Some D&D Terrain

I am dipping my toe back into the Dungeons and Dragons pond after about a 20 year break. I'm trying 4 edition. It's a big change from 2nd ed when I last played, but I like it. I've been wargaming since I last played D&D and one thing that held me back from D&D was going back to drawing terrain on an erasable mat.

I love making terrain and the modeling aspect of wargaming almost as much as wargaming. So I didn't want to give up playing on nice looking tabletops. At first I tried a few skirmishes using no battlemat. Just replaced squares with inches. It works to a degree that you can make a go of it but not without issues. But I was gonna also try using the battlemat.

Last night I was putting together an adventure for my friends and I thought I'd print out some Dungeon tiles or something. I couldn't find anything I liked and was about to toss in the towel when inspiration struck. I could scratch out a grid on pink foam board, slap on some gray paint and I would be in business. Shouldn't take any time at all.....

Well it was much easier than I thought, looked much better than I hoped, but that led to....Mission Creep. Once I got going, my project kept getting more elaborate and elaborate. I didn't make my 12 midnight bed time, but 2 is not bad, right? Sigh. Well the results are below.

This is the entrance to the dead Wizards Lair that has been taken over by forces unknown. The stalwart PC's have been hired to clean it out. We are just going thru an adventure to learn the mechanics with minimal roleplay. 4e is a lot to learn. This is the ledge on the side of a cliff entrance to the wizards lair. Next week I will build interior boards.





Cheers, Xin

The Mighty Eighth Airforce

This past April for spring break I drove the family to Florida. We've done this before and I've seen this huge B-47 Bomber right off 95 in Savanah GA. I always wanted to stop but you know it's a long drive from NJ to FL. Anyway we were making really good time, so I saw the bomber and pulled off.

That's when I found the 8th Airforce Museum, and what a great find! Outside in the parking lot they had an F-4 Phantom and a Mig-17

I parked and went in since we had the time. I said to my kids, who groaned a bit, "It's Daddy's vacation too, sometimes we will do boring stuff".
This place is great and well worth the stop. The front section has lots of displays about the lead up to the war and our entry into the war. Once past that you get to the "airfield". They have the main room sort of like a airfield from Britain. Concret floor with oil stains, tire marks. Walls painted with scenes of the airfield. There's a quasent hut for the flight brief which is actually the begining of a Multimedia Flight exprience, From brief to bomb run and back to England.

Also in the big room is a B-17 that is being restored. I think it's about 85% done. This thing is big and awesome.
Lots of other cool stuff in the room. There's this huge diorama of an Airfield. This thing is cool and big. About 20x30 feet.Another diorama on a bomb run.
There's a lot of other things here, but we ran out of time, and a reason to go back. If you have the time, please stop, you won't regret it.

Here's all the pictures I took, enjoy.

Cheers, Xin