Trenches for The Quar; Part III Filling in the empty spaces

        Twenty four square feet of table looks pretty blank when there are only trenches in the opposing foot-wide strips at either short end. This table needed some tactical details to make it interesting. To start with I added a mess of shell-holes, the Quar wars are sort of a Great War/Steampunk cross-breed so there would just have to be a spattering of shell-holes across the table. To add a little more interest I placed a small hill in one of the "no-man's land" sections and the shattered remains of a village in the other. Both of these features were offset toward a corner so that by rotating the panels different tactical situations could be portrayed.

 

first step, make a bunch of tiny bricks

second step, laboriously glue them together into the remains of a shelled building

third step, a glass of bourbon and some classical music

 

 

the hillock was far less demanding

 

 

while pondering how to make the shell-holes I had a flash of inspiration:

 the automotive matte spray which nearly ended my Afghanistan terrain project!

 if employed properly, it would save me no end of labor!

 I could melt the shell-holes into the surface using the solvent in the paint

 

 

and it did the job admirably, a quick one-second blast was enough to start the melting process

once dried the inner surface was a hard plastic material

(don't try this indoors, the solvent is overwhelming)  

 

 

making the soil that is blasted out of the hole was handled using Gorilla Glue, 

this has a foaming action that will raise a significant lip all around the crater 

a thin coat is all you need

 

what makes the glue foam is a spray of water, 

the glue will increase to several times its original volume as it sets

 

like this

 

one of the downsides to building the trenches out of many blocks was that I had to go back and close all the gaps, wallboard compound from your local building supply will takes care of this handily 

 

       Now I am back to waiting for stuff to dry. I guess that I should go mow the lawn....... 

 

I had some spare time before dinner so I threw a coat of paint on it 

next is a thinned coat of drywall mud topped with coarse sand