Trench Warfare - part 6.

 

With not much time available to start bigger projects,  I turned my attention to the fleece blanket I had bought to use as the ground mat.

This was just a bargain £3 fleece from.my local B&M, I picked up a grey blanket at the same time to use for urban battles.

It looks a little flat as basic though...

So with an afternoon spare this past weekend, I grabbed a bunch of rattle cans and set about trying to spray some variation patterning onto the surface.

This looks a lot better.

It's a mix of Light and Mid Browns, some Death Guard Green and a little Medium Grey just for variation.

It's a very "old school" way of making a gaming cloth, and very budget friendly, considering I already had the rattle cans in stock, and most of them which I used were the end of life stage anyway, I wasn't going to get much priming done with them. 

I could have invested into a Neoprene mat, like they sell and use at Element Games, but I'd need to buy a 4'x4' mat, then trim one edge down to fit my table, which is 4'x3'. Then I'd have to go through the trouble of hemming the edge which I cut as I dislike the messy look it would have left.
Not to mention the fact that a Neoprene mat runs to maybe £30-£40, almost ten times as much as I paid for the fleece!

So, just like the rest of the terrain in this project, it's an "old school" scratchbuilt flavour, which I prefer as it ensures that none of my terrain looks like anybody else's. Sure the 3D printed parts may look like another project, but it is how we use the parts given to us which differ, and that most of the trenches and craters are all scratchbuilt mean they won't be repeated down the line.

I decided, as I had the lid up on the table for photograph's, to take some of the mat with trenches and miniatures in use.
So here are some of my Deathwatch Astartes fighting it out with my Tyranids:

Before spraying the fleece:

After spraying the fleece, doesn't it make such a difference to the look:

I'm getting real old-GW feel from this project already, remember back in 5th edition Fantasy, 3rd/4th edition 40k when they would always include a homemade terrain building section in the hobby area of the book.

Better times.

Next for this project, when I get some free time to invest, I think will definitely be a set of minefields and more craters, before I start on the opposite side trenchworks.
I also have another terrain project in mind, which would work well for this trenchworks table, and a desert themed table, nut that's currently coming off the 3D printer. 


Until next time, have nice day...

Trench Warfare - part 5.

 

As the trench wae table grinds on, I turned my attention to something other then trenches.

I wanted a bit of variety in terrain and was going to make a catered hill or a blasted wood...so I chose to combine the two ideas I to one piece.

An idle Sunday evening after work sparked then idea to start as I looked at the huge 80m coil of pinning wire I use on models.

Several strands of this were cut loose at about twelve inches length and then twisted together to give a very rough tree armature.

Bloodgor Barry is present for scale.

More wire strands were cut and twisted together and around the original armature to make some branches at different heights.

Two other trees were made at the same.time, one taller and the other shorter then the original.

I also took a carving knife to a chunk of insulation polystyrene and made my hill and crater, glued to a 6mm MDF base.

The tree armatures were roughly placed at thisntime to get an idea of what would fit where. 

Next steps.were to cover the exposed foam with a layer of aluminium foil to smooth it out, before adding a mixture of interior filler AND PVA glue to create the landform.

This tenique was also tried on the tree by mixing some.basing sand Antonio as well, to imitate some tree bark textures.

Again Bloodgor Barry makes an appearance.

When ground cover was being thrown at the hill,  I started with a layer of neat PVA and some pet wood shavings to get a rough, fallen branches type look, before spraying everything with watered down PVA and throwing basing sand over it all...three times.

Here you can see how the wood shavings breaknupnthe flat surface ofnthe top of the hill.

After spraying the hillnwith brown primer,  I turned my attention to the trees, having done the same aluminium foil and watered down filler/PVA mix, I thenfolled them in a tub of ground up wood shavings to make more of a tree texture, I don't think they're bad for a first attempt.

I hit them with successive sprays of grey primer, light and mid brown and some NATO camo green i had lying around. This gets a variety of the similar shaded colours onto the trees and stops them just being GREY or BROWN, as real trees aren't just one colour.

You can also see how the positioning has changed frombthe previous photos.

I wanted the original tree to be 'off center' and bent one of the root segments upwards, as if the blast which made the crater had dislodged the tree.

Then, and i didn't take photos of this section of the build unfortunately,  I bedded the trees into the groundform with again with a mix of PVA, sand and filler, and then I went over it to make it stronger with AK Sandy Desert texture paste mixed with sand.

These were then all blended into the ground through painting my usual ground base colour recipe and the usual.black/grey for the crater.

This black/grey was added to the tree on the edge of the crater, to show that side had been burnt by the explosion.

Finally here is the finished piece on my fleece playing cloth.

This is the first piece of terrain I have added to this set which isn't a crater or trench, so I'm glad with how it turned out to match everything else.

The trees were a first attempt and not bad, definitely room for improvement,  but I'm working towards that. The lack of foliage and branches comes from historical World War 1 photos of woodland which had been shelled.

Often there would be the trunks of the trees stood upright with no branches (or very few) and i wanted to replicate that on my model.

Which, as I said there was room for improvement,  I think I've achieved my goal which I wanted to represent.

I haven't added as many trees as you'd normally find in a heavily wooded area, as I do want my terrain to be playable at the end of the day.

Another piece of terrain down, more craters i think next, possibly some barbed wire stands as I've seen a building guide on how to make them in the WW1 style, rather then the Czech Hedgehogs from WW2, which i have made a few of.

Until next time, have nice day...

Trench Warfare - part 4.

 

The Trench Terrain is carrying on on the build table, whilst happy with the progress I have been making i decided I wanted to create a strong point which would become a focus of the games on my table sometimes.

I picked up a 3D printed flak bunker from Ebay for less then £10 and figured it would be a great command bunker for my purposes.

I started by cutting a base for the piece from my usual 6mm MDF and bevelled the forward edges. I took pains to make the joins fit between pieces #1 and #3, so this is a replacement for the catered section of trench from the last post.

As usual to add more interest to the piece, things like a crater were added, and the angles for the trench walls were drawn on, diagonally leading to the sides of the bunker rather then straight like the last pieces.

Again a more organic shape was created for the base as this side is all the mud and debris which has been caused by the battle, the other "man made" side where the trench is is a straight line to delineate the trench and for contrast against the battlefield side:

Given that the roof of the bunker was removable as delivered, I then took time to add some 1mm magnets to both the walls and the roof, so it will stay in place even during gameplay:

And the basic landforms are now in place, using my usual ground of 5mm foam core with a drainage ditch and some polystyrene insulation for the landforms:

And now with the first mixture of paint, PVA and interior filler added to the "dirt" areas:

I didn't use the aluminium foil on this piece, and this photo from the 'front' shows how bobbly and silly the ground looks at this point due to the shapes of the polystyrene:

So it was on with another layer of PVA and interior filler, smooth smooth out some of the ground and make it look more natural:

Nownwith added sand for ground texture:

I took time to really work the ground form up to the bunker walls and make it look embedded into the ground properly:

And i added some patches of sand to the roof and interior of the bunker to represent the accumulated dirt from boots and explosions causing flying debris as the war has gone on:

Roof:

Interior:

After spraying the piece to lock the textures in, the long job of planking the trench was started.

Again as before these are cut down coffee stirrers and barbecue skewers for the upright posts:

A step formthe side of the bunker was added for detail and the ladder was glued on at this point:

Thoughts then turned to making this piece look more "lived in" rather then just a box.

I had a lot of equipment crates I had previously 3D printed out of a collection of stowage STLs I had purchased and a selection of these were printed for the project:

A crater of rifles and a storage box added to the roof:

On the outside i added a bunch of large crates to one side of the bunker and made a tarp to cover them out of a bandage soaked in PVA glue and teased into position, a small coil of barbed wire was added for detail. On the opposite side, I added a pile of misprinted sandbags, using the worst of the misprints as the base and building ontop of them using good prints to make a supply stack:

For the interior i wanted some equipment, so kitbashed this vox station for 40k games out of the screen from a rhino APC, bits of a Cadian box and a Servo Skull:

And using four crates and some.mlre chopped coffee stirrers, I made a briefing table:

When placed inside the bunker with some more equipment:

After adding sandbags tomthebtop of the trench walls and spraying everything with a mid brown from Maston, I decided to see how the bunker was looking next to Trench section #1:

Painting then started and following a paint guide for concrete from the 4th edition 40k rulebook, I started the bunker off with a "Dark Flesh" colour, whilst picking out equipment with a military green, sandbags with an off-white/bone and the duck boards with the usual Baneblade Brown:

I didn't take a photo, but the entire piece was then washed with my homemade dark brown wash. The bunker then got dry brushed with a Mid-Grey and a lighter grey to build up the concrete colour, and finally a light dry brush of Bone which is my ground highlight colour:

On the ground front, the ground followed my usual dark - light brown dry brushes and highlighted with a bone colour, the crater was the usual black through grey up to a highlight of light grey:

At this point the build was basically complete and i was happy with how it had turned out.

But there was one thing missing I felt...some actual lived in feel...

A quick Google search of WW1 aerial photography (when it was in its infancy) turned up some lovely map type photographs which would be perfect.

With a bit of trial and error in MSpaint* I resized them and printed them in black and white.

A larger map was glued to the table, I want to go back in with some scaled mugs and mess tins to add a little more detail.

A group of spare coffee stirrer planks were glued together to make a notice board and two of the maps were glued to it and it was added to one of the interior walls.

All of the maps were given a light drybrush of bone to add some dust which would have accumulated**.

On the next wall I glued a magnet, this would be hidden by whichever piece of equipment I added for that game:

The 40k Vox machine:

A historical attack map:

On the outer wall i added a warning sign, blended into the piece with dry brushing again. 

It reads "Stay in trench during daylight'

With the detailing complete, all that was left was to finish off the base with a black edge like I do to my miniatures for neatness sake and the bunker was ready to hit the field.

To that end I threw it onto the table along with a few other pieces and some miniatures to get these final glamour shots of the piece:

You can see the way the table is heading, but I need more terrain to fill it as it is still awfully bare, but the project is ongoing after all.

I'm either going to work on a fortified Observation Post crater or a wrecked vehicle for the table next I think.

Until next time, have nice day...

*MSPaint, the original and greatest image software ever.

**Given at work we can put a train list down and in the time it takes to go to the toilet, said list can already have a film of dust over it. Adding it to the maps in this case doesn't feel too much of a stretch.