Today I had a trip to Hobbycraft in search of scenery making material. To ‘earn’ this trip I had to agree to a trip to Ikea with wife and kids to get cushion covers! Luckily, this also enabled me to purchase two Helmer draw units for my ‘toy’ storage 🙂
Prior to leaving I’d checked the Hobbycraft website and they had a offer to register for their newsletter and get a £5 voucher for spending £25 or more. So I registered, closed my browser when they started hassling me to send the offer to friends, and waited for the confirmation email and details of the voucher to come through. Nothing appeared. Now it transpires you have to follow the process to the bitter end to get the download link. Stop early and that’s it. You don’t get the link and there is no way to go back and find it! I pointed this out in the shop and was basically told, no printed voucher, no discount. So I placed my basket on the bench and stormed out!
An hour later, after going home, finding the correct sequence for the voucher, printing it, I returned and got my £5 off! I still think it’s an iffy sequence on the website and I shall complain. It was the staff attitude that pissed me off though…
Anyway, what did I buy?
- lots of PVA! You can never have too much!
- some green flock which I intend to use for hedges.
- some brown felt to try for field/rough ground areas
- some magnetic backed rubber foam – for roads
- some 1mm plasticard – for? Not sure yet 🙂
- and a Citadel Battlemat!
The main purchase was to be the magnetic backed rubber foam. In grey, the magnetic sheet gives it a good robustness and assuming I can cut it neatly, and maybe add a verge and white lines, should make good tarmac roads. I may still try the vinyl tiles for this as well but it can’t hurt to have plenty of roads! I’ve also got a brown sheet (all are A4 and 59p by the way) which I may try to add texture to for wood bases.
The battlemat was a semi-impulse buy. I’d seen them in use on Sgt Steiner’s blog and have been looking for a replacement for my Purbeck terrain tiles, which although OK are just too bloody space consuming! I’d popped into Games Workshop in the week to look at one and thought they looked OK. But I wasn’t too keen on paying £18.50. A trawl of the web found a few offers at £14.50 but then with £3+ postage it wasn’t much of a saving. Hobbycraft were supposed to stock them and the website said £18 but the £5 off would make it worthwhile. It turned out they had them on for £15 so it was quite a good deal. Of course I ended up spending a tad more than the required £25 needed to use the voucher 🙂
The mat looks fine and I’ll hopefully get to try it next week as I have a game lined up at the Club – possibly a Punic based Impetus game.
I quite like my visits to Hobbycraft. I only go a couple of times a year. I know there are some things I could likely get online cheaper but it’s nice just to browse and take home a bag of goodies. The mess up with the voucher was annoying but worth pursuing. And it made the purchase of the battlemat worthwhile. It’s been nice to be working on some terrain again. I know I really need to crack on with the 28mm but I’m contemplating a day off next week to have a little blitz on them.
All in all a good little day. I’ll be making up my Ikea units tomorrow and having a bit of a tidy. I should have my first batch of ’tile’ roads done as well. Pics will follow…
Hi Andy
Look forward to seeing new terrain etc in action.
The magnetic backed stuff for roads sounds very interesting
Dont have a Hobbycraft shop here.
Cheers