hole in the base board next to the cotton thread. Be careful not to catch the thread with your drill bit...otherwise you'll have to start again and re-thread it.

When gluing the twigs in place, stick a bit of superglue onto wherever the twig touches a post or the thread.

Some of my vine rows had three stems, some had four.

To add a bit more of a natural look, drill some of the holes at a slight angle, so that not all of your vine stems are perpendicular to the board. Nature very rarely has any straight lines or right angles!

Allow all the twigs to dry into position before starting the next step, which is to put some polyfilla down onto the board. We're looking to build up the ground level along the row of vines, but also to make the ground level less regular.

As soon as I had spread polyfilla between two rows, I sprinkled my ground covering sand mix (coloured sand and tile grout) over the wet polyfilla. I think, again, my technique differs from a number of other tutorials I have seen...no need to paint!

Cover the whole board in polyfilla and a suitably coloured sand. To my eye, a lot of the Mediterranean has a reddish coloured soil, overlaid with an almost white powdery dust. More on that later, but for now the main colour is quite reddish, though not quite as dark as it appears in the photo below - the sand was damp from the polyfilla - it dries slightly lighter in colour.

Whilst the polyfilla and sand were still wet, I took them outside and gave them a good soaking in diluted PVA glue (about 1 part PVA to 9 parts water) using a spray bottle.  This fixes everything in place and makes it really robust. This is why it is important to affix strips of non-stretchable packing tape on the back, which prevents the MDF from warping due to one side of the board being soaked and drying out again.

After spraying with diluted PVA, and still wet, I sprinkled a lighter colour ground cover (white sand and ivory tile grout) in between the rows of vines.

If your boards do bend, then, once they have dried out, you can gently flex them back to being flat before working on the next step. The keen-eyed will notice that the chamfered edges did not get any of the polyfilla and sand applied, so to rectify that I painted a little pale terracotta paint onto the edges and sprinkled more of the coloured sand onto the edges to blend them in with the rest of the base.

I used a sheet of dark green Woodland Scenics Foliage for the vine leaves. One sheet was just about enough to do 10 vines (a total of A3 sized boards).  I used dark green because it is what I had "in stock", though I wish that I had planned ahead and ordered either the light green or even medium green. I don't think the dark green is necessarily wrong because mature vines do end up that colour late in the season, but for most of the year the vine leaves are much lighter, so one of the other two WS products would probably have been more suitable.

I tore the foliage sheet up into lots of thin strips approx 1 to 2 cm wide. A lot of the (terrain) vines I have seen usually have far too much foliage on them (I think that mine do too), so less is probably more when applying the foliage.  

Do the tearing-up over a tray or piece of newspaper and save all the bits of turf that fall off. This is all the stuff that fell off!

Next was to paint neat PVA (thicker is better) onto the tops of the twigs and along the cotton thread and then carefully fold, stretch and manipulate the foliage into a vine-shaped vine. Press the foliage into the PVA a bit to ensure that it makes contact and then pull and fluff the foliage a little bit, so that it doesn't look compressed. Do this for all your vines and then leave to dry.

The reason why we want them to dry prior to the final step is that you want to shake off all the loose bits of turf before spraying the thing liberally with diluted PVA to fix all the foliage in place. Here are my sprayed vines drying in the Welsh sunshine.

And here is what they look like with a couple of Allied soldiers hunting Fallschirmjager:

I might go back to them at a later date and apply some lighter coloured turf as highlights to make them a less dark green in colour.