Doodling...

 Doodling - my word for doing odd little projects whilst listening to a podcast or maybe watching a sports event on TV.  They don't usually involving drawing something inconsequential, like this ... 

But rather finding something that looks vaguely as though it might be turned into something useful. Such as this piece of plastic surfaced board.

This 45cm x 38cm board was rather too quickly drawn up into hexes using my usual method, but the corner to corner distance going UP the board ought to have had maybe 5mm added.  Never mind: it does the job - a 77-cell board for small games. The paint's coverage being problematic on such a surface, I just drabbled it on.  Looks OK to me!

The figures, by the way, I would like someone to identify if someone can.  I'm told they are the old Minifigs 'S' Range Crimean War, or maybe recastings.  I would like to add a few to these to 'round off' the rather awkward numbers.  

And then there were these that follow:

These were built as light, rustic bridges, capable of carrying small vehicles up to light armour, say.  Being too short convincingly to span my wide river sections, over the last two or three evenings, I placed them on bases with blue cellophane river sections 'flowing' underneath. They seem to have come out well in these pictures. The top one features, without a base, in the recent Zugdidi battle.  

This last one (below) I made a couple of nights ago, starting with an corrugated cardboard piece that became the foundation for the central section. The construction was match stick - the type you buy without match heads for this type of project. It could just about stand for a military bridge, with or without the addition of pontoons.  

I think I'll label all future such side-projects under the label 'Doodles'...

Terrain Generation...

I was very interested to read Bob Cordery's 'Terrain Generation' method, and wondered how adaptable it would be to my own 10x10 square grid.  The thought occurred to me that if I were to ignore the outer square of ... erm ... squares, the thing would work quite nicely.

So I gave it a crack - a stream and a road passing through undulating cultivated country.  Here is the result:

Terrain generation, using the method for an 8x8 square grid
ignoring the outermost squares on this 10x10 grid except
for roads and rivers, and - potentially - railways.

Well:  a bit sparse, but that can be remedied.  That green shape is not part of Bob's scheme, but it occurred to me that one might add things like orchards, ponds/meres, swamps and enclosed fields.  Requiring a 5 or 6 each for an orchard, pond or swamp, none appeared on this map.  Allowing a 4, 5 or 6 for an enclosed field area, and using the system of location placed it where the green dot appears on the grid.  Rolling a '5' for size yielded a 3-square area.  I arranged it arbitrarily as shown on the map.

Pretty open terrain, possibly somewhere in the steppes of the Ukraine or the Donbas areas, in the locality of a State Farm.

Of course, I'm not going to let this map go to waste.  I'll just have to think of a battle to fight on it!

Bits and Pieces

My last posting showed an interesting and useful pile of stuff sent to me by a fellow blogger from the Land of Oz (Mark, of One Sided Miniature Wargaming Discourse} .  Here is what I have done with them in the last week or so.  The T70 and the BA64 I touched up with a lighter green and some weathering, and added identifying numbers (usually, I paint them on, as here, rather than using transfers)

This picture compares the assembled 122mm howitzer with the semi-scratch-built I made some years ago,  This new addition doubled by 122mm howitzer inventory!

The Nebelwerfer came already assembled: you've seen it before.  The metal 7.5cm infantry gun, limber and RSO tractor I assembled, and I've given them a very basic paint job.  The tracks and washes and such have yet to be done.  The half tracks are still awaiting their weaponry. The background buildings I will touch on later in this posting.

Before I do, I should mention these items.  The civilian volkswagens were given me by a friend quite a while back.  I don't know whether these models were ever used as staff vehicles by the Wehrmacht, but painted with camo, they do look the part.  The white metal 15cm howitzers I bought at a bring-and-buy several years ago, but assembled only this last week.  The recoil slides are a bit munted, about which I couldn't do much, but I figure that if the thing looks like what it's meant to be then that is what it is.

...And these four items made up half my purchases from last Saturday's bring-and-buy at the Club: two Daimler scout cars, and two Bedford light trucks.  These are die cast models, something I didn't fully appreciate until I got them home (my eyesight really is becoming a problem...).

Now, these things.  Having got myself inveigled into grid war games, I needed to obtain buildings that were suited to my 4-inch square and 4-inch 'short-diameter' hex grids.  I have seen some impressive approaches to the problem on several blogs. The 2D (or 2.5D) approach by Foss1066 (Skull and Crown)  and Chris Kemp of Not Quite Mechanised. I find attractive, and it is only storage issues that give me pause about taking that line.  The former very kindly offered my a sample of his work, but as they are designed for 5-inch grids, and felt I had to decline.

I have gone instead for the 3D approach using very under scale buildings, rather similar to that taken by Bob Kett ("A Village Hex").  What gave me the idea was in fact the wooden 'town in a box' building set used by Bob Cordery and others for their games.   What you see above is a town or city-scape of home made, downloaded and assembled, and commercial card buildings.  For twentieth century warfare, I felt the need for some 'high rise' edifices, simple, '5-minute' jobs that at least look the part.  They are simply tea and Tabasco sauce packets, painted overall grey, given a low parapet and with doots and windows drawn on.  The large ones exactly fit the oblong formed by the opposite sides of my grid hexes.

Considering my interest in the Western Desert campaign, not to mention Medifluvian (Mesopotamian) operations carried out by the Ruberian Army against the Turkowaz Enpire, I bethought myself to make a few vaguely Middle Eastern/ North African style buildings - mosque, administration blocks and what have you.  

I don't show them in the above pictures, but here are a few  'built-up area' profiles that will be used for my hex-grid.  If buildings need to be removed to make way for soldiery of equipment, the grid area will (I hope) still be recognizably representing a village, town or city block.

Battlefield accessories...

Taking a diversion from the Napoleonic, I have been reviewing lately my World War II inventories. This has meant building nine - no: ten! - out of my backlog of unmade kits, refurbishing several  other models that had been damaged or had bits missing, and putting together three four-horse artillery teams, and taking an inventory of my German equipment (another posting coming up!).  I also looked into some of my battlefield 'accessories'.

My first real attempt of constructing dragons' teeth
obstacles.  They turned out to be a bit on the tall
side.  About two-thirds that height would look about right.

Recently, one of my favourite blogs talked about 'dragons' teeth' anti-tank obstacles. Commenting on the posting I expressed the opinion that bits of egg carton might make a fine set of dragons' teeth. The picture below shows the central dividing cones cut out and before mounting on card (above).  It seems that I have no picture of the thing completed and flocked, but you get the idea.  There was no need to texture or paint these things: what you see here is what you get! For the moment this is the only section I have.  It is well over-scale for 1:76 scale figures, so the next lot will be much shorter. Research indicated, though, that these sorts of defences varied considerably in height anyway.  

Egg carton with the centre cones cut out.

A pair of UK Achilles tank destroyers tentatively approach
some angle iron obstacles.

While we are on the topic, here are my 'angle-iron' anti-tank obstacles and wire entanglements. I've added my recently made Armourfast Achilles tank-destroyers by way of scale.  The AT obstacles are made in fact from balsa wood concave corner beading, painted a mix of black, silver and rusty brown.

These have been placed upon sections of three emplacements, but I have a single emplacement stand which can replace one of the triple sections to represent a gap in the line of obstacles.

Obstacles in stands of three.

The balsa beading was simply glued together with PVA in the arrangements shown, then glued onto the card bases.

It might have been a good idea to have trimmed the
bottom corners to give a better notion of these obstacles being
anchored in the ground!

In the following picture, the angle-iron obstacles have been backed up by wire entanglements.  These are made from plastic sprue.  I cut 3cm sections of sprue, gluing the in pairs in an 'X' shape. I cut a notch at midpoint of each piece for reasonable sized surface area for bonding.  Then the 'X's were paired off and linked by a 4cm cross-piece in a 'saw-horse' arrangement.  These sections I might have left 'as is', but as I was needing wire entanglements, I felt some embellishment called for. They being the muddy-brown colour they were, i didn't trouble to paint them, neither.

Anti-tank and anti-personnel.

A line of wire entanglements showing how the scour-pad steel
has been looped 'under and over'.

The 'wire' I supplied with kitchen pot-scouring pad.  Sections of this I pulled out of the pad, cutting them off with a wire cutter.  Before looping the wire, however, I glued the sections to card bases, which I then flocked.  These sections I threaded under and between the legs of the 'X's, along the stand, and looped back over the top.

No gluing was necessary.

The right hand picture above illustrates the method.  Although the result is a little exaggerated, and probably not quite the way wire entanglements were constructed, they have the look of the thing!

Achilles AFVs penetrating a gap in the wire...