A Little German Countryside

I've jumped back into terrain making trying out a couple of ideas I've had recently. My plan is to build up some terrain that can be used for upcoming Team Yankee games and further afield maybe some Pikeman's Lament. So I'm basically looking at a West German setting separated by a few centuries in time.

First up is the basic mat that I'll be using for taking pictures. One day I'll make a full sized mat but for now I like making these smaller 1' by 2' ones. I'm also using it as a test bed to try out a different technique for flocking.

The construction was done the same as the one I did up for my red terrain previously.

For flocking I wanted a more natural fade to edges of the vegetation so the entire mat was painted with a thinned white glue mixture with a touch of brown ink in it. Then the flock was sprinkled on through a sieve held about a foot over the mat.

After this dried I knocked off the excess and used a hand sprayer to hit the whole mat again with the same watery glue mix. I let it really soak in to hopefully hold everything on. I also sprinkled some secondary layers of turf in patches to give more texture.

The extra glue has really fixed the turf in place without any unforseen problems. I was a little worried I might get a shine or discoloration from the glue.

I covered the left side pretty completely but on the right its more sparse. This way I could use each side for different looks in pictures. 

The mat with some of my TYW terrain and Shotte.

Closer up shot in the lightbox. 

I also got in the start of my Team Yankee British so work on the Recce troop is up next. Also some more terrain pieces. 

Field Fortications

In between working on 40k related projects I've finished up two more sections of gabions. I had done all of the construction for each of these previously and just needed to base and paint them.

I packed the sand mix from the inside this time which was much easier. 

I put a shorter gabion on the end of each one. This way I can put them together a couple of different configurations with either firing positions for shot or as a larger position for a regimental gun.  I'll need a few more to make any real trench line but this group will do for a small revetment.

Imperial Shotte

My first unit is completed for my Imperialist forces. Well its really half a unit as it seems most infantry are in units of 12 in the rules.

I'm using the 1, 2, 3 basing method invented by Dalauppror. I think it's a really clever system that makes for nice looking unit. Still organized but not with the parade ground look you get from square bases.

 I wanted the whole force to match so instead of scraping together the various sized bases from what I had on hand I ordered a set of laser cut ones from Litko. I didn't get the bases until after they were mostly painted so there was a bit of a puzzle getting them to fit on the bases. I had planned out how they would fit together but didn't quite realize how tight they would be. I'm considering upping the diameter of the group bases to make it easier for them to fit but I also like the tight grouping.

The Siren Song of the Gabion

It's strange how sometimes simple things can capture your imagination. A gabion is little more than a big open-ended basket full of dirt but I've always been fascinated by the look of them. And yet I've never gotten the chance to make any due to never gaming a time period where they would be appropriate. ( I suppose I could have made some to go with the cannon in my Warhammer Empire army, but they misfired and exploded so often that they would have served more as protection for the rest of my army from cannon shrapnel than anything else.)

So when I decided to do some 30 Years War the first thing I wanted to make was some gabions. There are a lot of nice resin and even plastic models out there but I decided to make mine from scratch out of wire.

My first attempt showed it was a little harder than I first thought. I salvaged some different sizes of copper wire from an old light fixture for the uprights and used some thin florists wire for the weaving. My first method was to stick the uprights into a piece of pink foam and weave the wire around them. In order to get the wire to look right you need an uneven number of support poles. Unfortunately the pink foam didn't hold them well enough and when I resorted to superglue to reinforce the structure it ate away at the foam making the situation even worse. I still ended up with two usable gabions even though they look like they were made by some drunken sappers.

My first two done. The Saxon is only for scale but looks doubtful about this being the future of warfare.  

For the third attempt I drilled holes in some scrap wood to make a jig to hold the uprights. This worked out much better although there was some difficulty extricating it once complete.

Just starting to weave the gabion on the jig.

Next step was filling them with dirt. In this case I used some pink foam to plug up most of it and then smooshed a mix of sand, paint, and matte medium into the nooks and crannies. Next time I'll probably coat the inside with the dirt mixture first so that it presses up against the inside of the wicker work and then fill the rest with foam.

As is the norm I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the intermediate steps. This is just before getting ready to paint. 

I glued my three gabions together and I embedded them into a caulk base. After that it was finished up similar to my fields. There's room for improvement in the process but I think they weren't to difficult to make so I'm going to put together a few more sections to make a redoubt.

Merlin inspects the finished work.

Back into the Fields

Getting back into the swing of things I've decided to embark on a new miniatures project. I've been following along over the past year with the development of the The Pikeman's Lament at Dalauppror's blog. He has been working on a Thirty Years War version of Lion Rampant and if you have interest in the period or simply want to look at a lot of excellent miniatures across all periods you should check out his blog. Pikeman's Lament is scheduled for release in January so that gives me most of the year to get my stuff together.

While waiting for the first unit of figures to arrive I decided to make some plowed fields. These are basically the same as the one I made some time ago with a couple changes that I borrowed from a tutorial for flexible terrain on Dagger and Brush's blog.

I didn't have any plastic wrap so I used waxpaper instead. This turned out to be a mistake as its now stuck to the bottom of the piece. 

The first was using drywall joint tape as the base for the caulk. It makes it both stronger, thinner and more flexible than the felt I've used as a base before. I also glued a magnet onto one corner so I can attach individual pieces to it on the table. I'm thinking maybe a tree, wagon or other farming equipment. 

Next I spread the caulk over it. I've always had good luck with a paintable brown siliconized acrylic caulk so even though its a bit pricy that's what I used here. I used a chopstick to make some basic lines and the rest of the shaping was done with my fingers.

Next I sprinkled sand across it. The sand both adds texture and makes it less sticky when shaping.

The magnet is under the bits of grass in the upper right corner.

After that its the usual painting and flocking to finish it off. Since I don't have any miniatures painted up yet Launcelot and Merlin and are standing in for them.

I also got in the next stages for the project.