Collins Doesn’t do Savage Frontier

it took a long time, a lot of chasing and quite a bit of hope, I’d basically given up on it but then it arrived and all seems to be well. didn’t get the rulebook unfortunately but im content with what I have now.

Finally got the last resin pour done this weekend! I’ve now got more than enough for an interesting river crossing a short edge in a wavy fashion.

The bridge is permanently fixed in the resin now too so there is no turning back on that one.

What I need to do though is decide whether or not to make it a faster flowing river or not by adding surface waves in a polymer type glue.

Its such a shame this particular entry… given that Savage Frontier was supposed to deliver in Jan 22 and we are now in Nov 22 and I don’t seem to have any of the funded product in my possession, have had no notifications of it being dispatched and am now having my questions and comments ignored I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting anything now.

Tim Spakowski was posting quite a lot of updates until Jan 22 and it seems he had a falling out with Footsore minis (who were apparently doing the fulfilment European side) and pulled out of the partnership going back to his previous trading name of special artisan service minis.

He clearly intended for this to be a successful project and created a Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/167502918455430/ and seemed to contact or reply to people very sporadically and now it seems that there are a lot of people in Europe and the US who simply haven’t received anything. Still on the kickstarter page people complain about not receiving anything. The last time Tim replied to me was to say that he was having issues sending things to Europe… Im assuming the issues are of the didn’t send it variety.

It is a risk with kickstarter of course, something not funding, or going wrong or not delivering… this one is one of those failures and its really a shame as I loved the idea and aesthetic and clearly went all in and even built a table…

Don’t worry though, you could always buy it again from his online store…

Savage Frontier

I now need to find a way to revamp the project and utilise it for something with less of a sour or bitter taste. Walking Dead or WW2 perhaps?

Well, I never doubted the kind and benevolent glorious leader. he said it would work, I didn’t believe him, did it anyway and low and behold it did. these trees are rock hard.

if you look at some of the trees in detail you can see one or two of them have lost a fair bit of the static grass. I don’t think this will be a problem going forwards.

I need a road… just to go to the shops.

I used something that was roughly horse and cart width in 28mm and ran it through the soil/tile grout whilst wet to make it look indented etc.

It did work, kinda. was very subtle, if you were to do this find another way, eg using DAS clay and put in the indentations yourself then go over it with the soil/tilegrout mix.

the rest of it was done as a normal tile. they’re still wet in the photo so that explains the change in colour.

The kind and benevolent squirrel lord decreed the best way to seal my pine trees was to make my own scenic sealant spray by following a video online.

It basically works out at

• 2 parts water
• 2 parts ISO
• 1 part matt medium.

and then 3 shakes of a squirrel’s tail followed by a 7 day wait for the heavy solids to separate out.

Last time you saw I had a super fast curing resin issue that was ruined by my blowtorch and titivating.

The way you go about fixing it is to add more resin. as Warren would say, ‘more is more’.

I ran down the local shop and picked up some more stuff to make it look busier in an attempt to detract the eye and I also used 3 paints to try and make some fish in the style seen on the test of honour maps from tinywargames.

I used 3 colours to help paint the fish

1. boltgun metal to draw the main shape of the fish and 2 flippers
2. nurgling green to add the colour down the centre (top side of fish)
3. stormhost silver to highlight and feather the edges of the green

this kinda makes something that looks similar to a type of salmon or trout. not a perfect replication but it kinda looks like a fish.

I have decided to keep the table as an autumnal table. Every time I want to play with it as a snow table I will simply sprinkle soft snow flakes over it. that way I can keep the flexibility up.

The static grass used was woodland scenics 12mm dark green and 2mm dark green. it looks super light though! would hate to see how light the light green that woodland scenics has!

I had to decide whether to bother adding more leaf litter to the removable trees to have them fit into the woodland tiles.

The left image has no added leaf litter, the right had it roughly thrown on.

I chose I should as I think it looks better.

I decided to add a green layer even though it will get snowed on. the green will still be there regardless of the white that goes on top and will likely show through in places.

I did a tester first (I test everything for this board it seems) of the 2 parts foam flock from woodland scenics and the 2 parts colour set sawdust flock flock from Javis. Then add a sprinkle of mixed herbs and birch seeds for the leaf litter.

I have also been playing with my new toy… a static grass applicator!

I decided to add a green layer even though it will get snowed on. the green will still be there regardless of the white that goes on top and will likely show through in places.

I did a tester first (I test everything for this board it seems) of the 2 parts foam flock from woodland scenics and the 2 parts colour set sawdust flock flock from Javis. Then add a sprinkle of mixed herbs and birch seeds for the leaf litter.

I have also been playing with my new toy… a static grass applicator!

Dammit OTT! why is there no poll option here… there really should be, oh well!

In the comments tell me:

Picture below, but be aware they both need to be able to hold some snow on them to tie in with the rest of the table build.

Using CFS Water Clear 2 part Epoxy resin and a tiny bit of peat brown ink from Windsor and newton I added some much needed depth the river.

First I dammed the ends by using some plasticard and superglue. I intended this to be a temporary bond but clearly I should have used a different glue. that sucker is stuck hard to it now! Nothing a knife and some brown paint won’t fix later though.

Important to mention that I made sure the table was perfectly flat using a spirit level before working on this. the last time I did resin pouring (see Star Wars project) I didn’t and it was a tad lopsided.

In the last week I couldn’t bring myself to make any more trees….thats a long process so instead I played with snow flock to see whether I should bother putting green down on the base boards first.

I think I’ll go for the lightly snowed effect rather than really deep heavy snow as it will make it more versatile in the future… and if I change my mind I can always add more snow later anyway.

what that means is I will need to make bushes and other leaf litter to go down before the snow effect. not an issue!