First World War terrain boards SECTION 3 (TRENCH) updated 11th October

[Funghy-Fipps]

I am agog.  Stupendous. 

[gamer Mac]

WOW The buildings are out standing

[Thunderchicken]

Fantastic work! I'm looking to put some ruined buildings together soon so your timing is perfect  .

[thejammedgatling]

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!



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...

[FramFramson]

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?

[Remgain]

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

[thejammedgatling]

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:




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:

[thejammedgatling]

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.

[Plynkes]

"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! 

[Sangennaru]

@jammed: PMming right now!

[thejammedgatling]

"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!

[Sangennaru]

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!

[thejammedgatling]

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.




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.



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 .

[Muskie]

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.

[thejammedgatling]

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..