Friday, June 7, 2024

Another Terrain Project, this time it is a Quar thing

 

some of my Great War trenches

        My endless taskmaster, Zhodani Commando, has fallen under the spell of the latest release from Wargames Atlantic; The Quar. I was aware of this little niche in SciFi/Steampunk gaming from previous contact with Zombiesmith, and it has an amusing mythos and some interesting minis. Being a stone-cold historical gamer (wink) I resisted the urge. The release of inexpensive plastic models tempted but did not seduce; I cannot say the same for Zhodani.  The essential idea is that there is a race of anthropomorphic ant-eaters that are trapped in a perpetual war that blends Steampunk with Great War technology. To provide something for his armies of Quar to fight across Zhodani  need some entrenched terrain that has been blasted a bit by artillery. Having seen my Great War trench board Zhodani asked if I could build some geo-morphic boards for him. Having no big projects on the table at the moment I agreed (why does it always go like that?).

       Zhodani wanted a total of six boards, four with trenches and two "no man's land" sections that were gently shelled but left undisturbed by trenching.  As with the Afghanistan terrain he wanted these to be as fully geomorphic as possible. The new boards are going to two feet on a side so instead of two three-foot square panels there will be six panels, this will help with keeping the terrain fresh and ease storage.

first there was the design phase (where I scribble ideas on graph-paper)

then there is the refinement phase where things sorted out to the customer's preferences 

then there is the carpentry phase where I build the bases for the terrain 

       This promises to be a diverting little project, I will have to delve into some of the Quar lore to get an idea if there is some characteristic architectural styles that I need to apply or if standard Great War trench techniques will be satisfactory.

5 comments:

  1. You are the Master Blaster from beyond the Thunderdome sir! You are rocking the house with this one.

    Cheers
    Kevin

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  2. Oohhh. Relevant to my interests is this.
    I’ve gotten into Quar myself and also want to build a trench board. Even bought a Proxxon for the occasion. So I’ll be attending to this with much interest.
    Question please; Are the wooden braces on the bottom of the boards or does foam go inside them?

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    Replies
    1. Stew, you can play it either way. I build so the the braces are on the bottom and the terrain is on top. When I built the Castillo model this was due to the braces being added as an afterthought, but on later projects it was intentional as I use the holes in the braces to put screws through to hold the panels together during play. Having the braces on the top side would keep your edges from getting damaged but puts you in the situation of having to have all the terrain along the edge down to that level. I played around with that idea but could not come to a satisfactory solution to the problem.

      Regarding the Proxxon, there are a host of tutorials available on line and even a ton of accessories that enhance its performance, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

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    2. Shifting Lands has some great guides on using the Proxxon

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    3. Thanks Anton. I’ve been checking out the Shiftinglands on YouTube and going into your back catalogue of fun with foam. Though my first forays won’t be all that ambitious. 😀

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