Lead Adventure Forum
Other Stuff => Workbench => Topic started by: thejammedgatling on October 11, 2009, 01:14:28 PM
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Well, I finally jumped in at the deep end and began making my First World War gaming table. Inspired by AirCav, the Captain and a few others. A few weeks ago I had cut up 16 600x600 units which were 6mm MDF, and took them to a foam place which accurately cut the 40mm polystyrene and used a spray contact adhesive to mount them to the panels. That was the easy part done.
One of the hardest decisions was which part of the Western Front I wanted to embark on. Some years ago while a student I embarked on a three month stint in Belgium and France researching the old battlefields and making copious drawings and photographs of them. But they are quite different places..the soil colour, field layouts, elevation (or lack of). I was very tempted to take on the fields of Passchendaele and try to re-create something thoroughly chewed up by artillery with shattered duckboard tracks and muddy mess like a Paul Nash painting. I suppose the playability of this type of board however put me off a little. So I returned to the rolling chalk uplands of the Somme. I liked the effect of the trench lines, shellholes and earthworks showing up like scars across the green fields, with sunken lanes and small farmlets dotted around. It also has it's share of streams and canals to play with as well.
So I began with a four board layout of some farmland connected by small lanes, which has been bombarded but have not yet become front line trenches. Some of the shellholes I decided to connect up like hastily constructed earthworks..possibly by forward scouting units digging in until reinforcements arrive or a withdrawing rearguard.. I probably will make a 1917 style trench system at some point but I want reasonably fluid gameplay to start with. A small drainage ditch/ stream runs across two boards. They are built to work in different layouts, hence the road entry/ exit points are consistently on centre, and the stream dissapears into a culvert prior to the board edge. There will also be a few cobbled farmyard areas where later on I'll be putting some ruins.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0101-1.jpg)
So I got busy today with the knife and some sandpaper and have got this far:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0090-1.jpg)
The shellholes look quite dominant on the landscape! I may end up cutting a few of them out possibly. The crater rims were bonded back on with contact (hence the yellow goop) and I used a template for small and large craters to get some consistency.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0095-1.jpg)
Next step to sand down the craters a little and start to add some filler! Oh, and I have to add the hardboard edging for the boards to save the corners from being broken off!
I'll try to add more soon.
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Wow! Look very promising. I need to do that also some day. So your full setup is 2400 x 2400 mm?
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Interesting indeed. I’m looking forward to see the evolution of this board.
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Looking good :D I'd maybe cut out a couple of the craters and if you want more you could make another couple of boards that have had a heavier bombardment.
I'm interested to know about the foam place that stuck the foam to your boards. I know you are in Australia so company names won't be much good but the service might happen over here.
cheers
James
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Lovely! I wonder were this will go to... Looks brilliant!
Also make sure some of the craters are HUGE! I was at Vichy Ridge and had a look at this crater and it was about 4M deep :o
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Brilliant! Lovely to see :)
Keep us posted on progress.
Don't know if it helps, but I built a trench section a year or two ago.
Might provide some stimulus as to the look of the land?
Viz:
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/0/577_21_07_08_11_27_53.jpg)
The original thread with lots more pics is here:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=4590.0
Cheers.
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Looking forward to seeing this progress. I'm in the process of making some WW1 scenery myself at the moment. :D
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Wow! Look very promising. I need to do that also some day. So your full setup is 2400 x 2400 mm?
With 16 boards I'd get a game table potentially 1200x 4800 (or 4' by 16' if you're that way inclined) or else 1800x 3000 (6' by 10'). However, with the full array of 24 boards it could be longer. The plan would eventually be to have a countryside section, a no-mans land with trenches and support trench section and a town section. I'm also working out plans for how to do the canal section to incorporate my bridge kit:
(http://www.verlindenonline.com/store/imagemagic.php?img=images/1595.jpg&w=495&h=402&page=prod_info)
I'm interested to know about the foam place that stuck the foam to your boards. I know you are in Australia so company names won't be much good but the service might happen over here.
James
the place is just called foam sales. They sell polystyrene but also a host of other types of foams and cut up matresses with the stuff etc. They spray on the contact with a high pressure airgun which has the added advantage that the stuff is nearly dry when it hits the surface. Using the boards as a template is a great idea as it means that the edges of the polystyrene will be accurate to within a millimeter...much better than me hacking away with a breadknife! I'm racking my brains as I used to know a similar sort of place in Kingston..but it may well be gone by now. On the Richmond road I think. Try Yellow pages for foam matresses and you may well get lucky.
Lovely! I wonder were this will go to... Looks brilliant!
Also make sure some of the craters are HUGE! I was at Vichy Ridge and had a look at this crater and it was about 4M deep :o
Thanks. The craters at Vimy and La Boiselle (among others) were mined and blown. The La Boiselle one in particular is HUGE. I laid a wreath there on July 1st on behalf of some of the families of several of the German soldiers killed there. The sight of the sun rising over the rim of the crater was awe inspiring. Now for that I'd have to be ordering 500mm thick foam....
Brilliant! Lovely to see :)
Keep us posted on progress.
Don't know if it helps, but I built a trench section a year or two ago.
Might provide some stimulus as to the look of the land?
Viz:
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/0/577_21_07_08_11_27_53.jpg)
The original thread with lots more pics is here:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=4590.0
Cheers.
Thanks Captain. I think these pics were some of the ones that made me eventually get my finger out. I love the details you put into them, especially all the detritus. I remember reading many accounts by soldiers who were shocked at just how messy the battlefield was with lots of paper, clothing, discarded food tins and bottles etc floating around. I'll probably incorporate more of this in my trench sections as you have done. Thanks for the inspiration!
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So, the next stage. I cut some of the height from the craters and roughened them a little as they were too perfect in shape. That looked a little better. The tops of most of the craters were about between waist and shoulder height on a miniature.
For the next step i wanted to fill the gaps left around the bases of the craters where they were bonded to the boards, and also add some texture. For this I mixed up a load of filler with a couple of handfulls of crushed limestone from my garden (plenty of that in Western Australia)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0016-1.jpg),
The advantage of that also was that as bits broke off the boards (as they invariably do as people drop tape measures) they would still show as white underneath. I applied the mix by hand and with a 1" brush, brushing outwards and up from the centre of the craters. This would I hoped give the effect of the great big slabs of rock being thrown out while the smaller pieces remained. I added some pva to the mix as well to give it some plasticity.
When that had dried I gave the whole thing two coats of paint. The colour I chose was a medium brown again mixed with pva. Basically the Somme sits on chalk covered by topsoil. As the shells hit they will burrow down through the topsoil and gouge out the chalk, leaving a mixture of the two at surface level, so even the mud would have a lighter shade.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0001.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0005.jpg)
When this had dried I decided as an afterthought to put some cobbled sections down as possible farmyard entrances or barn annexes where heavy machinery might be left without bogging. I used plastic sheet cobbles that I had picked up for half price some years ago and still have stacks of in the shed. I will do the edging on them later so that they blend in better.
Then time for the next coat. This was a caramel colour..the mid tone for the chalk areas which include the shellholes and the laneways. The drain will be kept as a darker soil colour, assuming that this would mostly be comprised of clay. As the mid brown coat had not yet dried in some areas it began to blend in and create mid-tones that I quite liked. I hair dryed it and gave a second, more drybrush coat.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0026.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0030.jpg)
I keep checking scale as I go along. Here's a Stormtrooper to gauge scale. It looks about right to me.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0035.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0009.jpg)
And here's the A7Z:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0017.jpg)
With the caramel down I had to let the whole thing dry, so I decided to experiment on an idea for the grass. I liked the effect of the long grasses done on the boards featured in the Great War rules and wanted to get something like this, but possibly also some wheat fields as well. I had shot down to the local fabric shop yesterday and rummaged around their fake fur section until I found something that I thought reminded me of tall grass. Only problem...it was BLUE. Oh well. I bought half a meter to test it.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0018.jpg)
So I dipped a small piece in a pot of paint thinned down with water..probably about half and half. I squeezed it several times so that the colour really did saturate it. Then I laid it flat on a piece of plywood and used a wire brush and a toothbrush to play with texture...brushing the grass flat or almost flat in differing directions to give the effect of being knocked over by the wind, shell concussion or trampled underfoot by soldiers perhaps. Here are the test pieces anyway, again with our friend the stormtrooper to add scale.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0019.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0022.jpg)
I won't know if this has truly worked until the morning when it is dry. I really want grass that holds it's shape (partly for drybrushing in the next step) but is still supple enough to 'settle' slightly under the weight of a figure, or else it will have practical problems for gameplay! If anyone out there has tried this method and has tips please advise!
So with everything drying I called it quits for the night..
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Looking very good so far, the paint is really bringing it together :)
I'm racking my brains as I used to know a similar sort of place in Kingston..but it may well be gone by now. On the Richmond road I think. Try Yellow pages for foam matresses and you may well get lucky.
That might be the units behind the firestation next to Ham. I'll have a wander up there on Saturday.
cheers
James
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Keep up the good work, over to see more WIP's and progress!
the Belgian,
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The groundwork is looking great!
Can't wait to see how it turns out.
Am interested to see how the teddy bear fur blends in.
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Have a go at the teddy bear fur roughly with a set of clippers to try and get rid of the uniformity of the normal grass :)
cheers
James
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Have a go at the teddy bear fur roughly with a set of clippers
cheers
James
Good Lord sir! I would not have liked to have seen your teddy bear collection when you were a nipper. Were you still doing conversions back then?
Good idea though. I do have some hairdressers electric clippers somewhere. I think having gaps and patches in the grass would be more effective. One point of note when you cut this though...it goes EVERYWHERE! Worse than polystyrene!
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Smashing.
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Brilliant job can't wait to see the finished article :D
Keith :?
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Try shaving it in a plastic bag and you can keep the shavings for later :)
cheers
James
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That's looking great. 8)
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Great looking boards mate, cant wait to play across those. Although as you know with the scale we seem to blow things you may need to get working on all those other ones pretty soon.
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Inspirational.
I will, one day, make myself a nice terrain board. I will, I will!
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Next step.
A few more grass trials. The left piece is the one from last time and in the other I trimmed the patches of teddy bear fur with scissors in a random fashion, then used my dip method to run colour through the material. I tried an alternate colour this time to look more like end of summer grass. Again, it will take a while to dry. The first patch however is now dry and seems to hold a figure balanced quite well. Though in its untrimmed state it reminds me more of pampas grass. Maybe an idea to hold over for something else, but not too useful for WW1.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0003-1.jpg)
Impatient to get a feel of how the colours were going to start to work I got out my paints and completed the highlight coat on the shellholes and road areas. I'll need to do a touch up coat again prior to the end and possibly do some plastering work on the lanes so I can push in some wheel ruts and give it the more rounded profile I'm after. The ultimate plan is to sprinkle my crushed limestone mixture into this last coat. The shellholes will dirty static water in a few of them, though not heaps.
Anyway, gave it a quick brush with 'herb green' to get a lay of the land, even though this will be covered with all sorts of grass/ hay etc in the end. The two brown patches are the cobbles.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0005-1.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0008-1.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0009-1.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0011-1.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0013-1.jpg)
Next step..finish the board edges and start to apply the grasses and mud.
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So another week has gone by and I finally started to make some progress on the boards after some colour testing. It's taken me awhile to find the right blend for the grasses that I want. Rather than try to cover the lot in tall grasses I decided to make patches and in other places put some tall upright straw/ grass. However, the next section of boards might include a whole wheat field..
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0334.jpg)
I mixed up my base earth later using the captains tried and tested paint/ sand pva mix and applied to it to all areas save the craters. I also gave the road a bit of a coat with plaster mixed with paint to give it more of a smooth, worn look. I trundled my Lledo model T through it to give it some tracks (and spent the next 20 minutes getting plaster out of the undercarriage!). Once sanded it looked better.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0354.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0345.jpg)
Next the upright grasses. Basically a natural door mat cut into small sections and pushed into pva filled holes in the polystyrene. My five and three year old assistants loved jabbing deep holes in the terrain for this part of the job..
Again, the look I wanted was for a section of the Somme that had been in the previous years fighting and which had had time to begin to regenerate, but which fighting is about to cover again.
The small drain channel will eventually have static water and reeds applied (plus some dead horses/ ammunition boxes etc) but for now I just wanted to build what looked like a jerry rigged bridge that had replaced whatever structure was there before it was obliterated. I just used lolly sticks.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0332.jpg)
I also started adding a bit of detail to other areas. Bullet holes in the tree trunks, patches of rusting pig iron from old destroyed infantry shrapnel shelters, a small area of duckboard in one of the lanes as well as a few patches of old barbed wire.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0336.jpg)
I don't want too much battlefiled clutter at this stage as I plan eventually to make some removeable 'patches' of this. A copse of shattered trees, a line of broken and destroyed artillery limbers...more dead horses, a shattered lorry etc..
So once the details were in and base coated I flocked the lot, leaving it fairly absent from the edges of the shellholes and more dense by the road edges and in the hollows. This was a bit tricky around the long grass patches and I am in two minds about the value of putting the patches down first..
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0349.jpg)
Next stage will be the second (tall) grass coating, in which we shall see some poppies. Oh, and I get to play around with this stuff to make some extra mud:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0360.jpg)
Comments very much appreciated! They do keep me going in the wee small hours when I get time to do this!
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It looks very nice! Adequately grotty with the grass adding just the amount of colour to make it, well, attractive. Well done!
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Looks really great - love the attention to detail.
The bullet holes in the tree stump is just brilliant. :-*
Onwards soldier!
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Yes! Great Work! :)
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Its looking fantastic mate, cant wait to get beaten on those terrain boards too :)
Are they coming out to play this wednesday?
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That a really inspiring tread. I like the attention to details too. I’m painting WWI French figures right now and it give me that little push I needed to finish them! Thanks! ;)
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Coming together very nicely 8) :D Bullet holes in the tree trunk are an inspiration :D
cheers
James
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That is looking really really excellent :o
Love it love it love it.
Bullet holes in the tree stumps... Now that's what I call attention to detail.
I find the clumps of teddy bear fur a bit intrusive. Honestly, I don't think they add anything, but each to his own preferred method :)
But this is going to be a fantastic board when it's all done.
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Its looking fantastic mate, cant wait to get beaten on those terrain boards too :)
Are they coming out to play this wednesday?
I havn't had time to complete my Germans so the only way I'll beat you on Wednesday is with the boards themeselves... lol
That a really inspiring tread. I like the attention to details too. I’m painting WWI French figures right now and it give me that little push I needed to finish them! Thanks! ;)
Glad you like them. Good luck with those figures.
Coming together very nicely 8) :D Bullet holes in the tree trunk are an inspiration :D
cheers
James
Thanks. I was amazed to find a petrified one of these still standing (aided by a large scaffolding pole) at Hill 60 in Belgium years ago. A very eerie sight.
That is looking really really excellent :o
Love it love it love it.
Bullet holes in the tree stumps... Now that's what I call attention to detail.
I find the clumps of teddy bear fur a bit intrusive. Honestly, I don't think they add anything, but each to his own preferred method :)
But this is going to be a fantastic board when it's all done.
I know what you mean..I just had to try it. I try to get some new element in each project I try and this was my leap of faith this time. I have actually just blended them back more to match the first grass covering and they are starting to look as if they're not just stuck on. I think they'll probably work better 'en mass' so I'm going to do a board with just this covering and see how it looks.Time will tell!
Thanks for the comments everyone. If all goes well these boards will get a playtest on Wednesday to see how they take figures and what changes might be needed. If there's anything you think is really missing on these boards or have any great ideas then please let me know!
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I had a burst of energy last night and decided to get on with the two remaining farm boards rather than do my finishing work. This should give us a decent 6' by 4' table to play good sized games on while I work on the next stage.
I wanted boards that let me put on a farmhouse/ barn and also which allowed for a curved road section to be placed, allowing a lot of flexibility in how the boards were arranged. I also wanted to try out my fallen crop idea on a large scale, so I started to make up a board showing the lane ending in a farm gate which has been ripped off it's hinges.
Her's progress so far. Won't bore you with 'progress shots' to this stage as I followed the same steps as last time. The only difference possibly was in adding some hand cut bricks to the farmyard shellhole.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0349-1.jpg)
The board at right will have a basic barbed wire fence around it and up the left hand side.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0351.jpg)
Here's a close up of the farmyard entry, framed by two large tree stumps. I took some care to add bits of shattered trunk at the bases. These bits after all had to go somewhere!
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0352-1.jpg)
Farmyard shellhole. Bricks cut from cork tile and cobbles are just sheet material bonded to the base with contact.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0354-1.jpg)
a better aerial view. The next step will be sanding back the plaster/ paint a little. A lot of the splotches of mud are going to hide join lines in the cobbled courtyard.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0356.jpg)
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Awesome work and admirable patience!!! Respect :-* :-* :-*
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So the first six boards now are almost done. I am stil awaiting my order of static water but apart from that I think they've turned out quite well.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0154.jpg)
But backtracking....With trepidation I took my scissors to the teddy bear fur...Ten minutes later once the fibres swirling through the air had settled into a nice blue coating on everything in my garage it began to take shape.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/PA260138.jpg)
I had made the shellholes first so it was a little tricky cutting shapes to fit around them, but I got there eventually.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/PA260137.jpg)
With the fur cut I made certain to tease out any loose stuff around the edges then dipped the whole lot in a bucket of paint and PVA. I had used a lot of yellow ochre paint! Squeexing out the excess I put a thick layer of PVA down on the board and layed it out, not worrying for the moment if the fur went over the edges as I intended to cut them when dry. I used wire brush and a variety of toothbrushes etc to tease out the fur into more convincing patterns. I certainly wasn't trying to get the crop to look as though it was falling all the same way.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0002-1.jpg)
I spent about a half hour with the hair dryer on hot to even start to get the whole thing to dry, then went to bed.
Next day I applied the two brush coats of paint to get the lighter 'wheat' colour I was after. I wasn't trying to blend it in too much with the other boards..I wanted this field to be a feature. I also at this point decided to cut out two strips of field to emulate vehicle ruts. The broken farm gate was placed in the lane as well. After a little while I flocked the remainder of the board. I didn't want the wheat field to go up to more than 2 board edges to give me more flexibility in laying.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0117-1.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0118-1.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0120-1.jpg)
All of the boards were pretty much up to the same stage at this point. It was just a case of finishing details. I applied the poppies and some of the wild grasses, especially at the road edges and in hollows. The bits of rubbish pig iron and barbed wire that had been added to the groundwork at the start were given a rust treatment with my 2 part paint method. This looked o.k but made them stand out too much, so I mudded them up a little.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0144.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0142.jpg)
Finally the shellholes and earthworks were given a final dusting of crushed limestone. This was especially useful around the edges of the roads where you could imagine larger chunks of chalk being flung up by cars and trucks, as well as on top of the grass around the shellholes.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0115-1.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0128-1.jpg)
This allowed the chalk and grass areas to blend in better with each other. Finally I added the barbed wire to some of the fencing around the farm courtyard, the wheatfield and by the bridge. This was nice stuff I'd picked up from a company called timeline models. Now I know the barb is hopelessly out of scale here (and yes, it is a real barb...OUCH!) but it was one case where I was content to allow representation take the place of reality. I guess I just liked the look of it!
So here they are....pretty much completed. I've taken a few shots to give an idea of the aerial look and of course a soldiers eye view, with our old friends the stormtroopers there to give an idea of scale. They will receive their first playtest this coming week and I'll post pics of that too, though probably in the WW1 subject area.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0155.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0163.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0156.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0166.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0125-1.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/DSC_0138.jpg)
It's been a lot of fun and has turned out better than I'd hoped. It gives me inspiration to continue with the other three sections of the WW1 boards. These will be:
Canal/ river (with blown and intact bridge structures and barges)
Town
Trenches
Thanks again for keeping me going with your comments..all much appreciated!
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That´s very, very nicely done. I really like how it says "WW1", yet is different from the muck-and-mire no-mans land of just brown bleakness.
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This kind of landscape, with shell holes and debris, along with plenty of vegetation still intact could be use for both ends of the 1914-1918 war were the armies were manoeuvring out of the devastated No man’s land zone. Real nice! :-*
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Stunning!! :-*
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They are looking really great mate.
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So what rules are you planning to use, Lev? You may have mentioned it when I last saw the boards but these days I forget too many things! ;-)> must be old age rushing up on me!
BTW, the boards look fantastic.
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This kind of landscape, with shell holes and debris, along with plenty of vegetation still intact could be use for both ends of the 1914-1918 war were the armies were manoeuvring out of the devastated No man’s land zone. Real nice! :-*
Thanks. That was more the intention. I still will be doing the more shattered and muddy landscape of long term no-mans land but for now I wanted something that could easily be for either early war prior to trench lines or else late war where movement once again became possible. I will probably also use them at some point for VSF 'England Invaded' type games where the defenders of Sussex are fighting off hordes or Martians...but that will be later on!
So what rules are you planning to use, Lev? You may have mentioned it when I last saw the boards but these days I forget too many things! ;-)> must be old age rushing up on me!
BTW, the boards look fantastic.
Cheers for that. They've come a long way since you saw them! We'll be just starting off with Great War but I also have copies of Through the Mud and Blood and Price of Glory, so we'll probably be giving each one a go. Maybe later on I'll do a Gallipoli board so that I can join in your Palestine/ Turkish games!
Has anyone got a link to a good Gallipoli board anyone has done?
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Most that I have seen have been terrain pieces placed on the appropriate coloured cloth/mat. No one has gone to the trouble you have on these. I did see one at Cancon some years back that had been made by Helen B of this group. Helen, do you still have any pics of that board?
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Most that I have seen have been terrain pieces placed on the appropriate coloured cloth/mat. No one has gone to the trouble you have on these. I did see one at Cancon some years back that had been made by Helen B of this group. Helen, do you still have any pics of that board?
Hi Pete,
The photos should be towards the start of the board. Our group organised two demo games over the two years. If there are any questions you would like to ask please feel free.
Helen
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That is great work and a lovely end result. Well done you :)
All the little details are brilliant and really help to make it.
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These are amazing terrain boards - I am once again consumed with envy, as I am at every terrain board thread, for those of you with the space to build and storage such fantastic things!
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Fantastic set of terrain boards :D :D :D :D
These will be brilliant to play over :D :D
Keith :?
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Well, it took me a while to find my old thread and I was in two minds as to whether to add to it or begin afresh. I chose to add-on as I always saw it as a single project in three phases. My aim then as it still is is to build a countryside, town and trench board for WW1 (moderator, please feel free to stick as a new thread if you'd like).
Having got ready to begin stage two early last year I got totally knocked sideways by news that my mum was diagnosed with cancer..and several trips back and forth from Oz to the U.K have certainly led to little time for building/ painting or chat on the forum. But from November I started tinkering again on this project..partly just as a distraction. And it has begun to gather pace so I thought I'd inflict my progress upon you once again!
Section 2 is basically the town. Well actually it began as a village and has now grown to over a dozen buildings at different stages of construction. Although I made them for the First World War they are fairly generic brick structures which would suit WW2 back to VSF and forward perhaps to modern. With flexibility in mind (lets face it, we have to store the things) I implanted magnets in the walls so that I could interchange French street signs to say London ones, or posters, or both.
The structures are all pretty heavily shelled as many were in the war, though I've made some fairly lightly hit. My main goal is accessibility and playability so the roof sections either do not need to come off or do so fairly easily.
Anyway, no 'in-progress shots' for these at present, though I may do some later on if anyone is interested in how they went together. They are a mix of kit-bashed and home-made.Here are a couple of single storeys overun by some Stosstruppen for scale!
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6193b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6194b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6197b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6199b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6196b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6200b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6195b.jpg)
Hope they're of interest!
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Those buildings are brilliant. The posters make them even better. I missed the original thread on the boards so glad you decided to "add-on". Look forward to seeing the completed whole.
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Lovely buildings but do the posters suggest that Jerry has made it as far as England? I very much doubt HMG was conducting a recruiting drive in Belgium or northern France. Very useful if you fancy modelling the naval bombardment of Hartlepool though. Maybe replace with something in French?
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Lovely buildings but do the posters suggest that Jerry has made it as far as England? I very much doubt HMG was conducting a recruiting drive in Belgium or northern France. Very useful if you fancy modelling the naval bombardment of Hartlepool though. Maybe replace with something in French?
Beneath the posters there are strong magnets so I can swap them with an ever growing collection of British/ French/ Belgian/ German adverts/ posters etc. These were the first two I did and I quite liked the look of the torn and damaged posters...they also cover up any trace of the magnets underneath. Plus as I said I mean to use these for VSF as well as historical so it does not really bother me.
Those buildings are brilliant. The posters make them even better. I missed the original thread on the boards so glad you decided to "add-on". Look forward to seeing the completed whole.
Thanks. I'll put some more up here as they are completed, plus the actual town boards themselves.
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Lev, good to see you back working on gaming pieces, your stuff is always inspirational, even if only inspiring me to go out and buy more terrain/scenery. lol
Beneath the posters there are strong magnets so I can swap them with an ever growing collection of British/ French/ Belgian/ German adverts/ posters etc. These were the first two I did and I quite liked the look of the torn and damaged posters...they also cover up any trace of the magnets underneath. Plus as I said I mean to use these for VSF as well as historical so it does not really bother me.
Thanks. I'll put some more up here as they are completed, plus the actual town boards themselves.
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Lev, good to see you back working on gaming pieces, your stuff is always inspirational, even if only inspiring me to go out and buy more terrain/scenery. lol
Cheers Pete. You'll have to come over for a game test when they're done.
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Love to, maybe when I am back from the IWF in Wellington, NZ.
Cheers Pete. You'll have to come over for a game test when they're done.
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Beneath the posters there are strong magnets so I can swap them with an ever growing collection of British/ French/ Belgian/ German adverts/ posters etc. These were the first two I did and I quite liked the look of the torn and damaged posters...they also cover up any trace of the magnets underneath. Plus as I said I mean to use these for VSF as well as historical so it does not really bother me.
Thanks. I'll put some more up here as they are completed, plus the actual town boards themselves.
That's really very clever then. I like that idea so much I must steal it. I must say the overall look of your boards is quite wonderful.
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I'm glad you added to this thread or I would have missed the rest! Your original boards are stunning, can't wait to see what you do with the town section. The poster idea is genius!
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My name is Muskie McKay and I approve this thread.
;D
I gotta get back to my terrain tiles. I gotta get back to working on hobby projects period. My life seems stuck in neutral of late.
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I added this thread to my collection. ;-)
http://musksminiatures.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/hows-this-for-a-trench-table/
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They are looking fantastic mate, Come on, show us the rest ;D
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Thanks for the feedback.
I got to spend a few more child free hours in the garage today and thought I'd take a few piccies of what I meant by the interchangeable sign system I had been working on:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6306b.jpg)
Le Cateau in 1918
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6307b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6308b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6309b.jpg)
a few of the range of signs (I've made about 120 now )
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6302b.jpg)
a spot of Victorian science fiction...
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6303b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6304b.jpg)
The magnets hold them fairly well in place. They are just printed onto fridge magnet sheet. The fonts are period correct as far as I have researched (if anyone has more up to date knowledge or images then please do pass them on). They were created in Illustrator and the bullet marks etc are all added digitally. The VSF posters were quick photoshop exercises and frankly a bit of fun using aspects of existing WW1 posters!
I'll try to post more soon.
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Love everything you've done there :-* :-*
I really like the War of the Worlds posters lol great touch.
cheers
James
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Very , very nice pieces.
Like the changeable signs ;)
Do you have planned something like "Goliath-World at War"?
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Very , very nice pieces.
Like the changeable signs ;)
Do you have planned something like "Goliath-World at War"?
I like the idea of the film..especially the fusion of technologies (the Red Baron's squadron especially). Perhaps down the track I'll have a play with Weird War 1...but in the meantime happy just to play First World War and VSF as separate entities. I'm also working on signs and posters for WW2, VBCW and SCW so that the buildings can be used in those periods too.
Only problem is too much time spent building...not enough actually playing!
Please keep the suggestions coming in. I'm torn between building sidewalk sections or keeping them as they are here. I'm thinking that if I go with the whole town then I may need them, whereas a small village is less likely to have them. They'll also help cover the board joints better..
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Didn't saw the film yet, just some concept drawing over a year ago, but was also very impressed of the Triplane of von Richthofen.
Bought right after that 2 modellkits of a Fokker Dr1 which still are waiting for some conversion job.
Will be my next Weird War project, after I've finished Star Wars.
So it will have to wait a little longer ;)
For the sidewalks, I would go for seperate sections, similar to the posters.
Just add if needed
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Just some wood pieces I'm working on (as a quick break from buildings). These are the moonscape type woods of no-man's land and the sort that you'd see in a Paul Nash print. Next stage on these will be mud texturing and adding some casualties/ water effects.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6319b.jpg)
all four sections together
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6322b.jpg)
woods surrounding large shell crater (gw)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6320b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6321b.jpg)
Trees are some beautiful dried branches I found out walking. Small branches just various sizes of twist wire. Based on masonite with foamcore board to vary elevations and mostly stuck together with timber stud adhesive. The whole lot then shaved with a knife then a bit of gap filler to smooth the base surface out. Shrapnel and bullet holes added with the drill.
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The idea of the interchangeable signs is great, I will just copy that if you don't mind.
In your pictures of the houses what have you used for the cobble stones?
Is it a single piece or a few sheets glue together?
Is the fountain home made or bought?
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The idea of the interchangeable signs is great, I will just copy that if you don't mind.
In your pictures of the houses what have you used for the cobble stones?
Is it a single piece or a few sheets glue together?
Is the fountain home made or bought?
The fountain is Verlinden. I paid about $12 for it in their 30% off sale..they seem to have these every other week so just wait until on sale. It's 1/35 scale but works well.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Verlinden-1-35-Village-Waterpump-item-1036-/180290383953?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item29fa24f051
The cobbles were cast from a piece I've had for some time..source unknown. I cast about 50 of them..some in plaster and others in resin. The resin ones were used at the board edges and the plaster ones nearer to the centre. I'm hoping that after several coats of PVA and varnish they will be strong enough to withstand some gaming.
Go for it with the signs! I'd like to see what others produce.
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Cheers
Thanks for the info
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So here are the results of the shattered forest pieces. I'm fairly happy with how they turned out.the light green drybrush on the mud and wood (Captain Blood I think was the one who showed me that) really brought the colours together. I used the same effect on the casualties I embedded in the piece (after painting them) and this gave them a sense of belonging that they had met their ends in the muddy woods. For the mud I simply used pulped paper mixed with pigment and PVA glue which has a very mud like quality as I daubed it on. It shrinks a little but the texture is nice. It's a nice trial run for testing colours and effects for the trench boards when I finally get around to them.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6332b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6327b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6334b.jpg)
large piece side view
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6333b.jpg)
and from above
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6341b.jpg)
detail of casualty
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6342b.jpg)
second piece
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6335b.jpg)
third piece from above (to be part filled with water)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6336b.jpg)
third piece side on
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6338b.jpg)
fourth piece
Now back to the town construction..
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Very nice. 8) That's an impressive pile of work you've done there.
Love all the little details. And the War of the Worlds recruiting posters! lol
Let me grab my passport and a case of beer and I'll be over sharpish to play!
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;D
Great work.
looking forward to more photos.
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Bit of a delay getting some pictures of the progress while my camera was on the blink :(
So quite a lot of progress has occurred since I last posted and the town is nearly completed (at least for now). I plan to do some more monumental buildings (town hall, train station etc) eventually, but want to move onto my trench boards. Anyway, here are some pictures. Mostly the buildings are heavily kitbashed from Verlinden, MiniArt and PMD kits which I either ordered direct or picked up through friends./ e-bay over the past few years. Some of them obviously needed multiples of the kits to construct but I bulked them out with use of brick plasti-card etc. They are painted in acrylics with oil washes. It took me a while to get the brick colour I was after.
2 storey terrace
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7239c.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7236c.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7238c.jpg)
2 storey shops
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7233c.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7234c.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7235c.jpg)
2 storey single structure
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7240c.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7242c.jpg)
3 storey factory
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7244c.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7245c.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7246c.jpg)
If you missed the start of the battle report 'Kaiserschlact Teaser Pics' is on the WW1 board, showing how the town is starting to take shape.
Comments and thoughts much appreciated!
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Jesu Christi - outstanding thread from top to bottom which I've only just noticed. Every part is quite stunning but I think you've really reached dizzy heights with those buildings.
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Jesu Christi - outstanding thread from top to bottom which I've only just noticed. Every part is quite stunning but I think you've really reached dizzy heights with those buildings.
thanks!
The only problem with the big buildings is storage, so I built the storage case before I did them. Some of them (the last one in particular) are made from dental plaster, so quite heavy. Now the only problem is I need three sherpas to help lift the box...
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Lev, nice to see your work coming on again with your usual stunning standard. When I get back from OS, I hope to catch up for a game of something. Have you and your gaming buddies had a go at Black Powder?
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Fabulous. Truly top work. :-*
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wow, i really love the buildings! you managed a really good colour, i've to give a try with the oils!!!
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Lev, nice to see your work coming on again with your usual stunning standard. When I get back from OS, I hope to catch up for a game of something. Have you and your gaming buddies had a go at Black Powder?
Yes, we've had a go with them on some AWI. A nice a fairly fast set plus fun to play. Give me a bell when back.
Fabulous. Truly top work. :-*
Cheers..that means a lot coming from you! I think your trench boards were the start of all this madness..
wow, i really love the buildings! you managed a really good colour, i've to give a try with the oils!!!
Thanks. Have a look at the Mini art website and click on the painting tutorial. I followed most of this (though much faster I must say). Liked the bit about using table salt to make cracked plaster! But the oils tip is the best one..so fast and it picks up all the detail in the models.
http://miniart-models.com/
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I am agog. Stupendous.
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WOW The buildings are out standing :-* :-* :-* :-*
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Fantastic work! I'm looking to put some ruined buildings together soon so your timing is perfect :).
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The trench sections begin. I'll try to make this more of a step by step, though I'm sure with all the disruption monsters (7, 5 and 2) around me it will not go quickly!
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7247c.jpg)
So here are the first 4 boards showing the front and second line trenches. A little bit squashed together for the sake of space, although the communications trenches could easily be extended by extra boards. The labelled areas (from top left board reading right) are bunker, latrines, billets, bunker HMG nest and mortars. The bottom two boards aren't well labelled but the left board will contain a hidden artillery position for three pieces. This will connect by a railway to the bottom right board, which will also have an aid station.
The front line trenches all look a bit too text-book manual but won't after I've added some shell damage. I'll probably add some corner tiles and a heavily shelled trench tile later on. I still have 6 blank tiles to decide what to do with after these are done with.
The boards by the way are 59cm square and consist of 40mm polystyrene sheet dry mounted onto 12mm mdf sheet. The edges are 3mm mdf.
Now for the polystyrene blizzard to begin...
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So are these to replace your initial set of boards, or will they be supplemental/alternative?
Also, on both your old st and this new one, I don't see too much room for your standalone terrain pieces (the craters, buildings etc.), especially the larger buildings you've just posted recently. Are you planning some relatively flat/undamaged boards to give you areas to use the more individual terrain bits?
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Thanks. Have a look at the Mini art website and click on the painting tutorial. I followed most of this (though much faster I must say). Liked the bit about using table salt to make cracked plaster! But the oils tip is the best one..so fast and it picks up all the detail in the models.
http://miniart-models.com/
Great suggestion, thank you! ;)
Marco
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So are these to replace your initial set of boards, or will they be supplemental/alternative?
Also, on both your old st and this new one, I don't see too much room for your standalone terrain pieces (the craters, buildings etc.), especially the larger buildings you've just posted recently. Are you planning some relatively flat/undamaged boards to give you areas to use the more individual terrain bits?
I'll put up some pics of all the boards together when I clear a bit of garage space. They are all basically the same size, though the town boards are only about 15mm deep, as opposed to about 55mm, so I use spacers to prop these up to the same height as the other boards. That's a good question about the scarcity of flat space on the boards. Although siting the woods etc has not been a problem, finding a place to roll dice without them ending up in a shellhole can be tricky. What I've done is to make the town boards double sided. On one side just flock and the other the cobbles. So they can be flipped to allow for more open areas. On these I'll just make removable terrain items such as the forests and shellholes etc.
For the buildings the cobbled boards are totally flat, letting me set up where I'd like. On these the shellholes and rubble piles are all removable. I'll post some pics of them soon. But these pics give a better idea:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6951D.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_6936.jpg)
I'm going to add flock around some of the street sections to help the town 'blend in' to the country. Making things like small walled sections/ fields will also help with this.
The next step for the trench boards is cutting the styrene (halfway through now) and siting the resin pieces I have. Here's one of the sandbag wall with firestep in the front line trench:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7248c.jpg)
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Question:
Anyone got any good ideas on building trench rubbish...bottles, crates etc? Any quick and easy ways? Or commercially available stuff (o scale railway/ dolls house etc?). I want to cover the parapets with lots of....junk.
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"27. Empty Cartridge Cases and Rubbish
At intervals throughout the trenches sandbags will be hung up as receptacles for empty cartridge cases and chargers. Others will be hung up for the collection of rubbish. Sandbags to be labelled accordingly.
33. Sanitation
All refuse, empty tins and rubbish should be placed in properly appointed rubbish sacks and receptacles, and these should be removed at night time and their contents buried."
From Trench Standing Orders, 1915-16 (British Army)
You slovenly soldier! :)
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@jammed: PMming right now!
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"27. Empty Cartridge Cases and Rubbish
At intervals throughout the trenches sandbags will be hung up as receptacles for empty cartridge cases and chargers. Others will be hung up for the collection of rubbish. Sandbags to be labelled accordingly.
33. Sanitation
All refuse, empty tins and rubbish should be placed in properly appointed rubbish sacks and receptacles, and these should be removed at night time and their contents buried."
From Trench Standing Orders, 1915-16 (British Army)
You slovenly soldier! :)
I shall consider myself on a charge!
@jammed: PMming right now!
pm'd back cheers for ideas..loved your website!
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pm'd back cheers for ideas..loved your website!
thanks mate!
for the rubbish... sculpt and mould is the solution! :)
do you know the tutorial for the barbed whire, right?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/314348.page
pure gold to me! :)
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thanks mate!
for the rubbish... sculpt and mould is the solution! :)
do you know the tutorial for the barbed whire, right?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/314348.page
pure gold to me! :)
That's a very nice barbed wire tutorial..rather time intensive but very nice. I reckon you're right about the rubbish..a bit of casting is called for. If I make the rubbish in clumps it might be easier and less fiddly.
Anyway, a few progress shots. I'm just testing the depth of the trenches at the moment. I have a few of the resin casts from Timeline to use and I still want a bit more of a parapet then these give, so I will add more piled earth and sculpt some extra sandbags etc. Probably make loopholes for the sentries and machine gunners.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7251b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7253b.jpg)
I carved out the first sections and took a bit more away then I needed so that I could build back in my revetments in balsa/ corrugated card etc.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7250b.jpg)
I also made some duckboards just using matchsticks on trimmed balsa pieces. I made them mostly long so that they could be trimmed to size later. All of my WW1 figures are based on M10 washers so I need to make sure the trenches can carry them .
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7252b.jpg)
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You're using the crumbly foam. I've made terrain from free crumbly foam, and big flat sections of it, but prefer the higher dense stuff you can score at Home Depot. Hopefully it is harder wearing. I'm way behind on my trench table, I'm just slow and get pulled in other directions by the whims of other gamers as much as my own. I made my duck boards out of Popsicle sticks and meat skewers. Is the scale alright with match sticks?
Is this a 28mm scale project or smaller, I've forgotten... I'm building mine to be a bit big for playability, but I've been testing depths and such with Foundry and GW models and it seems to work for 25 and whatever GW is calling it's latest models, some of them are pretty damn huge.
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Muskie
Yes, its all for 28mm. I base on 24mm wide washers, so everything basically is made around that size. I've found matchsticks look fine. I assume that many trenchboards would have been improvised from anything available in the locality as well as purpose built, and I'm not that fussy. Simply cutting the matches in half gives about a 30mm width. I plan to part bury a lot of them in mud and water anyway. The front line trenches should ideally give a man full body cover without crouching, though they could not always do this. The communication trenches have wide passing places for bodies of men or stretcher bearers to pass each other but were often shallower (as mine will be).
GW figures seem to be around 34mm to my eye nowadays..a whole world away from my old citadel 'C' series I collected as a wee nipper..
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Had a bit of a bash over the weekend while some of you were gallivanting off to Salute... :-[
I'm just doing the first trench terrain tile to test how some of the techniques work. First step is getting the trench side supports made, followed by getting the 'spoil' piles on top done.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7362b.jpg)
getting the levels right for the loopholes for the men on the firestep is tricky..
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7371b.jpg)
the shuttering on the sides is a mixture of matchsticks, corrugated card and balsa
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7368b.jpg)
the latrines..
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7365b.jpg)
bunker in progress. I'll give this a concrete style roof. Note the gunslit sighted down the sap to prevent enemy troops from filtering quickly down..
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7364b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7363b.jpg)
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yay! that trenche is perfect for the Pink Unicorn and his army of Marshmellows! XD
wanna see it painted, now!
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yay! that trenche is perfect for the Pink Unicorn and his army of Marshmellows! XD
wanna see it painted, now!
well, I do like to get maximum playability from terrain pieces..
quite a lot of building work to still do before even thinking of paint..trenchboards, bunkbeds, gunslits, distress rockets, telephone cable and maybe even a toilet roll holder..
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Looking good.
They're quite fun to build aren't they? ;)
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Looking good.
They're quite fun to build aren't they? ;)
Cheers.
Yes, they're quite 'organic'..you can sort of make them up a bit as you go. What I especially like about them is the feeling that as you are reinforcing a wall or putting in shrapnel proofing you are starting to think from the viewpoint of the men who would have had to live in these for days and weeks. I don't think it's possible to build a much more 'lived in' type of terrain board than the trenches. What I'm trying to get the feel of is something that an engineer has designed on paper but which has begun to break down in the wear and tear of shelling and weather plus the trudge of thousands of boots. So I find myself half building something and tearing parts of it down as it looks too neat.
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Looking fantastic as ever mate
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:o :-*
That's awesome!
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Outstanding - I will certainly keep this thread in mind if I ever get around to giving my WW1 troops some decent terrain to fight over.
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I'll bet you aren't having too many off cuts going to waste! Just add any bits to the piles of rubble and rubbish.
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Shaping up very nicely! :)
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I'll bet you aren't having too many off cuts going to waste! Just add any bits to the piles of rubble and rubbish.
You'd be surprised James at how much polystyrene ended up in the bin last week..and the worst bit is that my kids track it in the house. Half my work time is cleaning and hoovering..but happy wife happy life and all that.
Anyway...getting bored with matchsticks and corrugated paper..I wanted to try to do some wicker trench revetments like these:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3247/3031707242_96d2ebc227.jpg)
Now I tried to overcome my hatred of getting 'goop' on my camera by doing some basic step by steps. I'm pretty sure this sort of technique has been posted here before but can't remember.
Step 1 is to drill holes about 1 - 1.5cm apart in roughly a straight line. I never measure as I think the final product can look a bit too perfect.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7431b.jpg)
The holes should be the same diameter or just slightly bigger than the heavy gauge wire you use. The two end holes I used wooded barbeque sticks as they don't bend and you can put a bit of force into them to keep the whole thing tight.
Next, get your light gauge wire (I used 0.9mm) and twist off a few times at one end then start threading through the verticals. Do not cut the wire when you reach the wooden ends, just wrap it around tightly. If it seems to be starting to 'lift', poke it down and give it a few turns before starting the next run.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7434b.jpg)
I think I did about 15-20 runs to get my effect.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7436b.jpg)
I did a rough pre-measure on mine so I knew where they were going to go. The beauty of the system is that the whole unit bends to fit the trench shape. Before you pull the whole unit out of the holes in the base board, just turn the thing on its side and give the tops and bottom wires a going over with some superglue. This will stop it slipping off in movement.
Your piece may or may not slide out of the holes easily. On my first attempt half of them had got superglued in (I hadn't turned it on the side). Cut them out if needs be...you can always turn the whole unit over. I left about 1cm of the support wires showing to allow me to push them into the polystyrene for extra support. I used my old faithful ultragrip plasterboard timber stud adhesive to bond them. Looks like mud when you apply it and dries rock hard.Some of it will; squeeze through the wicker..just like the real stuff.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7439b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_7440b.jpg)
I remember seeing lots of willows while driving around the Somme Valley so the troops probably had a fairly plentiful supply of this sort of stuff along with timbers stripped from the hundreds of shelled villages.
Cheers!
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This is coming along nicely :-*
What's that ultra-grip like to paint?
cheers
James
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This is coming along nicely :-*
What's that ultra-grip like to paint?
cheers
James
Cheers James
It's acrylic based and is quite elastic. I normally give the whole thing a few coats of PVA in any case before my base coats. Never had any problems or any lifting of paint. It's pretty cheap stuff as well...this brand cost me about 12 pounds (equivalent) here in Australia. Compare that to buying a similar product for a tube gun dispenser and it makes sense. It is also incredibly strong (bearing in mind it is meant to hold up plasterboard ceilings).
This is my second tub so far on the project!
One further use for it is dabbing a little on the exposed cut ends of the wire...they are bloody sharp and I cut myself twice today!
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Well..another hiatus on the boards, but quite a lot of progress over the winter months (I am in Australia). Also managed to sneak in a visit to the Somme for July 1st (while in the UK) to see the battle-fields again, take more pictures of buildings I might like to build, see some very old friends and drink far too much French beer. ;)
But onwards..
I had originally the 4 core trench section boards which incorporated the two front line fire trench sections and the two support trench sections, one of which contained the field dressing station and the other the artillery. The linking trenches were mostly on centre, giving me some options but not enough, so I made two more sections. One, a 90 degree bend and the other another section of fire trench but very badly knocked around by artillery. The sort of thing the German guns would have done to the British front line during their March 1918 offensive (which is what we plan to play).
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3021b.jpg)
So here's a section just showing the base coat. Again I used the light chocolate colour which is my mid tone. I did not go darker as these will be chalk cutting trenches. I plan to use ink washes to darken areas in the trenches at a later point to add more depth.
Then, the first heavy drybrush with a caramel colour, paying special atention to the trench lips where chalk has been thrown up:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3026b.jpg)
And the same effect on the heavily shelled section:
[img http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3025b.jpg[/img]http://Once that was done, time to apply a bit of weathering/ rust to my acres of corrugated iron shuttering, with special focus nearer the bottom of the trench where water was bound to pool:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3029b.jpg)
More pics soon and hopefully manage to clear enough space to actually get all the boards together!
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These look really fantastic. They'll be a real delight to play on. I particularly like the dug-outs/ shelters you can see in your photos. Really looking forward to seeing the progress.
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Very nice 8) Coming together strong.
I like the fact you've gone for chalk rather than normal soil, there's enty of opportunity for some great weathering to go on there :)
cheers
James
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Mate, they look fantastic. Definitely up for a game or several once their done. Oh and its a yes from me regarding the terrain building day.
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Superb.
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Great! Looking forward to seeing these finished!
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Looking awesome Lev
I think it is time you put on a demo game at NWS soon with these.
Cheers
H
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thanks everyone for the feedback
yes, I reckon their first outing will be in 2 weeks to trial the new trench raiding rules from the Over the Top rules (anyone been keen enough to try them yet?)
At the moment I'm flocking, adding mud and liquid water which is all a bit messy but will get some pics done when I've washed up!
In the meantime, here's one of the damaged trench section...how many casualties can you spot?
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3025b.jpg)
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I count 8/9 :)
cheers
James
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4!
Anyway, got some pics done at an almost finished stage for the second line trenches. The flock suddenly transforms them, and the coolour really throws the bleakness of the trenches into stark relief.Still working a little on the transition between the chalk and grass as it is a little abrupt, but I wanted these to look more like reasonably old, static trench lines rather than new ones. It also help them marry up with my first boards better.
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3056b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3061b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3057b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3059b.jpg)
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/thejammedgatling/IMG_3060b.jpg)
Hopefully get a shot of the whole lot together soon.
Tinkering with static water as well right now.
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that's great!
but i really suggest you to add some powder pigments as dust, it will help to make everyyhing more smooth and monochromatic... and the bomb explosion will bring a lot of dust all around here! =)
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Great stuff :-* :-*
4!
Well, you have some very human looking ground work :)
I'd go with what Sangennaru says about the powders, failing that, a light drybrush of your top ground work colour over the grass would help.
cheers
James
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given the colour of chalk dust you might tray army painter snow?
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good ideas
I think I will give pigments a try...but have never used before. Any tricks? Do you apply wet as a drybrush method?
Advice please!
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sorry to revive a old thread, but any more news on these boards??
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Excellent. I particularly like the wickerwork hurdles holding up the trench walls; a nice detail.
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WOW!
Very very nice and very inspirational!
Got to get me started now!