Project - 40k/30k Trench Board

Yet another (but not the last!) terrain project I have on the go. Brother Handro and I have a narrative campaign on the go called "The Battle for Grandia" . It is the invasion of the Grandia system and more specifically Grandia Viridis  by the forces of the IIIrd legion. Loyalty and allegiances are complex, and there may even be a rift in the IIIrd legion forces...but more of that to follow...

Grandia Viridis is an agri world, and most of our games are played across fields and farm machinery, but I wanted to make some game boards to represent the more 'dug in' areas of the campaign - region spanning dug in fronts where the imperial militia/Grandia defence forces could wage longer wars of attrition, cities defended by trench works, the usual.

The boards are all 2"x2" and each have a road on one edge. This can be a central highway, smaller access roads and can be arranged in a variety of ways quite easily. It's all mounted on regular (and cheap!) polystyrene, with trenches cut into the board. The trenches are deep, marines heads stand proud but most guard/human scale models are well hidden so trench steps will be a feature in due course.

Metal trench walls, sandbags and mud is the main theme and, if I say so myself, it works quite well!! 

The fields are made from a large coir doormat, but here in lies the problem - there are some big areas of mud in between full fields but no debris/detritus!

Now clearly the trench boards need finishing, there needs to be some scatter flock to represent some of the greener expected. I'm even likely to cover the road in grit and re-paint it to add an asphalt texture

My dilemma is this...should I shred some coir mat/natural fibre plant liner and make crushed broken crops in all of the flat muddy areas?

It would let me put in tracks of vehicles to show that it was all fields and not just bizarre planting methods.

It would allow me to bury some plastic humans/drums/barrels/czech hedgehogs and wire as casualties/detritus of war.

What do you guys think? 

How are you finding the blog?

Comments welcomed!! 

Der H 

Thought of the day: " How can a man understand and appreciate the time of peace when he has never been in the trenches of life."

Project - Bolt Action Winter terrain

I appear to be on a terrain binge!

Terrain is one of those things that can really make a game. Many people I have spoken to will spend huge amounts of time and money on buying, converting and painting their models in their chosen army (armies!) but often terrain is an after thought.

Im not sure why this is. I imagine it is partly related to space for storage. Possibly also a lack of experience building terrain! For many people, gaming at a store allows this omission to be ignored as most stores (GW in particular have spectacular gaming table with great terrain.

With the growth of YouTube, and its plethora of hobby channels, terrain building has become much easier. I particularly value the videos produced by Mel "The Terrain Tutor" with his channel. This guy always pumps out fantastic project logs and tutorials, often covering the experimental phase of terrain projects so you don't have to!

I will be uploading several more of my terrain projects over then next weeks adn months, but today I wanted to cover where I am up to with one project in particular - Bolt Action Winter terrain.

As you can see there is quite a lot of it!

I wanted to make this usable for winter northern Europe, especially Battle of the Bulge/Belgium, but also for the Eastern Front/Russia. Band of Brothers was a big inspiration but I equally wanted modularity. This made foxholes especially dificult to do

There are three types of tree setup. Above is a set of "blasted trunks" to represent pine trees which have been felled by mortar rounds - visualise devastating scenes from the medic/BotB episode of Band of Brothers.

Below we have the smaller trees which will remain bare and barren.

In the top image, bottom left, eagle eyes readers will spot blank mounds - These are for some "gutter guard" pine trees to stick into. I might do a post on these trees at some stage but they are very much not my idea!!

To expand my range of terrain I included some infantry and tank obstacles. Czech hedgehogs, barbed wire and Dragons teeth all feature.

Bocage/Hedgerows (although not a Belgian thing) are vital for Bolt Action, so of course made an appearance.

All of these will be receiving some dark and moss flock cover. Some snow and mud effects and finally a dusting of snow static grass to finish them off.

More pictures to follow as well as a confession...I have bought more stuff!

Der H

Thought for the day: "To the German commander. Nuts! From the American commander."

Project - Blood and Plunder Terrain

Just trying to keep my motivation going across all of my projects so wanted to show some of the progress (slow as it is) I’ve been making with my B&P stuff! Going all in for the "admiral" pledge level means I’ve been sluggish at best with painting, but there has been some progress!

Terrain
Trees/forest tiles – I've made quite a few with some awesome plastics from Amazon – I've seen a lot of these around on Firelock games' site and the FB group. They're from the Amazon store Highly One with Trees and Shrubs both being great value!

Also some WIP Hills/islands as invented by Beasts of War as seen here. They need some flock (and some better photographs!) but are coming along nicely!

Of course, any good pirate game comes with ships!

Sloop – nearly done
Gone for a civilian/private/waling ship vibe with generic colours….possible changes: might change the prow colour to brown again….
Needs detailing, possibly going to drybrush highlight too but not sure….

Brig – block colours
Gone for a variant of the surprise. Yellow and white. Want it to be a British ship… blocked colours only for now

Frigate – block colours
Black and red (the red need alot more work…) as per the Acheron! Obviously much to do still!

What so you guys think?

Der H

Project - Lord Commander Eidolon

I am now enthused and engaged with this blog!

The ETL from 2016 was great fun and I proudly wear my signature banner as a reminder that (on occasion) I do get things finished.

It also made me go through and see how long I had owned certain models in my IIIrd Legion army and actually get them finished. Palatine Blades and Phoenix Guard terminators are the best examples of this phenomenon; I LOVE the models, I love the sculpts, I even love the rules! But they sat for so long unpainted and unloved.

Lord commander Eidolon shares this heritage! A beautiful model, I bought it as soon as he was released. But Since then....nothing...

Here is where my Lord Commander sits at present:

In my defence....no I actually cant finish that...He is magnetised, and even has purple on him but this is the month...this is the month that I finish the great Lord Commander of the IIIrd Legion once and for all!

The magnets fit into my larger IIIrd legion character series - see the pictures in the Gallery for more from that series and check back on the blog to see updates as this project comes on!

Der H