Matakishi's Tea House
A simple little site...
Printed Scenery from Unreal Estates
a review by Mark Bush.
Tim Sleigh of Unreal Estates sent us a selection of his terrain tiles. These are designed for use with 15mm figures, and come in a useful selection of types: marsh, plantation, field, vineyard to name a few, as well as road and coastline. The tiles are 400mm square, with the road 2mx50mm and the coast 2mx140mm. All are printed with an aerial view of the terrain in bold but not overpowering colour on heavy canvas, and can be easily cut to size/shape with scissors.
Tim says they are designed to give you 'area' terrain without scenery models getting in the way of moving figures about, and will prove a boon to anyone who has had to adapt their deployment to fit the nicely sculpted terrain rather than where you would actually like your troops to go. They also make a relatively inexpensive way of filling the table with terrain, and can be stored and transported with ease. It's ideal stuff for the gamer on the move, with limited storage space or who wants to minimise set-up and pack-up times.
To my mind, this is just half the story. One of the problems with area terrain can be the way it moves about. Have you encountered the wood that seems to creep forward with your opponent's advancing troops? Fine if gaming the climactic scenes from 'MacBeth', otherwise deeply annoying. Using a tile allows you to define a wooded area and then deploy and move with ease, moving tree models (for example) around without having to worry about where the edge of the terrain has gone. The idea of the terrain mat is not new, but I've lost count of the number of bits of cloth I've tried using only to discard because they always look like bits of cloth rather than terain. These tiles get around this by giving you something that looks like it should be there. The forest tiles work particularly well for this, and when combined with tree models the printed aerial view on the tile gives a nice impression of undergrowth.
The tiles also allow you to define an open area within a largely wooded landscape, such as Western theatre battles from the American Civil War. Using the field tile defines the open area clearly and in an aesthetically pleasing manner, allowing you to scatter your tree models across the rest of the table in whatever manner takes your fancy.
The photos illustrate these two uses. The tiles were simply cut to shape and laid out with a quick backfold to help them lie flat. (Tim suggests a warm to hot iron applied to the unprinted side should they curl up.) The river is simply the coast strip cut in half and butted together.
All in all, I liked the tiles a lot. They give a pleasing look to the table and provide well defined area terrain and a flexible road system that doesn't stand proud of the table. The printing and the cloth are both robust and look like they will stand years of use. I certainly look forward to them doing stalwart service on my table for a long time to come.
The mats cost AUD$35.00 each (around £17.00) the roads are AUD$15 (£7.00) and the coastline is AUD$25.00 (12.00).
You can contact Tim for details here:
and you can download a small pdf catalogue of the range here:
Printed Scenery from Unreal Estates
Market Stalls from Black Cat Bases
Two of the three stalls pictured here with a couple of Britannia 28mm Somali civilians.
I received these new market stalls in place of the old versions because Ben at Black Cat said he thought they'd be better for what I needed. How right he was.
The set contains three identical resin stalls with roofs and three different metal trays of goods. There are also several metal castings of extra sacks, pots and baskets included.
When they're assembled the stalls measure 60mm across the front, 50mm high and 25mm deep. I have based mine on 100m x 50mm bases to allow room for the extra items that are placed around them.
The stalls themselves are made from the white resin that Black cat use. It holds detail well and is easy to cut and sand. It glues with regular super glue like other resin. I've never personally had to wash black cat resin items to remove release agent before painting but this is usuallly a good idea to avoid problems later.
Both ends of each stall had a sheet of resin linking the upright posts that I decided to remove; you can leave it in place, it's cloth textured like the front and top, but I wanted open sides. This was achieved in a couple of minutes with a razor saw and a file and most of the metal pieces needed mold lugs removing with a knife. There were no bubbles or gaps that needed fillling.
It took me a day to paint everything. I glued the metal trays to the stalls before painting but left the roofs off until the end. All the little pieces were glued to temporary painting bases to make handling them easier.
I should mention here that I'm not entirely sure which pieces of the extra kit that I've used actually come with the stalls. The big spherical pots are separate items which I ordered (also from Black Cat Bases) and everything else except the other two big pots, the terracotta ones, seems to match the stall goods in style and content. However, Ben has a habit of putting extra bits in my orders, so some of the smaller pots might not be included in the basic market stalls pack.
Everything got a basic quick paint job because I like my background scenery to stay in the background, I kept details and patterning to a minimum. Originally I painted the stalls' cloth covers with stripes but this made them look too busy so I reverted to plain white. There is a very nice fine woven texture to the cloth that would reward a decent paint job if you felt you had the time. In fact, the overall detail on the castings is excellent.
The trays of goods gave me cause for concern originally. The containers and plates are very close together which makes getting a brush in between them very difficult and there is a wide variety of different goods on sale that could easily suck up all your available painting time.
I got around this problem by cheating. I painted everything dark brown and then drybrushed up through several (four in fact) lighter browns and tans to end with a bleached bone/cream highlight. This picked out the wood grain on the base board and brought out the detail on the trade goods making everything look good and 3D.
I then went over the fruit, leaves and grains with various translucent colours; red, orange, yellow and a couple of Games Workshop greens which allowed the underpainted shading and highlighting to show through. A couple of the plates of leaves got a dark green ink wash too. There are some rifles and metal items on one stall that were touched in with Boltgun metal before getting a chestnut ink wash. This whole process took about five minutes per stall.
Once everything was dry I arranged the small items around the stalls and based everything in my normal way with Basetex. The finished stalls are strong, sturdy and surprisingly heavy.
I've left the price until last because, as with many Black Cat items, it's remarkably low for the amount of stuff you get. The three market stalls and accessories cost just £15.00 and that gets them an extra point or two on the scoreboard.
Market Stall set: Three stalls and trade goods £15.00
A Load of Old Rubbish
On the left are two bases of wheelie bins, a dustbin and a stack of black bin bags from Black Cat Bases and on the right is a big bin and an accompanying pile of rubbish from Ainsty Castings which are now owned by Old Crow. The BTD Cyberman is there to ambush scavengers or to give an idea of scale, whichever you prefer.
I was given the Black Cat items at Colours 2006 by Ben Parker who made them and owns Black Cat Bases so that I could paint them up and see what I thought. The Ainsty items had been lying around for some time and it seemed natural to paint everything at once and compare the results.
Both companies make their scenery items in resin; it's usual to wash resin in warm soapy water before you begin painting to remove any grease from the casting process, I didn't bother because I'm lazy and there was no release agent on any of the pieces anyway. I mounted everything either singularly or in groups on some 60mm round bases and got to work. Everything was quick to paint, after a black undercoat the bins were given a coat of Foundry 26A Forest Green and then washed with GW Chestnut Ink to dirty them down. The ink was dabbed off with a textured tissue as it was applied to give a stippled effect rather than an overall brown sheen. The bin bags and the rest of the rubbish bits were drybrushed with Foundry Charcoal Black 34B and 34C and then a Chestnut Ink wash and some Flesh, Ochre and Canvas colours were applied to the rubbish to bring up the textures. The dustbin was painted GW Mithril Silver and then given an wash with GW Armour Wash ink to make it a bit grubby. The bases were finished off with Dried Earth Basetex, scatter and static grass (there's a step-by-step guide to this in my FIW section). Once the Basetex was dry, everything was matt varnished and finally the bin bags were painted with gloss varnish to give them a polythene shine.
There's not much to choose between the two company's products, both are very good. There are a few air bubbles in the Black Cat pieces as opposed to none in the Ainsty ones but none of them were serious. None of the pieces required any cleaning up prior to painting.
I like the variety offered by the Black Cat pack, I will be buying several to amass a number of dustbins for my city. I'm sure I'll be able to order them separately too, Ben is very good at things like that. Each of the different items is a decent size and could be based individually without becoming fiddly if you prefer such things. The price is very good too.
The Ainsty set is just beautifully sculpted as is normal for their range. The integral resin bases allows the two components to be left unbased if you'd prefer and gives a more natural look to the scenery. Personally I always base things to protect the underside so this isn't a concern. My recommendation is that you buy both sets.
Ainsty Pack: 5932 Overflowing Dumpster and Rubbish (2 models in pack) £4.25
Black Cat Bases: Three bins and a stack of bin bags (5 models in pack) £2.00
