Category: wargaming

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Scenery wargaming

Season of Scenery Challenge- part VIII – finale

A long while ago I had the desire to make some adobe buildings for cowboy skirmishes. However despite having the figures (admittedly only primed) and then my “what a tanker” playing partner getting “what a cowboy”, it still did not look good. Fortunately the challenge rolled up and provided the impetus I needed to get this project over the line – along with some more conventional items. Amazing where “cardboard packaging” can take you!

I have an old card table earmarked for skirmish play. The adobe buildings were just how they came out of the product boxes 😆 I then added some extra roofing with card and tissue paper plus pva. The two right hand regular buildings are from warbases basics range
You can’t beat Dixon 28mm cowboys for style
Lots of yellow ochre – the left hand building has received a dry brush. The packaging designer kindly included a base skirt which was decorated with pva and budgie grit.
Dry brush done and doors and windows (cornflake package) painted and dry brushed
Sunrise – the Mexican is at a disadvantage although he aimed first
Pistol high – who will bite the dust?
We may never know 🤠
A real New Mexico example in Santa Fe. For my quick build models I omitted the exposed logs – maybe next time.

So that’s it, 8 weeks of one hot dry summer and I have massively exceeded my expectations. I completed a lot of items and even though I started even more they are at least started and now have real homes rather than their sales boxes (thanks John the Varnish!)

For the analysts….. completions were

First module of my port,

two adobe buildings,

six earthen defences,

one artillery position

one aircraft base

flexible roads recoloured

two hills now also become a green defensible position

repaired damaged cardboard church

new self coloured HO Germanic church

two warbases Wild West buildings

two very old bellona low relief terraced houses

Two straight drainage ditch pieces

Finishing off stuff and even repairs/reworkings proved very satisfying.

The “starters” all happened to be kits and kicked off my challenge.

Blotz models Bronze Age fortress

Italeri French railway station building

Italeri north Italian church

warbases north German church

At least I have the measure of these pieces not least where and how to store them.

I probably have too many churches now……..

Funny that I did not finish the kits that I started the challenge with – given they were my absolute main targets – instead I started raking out cardboard and home building………

wargaming really is hilarious…..

Thanks Dave.

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Scenery wargaming

Season of scenery challenge part VII low relief housing and a ditch

Last year I started painting my Low relief housing. I bought two of these terraces back in the 1970’s and somehow these bellona pieces have not fractured into pieces. They are injection moulded and were the “resin prints” of their time.

One terrace in basic coats sat on my first port module
Low relief was popular railway modelling idea taken up by bellona

So I gave them a go and I must say the sculpture is brilliant. They were fun to paint. You can still buy injection moulded models – amera sell them via eBay in the uk. Alas I haven’t seen any terraced buildings.

Two terraces book ended by my hovels Dutch buildings with EWM latex roadways and then the ditch
Natural morning sunlight catches the detail well

In front of them are some early war miniatures road sections (flexible latex) last year I painted them but didn’t like the finish so they were back in the mix for a dry brush.

Finally there is the ditch. Basically more packaging fell into my eye line and I immediately thought – that’s useful. This is new packaging (not from the mountain!) and made the back end of the challenge displacing some other contenders.

They required no preparation.

Galena students burnt umber is rich and oily giving good coverage on this very dense cardboard
The ochre coating was necessary but not too obvious before the brandy cream which was a semi dry application
Very pleased with the low reliefs and also with the roadway while the ditch was an out of the blue late late entry which has exceeded my expectations

I gave the packaging a coat of burnt umber then one of yellow ochre and then brandy cream! dry brush before an autumn variety of Javis static grass. The ditch water was done with Paynes grey tube acrylic and then a shade of paynes grey with some ivory white added as a top coat.

Final shot which shows the early morning in colour somewhere in Rugia plus Mr Varnishes armour! (you know who you are 😊)

Last entry for the scenery challenge is next up

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Scenery wargaming

Season of scenery challenge part VI bits and bobs

First up is an Aircraft movement base. It was an unfinished piece from last year I think. Anyway it’s now got some scatter and is ready for some land planes – only trouble is I gave away my reconnaissance spitfire I did in AHPC14 https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/tag/fantasy/and now have just my “scrap heap” rescued spotter float biplane.

Actually the base could pass for a seaweed covered rock……

I need to get some aeroplane production going……

Next up is a complimentary piece for my recent fortifications. It’s an Artillery position fashioned from some corrugated card and unlike my recent port module this one went bananas. But I persevered and it’s finished with some dried tea – the brown granules and greenery.

Javis – shrub mixture added over dried tea leaves.
I richer lighting shows off the simple two coat dry brush of burnt sienna with coffee colour dry brush
A bit bendy
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wargaming

Season of scenery challenge – part V : defensive places

I guess I have a post in mind about how books influence my wargaming. In fact some books have been highly influential. “Charge or how to play wargames” is positively antiquated yet it was the played out scenario of Sittangbad at the end of the book that first gave me thoughts and ideas about temporary fortifications and a pontoon bridge for that matter.

Last year I did the pontoon thing.

https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/2024/08/23/across-the-weser-in-67/

This year I have finally created some defensive walls. They perfectly fit my need for a modular approach.

They had been part of my truly massive cardboard mountain. I say that because the mountain was actually distributed (lots of small unnoticed storage hills!!) until the other week when I gathered every bit I could find together: queue Mont Blanc before my eyes.

End result was a giant throw away session unless items could promise me some tangible scenery and sooner rather than later. These odd packing shapes of course were designed as fortifications made of earth.

A yuck raw sienna base coat

I am happy to report that these six cardboard packing pieces have now produced six earthen defensive walls suitably crenellated.

I have two of one type shown to the front and another shown as the other three.
A coffee colour dry brush neutralised the raw sienna to give me the look I wanted

I decided they may have been initially temporary at some time in the past but now are showing some age with greenery.

And of course there are always two sides to every wall from a weather point of view. I only grassed one side.

So one side is wet and greenery has grown well while the other side remains barren and dry.

Combined with some old scenery boards the fortifications give me a good representation of a strong defensive site
I had been toying with how to create defensive sites for use in various eras and then in my clear out these boards appeared. Being used simply to pad out a cloth for a hill I gave them a coat of paint and now they will form the base of my fortification. Once they had been triangular shelving and supported a CRT tv – remember them?
With some regular field artillery and some notional gun platforms

That’s it for now.

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Scenery wargaming

Season of scenery challenge part IV port facilities

This years scenery season has continued to prove fruitful. I have been finally sorting out some key home builds. One is a harbour the other is a 17th century fortress. The common thread was that they must be modular in some way plus their core material is recycled cardboard.

Some colour tests
Stonework from card
Lots of checking for warping and size matches
The modular harbour gets the green light
The cellular construction means strength and lightness
Still to add some extra options like a sea wall
The first trial module

I wanted a distinctly south European style which meant ochre rather than grey would be the key colour.

I used a pva base for some fine sand dressing. It did not adhere everywhere which prompted a “potted roadway” thought. The compacted earth road has been eroded in places. Some judicious shading and job done.

The card stonewall received some dry brush over ochre base over hand drawn stones.

The holes at the bottom – don’t ask 😂

So far this piece and others made of two pieces glue one on top have defied going bananas – I did use weights for the drying step.

And here is the unit with another scenery piece on the go – it was started in the 2024 season but I changed my mind, and it got parked. It too has had a dose of ochre to help it on its way.

Low relief is not so fashionable these days but it has its place at my games table

There are some other irons in the fire. But this will do for now.

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Scenery wargaming

Season of scenery challenge ptIII – sage advice from John @justneedsvarnish

John@justneedsvarnish over time has kept reminding me that storage cannot be ignored when collecting for wargames. This is even a greater issue when scenery comes into play given it can become a sizeable part of your collection.

So my recent building blitz has a kind of logic.

Building blitz

Over the summer figure painting has dried up just like last year and scenery has come to the fore. This is just as well because the lockdown era seemed to be the time when I fervently collected for my apparent scenery needs but never made any of the kits or used the “recycling”. It was the latter that brought me up short when I looked at my cardboard mountain.

Also I have made some inroads into my figure mountain that led to a right old sort out.

The net result is two scenery drawers created by redistribution of figure boxes/bags/containers.

New homes for scenery – the tall items drawer
New scenery home – the shallow drawer with some washed and bagged figures about to depart. My Italian hilltop town from 2024 scenery challenge (I think) lives in the grey box

I am quite pleased with the result and it will probably lead to a scenery rationalisation at some point now they are all more visible and accessible.

Right now some of my recent builds have simply booked themselves a decent storage spot.

Thanks John.

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Scenery wargaming

Season of Scenery Challenge II – process and creativity

Crikey what’s going on?

Like most wargamers I guess when you stop and reflect upon your hobby, your traits often pop up.

In my case I am more process than creative perhaps more risk averse as well. So that’s the wargaming general who gets his logistics sorted before attacking – and maybe never attacks as a result 😂 queue heap of unpainted figures and of course scenery.

You could of course burrow into all this personality assessment-briggs myers style. Anyway this is a long intro to justify this!

Scenery explosion

So instead of carefully planning my scenery making I just dug out any thing I could find and started building – note, no painting.

Of course one item is self coloured so it’s done! Dating from the days of the USSR and the DDR it shows there is nothing new under the sun – even back then modellers fed up with the painting step were catered for.

Three years ago I made a tower one summer after discovering Dave Stone’s challenge. Last year it prompted me to trawl my bridges and defences pile to excellent effect. Heck I have even managed to game them!

This year the reaction to July’s starting gun has been a frenzy of building – in fact anything I could find. And especially those “I will make this when I have time to do it justice”.

So I have

An italeri church

An italeri railway station

A warbases church

Two warbases cowboy town buildings

A vero (1980’s) 1/87 scale model railway church ready coloured

A blotz starter pack for 20mm Bronze Age fortress.

No idea when some paint will get sploshed on them……

Thanks Dave 😉

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wargaming

What do you do with a Pebble Beach holiday?

What’s a war gamer to do? No sand for their sandcastles!

My beach offered some nicely rounded pebbles of a certain size in a mix of greys and reds.

There’s always an odd one!

As it happened the local town shops included those selling endless varieties of resin chess sets yet surprisingly stone pebble sets.

Queue felt pen and a pleasant half an hour hunting pebbles for shade and shape.

The beach offered two convenient contrasting rock colours

The shop sets came with a cloth chequer board. I have not managed that bit yet.

Still I now have a quirky chess set for those future pebble beach holidays.

You can buy the shop version for around £25!

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wargaming

Le siège de Rome 537

La production de figurines, malgré les progrès immenses de l’impression 3D, est étrangement en déclin. Cela s’explique évidemment aussi par la guerre…

Le siège de Rome 537

If you need an english version it’s not too much to foto the five text sections which are conveniently sized and then select scan and translate options in your smart phone.

Also Chariobaude has an excellent WordPress blog which I discovered way back in 2017 covering fantastic painting of late Roman miniatures.

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Scenery wargaming

Season of Scenery Challenge

Fortunately John over at “just needs varnish” reminded me that Dave Stone’s challenge started at the beginning of July.

Last year I had a very fruitful time in fact my challenge ran into the end of September! It did not do my figure painting any favours though.

Yet I had so much scenery waiting to be done it proved to be a rich vein.

Well this particular ore vein is still rich.

Loads of possible scenery opportunities accumulating 😆
Always read the instructions!
I nearly chucked away the ridge tile – look carefully
Some nice detail on my first mdf building
Some clever design made construction easy
I found this mdf model easier than the italeri church

So far that is two churches and a railway station finally out of their boxes and just about built.

Painting may be a stumbling block – I get quite hesitant about colours. Cold north or warm south…..

* Could be I have drawn loads of early pacers who then fade away……..

I wonder what else will come from the pit of scenery?