Fencing Finished

 Finally finished off the AWI Snake Rail Fencing for the 40mm collection.  Might add some flocking/stones to the bases but they are done for now...

Snake Rail Fencing

 

As I am getting close to having enough 40mm AWI painted for a game, I decided it was time I started on some scenery.  I need a fair amount of snake-rail fencing to give the battlefield that "american" look and so bought a few packs of wooden dowels from Amazon and set to work on designing some fences.

The above is my first test piece shown with a 40mm Continental.

After that, I cracked on and have finished just under 12 feet of fencing.

Now (once it stops raining) I need to prime, paint and then finish the bases.

Sample City Wall

 Not feeling that great today - cold/virus so doodled away on Sketchup and laser cut some bits to produce a sample piece of city wall.  

I've decided to put 2" of city wall on each side of the bastions to make it easier to get the join right, so this 6" section will sit between 2 bastions.  

Also decided it is better to have the pieces free standing rather than on a hex tile.  I'll leave the ravelins as they are (probably) but build the rest to sit on the ditch, etc hex tiles rather than being built onto them.

 

Ravelin Finished

 

Finished the protoype Ravelin which I think came out okay. Need to adjust a couple of things.

 

I have gone for a slope at the back but might replace that with some steps at some point.

 

Now just need to make 2 more, 3 bastions, 2 Demi-Lunes, 4 city walls, a citadel and a load of houses and I am done!

 

 

More Ravelin(ing)

 

Spent some time today working out how to measure the walls on the 3d model and reproduce them as flat objects I could laser cut.

All the walls now cut and rested on the model to try it out.

I have also cut some pillar supports for inside to support each floor.

Next up is gluing it together and then experimenting with texturing with tissue as I've seen used but never tried myself....

 

More Frostgrave Scenery

 I found this temple in a box while looking for some other things.  I made it over 20 years ago for a Dinosaur Hunting participation game in Darkest Africa run at Valhalla...

I've sprayed it and snowed it up a little to use in Frostgrave.

Test Snow

 

A quick test of drybrushing and snow effects on the ruins for Frostgrave.  Has come out okay, I think.

Cavalier 2018: The Portable Wargame

Anthony Morton and I attended the Cavalier Wargames Show in Tonbridge, Kent on Sunday 25th February. I had arranged for us to run a 54mm 19th Century version of the portable wargame to promote the Little Wars revisited forum, Black Hat's range of Little Wars Revisited figures and Bob Cordery's rules.

We used my usual armies of British and German organised into 6-man Infantry regiments, 2 man cavalry regiments and guns with 3 crew.

Anthony waiting for some players and the action to begin:




I made the board over a couple of days the week before the show by laser cutting a mix of 4mm,3mm and 2mm mdf into 100mm square tiles. Hills are represented by an 80mm square on the tile representing the hill top, rivers are 2 layers of 2mm mdf, roads are engraved into the tiles. The trees are simple, representative shapes on the edges of the tiles as are the fields and the town area.

The forces consisted on 6 infantry, 2 cavalry and a gun on each side:






The action begins:



We ran 3 games during the day and had a lot of interest in the rules, the board and the figures so it achieved our all objectives.

This shows one very enthusiastic young player who had amazing luck with the dice:



And his slightly older opponent who wasn't quite so lucky:





We also had a lot of interest in the Little Wars Revisited forum and the games day I have arranged for March 10th in Woking.

First Sword and the Flame game

Anthony and I finally played our first game of The Sword and the Flame using our North-west Frontier collection. I didn't manage to quite finish building all the scenery I wanted but the table still looked pretty good.

The scenario was based on the example game in the TSATF rulebook with the British advancing down a valley to examine a partially destroyed fort.

The British had 1 unit of British foot, 1 unit of Indian Foot, a gun and 4 crew and a half-size cavalry unit.

The Pathans had 3 units (half guns. half swords) and an old gun with 3 crew.

The British advanced slowly and met some withering fire from a group of Pathans on the second turn (7 hits from 10 shots!), which brought that unit to a halt in the open. The British managed to contain the initial Pathan onslaught but lost a complete British unit with just one man helping a wounded colleage to the rear. The rest of the pathans attempted to attack the cavalry but decided that destroying a British unit was as good as it would get and retired satisfied.

Some pictures of the action follow:

54mm NorthWest Frontier

I have made a start on my North West Frontier Scenery so that Anthony and I can play some games with The Sword and The Flame rules.

First up is the Airfix Desert Outpost:



Then I have started chopping up some bits of packaging to make some rocks for my Afghans to hide in.



I have about 40 Afghans painted and just need to finish 20 more so we can have a game with half-size units.

Funny Little Houses

One of the problems with 54mm wargaming is the amount of space that scenery takes up, especially buildings. I was quite taken with the range of Funny Little Houses from TVAG which are made for Funny Little Wars but really don't have space to store them.

The solution is to make them in sections which can be dismantled and stored flat.

The buildings are made by printing but the PDF files onto A4 full-sheet labels on a colour printer. The labels are then stuck onto black 5mm Foamboard and then cut round. I ignore all the tabs used when making them from card and just cut out each wall, etc separately.

The edges and sides of the foamboard are then lined with 5mm magnetic strip, which enables them to "click" together.





This is the completed Large Stone cottage assembled:



and this is it dismantled for storage:



The same with the church: