A wood full of trees

My tendency to have several things on the go at once works for me, but at times it can bear additional fruit. Perhaps that should be 'foliage', in this case.

I use a homemade basing material comprising a mix of sand, paint and PVA glue, with a bit of dried coffee grounds and tea leaves for added texture. Since my last post, my plan had been to apply some of this basing material to a few figures that have been 3/4 finished for many months. I would then add the finishing touches/highlights to those figures and also apply more base coat colours to my early French. This all changed at step one.

I had some green basing material that I made up late last year. Trouble is that, with several warm to hot summer days, it had, literally, taken on a life of its own. One of those metaphorical 'science experiments'. So, I scraped off the mould, ignored the smell that was akin to the 'bog of eternal stench' and decided that it would be best applied quickly, and in bulk to get it out of the container, exposed to the air and drying—as soon as possible.

I had just thing. A heap of trees that had been on my table for... perhaps a year, maybe more, waiting for me to have the time and inclination to attach them to bases, add the basing material as well as a bit of fixing up (in some cases).

These now moved to the front of the queue!

Seeing the wood full of trees

Amongst the trees were some that were trunks and branches only—to which I added various bits of lichen and other green materials. There were also some well-worn trees which had lost most, perhaps all of their former foliage. I wasn't planning to renovate these, thinking that I'd leave them as autumn trees, but a post on Matt's Storm and Conquest blog—part two of seven as it has turned out—inspired me to extract the digit.

Above and below: some of the well-worn trees with basing added.

Some of the finished trees with added foliage (back and left)

Renovated trees
Small ones ex-orchard trees, originally purchased when Dad & I first began wargaming.

More renovated trees

Some more modern, speccy trees that I purchased around the turn of the century

Most of these were from a mixed bag of scenery
that I picked up second-hand in the 90s from a railway shop

More from that 'mixed-bag', plus some more recent purchases of Dad's at the rear, some former Christmas tree 'leaves' at left—and even a couple of cacti from my friend Mark N.

While it delayed getting any figures painted, it was great to finally make the time to sort out these trees and to have them now based, foliage added and even some renovated. They are finally off the table and ready to use.

The Frankfort am Main regiment and artillery markers ready for the final touch-ups.

Similarly for these four battalions of the Vistula Legion.

Now it is back to the original plan: finish the Frankfort am Main regiment, Vistula legion and artillery markers, while getting the white, red and a few other key colours on the early French. That is, of course, unless something else jumps the queue!

Fun with latex

I prefer home-made scenery. It goes back to the early days of wargaming with Dad when everything was (relatively) so much more expensive so we used the small amount that we had from train sets and improvised/made the rest. Besides, it was all part of the fun. Even now, when professionally made scenery is so much cheaper I prefer the home made variety as the bought stuff, while flash, lacks character for mine.

Some old terrain squares have formed the base scenery for the games thus far at my new (as it still feels to me) wargaming shed. I want to move to using the overlay 'sheet' method—actually I have purchased some lovely, plush green stretch material which will add to player comfort, ha,ha. I was thinking about how I'd like to represent roads and rivers. Then I suddenly remembered; liquid latex.

I have a fairly large quantity that was left over from making soil peels (monliths). These are constructed by painting the stuff on the face of a soil pit. The soil sticks to the latex which is then peeled off and mounted on a board. The resulting impression shows how the soil changes down the profile and is an excellent, visual tool. Anyway, I thought that I should be able to paint the stuff onto plastic, mold it a bit, even stick things to it when wet and then paint it afterwards.

I had a test run making some items for a First World War game. I made circles to represent an explosion, the resulting crater and, what was going to be smoke for gas, but I decided would be better as a rock outcrop (not for World War I). I was pleased that it all worked. The latex peeled off the plastic when dry, assorted bits that I had stuck to it held tight and I could paint it with my acrylic paints.

Test run making terrain elements for First World War games, which I'll be trying out later.

Buoyed by this I decided to go into a bit of production making sections for rivers and roads. I painted various shapes on to an old piece of vinyl. I added some pieces of lichen and bits of model trees to some of the sections that I wanted to represent swampy areas around a river.

Sections of liquid latex painted onto vinyl. These are destined to be rivers and ponds.

Some would-be river sections with lichen and tree bits added to represent swampy areas.

The sections once partially dry (above), fully dry (below left) and painted (below right).

Once they had dried it was a simple matter of applying paint (two coats) and they were good enough for me.

Painted sections of river and swampy-banked river.

I was really pleased with the final result, particularly once placed on a tabletop. They will not win any terrain prizes but are functional and flexible. Most of the sections that have I made are quite short, so I'll now make some more of the longer ones.

 

On the table-top. This is the layout for a small, brigade-scale game of "Twilight of the Sun King".

Book Review: Wargames Terrain and Buildings: The Napoleonic Wars

I became aware of this book when I saw Seb’s excellent review on his blog. I therefore jumped at the chance to do one of my own when offered a review copy by the publishers.

Cover art courtesy of the publishers.

Please seek permission before reproducing.

I enjoy making my own terrain pieces and it has always made more sense to me to spend available ‘wargames funds’ on figures and books before buildings or other terrain. After all, figures I cannot easily produce myself, but I can make buildings, no matter how rudimentary. In more recent times, even while the prices of buildings and other terrain have reduced (and available funds for wargaming increased), I am still reticent to purchase terrain, save perhaps for second-hand items or some of the MDF kits from Sarissa Precision (I discussed their 1/72nd La Haie Sainte previously). More on them later.

It seems that this is something that I share in common with Tony Harwood, although my attempts pale when compared to his beauties. Yet with the aid of this book, in which he shares some of his methods and ideas, I hope to be able to improve the quality of the buildings that I produce.

This book is marvellous in so many ways. The construction of the example buildings and other structures is described step-by-step with clear photographs of each. Mr Harwood uses simple, easily obtainable materials, chiefly of the ‘scrap’ variety. The construction process is straight forward and includes some great combinations of techniques that make so much sense. For example, layering strips of paper on the cardboard ‘shell’ of a building, glued in place with PVA glue in a kind of papier maché fashion. This rounds off the sharp or jagged edges of a cardboard-only construction while adding some texturing to the walls.


The construction of nine models is covered in the book. These are a Russian windmill, two-storey French house, La Belle Alliance, French pigeonnier, stone build well, Russian granary, small bakery, Hungarian chapel and Peninsula diorama. The Russian windmill is 15 mm, La Belle Alliance 20 mm and all the others are 28/30 mm. With the exception of La Belle Alliance, which is the 20 mm Sarissa Precision kit with modifications, the scales of the models are completely nominal. There are no plans, an aspect that may detract for some people, but one that I think is a bonus and adds flexibility.

Inspired by an image from a book or other source, Tony Harwood first produces a sketch.

From his plans, he produces the shell of the building. In this case strips of paper with PVA applied to one side are layered over the cardboard in a papier maché kind of manner.

The finished two-storey French house. Twenty-one pages with clear photographs show its step-wise construction.

In fact, the plans are not omitted as they do not exist! Rather, than work from a plan, Mr Harwood gets his ideas from images in various books, draws himself a sketch (something that he’s darned good at) and then roughly scales the sections of the building, using a figure of the appropriate scale as his ultimate guide.

Using this approach means that the step-wise construction of all of the structures in the book, with the exception of La Belle Alliance as it is a commercial kit, can be followed at any scale. Brilliant!

Furthermore, for those willing to have a go and adapt a theme and technique, the buildings/structures in the book can be used for inspiration to build something different. I intend to use the ideas presented in the construction of his Hungarian chapel as inspiration to make the church at Plancenoit.

Actually, ‘inspiration’ is an appropriate one-word summary for this book.


Thank you Tony!