Having belatedly decided to tackle Messrs. Mersey and Leck’s ‘The Pikeman’s Lament’ rules, I realised I needed some on table markers to signify when a unit is wavering.
It actually distresses me to see a table with lovely terrain and beautifully painted figures, marred by a confetti-like sprinkling of luridly coloured plastic chits. So I always try to make markers that don’t intrude on the aesthetic look of the game, but do fit the genre or period.
So I came up with these: cannon shot ploughed into the earth of the battlefield. Dead easy, in period, and quite effective looking
Step one:Pop a blob of Green Stuff onto a 25mm repair washer, flatten it out so it’s a bit humped at one end but flat at the other. Then use some kind of fine rod (I used the end of a 2mm drill bit, but you could use the handle of a paintbrush or anything like that) to impress a groove which will be the furrow ploughed by the cannonball. (Yes, I know it looks vaguely naughty at this stage
)
Step two:Roll some Green Stuff cannonballs in approximately the right size, and once the bases and projectiles have all hardened, use a dab of superglue to fix the ball at the end of the furrow.
Step three:Using a stiff mix of gloop (sand, grit, PVA, paint mix) build up the groundwork, paying particular attention to making the cannonball look like it’s well-embedded in the soil it has ploughed into.
Add a few little bits of rock etc., to taste. (I was going to add a few broken pike-shafts, and discarded swords and helmets, but then I realised they would limit the use of the markers a bit too much to just one specific period, so decided against it… They would have looked nifty though )
Step four:Once the gloop has dried, give the ball and its furrow a good dousing of neat PVA. This will dry and shrink to form a hard plasticised skin over the ball and surrounding area of base, and minimise the chance of it coming loose during handling.
Step five:Once that’s dried completely, give the whole lot a liberal coating with matt primer – here using Halfords ultra-matt ‘Camo brown’. Don’t worry if it goes on a bit thick. It will all help stick the whole thing together and make it more robust.
Step six:Drybrush the whole thing with two or three layers of Vallejo ‘flat earth’, gradually adding in a bit of white to each successive highlight to provide some depth. Then pick out the cannonballs and any rocks etc.
I also ran a very thin oil wash of Raw Umber (like 1 part paint to 99 parts white spirit) into the furrow, just to darken it down a little and make it stand out.
Step seven:Add tufts, flock, clump foliage etc., as desired.
Job done!
Wavering!