#Terrain Tuesday: Warbases MDF Fields and Ponds

Hello friends:  

I’ve been quiet here last week, which, as you might expect, was a busy one for my day job as a wargaming vicar, but time to catch up now that Holy Week is concluded.

Recently I needed some custom-made MDF bases and ordered them from Warbases in the UK, as my Canadian supplier didn’t seem to need the business.   While I was on the Warbases webstore, I saw that they offered fields and ponds, in a part of the store called Terrain Bases   It wasn’t clear to me that these were 2D images printed onto MDF, I had formed the mistaken idea that they were somehow 3D, which was my own misperception.

There wasn’t a full range in stock, but I ordered two field sets, one in spring (left) and one in autumn (right).  Here are the large pieces from each set, each with a stone wall and gate around the edges.  They blend nicely against my Geek Villain game cloth.  

And two small fields in each set, again, spring (left) and autumn (right).

And I bought a set of ponds, which includes a generous five separate ponds.

28mm figure stand for scale.

And a 6mm stand for scale.  In 6mm, depending on the game scale (eg, Blucher where this one stand would represent a brigade), these would be decent sized lakes!

In 28mm, the large stand would accommodate a four or five based unit quite nicely to represent a terrain objective or a defensible terrain feature, such as a walled field.  Useful if one didn’t have enough actual wall section models.

Some folks might balk at the idea of putting 2D terrain representations on the table, which is fine, but for a fast game or if one is travelling light to a club or convention, these models might well be fit for purpose.   The quality of the printed images of the field and pond sections is pleasing, so they are a definite step up from fields and ponds of cut felt.

Cheers and blessings to your tabletops.

MP+

 

 

 

 

Terrain Tuesday: Never Enough Trees!

 A wise man (it may have been my friend James, but don’t tell him I called him wise) once said to me, “A wargamer can never have enough trees”.    I agree, though I would make an exception for gams set in the Western Desert.   For years I’ve tried making (and repairing) Woodlands Scenics model railroad tree armatures, until I met a company called Model Builders Supply (MBS) and decided that enough was enough.

MBS is a Canadian company, based in Aurora, north of Toronto, and does a wide range of products, from scenic items for architects’ models to dollhouse supplies, and recently discovered wargaming when they started exhibiting at Hot Lead.    

This year at Hot Lead I picked up a two dozen of their 28mm trees, some snow-covered spruce trees for my (sadly backburnered) Rockies Ablaze project, plus some trees in summer and some in autumn for various seasons.   The trees are sturdy and look realistic enough for my tastes.  I also picked up some of their plastic wooden shingle roof sheets for MDF models and some brick/stone sheets to model streets for a 15mm Italian village for WW2 gaming. 

Here are last year’s tree purchases, set onto LITKO irregularly shaped MDF bases.  My friend Joe Saunders likes to say that irregular shapes for basing look best for natural items like trees and such. 

 

Cheers and blessing to your modelling!

MP+

#Terrain Tuesday: Warbases Prussian Barn WIP

Hello friends:

I’m reviving a feature here which I’ve called Terrain Tuesday.   Here’s a bit of progress on a project carried over from last year, this 28mm Warbases T-Shaped Barn from their Napoleonic Prussia series.   I can use these in a variety of horse and musket settings, and this particular model could possibly be used in a North American setting, assuming the barn was built by settlers of German origin.

I wasn’t happy with the MDF roof, so I ordered some of the Warbases cardboard roof tiles sets and laboriously glued them on.

Now I have to decide how to paint the roof.   I was thinking a brown base coat, and then a dry brush of red, as most German roofs I’ve seen in paintings of the period seem to have red roofs.   Any advice?

Blessings to your modelling.  MP+

#Terrain Tuesday: Trees in Various Scales

Today I’m reviving an occasional feature on this blog/diary, Terrain Tuesday, a chance to talk about tabletop terrain projects I’m working on.   

I don’t think we can ever have enough trees on most battlefields, unless it’s the Western Desert, perhaps.    Lately I’ve been trying to find the odd few minutes here and there to base trees, using some irregularly shaped bases I bought from the Litko website, and trees that I found for sale at Hot Lead in March courtesy of Model Builders Supply, a local company specializing in architectural and hobby scenics.  

 Two newly based large conifers shown with a 28mm Victrix figure for scale.

 

My friend Joe Saunders from Miniature Landscape Hobbies   has a wise saying, that irregularly shaped bases work well for nature, whereas human-made structures tend to look better on geometrically shaped bases.  I’m keeping that in mind as I use up the rest of these nice Litko bases for trees in various scales, including a small 6mm forest (top left).    Hopefully I’ll have that ready to show this time next week.

What terrain are you currently working on?

Cheers and blessings to your modelling!
MP+ 

Terrain Tuesday: Adventures in Basing and Building

Recently I mentioned that our guest on Canadian Wargamer Podcast #11 was Joe Saunders, who runs a small but mighty enterprise called Miniature Landscape Hobbies.  I was so impressed with his method for large scenic bases that I tried it, and here’s the result.

To back up a bit, my previous method was to cut a piece of MDF purchased from a DIY store.  This was never very pleasant or satisfactory because I used a craft knife and could never get the lines straight enough, and it was also very taxing on my hands and wrists.  There was also the very real worry that I might inadvertantly cut myself.  Once the MDF was cut, I would texture it with plastic wood (usually from Lepage), use diluted white carpenter’s glue to apply texture (usually model railroad ballast) and then once dry paint brown, two successive drybrushes (yellow ochre first, then maple tan) and then apply flock and seal with a matte spray.

Joe’s technique is explained in this video.  Not to describe the whole method, but in brief I used two sheets of cut boxboard with the corrugations going in opposite directions.   I them coated it with diluted matte Mod Podge mixed with brown umber craft paint, and while it was wet I applied the grit (ballast mixed with some clean cat litter).   The next step according to Joe is to mix rubbing alcohol with brown acrylic ink and then use a pipette and apply the ink mixture while holding the base at an incline to allow the mixture to run freely. 

I didn’t have brown ink but I had some green ink, so I thought I’d experiment.  What I got was a pleasant greenish hue and in a few places the green ink turned the grit a bright green, suggesting clumps of foliage.  I showed this image below to Joe and he thought it was a “happy accident” and suggested a tan dry brush before adding flock. 

 

Here’s the finished base on the left, with the Warbases cottage from their Prussian Napoleonics range of buildings.   I spent much of the winter cutting up cereal boxes to make the tiles on the roof of the cottage, until some bright chap told me to by the pre-cut roof tiles from Sarissa.  I did that for the Warbases Prussian barn on the right, but couldn’t resist the allure of the cereal box and also cut out the stones for the first floor of the barn walls.  The base of the barnyard was also made according to Joe’s recipe.

I wanted some texture on the walls of the cottage, which were plain MDF sheets, so smeared them with carpenter’s plastic wood filler to give the impression of stucco.    I did the same with the wall section on the barn beneath the wood timbers.  Thankfully the wood timbers were all one laser cut piece so quite simple to apply onto the plastic wood before it dried.

Some 28mm figures shown for scale.  The barn is a beast!  It won’t be hogging a standard sized table for a big battle, but it will wok for a skirmish game such as Sharp Practice, with Prussian jaegers defending against marauding cossacks, I think.

Another view of the stone wall on the ground floor of the barn.  Not sure what door halfway up is all about.  In my part of Ontario you sometimes see barns with an earthen ramp leading up to a doorway which I am guessing is for transporting hay bales and fodder.   I should consider constructing something similar out of styrofoam.

#TerrainTuesday: Repainting the Garrison Gazebo

Hello Friends:

Picking up the blog again after taking August off for some home projects, family visits, and a most enjoyable time with my son John who came out all the way from British Columbia on the West Coast to hang out with his dad.   I’ll have a report on What I Did On My Summer Holidays here shortly.

For now, to satisfy the entirely self-imposed demands of #TerrainTuesday, here’s a project that I dragooned my son into helping me with, the Mad Padre garrison garden gazebo that was sadly in need of cleaning, repainting and re-staining since it was built some twenty years ago.  Between the two of us we blasted it with a pressure washer, scraped and cleaned it, power-sanded it, painted and stained it, and generally refurbished it.  John was mostly cheerful about doing the work in the midst of late summer heatwave and was paid handsomely in beer.  The roof tiles show their age but the structure isn’t robust enough for the ladder work required.  Still, it looks rather good, I think, and the lovely Joy is grateful.

Since 1to1 terrain scale is a bit of a cheat, here’s a 6mm battlefield that I threw together just now to give Osprey’s Absolute Emperor fast-play big-battle Napoleonics rules another go before passing judgement.  Bit of a mix of stuff in this photo:  Paper Terrain roads, rubber river sections from Baccus, mostly Timecast bridges and buildings all on a Geek Villain grasslands mat.

Three Austrian corps will defend against a somewhat larger number of French who will have to cross the river and advance from bottom to top of the photo.

John and I have tried these rules a few times with smaller forces while he was here, so another go tonight solo and I’ll try to give my impressions on the rules on #NapoleonicsThursday.

Blessings to your tiny landscapes.

MP+

#TerrainTuesday: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Since I don’t have a piece of wargaming terrain finished or in production at the moment, I thought I’d cheat and tell you about a piece of 1 to 1 scale terrain that has been keeping me busy of late.

This gorgeous crab apple tree sits in front of my house.  In May, when I took this photo, it is a glorious, fragrant mass of blossoms.    

The blossoms put on a show for about a week, and then they start to fall, like a gentle snow.  They fall and fall, so that our driveway and walkway are on some mornings white as if it was winter.

By the end of May the blossoms are replaced by green leaves, at least until the gypsy moths (sorry, not allowed to call them that anymore - they are now LDD for Lymantia Dispar Dispar, or just furry hungry buggers that grow into the size of small snakes) invaded trees in the area.  The crabapple tree was a particularly tasty buffet.  All through June and July I waged war against them, picking them off, gingerly at first, and then by the fistful, and dropping them in a soapy bucket of water.  I did my best to keep the lower branches free of the caterpillars, but I couldn’t reach the upper bows, and every morning the ground was littered with fragments of leaves and tiny almost embryonic green apples.   I assumed the tree was doomed.

July came, and the caterpillars became sluggish and then disappeared.  The local paper said some sort of virus had killed them.   I found and destroyed a few cocoons, and then for a week small white moths fluttered about aimlessly, as if filled with wonder that they could fiy, albeit badly.  Then they disappeared.

August came with apples.  The tree roared back, green leaves appeared in the bare sections, and SO MANY APPLES.

Now its the apples that fall, buckets of them every day.  I have a nifty roller tool that gathers them in a wire ball-shaped cage, and usually spend thirty minutes a day collecting them, so as not to attract wasps and alarm my neighbours, a nice young couple newly moved in who regard the tree with some alarm.  I’ve noticed they are deathly fearful of insects.   Some of the apples go into my compost bin, the rest into the city green waste bin.  My wife, who has lived with the tree longer than I have, tells me that the apples are sour and hard to cook with, so I’m content to let them return to nature and to give me free biomass for next year’s garden..

Respect for a tree that doggedly does what it wants to, bugs be damned.

Cheers,

MP+

#Terrain Tuesday: Adventures In My Back Yard

Hello friends:

Not much to report here of late - this is my first blog post since I started a month’s vacation lasting all of August, which has been very pleasant thus far, with a fair number of miniatures on the painting bench and some out of town overnight trips with the lovely Joy (our first since Covid), and some significant outdoor landscaping projects under way, which I am going to call eligible for this week’s Terrain Tuesday feature.

To start the project, I needed a new wheelbarrow, which of course meant that I got a chance to put my scale modelling skills to use in a 1 to 1 scale project. We hone our model making skills for real-world moments such as this.  Everything was going swimmingly until I discovered that I had confused front and back in the somewhat minimal instructions, and so had to disassemble and reassemble the whole shebang.

One side of our house was landscaped with flagstones and pea gravel some twenty years ago.   It’s become quite overgrown and we would like to replace it all with a smooth interlocked brick or stone surface, which will look neater and be easier to keep clean.   We have some builders coming in the early fall to do that project, but for now there is some wasted space between two garden beds that I’d like to reclaim, joining the two garden beds and renewing the soil so I can plant hostas or some other shade-friendly plants together.    The area is about eight feet long by four feet wide, and I quickly discovered that the pea gravel is about two inches deep.   I wanted to be able to separate the gravel and the earth, so I knocked together this quick screening device to go over said wheelbarrow.

There is a LOT of pea gravel.  So much pea gravel. Here you can see the mix of gravel and flag stones that our contractors are going to take up.   It’s far too much work for me to do with a pick and shovel.

Underneath the pea gravel is, of course, a myriad of stones, brick fragments from the original construction that were apparently easier to bury than cart away, and of course, thick tangles of roots from the nearby maple trees.   But, I’m too far in to stop, and the garden bed is almost finished and ready for some compost, some bags of fresh clean black earth, and of course, plants.

The pea gravel is proving useful, as we have a garden bordered by large stones which had pretty much sunk into the ground.   Joy asked if I could dig out the stones and raise them slightly so they could be a more visible border.   So, several projects in one going on simultaneously.

 

Anyway, it’s all very satisfying and for now it makes up for not having gone to the gym since Covid.  

I hope you are enjoying some time off this August and thank you for taking the time to read this.   Blessings to your DIY projects.

Cheers,  MP+

#Terrain Tuesday: Barrage Miniatures Kickstarter Goodies Have Arrived!

 I'm not a big Kickstarter guy, but th offer from Madrid-based Barrage Miniatures seemed too good to pass up - modular resin/rubber terrain for the miniatures tabletop.   

In backing the KS, I chose a green river, almost enough to cover the width of two of my tables, plus enough shore sections to line both banks.   

That river was just crying out for some boats, so I dug out my 1/600 Thoroughbred Miniatures ironclads and my instincts were correct, it all looks great together!

Hammerin' iron!  The nice thing about this system is that I could only line one side of the river mat with shore sections, creating a bay or shoreline, or I could use the modular bits to decrease the width of the river as needed by the scenario or scale - perhaps a 6mm version of Aspern Essling!

Here are some of the other pieces that came with the KS.  Cropped and plowed field, multicoloured sections to mark out woods and to depict fallen leaves, a desert mat for the farmyard, and stone wall sections.  Lots of round green grass sections that blend in nicely with my GeekVillain mat.

The elevations here are old T-shirts rolled up and placed under the Geek Villain mat.  Again, the green resin pieces are useful for hiding the creases in the mat where it falls over the t-shirt hills.

Of course, now that I've laid out this table, I need to get some troops on it.  It all looks Civil War-y, so ...

Cheers and blessings,

MP+

#TerrainTuesday: 6mm Timecast Napoleonic Buildings

For this week’s Terrain Tuesday feature, I am happy to show off these two completed terrain tiles for 6mm Napoleonics gaming.

The large timber frame building on the right is by Timecast, and is a lovely model, full of detail.    To flesh out the terrain piece and give it the sense of being a village or part of a town, I found two antique metal GHQ building castings in my hoard and painted them up quickly.

Trees are also by Timecast.  The terrain tile also functions as a four way road crossing, making it a potentially significant objective for hard marching marshals, foragers, and other ne’er-do-wells.

This gray building is also a Timecast model.  I based it individually to suggest an inn or estate house out in the country.

I find a huge satisfaction in working on the scenic aspect of 6mm gaming.  Buildings are relatively inexpensive, a little busywork effort goes a long way, and the finished result adds immeasurably, not dominating the table as a 28mm terrain piece might but adding just enough flavour to evoke a real world location.

This morning I threw a few other pieces on the table besides these newly created models and was entranced by how quickly a scenic view came together.  This visual aspect of small scale gaming is a huge reward in itself for me.

Cheers and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

#Terrain Tuesday: 28mm Field Fortifications From Paul's Models

Hello friends!

Took me just over a month to get these resin field fortifications from UK based Paul’s Models finished, which is pretty speedy for me.  I now have a massive redoubt and several feet of fortifications. 

 More than enough to cover almost the length of a 6’ table!

 Painting strategy was simply: black undercoat, craft store Folkart umbre brown on everything, then a drybrush of the same brown mixed with Yellow Ochre.  The boards were a mix of yellow ochre and white lightly dry brushed over the black undercoat, and them treated with Army Painter Soft Tone.  I didn’t want the boards to be grey, as they are supposed to be newly cut for the battle I have in mind, Seve Pines.

 Temporarily occupied by a Royal Artillery Whitworth and a mix of Canadian and British troops, who must have read the last blog post here!  These fortifications work well with 28mm figures and could represent any field defences or siege works from the Thirty Years and English Civil Wars up to the early rifle age.

 Good luck to whoever has to take these defences!

Thanks for looking.  Cheers and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

Terrain Tuesday: Terrain of Varying Dimensions

 As in two versus three dimensions.  

Currently set up in my cat-proof gaming room (well, unless I forget to close the door or accidentally lock one of the beasts inside at nighttime - that ended the Franco-Prussian war in a hurry!) is this monster, showing that you can have a LOT of terrain if you aren't too fussy about modelling it.  Recognize it?

Yes?  Good for you!   No?   OK, here's a hint.

I'll have more to say about this game in this week's Thursday Napoleonics feature.

How about somc conventional 3D terrain?  In the meantime, was up early this morning starting to work on these field fortifications from Paul's models, which I'm quite impressed with.   Painting plan is simple.  Black undercoat, Brown Umber (Folkart craft paint, cheap and cheerful) on the outer parts and then a bit of Yellow Ochre drybrushing and flocking the lower parts as it is mostly freshly dug and constructed.  Tan brown on the inside for the lumber, some Army Painter light tone washes, and then a bit of gray drybrushing.   Hoping to have this done soon so I can start Phase Two of  my ACW Seven Pines battle.

Blessings to your table dressings!  MP+

Terrain Tuesday: Making Terrain Tiles with Timecast 6mm Buildings

 

Hello friends and I hope this finds you well.

Recently finished these 6mm European buildings from Timecast and starting to mount them for my 6mm Napoleonic gaming.    For some reason which I can no longer recall, I chose to mount my buildings on 10cm square MDF bases, with the idea of integrating them into whatever road network the table required.  There are two completed tiles in this photo, metal buildings of unknown manufacture that I acquired at a Bring and Buy some years ago.

Sadly, my new Timecast buildings are a little chunky, and don't gracefully sit on the same base, which I wanted to be a four way road.

My solution was to climb my lead mountain and locate these two unpainted buildings from the same Bring and Buy.  A quick paint job and they should complement the Timecast model nicely and suggest a small town or village.

The other Timecast model will look fine on a second, T-intersection base.

I've also received some more trees from Timecast so I can pretty these bases up a bit.  So nothing very exciting for this Terrain Tuesday post, but the work in progress is promising.   We'll see if I can finish it off by next week.

Blessings to your worldbuilding!

MP+