Off to a terrible start, catch me downstream (part 1)

As predicted, I'm off to a terrible start. 

Starting a blog for an indoor hobby while it's summer time and you have a ton of outside hobbies, might not have been the greatest idea. Top that off with it being your busiest time of year for work, along with looking for other work so you don't starve all winter (again) and you have the perfect recipe for not getting shit for shit done.

Yet here we are. 

This being the case, I'm going to scrap the idea of going back and revisiting my hobby journey in full. Let's leave that for the doldrums of winter, when I should be painting and building and playing, but instead feel like burying my head in nostalgia and sadness.

Let's talk about rivers - why they are stupid to build for a table and why I can't figure out which river pun to use to represent the hobby block it is causing me (hobby dam?)

Rivers are one of those pieces of terrain that while it makes sense that they should be included on every table from a strategic/historical context, they rarely are. They are often seen as dividing lines in tables, either forcing players to play in a smaller area and creating a sort asymmetry for one army, or just get pigeonholed holed into 'narrative' games, which most pick-up gamers say they don't have time for (which is a lie). 

So it makes sense to just knock a big river out fast and quick and be done with it ... sound good? 

Wrong. Let's overdo it and make this the most overly detailed and complex river you can imagine. 

Styrene, caulk, 15 different ground covers, acrylic paint, oil paint, back to acrylics, then resin. Also some flock in there too before the resin, along with grass and reeds. then some clear silicone for waves, then a shit ton of static grass ... got it? okay lets go.

This was day 1-2. I picked up a 4x4 styrene sheet of 1/16th for 10 bucks at the local plastic shop. I had some caulk laying around from another project that I never used it for, and decided it'd be great for creating that rivers edge to catch the resin in. Pretty simple - cut shapes and then caulk the edges - shape the caulk with your fingers and use ample amounts of water to shape the banks.

Okay lets backtrack a minute. So one of the reasons I think that rivers don't get used often is a lack of river crossings - mainly bridges and fords if we are talking Warmaster. My thinking goes like this - overdo it on the crossings, and if you need less, you can take a few out. So two bridges and two fords - hopefully this provides enough crossings to not swing the game too hard one way or another, because goddamn I just love the look of a river on a board.

This bridge had to be assembled in 3d builder and then widened to make it 40mm - I just stretched the damn thing. bricks are forgiving like that. double up and lets go. 

Okay so mounted and cut. I made a width template for the ends from a popsicle stick - I think it was 3 1/2 inches give or take. Doesn't matter as long as they are all the same. Added a two fords, a split, an lake with an opening (so you can end a river) and a few smaller ponds for testers when it comes to resin and color. Also got a dusting of sand, which wont matter as it will all get static grassed to high hell. Mostly wanted to even out the caulk.

Let's leave it here for now, I'll come back in a few days and get you up to date on where I currently am, and then give me incentive to actually finish the damn dammed things.