Terrain For Hippos: Reviving the art of Cardboard Cottage Construction!

[puddingwrestler]

Much Ado about hippos!
There's a new ishoo up!
There's a new poll up!
And the rules for the annual terrain comp are up!

[puddingwrestler]

Ishoo Fifty-Nin: 15mm Sci Fi Tiles is up.

[Weaver]

Ishoo Fifty-Nin: 15mm Sci Fi Tiles is up.

I did something similar many years ago. 8 x 2ft x 1ft pieces of 1/4" plywood with "contour" terrain cut from polystyrene ceiling tiles glued to them. The points where the terrain contours came to the edge of each board were all on a standardised measurement system so you could stick the boards together in many combinations.

Comedy aside: I went to buy the wood and get it cut at the Smiths Do-It-All (as it was then) on my Honda Express 50cc moped, and then, being young and stupid, blithely strapped the lot onto the back carrier to take it home. Trouble was, the exit ramp from the DIY store onto the main road was a steep hill up to a T-junction, so I whacked the throttle open to get up the hill, and......... pogoed across the main road on the back wheel with the front one about a foot in the air....... There's not many ways of getting a 50cc moped to wheelie and that's not one that I'd recommend........

[puddingwrestler]

Painting For Hippos Ishoo For: In which Vikings are painted in a berzerk rage. Now available at all leading hippo blogs and second class railway compartments on the victoria line. er... yes. that.

[puddingwrestler]

The latest ishoo of Terrain For Hippos, in which the preperations for a certain diverting past-time are articulated, has been added to that most august volume; Terrain For Hippos.

[puddingwrestler]

Remember chaps, only two more months to get your Annual Terrain Compometition entires in!

And here to make things even easier, is a list of the quickest and easiest projects which are on the blog (originally compiled to tempt juniors in, but you may also be tempted!)

Here are some simple projects for beginners you could try!
Packing Crates
Bunkers
Tiny Tuna Towers
Orc Camp
African huts
One shape Four Ways (part one)and two
Linear Obstacles
15mm space port
Rubble piles
Billboards
Nissen Huts (nothing to do with Datsuns)
Bubbling Ooze
Space Ork Buildings
Dark Ages Village

[SinUnNombre]

I know I'm kind of digging this post up from the grave, but I just wanted to leave some nice feedback. My friends and I have recently, or rather are about to, start up Infinity, a 28mm Sci-fi Skirmish game. It requires a metric butt-ton of terrain to play, and I'm glad that Terrain for Hippos is out there helping me flesh out our game board on the cheap. I know I'm going to be sticking together quite a few of the Concrete bunkers soon for sure. So many thanks to you, PW, for putting such a great resource on the web for us wargamers!

[puddingwrestler]

How is posting to a thread which has not been posted to for about a month, but which has umpteen billion posts digging it up from the grave? It's where I always post news about the blog...

Anyway,WW2 For Hippos is now rolling! There's a poll you should vote on! And a compometition you've got about a week to enter!
Link! huzzah!

[NARSES2]

How is posting to a thread which has not been posted to for about a month, but which has umpteen billion posts digging it up from the grave? It's where I always post news about the blog...

Just one of those "settings" things 

Nice bocage there Mr Pudding'

[Weaver]

Nice job there!  

The Bocage terrain that gave the most difficulty was roads that were sunk lower than the surrounding fields, with hedge-topped banks at the edges, so from the POV of somebody on the road, you had a 6+ foot banking to scramble up with a 6+ foot hedge on top of that. Obviously you can't sink a road into the wargames table, but you could maybe put the hedges on top of Toblerone-shaped edges to represent the banking.

Here's a pretty fair stab at it. Still can't fix the height difference of course, but it has the claustrophobic, "WTF am I?" feel of real photos of the battles.

[puddingwrestler]

You can sink roads with modular terrain, but hgc does not have room for more of that... And not enough fow players to justify it...

[NARSES2]

You can sink roads with modular terrain,

I've seen some very convincing WWI trench works done that way at wargames shows but strangely never seen it attempted with a WWII Normandy game. I suppose if you are into WW1 then the time needed to build the modular "sunken" trench systems is well spent but can't be justified for a single WWII campaign ? Unless you are doing a long Normandy campaign rather then the odd battle/skirmish.

Weaver those photo's are fantastic  I've seen some wonderfull WWII photos where they were being used as natural trenches for rest inbetween actions. I also think I've seen some similar WWI photos as well

Chris

[puddingwrestler]

I have seen some ww2 modules with sunken roads. It is the sort of thing which only really turns up atgames days for exhibition tables however since it does limit you somewhat in terms of the games you can play on the board.

[puddingwrestler]

I say fellows! Two new updates!
Regardes vous - L'hippoptame minable!
Heer ist Herr Schmurtzige Hippoptomus

[puddingwrestler]

Yes chaps! The results for the TFHATC (try pronouncing THAT after a few pints!) have been announced! You should immediately go and check them out so that the enterants can bask in your adulation.
The Results.