New Stone Bridge, full revamp of Walls and Fences!

We are proud to present a new, tabletop-ready stone bridge, and a full series of painted walls and more - check the eshop !

The new stone bridge: made from quality resin, assembled and painted, ready to adorn your tabletop

Hello all, and I hope you have enjoyed your Summer!
I have some exciting news to share: while full at work preparing even more Outdoors boards and getting ready to launch our Urban Battlefields Pledge Manager in September, we decided to re-design and re-launch our bridges and wall system line (there is no such thing as free time, it seems :) ).

The main motivation was the development of the Urban Sets and the Canal System for our KS2 backers. I wanted a series of interesting, beautiful and practical terrain pieces which could be combined with the new tiles, to enhance the new landscapes. So, first came the complete redesign of the old bridge, with something to span the new canals. And then we took it even further, creating a new line of walls and fences.

Everything presented below is intended to enhance mainly the coming series of Urban tiles. However, they are already into production, so you can grab yours sooner.

The new Stone Bridge 

When we unlocked the impressive city canals in the Urban tiles Kickstarter, I promised the backers of making available some bridge designs to span those openings and connect city areas. Since there will be two different themes for Quay designs (Medieval and Contemporary), I went ahead and designed two different bridge styles. The "modern" one is still in the works, and will have an asphalt surface. But the "Medieval" one is finished, moulded and cast in many copies already - so you can get yours now here!

"Medieval" Stone bridge; cast in high quality resin, fully painted, with a cobblestone pattern on the surface

The idea was to design a stone bridge which would not only work with the new canal tiles, but would be able to span the rivers of our original river tiles, especially at the "ford" river tile type (where road tiles can "connect" and cross "river" tiles). Therefore, the new bridge fully replaces the older (flat) design we had made available for river fords. The old design has been removed from the store, and all backers and clients with a bridge in their order will actually be getting an upgrade to the newer bridge, at no additional cost.

It works (and looks) great even on "Dirt" road ford tiles

The Bridge is cast in solid, durable high quality resin, and has a slight arch with a span of 14cm. Its width is 9cm, although the available surface for movement is 7cm wide. As everything we make, it is ready to be used straight on your tabletop!

Revamping the Walls' System

Walls and fences decorate almost every corner of the urban environs, and I wanted our backers to have some extra options for theirs. Our previous wall system, whilst ingenious, seemed to lack the practicality for everyday usage and gaming. Most people tried to use our walls and hedges without columns, or the columns were not working properly - it was time to revamp the design.

The new "Stone Walls" in a row with an Urban based Hedge

I wanted something simpler and more practical, but at the same time more sturdy and good looking! So I went ahead and re-designed a full range of walls and fences, which look great and cover most gaming needs. The new walls were expanded to include "Stone Walls", "Walls with Irregular Stones" and "Large Brick walls". All are cast in high quality resin, are extremely sturdy, they look stunning and they stay upright (although there is still the option to magnetise their bottoms). Their lengths vary from 10 to 12cm, their height is at 2.5 cm and they are 1-1.5 cm thick. They are sold in sets of twos, and you can find them in the eshop

Irregular Stone Walls

Stone Walls

Large Brick Walls

As with the bridges, any backers with walls included in their orders, will get the new designs as a free upgrade.

And we didn't stop there; our previous "hedges" were simple and affordable, but it was time to upgrade them to something closer to the quality of our Battlefields. The old idea was thrown away, and the new Hedges are now available: full irregular 3D creations, shaded in green - or flocked if you want to go the extra step.

Hedge fence, flocked variant

They are made from sturdy plastic sponge and pvc, and they stretch for 14cm with a thickness of ~2cm. Their tops and sides are hand-sculpted to be irregular, with a maximum height of 3cm. They come in sets of twos as well, with the option of getting them simply painted or realistically flocked.

The new Hedge fences - flocked vs. painted comparison

However, in an Urban environment, hedges don't usually grow unchecked. So I also designed an "Urban Based" Hedge fence, which includes a large grey stone planter underneath.

Urban Based Hedge Fence

The flower box is cast in quality resin, the fence is 14cm long, 3cm wide and reaches up to 4cm in height.

Last but not least, I would be remiss if I did not included an option for the modern and futuristic battlefield: here comes the Wirefence, a completely new addition in our line.

Wirefences can be stabilised by snapping on steel disks on their end poles

The fence is basically made from high quality aluminum mesh, and each of the two end posts is attached to a small but strong neodymium magnet. Along with the fence, we include two small slim steel disks to act as bases. You can use the disks to stabilise your fence, or alternatively, bend the fence at any post to create wirefence corners. The aluminum mesh can be bent and restored for as many times as you wish.

Each Set includes 1 wirefence section of 25 cm length, and 4.5cm high, along with two slim steel disks (2cm diameter).


I sincerely hope you like these new scenic designs. They are already under production, so while they were designed to enhance the new Urban sets, you can get them beforehand in their new eshop page.

Good gaming,

George

Journal #12 - or, My Foray into Castings

Well, it has been a busy month... (yes, that's an understatement). But the Pedion Terrain adventure continues evolving! While getting ready to launch the Pledge Management interface later this month, I have been creating a number of molds to allow faster and accurate reproduction of tile features. So, in this post, I would like to share some of this procedure with you...

Molding Pedion

Much of the work done and presented so far on these pages is actually prototyping; terrain features and add-ons hand-produced and designed. However, to really enter a streamlined production of multiple boards, I needed to take these a step further. Therefore, I have had to create molds of the main features which are repeatedly found on the tiles, or are magnetically connected as add-ons.

This is not a simple process; that is, to select the best and cost-effective way to reproduce various features. One of the first parameters is that reproduction by casting can actually replace hand made articles, both in quality and in cost. You see, I really can sculpt hills, rocks, tree bases etc in a short time and from low-cost and extremely lightweight mediums. So the castings should be "worth" as much.

Also, the creation of molds is a big investment. The success of the Kickstarter campaign and the number of orders was such that provided the funds needed for such molds - but not on an industrial, tens-of-thousands copies level. So, I selected the more robust and small-industry solution of creating my own professional silicon molds for resin copies. For this I used the exceptional Dow Corning's 3481, for multiple resin copy production.

Then came the selection of casting materials. For the Sci-Fi crystals, I had to choose a clear resin that could be dyed, and have good UV resistances; My choice so far goes to polyester epoxies. As for creating copies of modular add-ons, I went with two-part epoxy resin, mixed with additional powder for lowering the specific weight of the final medium. Also, I started making the molds "hollow", so that the final castings would be lighter. On fixed features, sometimes I use gypsum instead of resin, due to ease of use. However, since the tiles must have high resistances, I use the special Giluform mix that acts like Hydrocal but with significantly increased hardiness.

But enough of talking; let me show you some pictures of the stuff I have been making!

Sci-Fi Crystal Formations in various colourings; you can estimate their size by comparing to the 28mm Space Wolf, the 20mm Sherwood Archer and the 15mm Alien terror

Especially for the Sci-Fi Crystal formations I did not sculpt the originals myself, but selected a more realistic approach: I used real Quartz Formations and Quartz "Needles" which I combined into several futuristic shapes; and boy, are these stones pricey. But I am extremely pleased with the result as now Pedion can sport a great variety of good looking and "realistic" Sci-Fi crystals, which of course have a magnet embedded into the polyester!

The Crystal molds

Check the dark blue and Cobalt blue colourings...

Two other pieces I will be needing great quantities of are tree bases and rocks for the broken terrain and forest tiles. In the pictures you can see the rocks made from Giluform, while the tree bases are made from resin (for durability) with embedded magnets.

Finally, I moved on to larger pieces. The first challenge I tackled was the add-on hill pieces, the ones you get when you order a hill tile. For those of you who do not remember, you can use this add-on piece either on the first hill to create a second level, or as a stand-alone hill someplace else on the battlefield. These pieces needed to be made from resin (to withstand lots of handling), to be hollow in order to be lightweight, and to be sturdy so they won't cave in when you put miniatures on them.

The hollow Hill molds

Resin copy of extra hill piece for Hill Tile #1

Resin copy of extra hill piece for Hill Tile #2

Underneath view of extra hill for Hill tile #2; hollow with 3 embedded magnets

And my molding efforts continue: the larger hill pieces, sidewalks for urban roads, large rocks for badland tiles, even whole tile sections for the coastlines. I hope to have more photos soon.


Good gaming,

George