Action Station!

Having started the latest pint-sized Chain of Command campaign "Old Hickory" against new oppo Ian (this time I get to play as Germans), I saw in one of the scenarios there is a train station. I've already got a lot of Normandy buildings for 15mm but don't have a station so I set out to add one to the collection.

I had in mind what I was looking for. The building at the top of this photo is the station in Bayeux, Normandy. On previous trips many years ago I'd stayed in the Hotel de Gare (bottom right) and the view each morning from my attic window was of the station some 50 yards away.

 

Searching on eBay turned up this Auhagen kit in TT scale. There were many other stations but many of them looked too German while this one was near enough. Unsure exactly now suitable TT was for 15mm I decided to jump in with both feet. I was NOT disappointed!

The kit arrived next morning from Wales & I set about putting it together.

I quickly got the main structure assembled but decided to leave the windows and detailing until after I'd painted the main building.

I cut a base (which would eventually include an enclosed stock yard) and gave the whole building a rough and ready base coat of chocolate brown craft paint to add some depth to the finish.

Next came a heavy drybrush of the walls. The windows with the kit came in white plastic, but remembering that the ones I'd seen were green I sprayed them and all the other fittings before drybrushing them too. Paul had given me some white Wills picket fencing in HO scale when he moved out so in a lightbulb moment I resolved to use them for my perimeter.

After working up the roofing and stone areas I added the doors, windows, gutters, fencing and the clock on the platform. Heavy drybrushing again to the base area made of hardboard. I like the pseudo-cobbled effect it gives so I use that a lot now. When finished I fixed the building down with No More Nails and added the grass.

Finished station with some 15mm paras for scale.

Another scale shot with a DD Sherman crossing the line.

I'm really pleased with the final outcome. It fits in a treat with my other buildings. Having been time consuming and relatively expensive (this kit was £18) I'd only recommend going this route when specialist structures are needed, But I'd definitely confirm that TT scale stuff is a great match for 15mm!

This should see its' debut within the next week or so in Mortain.

Jonny & the Diggers (part 2)

With just under six weeks to go until OML3 "The Lardest Day" I took the opportunity at last night's club to have a dress rehearsal for this year's Sari Bair-A Ridge Too Far Gallipoli game. I'm lucky enough to have been lent a great deal of the scenery and figures needed, but this would be the first time I would actually get to see both Mike Hobbs' and Alan Sheward's kit mixed together. The object of the evening was not so much sort out the final layout, but to see if there were any glaringly obvious omissions which would need to be sorted before the event.

View from the Anzac approach. There's about a 20"(50cm) rise from the near edge to the top of the slope.

I already had a plan in mind of how I wanted the table to look. 6' x 6'. A long sloping rise, based on two foot square tiles with a cloth overlay. Gallipoli is surprisingly much more verdant than would first be assumed with plenty of vegetation (cotton bushes, long grasses & even pine trees!) as well as the pale rocky soil. I found some more useful items while packing away at the end of the evening which I'll probably find use for on the day.

Another view from the bottom of the slope. I've hatched a plan to try to make it a little steeper (hopefully still allowing the figures to stand!)

Mike's trenches would form the Turkish line at the top. The trenches were often short, not too deep and not necessarily joined. so I'd opted for two 24" lengths on either flank with communication lines running to the rear on both sides.

Turks pour fire down on the approaching Anzacs from their trenches.

I'll be trying to make the dry stream bed at the foot of the slope more obvious and the lighter hills will maybe end up beneath the cloth too. There are more grass tufts to use on the day also. Again, the conundrum will be to provide more scenery without necessarily increasing the cover too much. I'm hoping that the folds in the ground will be the biggest source of concealment.

View along the Turkish lines.

Although I'm acutely aware that the Chain of Command mechanics for this stage of WW1 may provide a tad "vanilla" gaming experience, I'm hoping that the challenge of the terrain, objective and scenario may encourage the use of some of the less obvious options of approach to each phase. It differs hugely from the WW2 CoC game format. Most of the troops being armed with only rifles. No LMG's, little in the way of grenade usage and no fire teams! At this stage in warfare battles were still being conducted on a company level at least. So this will form only part of the picture as a couple of Anzac platoons are on table with the smallest manoeuvre element being 8-9 man sections. The HUGE Turkish platoons (83 men strong!) will only be represented in part also.

Anzac sections begin the long, unenviable slog up hill under heavy fire.

I'll be giving a lot of consideration to support choices too. A defensive machine gun or pre-assault bombardment can totally skew a game for either side. so it'll be a fine line to tread I fear.

This will need some thought. Maybe some "jamming" rules will be introduced? :^)

Lots more reading up should hopefully help in shaping the finer points of the game. overall I'm fairly happy with the way it's moving. It's all about making it playable from here.

Finally, the view from the top.

As always, please excuse the quality of the photos.



I Have Mostly Been Painting.....

Things have stepped up a gear as is customary now the warmer weather has finally arrived, the nights are getting lighter and OML3 draws ever closer.

With the upcoming 6th game in mine & Bob's fight through of Kampfgruppe von Luck requiring a church as it's main feature I had decided to source some much overdue gravestones and to revamp the church I owned.


A fairly cluttered table held 3 projects running concurrently (I get bored easily).

 The church I already had was the one from my old Landmark range (now owned and being heavily discounted to clear by Timecast). As fantastic a model as it is, I always thought that some of the buildings in the range had a touch too much green in them for a Normandy look, the church being the most obvious case. So I took the opportunity while painting the gravestones to give it a total repaint. I decided that I would mount the graves on some spare FoW small & medium bases so they could be removed for troop placement during play. Along with the church project, the embarrassment of not having enough walling to do the whole layout in the "Corridor of Death" scenario had prompted the completion of another 11 & 1/2 feet of new walling. This would take my total of free standing wall to a whopping 23 & 1/2 feet. If that wasn't enough now it never would be!


View from the front of the newly painted church with it's completed graveyard

I was really pleased with the outcome. I also decided to repaint the surrounding wall (also too "green") and grass around the base to match in with my other buildings.

I'm looking forward to getting this on the table for the Flank at Ranville scenario

As you'll also be able to make out in the top photo, more work has taken place on the Sari Bair Gallipoli game for this year's OML3 event. My order from Warbases had arrived!

Undercoated casualty figures to use as shock markers were mounted on 40mm discs and terrain added. Again the dice & frames to track shock were from Minibits.

 

I'd sourced some fantastic "clutter" items from Grand Manner's WW1/Colonial range to eventually mount on 30mm discs to create Jump Off Points. All of my senior and junior leaders were going to be mounted on 25mm a/f hex bases to ease recognition on the battlefield.

To bring the infantry into line with modern times, I'm rebasing them onto 25mm discs too. This would be my first widespread use of MDF bases for normal troops, having always previously made best use of coins of the realm....ahem. In the background you'll also notice the new patrol markers. Some internet clip art, laminated and mounted on 50mm discs are just the job.

Hopefully in the next few days I'll have an update showing completed versions of all the above. Mike Hobbs also visited yesterday to deliver all of the trenches, wire, craters and Anzacs for the project so there will no doubt also be some "mock up" shots as I tinker about. 

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

No, this is nothing to do with Basil Brush (Brits only I suspect), or the collected works of the eminent war poet Private Baldrick and not even a "How To" but more of a "How I".

After their use attracted comments in the recent CoC game, I decided to go about making my own barrage/explosion markers. There are any number of useful tutorials on the web (I know because I looked them up), but they all use slightly differing approaches so I cherry-picked and added a bit and this is what I came up with.


All you'll ever need.....

After gathering my materials I made note of the following:

1) Don't use the best Milliput.

2) Don't worry about the colour of the clump foliage

3) Don't use good superglue (my stuff was the 5 for £1 that you can get from Super Savers etc.)

 

 

First step was to make some rough armatures by pushing bamboo skewer into the centre and varying lengths of cocktail stick into the sides of the Milliput at differing angles.

Next is the most laborious part. After the first couple I settled on a technique of skewering small clumps of clump foliage and building up rings. I deliberately left up to 5mm of the cocktail sticks at the ends as I had a plan.

Next I sprayed them thoroughly with Halfords matt black primer. When they'd dried out I dry brushed first a mid-grey tone in strokes from the top down stopping short of the lowest parts and followed with a lighter grey, again stopping even higher up.

After raiding my son's 40K paints I picked one of the thick pigment "Base" colours and wet brushed quite vigorously into the base areas of each plume and painted the ends of the cocktail sticks.

I repeated the same process with a lighter red in sparser amounts and further up the tips again.

Then I repeated the first red stage with a "Base" yellow. All the time trying where possible to keep the brush strokes vertical up the plumes.

And again with a lighter yellow.

Finally the tips of the cocktail sticks were whitened. I wanted to represent shards of white hot metal/earth or whatever projecting out of the smoke. I'd decided if the idea didn't work, I'd just go back and foliage up to the ends (but I actually think it looks OK!) 

Very soon I'd finished all ten (the tenth was out of shot for the next picture)

Very happy with the final result, I'll be more than happy to use them for vehicle explosions as well as just artillery blasts.

After putting off making them for so long, I'm likely to add a few more in the near future. Next time I'll maybe try attaching the foliage before inserting the sticks into the Milliput to see if that makes thing easier.



A Life in Ruins?

 

 As previously mentioned, I had been inspired by Derek Hodge's work here http://dereksweetoys.com/2014/07/even-more-ruins/ and had decided that as lovely as my Normandy scenery was looking it all looked a little too 'nice'. While Normandy is indeed very beautiful (a lot like Cornwall but with more interesting stuff to see), it didn't look quite as quaint once the war-waging nations of WW2 had thrown frankly enormous quantities of munitions at it for 3-4 months. What I set out to depict was something more akin to the look of Villers Bocage AFTER shots.

I gathered together all of the suitable ruins I'd had secreted away in the garage for over 5 years

My little hoard was going to be enough to enable me to put out a decent little ruined hamlet at least. There would be a total of 9 houses and a church. Pictured above are six multi-based houses from http://www.fieldworks.org.uk/ (which honestly could have been left as-is but I was aiming for an overall more unifying look), a single storey shell which came with a Jagdpanther kit by Battlefront & the small church donated by my mate Garry (manufacturer unknown). Added to these would be a pair of buildings from Tiger Terrain (I've heard a whisper that these may be making a return with a proper website soon!)

All the buildings were washed in soapy water then got a customary basecoat with Halfords Grey Primer.

I had a rummage in my bits box and turned up some old Missing Link craters and varying pieces of wall left over from when I built the in-tact versions. I scrubbed the grass scatter off the craters and cut fibre board bases for the varying groups of ruins.

Two of the now singly based Field Works buildings with Tiger ruined walls & ML craters.

Same combination. This time with a Tiger crater and the start of some home-made rubble .

Battlefront & FW buildings with Tiger walls and crater

FW buildings (from the multi-bases) Tiger walls & ML craters.

The two Tiger buildings with Landmark Low Walls & ML crater

I magnetised the roofs of these two building to prevent them wandering during games. I took the Dremel to the wall and spayed the inside of the downstairs of both buildings black before attaching them to their base. All of the items were fixed down with NO More Nails. The rubble was made by using Rich Clarke's mix of tile grout and PVA to make a fairly thick paste. Piling that around the buildings and craters before pushing in large pieces of Gale Force Nine rubble, some granulated drain pipe (available from Sgt.'s Mess) then varying grades of Talus (a form of lightweight railway ballast apparently) and finally sprinkling a layer of fine sand to marry it all together.

 

 

The church base after rubble and filler to the walls

 The next step was to base all of the buildings with a thorough coat of chocolate brown acrylic floor paint. This was a tip I was given by old pal Dave Bodley of Grand Manner. I must admit, they looked awful after the brown coat & I panicked a little that they were literally ruined!

Much happier after I'd added some colour!

Then began nearly three days of dry-brushing frenzy. Although I ended up using a palette of six different shades of stone and earth, the end result isn't that apparent in the photos. After looking very 'samey' initially, they really took on a more lively appearance after the grass was added.

 

 

The luckier side of the village!

That alley will no doubt make a great ambush point.

The not-so-lucky side.

The unluckiest place. That's SOME crater!

The whole bunch comfortably take up 2x3 feet square. Enough for CoC or IABSM.

I'm all together quite pleased with how they've turned out. I'm still going to add a little soot in the pock marks in the walls and may keep an eye out for any additional buildings to add while I'm at Derby show. I'm looking forward to giving them a run out in the next couple of weeks at a club night.

Best laid plans.......

Well, that was longer than anticipated!

I've been a tad tardy on the blogging front of late, but like a serene image of a swan on the river, there's plenty going on out of sight.

I could spout any number of excuses as to my lack of blogging. From the school holidays, the good weather, my wife taking some holiday etc. but to be honest, the single biggest factor has been.....

Welcome to our family Maya!

As I spend so much time alone, it had been decided that some company might be a good idea. In a stroke of good fortune, friends of friends were looking to re-home their 2 year old Husky/Staffy cross. I've discovered one of the most enjoyable aspects of dog ownership. There are a large number of wonderful walks ending in beer gardens locally!

Anyhow, back to hobby stuff. As I mentioned I'd not been idle.

First up I laid into my ever enlarging Sherman collection. I'd decided some time ago that as I had enough now I'd actually decal them up with specific unit markings.

Production line. Somehow a few Universal Carriers slipped in too!

I picked up 10 more Sherman II's for a bargain £20 on eBay. Although there's a leaning toward folks believing that all British late war Shermans were V's, the 4th & 8th Armoured Brigades were still equipped with large numbers of II's at the onset of the Normandy Campaign. I added in a couple of Sherman Ic 'Firefly's' to make up troops and a DD to support my paras in their early encounters.

The first four mark II's have been decalled as 4th with their black rat emblem. These would be handy for games in both Operation Epsom & Goodwood settings and they even supported Highland Division troops east of the Orne.

On that subject, the first six carriers also received decals for The Highland Division. The DD got a 'Pregnant Pilchard' (the seahorse emblem on 13/18th Hussars tanks) and large red turret numbers.

All the decals were again sourced from the excellent http://www.domsdecals.com/

Paul next door and me also started our new CoC At The Sharp End campaign (one for another post) between his TWO holidays in the last month!

With the lack of gaming, I've taken advantage to clear a project I've had lined up for some time. Having taken inspiration from Wee Derek's efforts http://dereksweetoys.com/2014/07/even-more-ruins/, I dug out my collection of ruined buildings and set about creating the less picturesque side of Normandy. Pictures will follow.

I've also invested in a new project for CoC. A good deal of time has been spent trawling the interwebs sourcing new scenery, vehicles, a few figures, some Niiice buildings and even a TRAIN! for:

Go East young man!

Rumour has it a platoon (plus) of winter panzergrenadiers may have been painted too. Post to follow.

Finally, next Saturday sees another Wyvern Wargamers all-dayer where the members get the chance to set up a bigger game than on club nights and have at it for longer. I'm massively looking forward to this one as none other than Big Rich himself has accepted the invite to play (not umpire) in a game of 15mm Big CoC! I have the scenario in mind. There'll be five players in total. Yet ANOTHER blog topic for what promises to be a busy week.

The genie is out of the bottle!