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| A rough mock up of a North African harbour. Stuff just placed on for effect nuthin' fancy. |
There is nothing more boring than a plain blue cloth for naval gaming. As many Age of Sail fights took place very close to shore, I wanted to model terrain for coasts from Ireland to the Tropics.
I have made a fair old stab at it over the last week and by accident discovered a very useful purpose for what would otherwise have gone straight in the bin as useless off cuts from Amera products.
I was very happy with the Amera stuff so much so that I ordered a shed load more after completing the items featured in this post. It is vacu-formed plastic, not particularly pleasant to paint but if surface treated with various materials, it produces very attractive results.
The buildings and harbour pieces are metal and resin from the wonderful Brigade Models 2mm range. Obviously a sun bleached paint job helps convey the desiccated environment!
The buildings and harbour pieces are metal and resin from the wonderful Brigade Models 2mm range. Obviously a sun bleached paint job helps convey the desiccated environment!
So far I have started to build terrain for actions in these theatres:
Caribbean/ Tropics
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| A Dutch VOC ship sales along a tropical island coastline |
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| In the Tropics - Caribbean? Java Sea? off Ghana? Amera islands treated with bits and pieces as described. |
This will cover all of the European nonsense in the Caribbean, the Dutch in the East Indies and the Dutch and English in Equatorial West Africa.
North Africa
This will cover the English in Tangier, Barbary Coast Piracy and the Dutch/French/English and others in the Mediterranean.
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| Off the coast of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia or Egypt. Amera off cuts form the mainland. Got lots of Xebecs done too! |
This will cover the North Sea and Channel coast of England, France, Holland and Denmark and probably the North Eastern seaboard of the American Colonies.
I'll consolidate these geographies with some more items for each plus the final terrain style - Western Ireland and the West coast of Scotland.
The Amera bonus ball was discovered in one of those little brain double takes. As I carefully cut around the island pieces which are moulded into various sized oblong sheets with a Stanley knife I was gathering up the off cuts (being a tidy worker) and chucking them in a bin bag. After I had nearly finished the last piece the right angled corner off cut struck me as potentially useful as a spit of land on the blue cloth table. I recovered all of the bits and set about treating them to a coat of wood glue and either fine sand or static grass. Voila! Coastlines of the World! They are bendy and if marginally warped can be reset by gently teasing back into shape.
What a find! Not a single piece of waste.
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| My discovery - lying in the bin, I dug it out and made it into bits of flat coast - the straight edges and 90 degree corners help |
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| Off the Frisian or Suffolk or Norman coast. My Blue Peter style Amera off cuts forming the bay. |
The Amera bonus ball was discovered in one of those little brain double takes. As I carefully cut around the island pieces which are moulded into various sized oblong sheets with a Stanley knife I was gathering up the off cuts (being a tidy worker) and chucking them in a bin bag. After I had nearly finished the last piece the right angled corner off cut struck me as potentially useful as a spit of land on the blue cloth table. I recovered all of the bits and set about treating them to a coat of wood glue and either fine sand or static grass. Voila! Coastlines of the World! They are bendy and if marginally warped can be reset by gently teasing back into shape.
What a find! Not a single piece of waste.