On the workbench

At the moment I have a few games in mind and I'm working on models to improve them. Let's review what's recently finished or soon working in order of when the games will take place...

On 22nd February I plan to re-run the Port Gibson scenario I designed as a spare game for Steel Lard. Hopefully it'll look much better on one of my recently acquired Geek Villain mats. In an effort to make the terrain look a little more North American I've created some lengths of split-rail or snake fencing.

They're made from balsa wood to a design from Mark Bretherton. I'm copying so much of his stuff at the moment!

For the same game I've also carved some spare Kingspan insulation material to go under the terrain mat and make a sunken road. I've not photographed that; I'm sure you can imagine it!

At the start of March I'll be going to Hammerhead to help Simon Miller run The Battle of Moonbroth,  a Gloranthan To The Strongest! scenario. Recently finished is a 12cm square base representing Oakfed, the Praxian wildfire spirit.

The idea was to portray fire burning across the chaparral leaving scorched earth and burned-out undergrowth in its wake. 

The base is one of Simon's wavy-edged laser-cut bases with two layers of foamcore on top. This allows me to mount three switched battery holders in the bottom layer. To them I soldered flickering LEDs from cheap tea lights bought from my local supermarket's discount section.

The LEDs shine out through holes cut into the top layer of foamcore over which I've glued patches of slightly dirtied interfacing material. I'm quite pleased with the effect but I fear it might be overwhelmed by the lighting in the Newark venue.

The bushes are made from twisted wire. The presence of an as-yet-unburned one indicates the front facing of the unit. I look forward to seeing how Simon's rules handle this.

In April I'll be running Action on the Northern Hills at Crisis Point. I've described the scenario previously and it requires a couple of artillery pieces for the Andreivian Armenian rebels. I'll be using WW2 Soviet artillery to stand in for them. I've recently completed this 122mm M1938 howitzer using one of the AB Miniatures crews I picked up at Vapnartak.

The guns need to be dug in for the scenario so I've made a sandbagged emplacement to represent this.

Also for the Northern Hills game I need an Andreivian Government platoon. I decided to upgrade my paratroops, which are based on the venerable and not-particularly-authentic Airfix paras.

The platoon has a small HQ with a commanding officer, a radio operator and a two-man LMG team. The latter was made by replacing the rifle of a prone para with the barrel of a modern British LMG from (I think Italeri). There's also a two-man bazooka team, a three-man medium mortar crew and two eight-man SMG squads. Some of the Airfix figures had badly moulded helmets. Where this was the case I added camo by painting the helmet with matt Modpodge and dipping it into mixed flock. After the Modpodge has dried I apply a second coat to seal in the flock.

This force is going to have excellent firepower but only at close range. It should be an interesting challenge for the Government player. 

Further down the line is the plan for Richard P and I to play some 1812 Sharp Practice. I already had one Russian village house from Charley Foxtrot but decided another would be useful. Unfortunately I asked for the wrong one for Christmas and duplicated the one I already have! 

In an effort to make the new one look different, I swapped the sides around. This was OK until I realised I now had both external doors in the same corner of the house! To fix that I built a lean-to extension out of foamcore clad with coffee stirrers.

The colour scheme of the windows (Vallejo Mahogany Brown and Cream) was taken from a colour photo of a modern Dacha.

Yet again copying The Tactical Painter, I decided to make some gardens to go with the houses. This is the prototype in production.

The base is a piece of PVC board. Mark used balsa wood for his fences but I wanted to produce something stronger. I designed the (currently white) supports in Tinkercad and then 3d printed them. Having super-glued them in place I added cut-up coffee stirrers to make the fence boards. The base is painted in Modpodge onto which I've poured sand. I did this in sections in case doing it in one go cause the base to warp. The next step will to give everything another coat of Modpodge before painting.

Finally for now, we'll soon play the final game of our Siege of Hachigata campaign using The Pikeman's Lament. I want to represent one side of the castle for our Takeda players to assault. A couple of additional wall sections will help with this...

The doors added to the two existing gateway sections gives a length that matches up with the new longer section in front. These two lenghts will let me deploy the existing walls sections nearer to the middle of the table (we established the layout of the front of the castle in a previous game).

That's all for now. I'll try to remember to post finished pics later.