Supermarket find

At my local Morrison's the other day I spotted these:

My initial thought was, "those must be useful for something" so at £1.50 for a pack of three I thought it worth experimenting. If nothing else we'd have some more cloths to use in the kitchen!

They fold out into three 40cm-squarish sheets. The material is about 1.5mm thick, matt white and with a felt-like texture but slightly stiffer. They're certainly cheaper than buying those felt squares you can get at Hobbycraft. 

So far I'm envisaging three potential uses:

1. As the water-absorbent layer in a makeshift wet palette (I'm trying this out and it seems to work with a layer of grease-proof paper on top),
2. Cut into suitable shapes as snow-covered fields for 1/300th scale winter games, and
3. Potentially to add a temporary layer of snow to the roofs of 1/300th buildings.

I guess the next job is to see how well they take to being coloured with acrylic paints. I'm not sure what additional uses that might open up but I'll report back here if I find any.

More free stuff!

One of my ideas for Sharp Practice is to run a scenario that involves the Mississippi Marine Brigade assaulting Confederate defensive positions along the river. Along the front of the rebels' position would be a line of pickets in makeshift rifle pits.

Using bits from my stash of spare parts I was able to make these guys...

As with the earlier Confederate dismounted cavalry, the torsos are from the Warlord WSS Cavalry boxed set. A couple of the heads are from the Warlord Colonial Militia, while the rest were cobbled together by cutting down Perry Zouaves' heads and adding hats from the same company's ACW infantry. The Perry set also provided the muskets.

One figure has acquired a cavalryman's trumpet, presumably to augment the rebel yell when necessary. A chap in the rear rank has a repeating carbine from the ACW cavalry box while the chap at the centre of the front rank holds a beer bottle that I turned on a makeshift lathe from a length of wooden cocktail stick!

Total cost - negligible; probably the most expensive thing being the four round MDF bases. Even the two oval ones were cut out of spare material.

There are a few more cavalry torsos left in the spares box and I might have a go at using a couple of them to complete a US engineer bridge demolition team. Pictures to follow later!