Chase:
How much terrain do you need to FULLY stock Plainsville/Abington?
The simple answer is that no amount of terrain is too much. Having tons of overlap is always great. Not using the same stuff every single time would be nice. Stuff gets damaged ALL the time, so having tons and tons of terrain is just good. Abington has a lot of storage space with the option for more on site.
Another thing to consider is that when we expand again we'll need to make another whole stores worth of terrain / take another whole stores worth from what we've got.
Also over that how much terrain do you need to field the GT tables?
Different people have lots of different opinions on this.
Here's what happens in a perfect world:1) Plainville has 6 really nice tables on hand, 8 tables worth of SWEET terrain to go with them, and 20 tournament tables and identical terrain for them stored somewhere at the store.
2) Abington has 6 really nice tables on hand, 8 tables worth of SWEET terrain to go with them, and 20 tournament tables and identical terrain for them stored somewhere at the store.
3) Battleground has 40 tables worth of uniform terrain (4 "environments" that have 10 tables worth of identical terrain each) comes that's entirely separate from the terrain used in the stores.
The "how" is a lot more difficult than the community might realize. Here's why: 1) Derek really, really likes to have nice terrain when and where he can. He hates flat, featureless tables. Fortunately he does understand why flat boards are preferable for tournaments and an upcoming GT. (It gives players as "equal" a playing field as possible and greatly decreases the amount of time required to set up.)
2) Opening up a "Terrain Day" to everyone in the community *might* do more harm than good. Weird right?
For better or worse at this point in the game we'd like the terrain that we make for the store to be up to a certain quality. Outside of the fact that it can be awkward when the less skilled, careless people slap together terrain for the store, it can sometimes result in wasting materials (dollars) and the time of some of the more experienced people involved.
Example: It's an in inefficient use of Paul Gaughran's time on "Terrain Day" to help Chase with whatever step of whatever process Chase is working on. Chase may (or worse, may not) ask Paul lots of questions about very routine, very simple tasks / steps. The result of this is Paul not being able to spend time on other, much more productive parts of the project. The end result is that Chase helps to make 100 trees, 50 of which are terrible and won't last long at all. Had Paul made all 100 trees, he likely would have done them in half the time and at least 20 times as well.
What can we do as a community to get around this?The first part of this pretty much rests on me. I need to figure out exactly what Battleground wants and which part of that we'd like to attack first.
After a list is in place we need to start organizing when and where the terrain day / weekend might happen. Hint: It'll happen in Abington.
In order for it to function as well as possible it is an ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENT that Derek or myself IS NOT the "point man" for any specific project as a whole. We will NEED several experienced, talented members of the community to head up certain parts of the endeavor.
- If a team of 7 people are going to be in charge of making and painting hills for the weekend there will need to be at least one talented, experience person overseeing everything and preferable not more than 2 or 3 "Chase" types that have no idea what they're doing (but will take and follow directions). It will be on the group leader to know exactly what we want and exactly how to get us there. Other people can help him cut the foam, the less experienced guys can glue the foam together and begin adding sand or some sort of texture to the hills before a base coat is applied (that sort of stuff).
- If a team of 3 guys are making trees, blah blah blah... Same deal.
- If a group of 10 guys are working on making buildings, someone will have to be responsible for making sure the buildings are VERY well assembled and that there isn't glue all over the place. Some members of this group might also be responsible for cutting, sanding, and edging whatever that material is called that we base the buildings on (this job sucks).
- If a group of 5 guys are responsible for painting the buildings they need to understand what colors we'd like them to be, and that they're expected to paint them to a certain standard, blah blah blah...
- If a group of 6 guys are going to be in charge of painting, flocking, and adding texture to the tables... same story.
Really, what this ends up being is a bunch of very experienced people each helping helping to lead a group of others through "mass producing" a certain piece of terrain either all day or all weekend.
I feel like even if we get lots of "Chases" to come out we'll be able to allocate them well so long as we also get a fair number of people that really know what they're doing. Working in relatively small groups where the more experienced guys can coach and help the less experienced guys and delegate seems a LOT better than saying, "Okay Chase, here's this kit. Build it, base it, paint it, and come back in 10 hours. Go find and bother Paul if you have any questions."
Feel free to sound off if you're willing to dedicate a day or weekend this fall / winter to trying to crank out a ton of terrain.
