15mm Terrain progress

Hi folks,

This week has consisted of trying to make more progress on my infantry, but I've been getting distracted a bit by terrain!

Thankfully I did get a big chunk of the infantry blocking it done last night, so I'm still on track. But I also managed to 'finish off' a couple of the buildings I got at Partizan.

First up, a small railway station and a barn from Ironclad Miniatures. These are resin kits and come in a couple of parts (building and roof for the barn, and roof, building and platform for the railway station).

Scale wise, I'm pretty happy although the barn might be a bit small compared to some of the other buildings. The doors seem to be the same height, so will have to see how it looks once all set up.

And for scale with one of my vehicles - perhaps it's being used as a first aid post!

Ironclad Miniatures 'Eastern Front' railway station - if I had the station on a base board it would sit a bit higher against the Battlefront railway track. 

The station with the roof off! The building itself is very stylistically similar to the Battlefront signals box I have. 

Ironclad Miniatures 'Normandy Barn' - I added some ivy using some leaf flock I have. 

For scale with some of my recently finished infantry. 

The barn was very easy to paint. I just sprayed both models and roofs with a dark yellow primer, painted the stonework on the barn beige brown and washed with AP soft tone, then drybrushed up with Desert Yellow. I did the door and window sills with straight Desert Yellow and the doors a random green. The windows I just painted in black as I didn't think there would be glass used in this outbuilding. The ivy was an afterthought but I think it came out ok.

The station was similar, but I tried to use the same tones as the other buildings I have for the render, and a bit more reddy brown for the stonework/brickwork. I decided it would have a lead roof, as went for a drybrushed up grey (again, keeping to the same rough roof colour as my other buildings).

For FoW, both buildings will fit in one medium and one small FoW base - so not as big as the FoW train station (which can hold 4 mediums, I think) but the model was only £7.50 and another £2 for the platform. The barn was also £7.50.

Ironclad do have a range of other scenery options - I really really liked the look of their 15mm resin fencing.

I also used the time today with my background setup to get some pictures of my church with the other items I have been working on. Namely the Tiger Terrain walls and Blotz MDF gravestones. The surface was a bit bumpy, as my green cloth was folded up due to the space (I really need to get a different matt as well, one with static grass or a nicer effect rather than just felt).

These Tiger Terrain walls are excellent - and seeing them with the church has actually made me reconsider painting the church. It's not as dark as I remember it being and to be honest the whole setup worked well. I may need to order a few more wall sections and possibly more gravestones just to fill up the space a bit better. But some shrubbery and the likes would not go amiss here either.

The whole setup - plus some extra gates and corners - cost me £20.05 including postage. That was for 29 well made, detailed resin wall sections (including corners, gate posts and gates). There is no web store on the page, but I emailed the owner with the details of what I wanted and he sent a 'proper'  Paypal invoice that left me with no concerns. The items were delivered pretty quickly and communications with Stephan were excellent. I highly recommend checking out his site, as he has a range of other buildings and walls - and I'll be getting some more stuff soon, I suspect!

The gravestones are by Blotz and were the cheaper option than paying a silly amount for 4Ground ones. You get 29 15mm grave stones, which I put on FoW bases and used a little of my basing material to blend in. Then I just covered in static grass. The effect is basic, but just helps fill in the space.

I've also been experimenting with options for making the space look a bit busier.

The shrubs here are made from different shades of 'clump' stuck onto one of my old painting lolipop sticks. I'm thinking that with the sticks cut to relevant lengths they could sit along the gable ends of buildings and the likes. While not terribly realistic looking, they do look pretty good from a distance, and seem to help the buildings sit a bit better in the space.

I've still the Warbases MDF Barn to paint, just having built it today. And some buildings to finish off (those I bought from Lee).

This week I also received a load of trees - mainly Busch trees bought from Amazon. Poplars (must have Poplars for Normandy, right?!), varying sizes normal trees and from Ebay (via China) some 15mm scale 'apple' trees. The chinese trees were really cheap - less than £5 for 20 I think, but a couple of them are in poor shape. Still, the rest will help me populate some Normandy orchards! I just need to get them all based up at some point. I also got the mixed bag of Lichen as it will help fill gaps and add greenery where it's needed on the table.

The smaller sized trees will do for scattering around my town/gardens, while the larger once will do for woods and the likes. I also got some 'poplars' from a cheap site online, but they are such poor quality as to be useless. I may attempt to save them at some point with PVA and clump...

I also finished off all my outstanding wheat fields (doormat) sections - although I'm concerned that I didn't put enough thought into the cutting up of this - time and a chance to set up all the terrain - will tell!

So, still needed seems to be:

More dividing walls for inside the town
base boards for the buildings
items for gardens
pathways/lanes
more outbuildings
possibly more gravestones
more hedgeline - with some farm gate and breached hedge solution

The Other Partizan 2017 - Game report and loot!

Hi Folks,

A very interesting and enjoyable weekend was had with Martin and Dave down at Newark for 'The Other Partizan'. My first time at this show and it was really nice to see various retailers and tables which don't travel as far north as us.

Firstly, a slight diversion! We started the morning with Martin and I taking a quick walk over the road from our hotel to the Polish Wargave site. While the cemetery is mainly filled with Polish war dead, there were other Commonwealth graves as well. A very nice location and something I didn't know was there. There was also a memorial to the aircrew lost trying to supply Warsaw during the uprising there. The graveyard was well kept and the Polish grave stones look very smart. Mainly the headstones appeared to be for aircrew, but in one section I looked at there were Poles, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders:

Onto the show after a quick breakfast...

Game wise, Dave had put on a massive Sudan game (similar to the game of his which is covered briefly in this months interactive Wargames Illustrated!). Myself and Martin were the Imperial commander. I'm not doing a full on battle report, having done a short video instead:

Martin has a battle report here, while Dave has his split in two parts, here and here.

Dave's collection is impressive in it's detail and scale. We had a lot of people stop by the table to ask questions and talk about his collection. There were a lot of great games on display (and to be honest, I didn't see them all, being caught up in playing and shopping!).

Shopping wise, I picked up a selection of stuff:

Magnetic sheeting, the new hardback Battlegroup rules, the first book in the 'Armoured Hussars' series (about the Polish 1st Armoured Division), some spray paints, cork chips, flowers, ultra mat varnish, a resin Normandy Barn, Railway station and MDF barn... 15mm wise, there was very little to chose from.

However, I did spot these:

Which are a small scale set of mini's from Vanguard. They have been painted up to look like 40k models, but the vehicles themselves are not 40k models. The APC's are based on British 432's, for example. The larger tanks have different hull shapes to the 40k ones, etc. The infantry were teeny but the detail level on these was superb. A definite future project for me I think!

Also of interest, I spotted this at the Old Glory stand:

Again, not something that fits with what I'm doing currently... but maybe a project idea for later. Really cool mini.

And also these:

Which also caught my eye. Possible 1/3000 Naval games in the future? Anyone know any good rules?

So that's it really, I'll stick some pictures I took from the game and the show below!

Finished! British Infantry and Pioneers, Church Walls + Partizan 20/08/17

Hi folks,

Busy week for me hobby wise. I finished one batch of British Infantry and made a start on my next batch. I got as far as undercoating flesh and putting the detail for the Tam'o'shanters on the beret wearing chaps for the first 6 or so squads worth. Pics of the 1st batch I finished:

Pre grass and tufts!

1st Platoon, B Company, 7th ASH

Bit of a closer shot, where you can see I still need to work on faces, but hopefully you can make out the beret to Tam'o'shanter conversions!

I really wasn't happy with this batch of flower tufts. I'll be looking for replacements this weekend!

Pioneer platoon, B Company, ASH - using older BF figures with lots of Bangalores. One team with a flamethrower. 

Really love these older scuplts - a pleasure to paint!

Stuck with 4 men to a base for all these units - means I have to paint less but also reflects the depleted manpower of the units!

Following that, I got distracted by terrain!

This mainly involved adding some detail to one of the houses I acquired from Lee last year. I've lots of rubble in my village, but not a lot of fire damage, so set about remedying that!

I also managed to get the walls I bought from Tiger Terrain done - I'll get a better review of these done soon:

There were a few little bits I tidied up following this photo, but these will be the walls for my churchyard, with a few spare gates for around town.

I also got some paint on my Timecast haystacks I picked up at York the year before last.

This afternoon I'm prepping to head off to Newark for the 'Other Partizan' show tomorrow. Tonight will be spent having some curry and beer with Dave D and Martin C, before we put on one of Dave's big Sudan display games tomorrow. If your at the show, stop by and say hello!