Fences and Bushes

Real life things, like work, the Summer holidays and various other issues, means that I haven't done much wargamey stuff recently (with the exception of a fun Song of Blades and Heroes game with my daughter one rainy Sunday).

However I did treat myself to some rather nice resin fences from an eBay seller known as Small Terrain.

They arrived ready for use - being painted dark brown, highlighted a little and based with static grass. However I decided to give them a couple of extra drybrushes, and added spots of my own basing stuff, just to tie them in a bit with the rest of my terrain collection.

Speaking of which, I also found a few minutes to knock up these bushes.

So nothing earth-shattering, but a little progress nonetheless.

...and Now a Word From Our Sponsors

During the interwar years, many people were alarmed at the increasing urbanisation of the countryside. Notables such as J. B. Priestley, writing of his 'English Journey', and Clough Williams-Ellis, author of 'England and The Octopus', complained of the suburban housing, petrol stations and arterial roads that encroached upon their rural idyll.

Another complaint was the proliferation of advertising hoardings - "roadside placards or other inacceptable (sic) displays" - along the highways and byways of Britain.

Well, with apologies to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, it's time that the dreaded 'octopus' spread it's tentacles onto the tabletop battlefield!

This is one of those projects that I've been mulling over in the back of my head for some time, and, while not fully realised, has to be attempted and got out of the way to make room for other ideas.

I started off by trawling the web for various vintage advertisements, pamphlets and political posters (plus one or two I made myself) and resized them to fit on pieces of card. A search for contemporary photos of such hoardings show a wide range of size and style - some with large single adverts, others plastered with a mosaic of smaller posters.

I cut some stiff card to what I thought would be a realistic size and stuck on the resized adverts etc. Ideally I would liked to have printed each poster separately, overlaying one on top of the other where they overlapped, but as I only had one sheet of sticker paper left (I use sticker paper as opposed to messier paper and glue), I opted to do the layout on the PC first and print them out all in one.

The cards were then lined at the back (hopefully to represent wooden planking) and framed with bamboo flower sticks from the local pound shop.

Two of the hoardings are supported by diagonal bamboo struts (inexpertly held in place with putty and glue), while two were mounted on stilts so that they could stand above walls, hedges and the like. These stilts were then stuck onto small bases - perhaps too small - it remains to be seen whether they remain upright during a game.

These hoardings can be used simply as VBCW battlefield scenery, or maybe as blinds and such. They're not perfect, but they'll do, and more importantly that's one more idea out of the way!

The Writing's on the Wall

Yet another not-very-interesting post today I'm afraid, serving to document what I've painted as opposed to entertaining the reader.

Another set of Tamiya 1/35 brick walls assembled and painted to add to the scenery pile in readiness for March's Big Game (Burley Gate, Herefordshire, Saturday, 14th March).

Speaking of which, we've had a couple of players drop out recently, so if anyone's interested in popping along, then please let me know (cost will be £10-£15 which includes buffet). More details here.

Fake Plastic Trees

No, I’m not starting a Stereophonics tribute act.

As mentioned in a previous post, my modest collection of scenery was terribly lacking in trees. Luckily ‘Eric the Shed’ had blogged about a very nice orchard he had produced using some cheap trees from an eBay seller in China.

I thought I’d give them a try and ordered some packs, which duly arrived a couple of months ago after a very short wait.

Finally getting around to taking them out of their Jiffy bag the other day, my first impression was that, while they looked very nice, the foliage seems to be falling off quite readily. Cue several coats of hairspray to firm things up a bit.

I decided on the whole to base them individually and, after using up my small supply of mini CDs and coasters, helped Giles to bulk up an order he was making with some round 80mm plastic bases from Hurlbat.

Basing the trees was easy. The trunks are soft plastic, and the bottoms were easily flattened, before drilling a small hole into each one. I then glued a drawing pin onto each base and, once set, dripped a little glue on the pins and poked them up the bottom of the trunks (oo-er). The trunks were then washed with shade.

This contrivance was then covered/strengthened with putty and the base painted, covered with scatter and liberally hairsprayed. I also glued on the odd bush, pile of boulders (dried offcuts of putty) or larger stone slab (drybrushed bark chips).

While not massive, the trees scale up rather well with 28mm figures and so my need for woodland is sated!

UPDATE:-
Ooh, I've just noticed that this is my 200th post on this blog - go me!

“When we looked back again, that dark thing was not to be seen…”

An ancient and jagged stone stands deep in an old English wood. Steeped in legend and dark warnings, the place is shunned by all right-thinking locals, for it is said to be haunted…

Just who is the mysterious figure lurking on the periphery? Has Canon Albrecht returned to reclaim his scrapbook? Do the remains of Abbot Thomas still guard his treasure? Has Professor Parkins blown that whistle again?

Recently I’ve been re-reading the works of one of my favourite authors, M.R. James – in my opinion Britain’s foremost writer of ghost stories.

This set me in the mood to do something different, and so taking a break from my terrain-fest, I dug out a figure from Blind Beggar Miniatures’ Dark Clergy set – kindly sent to me as a freebie (thanks Mason!)

The trees you will read about in my next post, the standing stone is a piece of bark, the boulders just bits of left-over putty and the figure a vengeful spirit from beyond the grave (or possibly some silly blighter poncing around in a bed-sheet.)

Hedging My Bets

With the next Big Game looming ever closer, I needed to crack on with some more hedges, as despite Giles' prodigious output and willingness to part with ready cash (unlike stingy old me), we never seem to have enough hedging to dress the three huge tables that we require to accommodate so many players.

Although nowhere near as good a scenery guy as Giles (or for that matter Roo - he of the enormous hill), I thought I'd do my bit. Being not particularly happy with my last lot of hedges, I thought I'd experiment with a few different techniques. Off to my local supermarket then, to purchase some packs of suitably green scouring pads!

The first and most time-consuming method was to roughly tear some of the pads into strips, some wider than the others. These strips were then scoured, pinched and generally distressed, and then a narrow strip was stuck on either side of a wider one.

Once dried these were roughed up a bit more, drybrushed along the bottom with brown paint and then stuck to bases. A scattering of greenery and a coat or two of hairspray finished the job.

Not bad, but a messy, frustrating (I had to hold some of the strips in place with double-sided carpet tape while I glued) and drawn-out process which put quite a strain on my supply of scouring pads.

Wanting something quicker and more painless, I decided to cut the rest of the pads into strips of roughly similar width, drybrush them (brown at the bottom, light green and a smattering of yellow along the top) and simply glue them singly onto bases, thus representing a more trimmed garden hedge as opposed to the thick, unkempt specimens above.

Once again a scattering of basing greenery was applied and the whole lot given a voluminous, long lasting hold with the hairspray.

I was now left with some offcuts of plasticard, and these were pressed into service by simply sticking on bits of modelling foliage (a bag of which had kindly been donated by Giles a while back). Flock and spray as standard, then serve on the tabletop to admiring guests.

None of these will win any awards, but they'll at least help to alleviate the great hedge shortage and keep me stocked up with scenery.

Going to the Wall

Last year I treated myself to some goodies from Fenris Games, including a rather nice drystone wall set, which recently found itself at the head of the painting queue.

Well, I say painting...

The pieces came in a greenish-grey colour, which I thought looked quite stony, so I simply applied a shade over the bare resin, and then drybrushed on various greys, browns and greens to weather them. I then lightly drybrushed the more prominent edges with white.

Then they were glued to some bases and had a little greenery scatter stuck on, and there you have it - bish bash bosh! (Much better than my own scratchbuilt ones).

Hopefully they will provide someone with some vital cover during the next Big Game (March 14th), which is being planned at the moment...

Pining For Something

Ah January... That magical time of year when Wargamers of all ages take to the supermarkets, garden centres and sundry shops in search of half price Christmas decorations that they can turn to their own nefarious purpose.

Whilst running a few errands I spotted some packs of snowy pine trees going cheap at my local Wyevale and, as my motley collection of scenery is currently lacking in things arboreal, decided to buy a few.

Luckily I have a can of green spray paint courtesy of B&Q, so applied a couple of strafing runs over my new pine forest to reduce the wintery coating.

The trees are on lumpy plastic bases, which can be easily removed. However, seeing as I'm running low on plasticard (and what I do have I want to keep for making more hedges), I decided to keep them on and coat them in basing greenery scatter. The bases are reasonably heavy, and the trees quite light, so hopefully they'll stay standing on the tabletop.

Not a bad investment!

Woooooooooooo.......

All this recent talk of scarecrows got me in the mood to scratch build another one, seeing as it's nearly Halloween and all...

While my previous effort was a stuffed effigy of a BUF bloke, this one is a simpler construct mocking the pious Anglican League (obviously they have been raising their tithes a bit too much!)

A very quick and easy build this - a crosspiece made from bits of cocktail stick, dressed in a tissue paper 'robe' (hardened off by spraying with hairspray and layers of paint) tied with string, a putty pumpkin head and a 'mitre' made from a rolled up sticker.

I'm not particularly happy with the paintjob, as it looks spookier as a WIP!

Supplies and Shortages

It’s been a bit quiet around here recently, hasn't it? Well on top of the usual real life things that get in the way of playing with toys, I've also been busy getting ready for the next Herefordshire Big Game; to be held at Burley Gate Village Hall on Saturday 27^th September.

We like to do something different for each big game, and this time around we are looking at factoring in shortages. The logic behind this is that with civil war raging, supplies of fuel and ammunition would be disrupted, leading to shortages and rationing. To this end we’re trying out some house rules that oblige players to roll for fuel and ammo, with an option to resupply via dumps and runners when they run out.

This in turn led me to look at knocking up some models to reflect this situation – e.g. supply vehicles, runners and supply dumps.

Luckily, on top of a nice Dragon Artillery Tractor from Reiver Castings, I also had a mule and wagon that had I cadged off Very British Civil Forum member ‘Staffie’, and a spare Sikh HMG team that I acquired second hand from the Lead Adventure Forum.

The Dragon tractor was quickly assembled and painted, and the mule and wagon cobbled together in what I hope is somewhere near a correct fashion (with the addition of some thin ply and cocktail sticks to finish it off).

The supply dump was mainly scratchbuilt – cardboard for the crates and small pointy rubber bungs for the shells (massively over scale but still quite cool looking I think). I then added some bits from the HMG set and a 1/32 Tamiya jerry can. The whole thing fits onto the back of the wagon quite nicely.

Both the wagon driver and the runner are Sikh HMG crew with headswaps and a bit of filing here and there. The third member has already been utilised as a Royalist bomber (second from the left in the photo below), and will stand in as the second runner on the day.

Just over a week to go until the big game, and with some awesome pieces of terrain under construction and some challenging yet (hopefully) playable supply issues, it’s shaping up to be a good ‘un!

Flame Fougasses (or is that Fougassi?)

I've been planning to build some Flame Fougasses (or is that Fougassi?) for some time, and finally got around to doing so recently.

They were very easy to do - plastic tubes to represent barrels of various sizes cut at an angle and glued to a base before being covered with putty. A quick paintjob around the orifices and a liberal coating of basing greenery and they're ready to roll (well, be plonked into the ground, rather than roll).

I've left the barrel ends open, so that flame/smoke markers and the like can be added if required.

For the uninitiated, the Flame Fougasse was used extensively by the Home Guard during the invasion scare of WW2. They were basically barrels of incendiary liquid (including tar, lime and petrol) which were buried near roadsides, waiting to be ignited at a point some distance from the business end of the barrel.

In theory any invading Nazi would be treated to a dose of the flaming concoction should they be unwise enough to advance down said road.

Remains of such weapons can still be found today, and are catalogued by the excellent Pillbox Study Group.

Photo from the Pillbox Study Group

Would these weapons be considered gentlemanly enough to be used in the VBCW? If so, I wonder how to represent them in the rules..?