Over time, I have picked up sets of Gale Force 9 Rice Paddy terrain sets, as I came across them on sale. I have packed these up in a bin for eventual completion. Somewhat more recently, I was given a piece of teddy bear fur that I had cut up into pieces for eventual conversion into field sections for gaming. Finally, Total Battle Miniatures just came out with a new Asian village buildings and terrain. I ordered the latter and they arrived at my home a few weeks ago. Part of the set that I bought included some flooded paddy terrain. As I have been working on my Pacific armies and support, I decided it would be good to work on these, as they looked like an easy project to get knocked out. With that decision, I decided I should just go ahead and finish all my terrain from previous purchases!
I started by cleaning off all the resin from Total Battle and laying it out to spar paint it dark brown from Krylon. Each field is a single piece and lays flat, so I only sprayed one side. Once this set, I hit the sections with a black wash, as the brown was not as dark as I wanted (I wanted then close to the same color as the pre-painted ones from GF9). I then drybrushed them up with a slightly lighter shade of brown. There were some walking planks, that I hit with a drybrush of gray. The flooded areas I painted with a medium muddy brown, which seemed like a good choice, based on some google searches of photos. I then hit the sections with some flocking mix from Scenic Express, affixed with white glue. I left that to dry and a few days later, sprayed everything with some Krylon Matt finish to lock everything down.
Next I needed to get gloss on the water. I just painted each water section with some Vallejo gloss. The first coat did not look good, so I applied a second. That still did not look good (so much for a quick step), so I bought some Vallejo still water at my FLGS and applied that. This fit the bill (even though it is not photographing as well) and these were finally finished. Ironically, I started these first and finished them last.
The teddy bear fur fields were the easiest. I just grabbed some old spray paint and applied two coats to each section. I used tan and bright green. I wanted a more golden tan, but that can died, so I sued something else. I used up an entire can of bright green, as the fur was very absorbent! If you can find the fur, this is the easiest way (and cheapest) to make fields!
Finally, there were the GF9 fields. I actually did not realize how many sets of these I had collected over the years! They are made of the usual GF9 semi hard resin. They have a basic paint job of brown with a tan drybrush and have gloss applied over the furrowed ares. I hit these with the same same brown highlight I used on the Total Battle fields, so the color would match. I then painstakingly ran white glue along each furrow and applied the flock to each piece. Once that dried (and I cleaned all the glue and flock off my fingers), I wanted to try to seal these in also. However, I did not want to dull coat the existing gloss water. So….. I put on some gloves and went to work. I held the pieces upside down and sprayed the sections at a shat angle from the sides, to just catch the tightened areas and edges. That seemed to work and these were completed. Let just way, it was a good idea to put on some latex gloves!
With that, I have more than enough field terrain for my Pacific game tables! You can see the advantages and disadvantages of each type and decide what works for you!
- Manteuffel