yet another project

Hi all

I'm currently gearing up toward playing my first proper games of Bushido, I've played a demo game, read through the rules over and over again, watched tutorials on You Tube and furiously painting up miniatures for my two chosen factions, even making a few terrain pieces as shown on this blog.  But an important part of Bushido is objectives, to make most games interesting over a prolonged period of time you need to introduce scenarios, of which Bushido has a very healthy twelve, but the majority of them involve objectives.  So I got to thinking about objectives, now bear in mind a few years ago I would have ripped the minis out of the packs, super-glued them together and gamed with them over a floor or dining room table, fighting for salt shaker objectives.  These days I like the aesthetic side of the game as much as playing it and refuse to play with unpainted minis on bare battlefields so I wanted some thematic objectives and to that end hit t'internet and exercised my web-fu skills. I was at a loss as to what to get, most things seemed expensive and I'm very much a frugal gamer, so much so that I have made a couple of bigger pieces made out of scraps that I have lying around.  Hence the Shinto shrine which you can see here. But I wanted half a dozen so I persevered and then I found these.

Mounted on some bases that I bought from Minibits I have six statues/idols that look like this, I loved the colour so much I haven't touched them...

So I had my objectives but it got me thinking about more pieces. What else did I want? One of the things I like about Japanese culture is the ornamental gardens and Koi ponds, that's what I needed!! Now my inner dialogue went "not another terrain project, you've not finished the watchtower yet....." but I quickly shushed that detracting misery and started to plan what I envisaged to be a cool koi pond.

I already had all of the pieces that I needed (yet another frugal project) and this is what I had available and how I did it....

1 x Pringle tube
1x sheet soft foam
pva glue
brown emulsion
water effect resin
model bamboo

Cut the bottom off of the pringle tube so that you have a solid base, cut to the depth of the pond wall (I went 1.5cm). glue the foam onto the sides - inside and out (it's a good idea to score the tile pattern before gluing).  I then used the foam to cap the wall as below

I used cat litter as detritus at the bottom of the pond and then covered the whole thing in emulsion (a lot cheaper than model paint and better coverage). I then used brown ink to add shade and hot glued the bamboo as a centre piece.  I then made some koi out of foam and coloured it orange and other markings, they don't have to be perfect as the resin will distort the look.  The pic below is pre-pour.

And voila, one koi pond!!

The resin was poured over four different sittings to get the best result and after each pouring I added some extra detail. Pre-pour - one fish added, after first pour another, second pour the last and after the third I added some loose bamboo leaves.  the fourth was the final pour and had the last bamboo leaves at the surface.  i did this so that the fish would not all be swimming at the same level, a detail not completely obvious from the photos (sadly)

now I made this pond I started thinking about dedicated Bushido boards and perhaps it would look better in a Temple setting, so i went out out a bought a few supplies much to chagrin of missus Gobbo.......oops!!

artists canvasses for the board and polystyrene tiles.....

all glued together

I will post later how the board came about, stayed tuned for more progress
hope you enjoy
dGG