Terrain- Train Tracks

I've long wanted to add some railway-type stuff to my gaming table. I've looked longingly at Sarissa's lovely trains and tracks and then glanced forlornly at my threadbare wallet... (Sob...) My spirits were lifted when I noticed TT Combat's additions to the railway theme in their World War range. I've got several other buildings from that range and have no complaints about TT Combat MDF kits. They're cheaper to buy, and so can be a bit simpler in design, but not always. To this end, I purchased the Railway station and signal box kit, and a more recent Soviet railway kit including an engine shed and some railroad clutter. Each of those kits comes with plenty of track pieces.

Straight away, I got to making up the tracks from the Soviet kit. Ten straight sections allowed me to make enough to cross my gaming table and be a starter for other railway elements to arrive in the future. I made four longer sections by joining two sections together and kept two shorter sections separate for different table sizes. 

I based the MDF sections on the same waterproof tablecloth that I used for my rivers. It's thin, cuts easily and doesn't raise the tracks up too high from the table. I want to create some raised track embankments that I'll simply lay these pieces on top of, eventually, but that is a project for the future...

Ballast came from World War Scenics in a nice, big bag. I've got plenty left for the rest of the track sections left to build. I'll probably make a ballast mound with some of the leftovers as a thematic bit of clutter for around the engine shed once it's built. Then, I just need to get me some choo choos...

Terrain- Defensive Positions

Here's a few defensive positions and earthworks that I've painted up recently. They're all resin pieces from Anyscale Models. You can buy them individually or get some of them in bundle packs. There's plenty more options (including a few bunkers and pillboxes too) which I intend to get in the near future too.

These were all quick and easy to do. Earth colour. Wood colour. Sandbag colour. Brisk drybrush and then a dark brown/black wash. I added a few entrenching tools that I pulled from an old Warlord British weapon sprue- picks and shovels to add a bit more interest. I considered adding some more packs and pouches, as soldiers tend to litter their firing positions with all manner of debris, but I also didn't want to link any of these pieces to one particular nation of another. I might reconsider and add the odd German gas mask canister of British Bren magazine pouch here or there, but for now I'm happy. Some scratch-built ration tins might be fun though?!

Sandbag Barricades

Even simpler to paint. After a light tan brown base coat, I drybrushed with a lighter bone colour, followed by a dark brown/ black wash. Job done!

 

Terrain- A Scattering of Stuff!

The saying that armies can get finished, but scenery just keeps on going is starting to feel like a truism for me... Now that I've got a reasonable amount of scenery made, I can start playing around with set-ups for my games. I really enjoy placing terrain on the table and seeing what I can arrange where. Can I make it seem believable? Would buildings fall in the positions I've put them in? What would sensibly go where? I like asking those questions, but don't always manage to reach a satisfactory answer. I'm limited by the terrain I have built and completed so far. Another building 'over there' might have just finished a layout off, but as I make more bits and bobs, I'm managing to make increasingly pleasing arrangements. But, ironically, as I've managed to put more scenery onto my table, I've identified a new problem. Things aren't cluttered enough!

What I mean by this is street clutter. Day-to-day detritus. The stuff people leave lying around to show that they exist in a place. People are messy, and people in wars even more so! Wargames terrain and tables can be clean and crisp and free from mess, unless it's a bomb-blasted cityscape, of course, but little details can add interest and enjoyment and credibility and don't need to be expensive or over complicated. From a game perspective, clutter can also provide valuable cover or cause blockages to movement and lines of sight. It can add colour to a game and help support a narrative. Or, as I've realised, it can just help make things look more interesting... 

There's a mixture of resin and 3D printed stuff here. The oildrums are all from Anyscale Models, a company I have used for quite a few bits and pieces. They have a wide range of 'clutter' and some really nice WW2 vehicles in 28mm scale and others. Well worth a check out. The barrels are 3D purchases from eBay and the crates/ barricades are from Charlie Foxtrot.

The water pumps are from Hovels, which I got at the same time as my resin bridge. The woodpile came in the eBay pack with the barrels, above.

Opel Blitz

This is an Anyscale Models resin that I'd had my eye on ever since I'd discovered the company. I wanted to include military debris on my tables, as some zones would be fought over multiple times and still have the wreckage from previous engagements littered around. I painted it up to look like the grey Opel Blitz in my Heer army, and added a few decals left over from the Warlord sheet. Thematically, it could be a strafed truck carrying important cargo that either side needs to retrieve, which could have a scenario built around it? Or, it could just be a cool piece of scenery blocking a road or junction. The second picture shows some 'clutter' loaded on the flatbed.

Sherman Tank

Same as for the Opel Blitz wreck, I thought some fighting vehicle debris would look good, and this Anyscale Models resin is perfect. They've got several other examples for different nations, but these were the two that fit my current armies. If I can find cheap vehicle models that I can bash up, I'll definitely add some more to my collection to represent roadblocks, ambushes and aerial strafing runs. I painted this Sherman to represent a British/ Commonwealth vehicle rather than  American. I need to get some divisional symbols, so Allied stars and War Department serial numbers will have to do for now.

Terrain- Rivers

In a roundabout way, this particular element of wargaming terrain is the main contributing factor to why I started creating a blog. Fair warning- there's a bit of autobiography before getting to the pictures on this post... ;D

A few years ago, I returned to tabletop wargaming, model making and painting after many years away from a much-loved hobby. Life, work and children had all contributed to the gradual decline and then my eventual departure from all things hobby related. As years passed and children grew, the world carried on turning and circumstances changed, I found myself able to revisit wargaming and model-making again, and discovered a (then) new ruleset for WW2 called Bolt Action. Wheels were set in motion and my decades of fantasy and science fiction gaming shifted firmly into a historical setting which has always been of enormous interest to me.

My armies grew, and then my gaming table started to take shape. Trees, hedges, fences and walls are all early purchases/ builds. Roads are easy to build or buy. A couple of buildings grew into several and I started to feel like I had enough 'stuff' to fill a small table and battle across it. Seeing all of these elements grow and take shape was enormously pleasing. Since I'd been a boy of ten or eleven, I'd always looked in awe at pictures in Wargames Illustrated and White Dwarf and dreamed about having a beautiful scenery-laden gaming table, I was starting to get there, but there was one feature I was struggling to get hold of. I'd always wanted to have some rivers...

I don't like any of the professionally manufactured versions on the market. They can look very artificial (which is a bizarre thing to say about a fake wooden/ plastic/ resin water feature) and often come in garish bright blue colours that really put me off. I decided I wanted to try and make my own, but my next problem was finding a technique or method that I felt represented what I wanted my rivers to look like.

It wasn't easy. Youtube and Google gave me plenty of suggestions, but none fit what I wanted exactly, until I came across a talented gamer and model-maker from Australia called John Bond. His blog was massively eye-opening. I first discovered it after a Google search for 'making wargames rivers'. That's what I was given and that's all I've ever needed. And, to add to the bargain, I was introduced to the world of wargaming blogs and the excellent work of John and many others like him. The rest, as they say, is history...

So here they are, my rivers:

In his tutorial, John Bond bases his river sections in MDF, but I chose to try something different. These sections are based on waterproof tablecloth- the stuff you throw over the dining table before the kids get their poster paints out or you see covering primary school tables. I've got several that my kids used to use- it's flexible, can be cut easily and is lightweight. Plus, I don't have any wood...

The short river section below with the bull-rushes was my tester. I used the techniques from John's tutorial- small stones for the banks, Vallejo colours for the water, and coated with Vallejo Still Water that I'd bought for another project. Sand, flock, grass and shrubbery around the edges tied everything in to my particular basing style, but underneath, this is 90%+ John's technique, and I am very happy with it too!

The bends and smaller sections came along after doing several longer sections and being happy with the results. The stepping stones and the stony ford added a bit of variety to the mix. (I allow infantry and bicycle troops to move over the stepping stones on an Advance move, and both of the above plus cavalry and motorbikes to cross the ford on an Advance. Vehicles need to use the bridge.)

The bridge is a resin cast from Hovels. I like the level of detail with resin compared to the MDF bridges I've seen. This particular one has long been a favourite which I had marked down as a possibility once I finally get around to making rivers. I cut a base for the bridge and its sections of water from the same waterproof cloth I'd been using and added grass, stones and tufts as per my usual techniques. The bull-rushes are paint brush bristles cut to length and glued into place.

Terrain- Building 9- Terraces

This kit is from TT Combat. It's a great little piece that allows you to create a decent length row of terraced houses really cheaply. The detail on the kit is great, and it's generic enough that a bit of customisation can be made to dress it up quite easily.

I'd had success using brick paper on my scratch-made water tower, so I wanted to try it out on a larger building to see if the effect was just as good. I also felt that brick paper would speed up the process of getting the kit table-ready , compared to using filler, etc for the walls. I used the same brick paper that I had used for the water tower (and would then use again for the Boulangerie), and I must say I like the scale, colour and overall effect of this. I have other brick papers which I will try out on other kits, but I think I'll use this one the most... 

I added back yards to the houses to increase the overall footprint, using foamboard for the walls. The original TT Combat kit has no back doors, so I decided to make outhouses that extended out from the rear of the house to define one side of the yard and then join them together by a back wall. This allowed me to enclose the yards with back gates and make a self-contained block.

Walls and roofs are tiled with cardboard tiles, as per, and the spare shutters from the kit (where ground floor rear windows are now covered by an outhouse) were utilised to make shuttered windows on the extensions themselves.

I wanted to make one of the back yards a little different, as I felt three identical enclosed yards would be a bit dull. I omitted the back gate to allow for an open yard and gave the outhouse two doors instead of a window. I had an MDF motorbike from Sarissa rattling around, and had always planned on making a little garage or workshop and have it propped up outside. This seemed like a good option for quite a small yard space and so I decided to create a little backstreet business. I added some crates and oil drum clutter and stuck a few suitable automobile related posters to the yard wall and a Michelin advert outside, A wall-mounted lamp from the Rubicon street furniture sprue finished things off nicely. A couple of other posters and advertisements seemed to be enough to finish off this model- I wanted something big on the end wall to break up a big expanse of red brick. I positioned it as I have so that if I place one end of the terrace against another building, I can flip the upper floor round and have the poster on the other end.

German Heer Pt.11- More MG42s

A German army needs plenty of MG42s. I read that in an wargaming article somewhere, and completely agree. As the war for Germany swung onto the defensive for the most part later on, the MG42 showed its true value as an area denial tool. In the Bocage country of Normandy whole fields could be blanketed and turned into killing zones. German army doctrine focused on an infantry squad supporting the LMG as its primary tool, rather than the LMG supporting the rest of the squad- and this made sense as the MG34/ 42 was a fine weapon that did its job superbly. So, on the tabletop, I wanted to have more of them!

Team 1

I already have an Artizan Design MMG team to support my reinforced platoon, but I have always liked the models produced by Empress Miniatures. I have a few things in my army by them- a Panzerschrek team and my HQ officers, but I'd always planned on including more.

I like this team a great deal. I like the mixture of uniforms they're wearing which means I can use them for my grenadier or volksgrenadier platoons. Paul Hicks' sculpting is always superb, too- I'd buy all of the Empress WW2 models if I could, but that would definitely break the bank... I like the team's poses- hunkered down and watchful. Their low profile does have an impact on the table where Bolt Action's Real Line of Sight rule can make them that little bit harder to spot if placed well amongst cover.

Team 2

This team allowed me to add a bit of variation from the usual '3 men in a firing position' MMG team that you always get. If you play WW2 Americans, you can have a similar mixture of 'firing' and 'deploying' MMG teams as the USA can field multiple teams per platoon. I wanted something similar here. Fortunately, Empress Miniatures supplied another excellent set of models to help me do that.

Interestingly, or annoyingly, the deploying MMG team comprised of only 2 men- the gunner carrying the MG42 and his assistant in the greatcoat lugging the tripod. I included an ammo carrier from the LMG/ 2-man MG42 pack to make up the third man, and his pose complements the other two guys nicely.

I mount this team on a 3-man sabot base on the table, mainly to identify them as a fixed weapon team rather than just 'three men in a small group'. I don't like mounting teams on a single 50mm or 60mm round base, as I find that I can't get them into certain bits of scenery- and teams really want to get into cover where they can! Similar to my Soviet 'deploying' MMG team, the yellow line on the base represents where arc of fire is measured from as there is no barrel to work with. I have put one beside each of the three positions on this base so that the gunner can be placed in any of them depending on the particular scenery that the team is placed within.

German Heer Pt.10- Volksgrenadiers 2

Squad 2

Here's the second squad of Volksgrenadiers that I have completed. I've got 4 built and primed in total, but other projects keep muscling their way to the front of the 'to-do' list, so a large platoon of these guys keeps getting put back. As it is, I now have two squads and a HQ to represent the minimum required. I'm getting there slowly. Let's see how long squad 3 takes to appear?!

As with the first squad, I didn't just want to build whole 10-man blocks of figures from the Warlord Winter Germans plastics. I also wanted to add grenadiers to each squad to represent the mismatch in equipment that individuals could be supplied with by the war's end. Not everyone got a greatcoat or a StG44, and I swapped heads and equipment around between the two sets to blur the lines between them.  I also didn't want to build min/max squads armed to the teeth with assault rifles- I would have liked to have left it at the basic 5 StGs, but had to include 6 per squad solely down to practicalities of what was on the sprues, how many grenadiers I already had built and what I could stretch the box's content to represent. Surprisingly, there aren't that many rifles on the Winter German sprue, which is quite strange- but plenty of MP40s and StG44s, so I worked with what I had and compromised slightly.

Volksgrenadiers aren't the best, but I like the idea of their variable troop quality- even moreso than other Green troops. They can be quite swingy, and die easily when they are Inexperienced, but I enjoy it when they surprise both me and my opponent and bump up to Regular, or even Veteran!

British Airborne Pt.13- Engineers

 Airborne Royal Engineers

Here is the small squad of engineers that I have planned to include with my British paras for a good while now. Their transport, an airlifted universal carrier, has been waiting for them for quite some time, but I am happy that both have seen action on the tabletop for the first time together already here .

The models come from the metal British Paratrooper Section box from Warlord. I used some of the other models to flesh out my  Intelligence Officer's team but kept these five aside to make engineers. My aim is to use them to remove obstacles- barbed wire and minefields- on the table, so chose the grenade throwers to represent this tenuously. A LMG team and SMG armed NCO complete the squad. In some games, I will swap out the LMG team and add the flamethrower team I have also painted- they cost the same points and allow for bunker/ strongpoint assaults also.

I like how these guys came out. Overall, I feel these are some of the best British airborne I've painted. Brilliant- I'm nearing the end of the army and am finally getting the hang of it!

Senior NCOs

I hadn't spotted the rules for Senior NCOs when they first appeared in print for Bolt Action in The Battle of France Campaign Book. They were included in the Company Commander chapter near the end of the book that covered larger actions and protracted campaigns. Cut forward to the release of the latest D-Day, US Sectors book, however, and Senior NCOs appear as an add-on rule in the appendices and made me revisit them (& the campaign rules) for a second look.

I like how in Chain of Command, a senior NCO is an independent command figure for some nations who works alongside the lieutenant/ platoon commander. He can have just as much influence as an officer to the men in his platoon/ company and possibly even more so! I'm reminded of the calm and steady presence of Colour Sergeant Bourne in the film Zulu, or the grizzled experience of Sergeant Barnes that compensated for the bumbling Lieutenant Wolff in Platoon.

So, Senior NCOs have made an appearance in Bolt Action, and although I welcome the addition, I'm not completely sold on the rules attached to them. Rather than an additional figure with leadership that can be present on the table, a SNCO is a free upgrade for an officer's '+1 man' which essentially acts as an extra 'life' for said officer. Your lieutenant/ captain/ major gets killed, the SNCO takes over, operating at the same leadership bonus as the original officer. Fine. 

Thematically, now a sniper has targeted your HQ officer, this does allow you to have another leader to step up and take charge. I like that the platoon sergeant can now go, 'Right, lads, follow me...' and keep things going, so with this in mind, I chose to upgrade some of my '+1 men' to represent a more experienced looking SNCO type character.

The German SNCO was a '+1 man' already, and looks suitably gnarly and battle-hardened. I've given these SNCOs yellow base edges to depict their leadership providing qualities, like other officers, albeit in a replacement capacity.

The Britsh Para SNCO was a spare figure from Artizan that came in a command figure blister pack. He looks perfect with bristling moustaches and fierce expression so I knew he was right for my paras.

The Soviet SNCO was originally an NCO for one of my Tank Hunter teams. A recent reshuffle of that army due to new additions freed him up to be promoted to platoon sergeant, which I think he manages to do quite nicely.

I've yet to play using SNCOs, but I don't expect their rules to alter gameplay dramatically. They don't bring anything new that needs to be incorporated, just amend an existing rule.  Let's see how they perform in the near future?! 

Terrain- Building 8- Boulangerie

Boulangerie

This is the second building that I have completed from a set produced by a company called Game Cult on eBay. The first one I finished was my church, and these two were the stand-out kits in a multi-kit set, and as a result, are the ones I've completed first. 

I like the multiple levels of the roofs and the archway on this kit. It made the building a little bit different to the boxy nature of quite a few MDF kits you can buy, and it got my imagination racing as to the possibilities I could do with the kit. As always, I wanted to extend the footprint of the building and included a yard. I've made a few of these now and am reasonably confident now. I also wanted to cover the kit in brick paper to tie it in with a set of terraced houses from TT Combat that I had just completed and thought worked really well. (I'll post the terraces soon, but wanted to show this building first because I think it's really cool...)

An interesting feature of Game Cult MDF kits is that the building is not split into floors that lift off individually, rather the back wall of the kit slides up and out on guide runners once the roofs are removed. You can see these in the pics below. It's not as awkward as I first thought it might be, and it also allowed me to attach a drainpipe to the back wall that didn't need sectioning to fit to individual storeys of a more conventional kit.

The exterior stairway is actually the one included in the kit to put inside the building. I chose not to use it that way because I don't want extra clutter inside when I place troops. Instead, I thought about using it as an external metal stair leading to the upper floor. The door at the top is one I fashioned from cardboard bits and bobs, which covered a nice blank space in the wall- perfect for a new feature. 

The yard is surrounded by foamboard walls, just like the ones I've made for my other buildings, capped with cardboard tiles. The paving stones in the yard are leftover sheets from when I paved the yard of my hotel- it took a bit of jiggery-pokery to make what I had left fit the dimensions, but I covered any joins with moss and 'weathering'.

The gate into the yard is made from coffee stirrers, like all of my gates, with card and wire bits to make hinges and handles. After looking at all the rounded ends I'd snipped off to make it, I thought I'd have a go at shaped ridge tiles across the roofs. It was a bit fiddly to attach them, but I'm happy with how they came out- they definitely add a little extra to the building.

The archways have stones over the top to break up all of the red brick and gives them a bit of definition, and the chimney top is a couple of Lego pieces, as per... 

Decorations include posters and shop signs lifted from the collections I've downloaded online, a wall-mounted lamp by the back gate from the Rubicon street furniture set and a clock mounted on the front of the building that I free-handed onto an oval MDF piece that pushed out of another kit and was lying around in the 'bits and pieces' tub for just such an occasion.

I'm really pleased with how this came out. I plan to have a cobbled road piece connecting to the back of the arch, so the side gate opens onto the roadway. Traffic can pass through the arch and connect onto the road in front of the Boulangerie, making it a bit more interesting than just a normal T junction. With buildings either side, this will make for some interesting set-ups, I hope...

Russians Pt.11- Rota Razvedki Mounted Reconnaissance Squad

Here is the squad that will accompany my M3 White Scout car onto the table. Constructed from a mixture of troopers pulled from several different places, I was able to build this squad from quite a few already painted figures that needed only a few completing to finish off the squad.

All of the male SMG soldiers are troopers I have swapped out of my Tank Hunter teams to make way for Bad Squiddo's female soldier additions, which made up most of the squad for me, right there! The rifle-armed trooper with the beard was included in my LMG Squad, but I swapped him out to make my banner bearer a permanent addition to that squad. The NCO is an officer that came with the original Red Army box from Warlord (as did all of the other figures, bar one) and looked suitably gnarly and experienced to represent a veteran leader. The final member of the squad is a Bad Squiddo female trooper from their recent Kickstarter project. She's actually a tank rider, but I've transferred her into the recon troops. As one of the two rifle armed troopers, she can elect to stay in the scout car an 'man' one of the MMGs as per the Mounted Recon rule found in Fortress Budapest. Or, they can all debus and fight normally.