Off table battery markers

Those who know me will tell you that I have an aversion to war gaming paperwork. Writing things up on a blog is one thing, having to look things up on a roster sheet during a game is quite another. It is why I make so many markers and counters. 

Recently my mind turned to off board artillery markers. Up until very recently I've been using 15mm stuff that has been placed, on- table, on pieces of red card to mark its off board status. It works well enough except for three things. Firstly, most heavy artillery is not available in 15mm (and why should it be as it will seldom, if ever, get used on-table). Secondly it has a large footprint and takes up too much room. Thirdly, even if it were available, it would take an excessive amount of time and money for its gaming value - cost benefit.

I was thinking of using pictures mounted on thickish card and so forth, then I suddenly remembered previous forays into WW2 in 10mm and 1:300 scale. A light went on.

I googled Heroics and Ros. http://www.heroicsandros.co.uk/heroics/pdf/webcat.pdf

Immediately thereafter ordered the guns I needed - some of which are pictured above alongside my 15mm stuff. Their range is not universal, but it has a good deal of the more common heavy stuff. It is also very cheap - £0.40 a gun and crew - and Andy Kirk is a pleasure to deal with.

I decided to paint and base them purely as markers - which took out lots of work - and I think they fit the bill perfectly. It will not be a new idea, but I think it is a good one and worth repeating. A very small corner of the field will be forever off-table.

Stop laughing at my smokes - It's the way I tell 'em

This week I've made some heavy duty smokescreen smoke.  Why on earth have you done it that way, I here you ask, surely cotton wool / duvet stuffing looks better?

Maybe it does to you, though to me it just looks like clumps of cotton wool. When I have used it in the past it has hung around for months and I can't count the time I've spent picking strands of the stuff off figures, bases, terrain, etc. And God forbid that anyone should wear a jumper. It tends to get squashed in storage, blows about in anything approaching Beaufort 1, and it mysteriously tends to get longer (to cover more frontage) during games. Also, after a while, given the other uses for cotton wool, it takes on the appearance of something you would rather not handle. With that in mind, and remembering the model hedges of times long gone, I decided to do 'cartoon' smoke to go with my 'cartoon' WW2 figures.

2 packs of cheap sponges were obtained from Boyes (69p for 6, but only 2 in a pack were white). I cut these in half, as shown. 

Then I pinched (between thumb and forefinger) chunks out of the sponge to give an irregular shape. 

Now I have to admit that I made a mistake here. Later, I found out that I had not pinched enough from the bottom edges - the smoke looked too firmly planted to the ground and I had to pinch out some more after some painting had been done.

I painted the sponge, with brush and a squeeze, a dirty grey colour using a mix of white emulsion and some cheap acrylics.

 Then, in three coats, the first whilst the undercoat colour was still damp, I stippled and dry brushed them with white emulsion. 

I decided to base the smoke screens on 5" long 2mm MDF bases, textured with sand and grit, and again painted with household emulsion.

This is what they look like on the table.

With the paint they are now quite rigid and will be easy to store. They have also lost all of their static charge; which worried me during the pinching out process.

I believe jumpers may well be in vogue again this season.

How I base 15mm for the Western Desert

Newly based, 115th Kradschutzen Battalion swans out into the desert.

 Someone left a comment about how I base my WW2 stuff for the Western Desert, and since then I've received three emails asking for clarification on certain points. It's obviously time I did a "How I" on this subject.

Before I start, as with Eskimos and snow, there a lots of different types of desert, and mine is a specific patch of it.

I am concentrating my efforts on Operation Crusader (November - December 1941), which was mostly fought in Libya on the top of the escarpment that follows the coast to the north. Because of the season (there was torrential rain and sleet during the offencive), and because of the proximity to the coast and the rain showers that proximity brings, my bases are quite well foliated. Perhaps they are a little over foliated, it depends on what photographs you look at. Over foliated, or not, one thing that all first hand accounts attest to is the monotonous colour with subtle variation in texture, especially at certain times of the day. It is the variation in texture that I go for.

 Resin trucks and infantry are stuck to the bases. Tracked vehicles are not glued until after the basing is finished. The bases were cut from 2mm MDF obtained from a picture framing supplier. It cuts well using a steel rule and a Stanley knife. Also to be seen in this shot are my pre-mixed box of, children's sandpit sand and ground oyster shell, a small tub of cat litter in the pink tray (this cat litter is hard granules and is not crumbly; it is Tesco's own brand), and my grey 'cat litter box' basing tray.

 First basing step, PVA the base, with lots of slightly thinned (consistency of double cream) PVA.

  Add cat litter granules in the right places.

 Add the sand and leave until the PVA soaks through, then sand again.

 When basing tracked vehicles I add a further step. Immediately after the second sanding I add a sprinkle of fine sand.....

Then press the tracks of the vehicle into the surface of the base. Then shake off the excess fine sand.

This actually works!

 You can see here, how the second coat of sand builds up the 'top soil' around many of the 'rocks'.

 Next, using ink, watered down about 3 parts water to 1 part ink, I 'wash' the bases. Ink goes on much more easily and quickly than paint and the colour is more consistent. 

 Next I dry brush using cheap acrylics and household magnolia emulsion.

 I do three highlights. The Sd251s that go on these three bases were stuck onto the base with super glue at this point.

 Next up comes the foliage. I use Woodland Scenics coarse turf (chopped a bit finer than it comes) glued on with PVA.

Then, using artists acrylic, I paint the flora dark brown - and it comes out browny green

then I dry brush it so that it blends in with the rest of the basing. Although not shown here, I sometimes add Woodland Scenics clumps - painted dark brown and drybrushed brown, or I add pale coloured static grass shop made 'tufts', or I just leave.

I think the bases have a subtle variation of texture and colour that makes them a little more interesting than the sanded bases you sometimes see.

Italian Wars, painting update (March into April)

I have painted quite a bit of stuff since my January post. As well as the stuff pictured here, I have also painted 26 gendarmes and 16 stradiots. These had their own posts last month. Most of the figures pictured below are Foundry and Old Glory. The waggons and horses are Foundry, the barrel waggon is Hinchcliffe (?). The oxen are Front Rank. The Halberdiers are Foundry plus unknowns.

 A unit of landsknecht skirmishers.

A unit of 'generic' skirmish shot - they could Italian or Swiss.

 Another unit of 'generic' skirmish shot.

Some baggage waggons that will serve for most 'horse and musket' periods. That's why they have no crew. When I find some 16th C crew I'll put them on pennies.

The waggons are old, the teams have been repainted.

The waggon in the middle has had a tarp covered load added - using balsa blocks and miliput tarp. The one in the forground had it's tilt added a loooong time ago - I think it is glue soaked cloth over wire tilt bars.

A couple of Swiss (or early Italian) guns. I didn't have quite enough crew for them so I added a scratch built wagon as filler to one of the stands.

These figures only needed re-basing.

A unit of Swiss halberdiers.

Making generic earthworks

The Cerignola game stuff is nearing completion; even the last of the Gendarme types are almost finished. One job I was not looking forward to, was making 12" of earthworks to add to the ones I already have. Making them is not a problem, as they are easy enough to construct. But, I'm adding them to ones I've had for a while and I have to make the old and new blend in. This is never easy: I tend to use cheaply bought (heavily discounted) artists acrylics and odds and sods household emulsions for terrain, and when used up it gets replaced with something similar but, not usually the same.

Anyway, I have taken a few shots of my 'generic earthworks' to show how I made them. They are easy to construct and they are also quite cheap - which puts them into the scope of most gamers.

Firstly, making 12" of earthwork seemed a bit silly. Earthworks are so quick and simple to construct that you might as well make a batch of pieces. I had 16 resin gabions in the locker, so I laid them out next to a tape measure and worked out the length of earthwork I could manufacture from them. It worked out at 36 inches (3 'long' sections).

This is a lot of earthwork for 16 gabions - but I cheat the cost.

After gluing the gabions back towards one edge (see pic above), singly and in pairs, to a strip of 2mm MDF (35mm wide), I cheat the cost by gluing a piece of card in the space between the gabions.

Note: The wide side of the MDF strip will be the front of the earthwork and the narrow side will be the back (defender's) side.

Note: Each strip starts and ends with a gabion. They make the section joins 'disappear'.

To the back (defender's) side of the card I stick horizontally laid lengths of wooded barbecue skewers. (I cut the skewer to length with wire snips). Then I add some vertical 'holding posts'. This is where the cost savings are made - wooden skewers and card are as cheap as chips and look perfectly acceptable as 'barricade' when finished.

At this point I undercoated everything with dark brown artists acrylic.


Next I added the 'earth' to the front of the breastwork. For this I used terracotta Daz modelling clay. It air drys, doesn't shrink much (hardly at all), is strong and durable when set, and is cheap - I used half a 500g pack that I picked up, from ebay, for £3 including postage for this job.
Once dry I used PVA to texture the clay with sand and grit.

Then I painted the lot with acrylics, acrylic ink, and household emulsions. I added a few patches of flock for more texture and colour - Bob's your uncle, 3 foot of generic 16th to mid 19th Century earthworks.

Getting them to match with the old sections - 8 out of 10? Perhaps I'll leave you to be the judge. BTW, the mid section is the old stuff.

There is another difference between old and new that will not be immediately apparent. The basing uses a different material - the old basing is perspex from an old shower screen, alas, now all used up. Old shower screen, now, those were the days......

Table 'terrain boundaries'

Usually, green wargames terrain and its boundaries can be easily marked. Trees and lichen can be used to mark the edge of a wood; lichen can be used to mark the edge of a marsh; and the beauty of lichen is that it is very flexible - it 'bends' to a slope - and sits quite firmly on the table. Here is a picture of what I mean.

But, in the Western Desert, lichen boundaries would look a little odd; as would long lines of applique terrain pieces, laid end to end to form a boundary, because they would be too clutter-some for that general 'open desert' look we associate with the Western desert.

Last week, Peter and I experimented with declaring whole terrain tiles as a terrain type, marking each with a few small applique terrain pieces. This week I improved the look of my 'terrain area offering possible hull down positions' markers. I laid them out, within the boundaries of the tiles as I did last week. They looked OK, but I thought how much better it would be if I could mark the boundary with a 'line' of some kind to get a much greater variety of terrain area shapes and sizes.

First, I wondered about chalk but, being polystyrene, the tiles might not take well to being cleaned, and chalk has a habit of being a little more permanent than one might suppose. What I needed was something as versatile and flexible as lichen, but which had very little profile - it had to be totally and easily removable, thin, heavy, very bendy, and easy to put on the table-top. In a flash it came to me. I went straight to ebay to get a price and was pleasantly surprised - it was £0.60 per metre. I ordered 14 meters of '3mm x 4mm antique bronze'. Last night I put it on the table.

Can you see the long, thin, line surrounding the small rises?

Can you see what it is? 

Subtle, isn't it?

Closer.....

And, just in case, and to give you an idea of the thickness of the 'line' here it is next to some 15mm scale infantry.











I think this is quite an elegant solution, but only play testing will tell if it is durable. In fact, I think it is very clever, so clever that I'm unsure that it could could be an original idea of my own - I must have seen it somewhere before [?].

Something for dessert - how I paint WW2 vehicles for N. Africa

I have found painting 15mm WW2 vehicles for the desert theatre quite relaxing and a complete change from 28mm figures. Recently, I was asked how I did it. I'd been planning on doing a "how I" for some time so I got the camera out whilst putting together my German reconnaissance battalion.

Before I start, and to prevent a pointless waste of peoples time posting corrective comments, I wish to explain the organisation of this formation. As most of you will know I have chosen to recreate my formations at a figure scale of approximately 1:5, and this being the case I will have to fudge and change some organisational details; none more so than for this formation. Instead of the usual company level unit organisation I have chosen to field the armoured car company in small 'battle groups' combining other battalion assets. There should be 4 armoured car groups based around the four A/C platoons in the battalion, each with attached motorcyclists, but this would be hard to scale into three stands per 'battle group' without making the overall battalion too powerful - so I have done only three. There should also be less SdKfz 231 armoured cars but I wanted a distinguishable 'heavy' unit. The battalion's support company weapons (a 7.5cm infantry gun and a PaK36) will be split up and added to a battle group for a 'combat adjustment'. Purists will want to hang me, but they will have to find me first.

Except for some gun crew, this is what the battalion will look like. 

This is how I got there.....

 

Step 1: Preparation.

i]. Build the models using super glue.
ii]. Add radio antenna where appropriate using a fine drill, plastic brush bristles and super glue.
iii]. Stick vehicles to painting bases using small amounts of UHU and vehicles to ice lolly sticks with a glue gun.

Step 2: Undercoat

Normally I would undercoat using black spray paint, but to get a better variation in 'base' colour I'm undercoating manually using 2 coats of Humbrol enamel, in this case number 225.

Step 3: Ink wash

All vehicles are given a good coating of acrylic ink. This is Liquitex transparent burnt umber.

Step 4: Dry brush

Everything gets dry brushed with enamel. This is Humbrol number 93. This gives the basic 'used' look by varying the shade of what is, to all intents and purposes, the base colour. 

 

Step 5: First highlight
Using the dry brush colour (H 93) the first highlight is applied by over painting most of the dry brushed areas, but obviously staying away from darkly shaded areas. The first picture shows two SdKfz 231s, the one in the foreground has been highlighted. 

Step 6: Ink detail

My next step is to go back over very deep shadow and around model detail, such as hatches, by painting with burnt umber ink. Ink flows extremely well so this job is easily accomplished with a fine brush.

Step 7: Second highlight

This is simply a case of going over most of the first highlight with a lighter shade (I used H 94). It is the time to tidy the edges and lessen the thickness of the ink lines - painting to a line is easier than pianting one.

  

 

Step 8 & 9: Last highlight and black
i]. The last highlight is applied with a brush, paying special attention to the 'corners' where two plates meet. I used H 94 mixed with H 34 (white) for this.
ii]. I paint everything that needs to be black with H33 then highlight with a grey colour.

 

Step 10: Bits and pieces
This is part of the finishing touches and includes adding metal tones to MGs and tracks, and painting luggage, tilts and the like using a basic three tone highlight technique.

Stage 11: Vehicle crew
Lastly I paint any human beings using various shades, and generally using a three tone highlight.

Some close ups of it all finished

That's it and I hope this might be of use to someone. It is a time consuming method that requires some skill, but I think the effort is worth it. It works very well for identifying these small vehicles and figures from war game distances.