Fields of gold...

...the build.

Now this was supposed to be a quick build to add a little depth to the gaming table, the wheat field adding cover, but at the same time slowing the advance of any miniatures travelling through it.  Having purchased a coir mat a month or so a go I finally got around to cutting an A4 sized section and et voilà, a wheat field.  The mat had a flexible rubber backing and so was, in effect done, but it looked like, well, a door mat!

A quick image search of the inter web threw up some rather lovely examples of crafted fields and one I particular liked*, showed a field that was partially cleared. In a fit of enthusiasm I decided that I would replicate this and set about the task in hand. First job was to locate a sheet of plasticard that I knew that I had kicking around, then made the edges look a little less regular, bevelling them with my trusty Dremel. I then simply hacked off smaller sections of the mat and placed these on the base. 

*Sorry I don't have a credit, but thank you for the inspiration!

The example I had seen had, what looked like, a path running through the middle of the field, so I tried something similar, but when placing my chunks of field onto the plastic base, I noticed that the height was far too regular for my liking and so starting to try and cut various sections down.  What followed saw an incredible lack of common sense as I reached initially for the dremel - idiot, then a tiny pair of scissors - again idiot, before finally stumbling on the most obvious of tools - the scalpel!  A fresh blade and I was scything through the wheat, perhaps a little too quickly as I managed to knick my finger at one point.**  Undeterred, I manfully continued with the job in hand discovering, again by accident that by rolling the pieces of mat up I could get the blade of the scalpel further into the field without the risk of further injury! 

**The 'Saintly Mrs. Awdry' made some comment about Poldark not needing a plaster when using his scythe, this was studiously ignored!

The field sections were then simply P.V.A. glued to the plasticard and then the area was give a liberal coating of texture gel and a couple of stones for added detail.

A useful byproduct of all this harvesting were handfuls of shorn matting, which I bagged for later use. I'm thinking loose stalks of wheat scattered on the cleared areas? The base is going to take a while to dry, but hopefully there will be a painting update before too long.