Terrain: 10mm Woods

With my hedges almost done (just waiting for them to dry) I thought I'd turn my attention to the trees I need to base.  While these trees are N scale the process is pretty much the same as what I did for my 28mm trees, I just used bigger bases (50-60mm MDF) and used a bit of modelling putty to help fix them to the bases.

The process is simple enough, just drill a hole where you want a tree.  You want the drill bit to be a little smaller than the trunk width, if its too big then you will find it fiddly when gluing the tress.

I went for a mixture of two tree and three trees per base.  I found that putting the tree closer to the edge of the base so that the limbs overhang looks best.  It helps hide the base and allows you to bunch up trees to represent thick or heavy woods.

Since the trees were the same height (all 100 of them) I trimmed a little bit off the stem/trunk of each tree before pushing it into the base.  As you can see here the fit is quite snug and probably wouldn't need gluing but I did anyway just make sure, after all these are going to get a bit of handling on the table.  Just a small dab of superglue at the base of the trunk will suffice.

My first few completed stands, even now it's starting to look like a little woods.

As you can see, I forgot about the slotta tab slot.  A bit of paper will do the trick but it was fiddly getting it in there.

So I stopped drilling and glued over the slot on the remaining bases first.

After all the bases had been drilled and trees glued into place I painted all the bases dark green (from memory GW Salamander Green methinks).

Almost done and looking good, just a bit of flock and they'll look even better.  So out comes the flock and my trusty tub of "watery glue sludge".

And then I'm left with this:

Just a few shots of the trees in action.  I'm really happy with these, and best of all is that it only took around two hours from start to finish.  I'll be getting some more of these for sure, you can never have too many trees on the table.

Terrain: 10mm Hedges

Only having finished making some hedges for my 28mm WW2 minis I realised I'll need some for my 10mm minis too... *sigh*.  Well the having learnt a thing or two through making the big stuff I set myself some goals with these ones:

1. They have to be quick to make.  I'll lose interest otherwise and they'll sit somewhere half finished for months.  My wife will not approve.
2. They won't need to be based.  Maybe, won't know for sure about this but I'll make them without bases and see how they fare on the table.  They'll be dunked in glue/paint, flocked and then sprayed so hopefully they'll have enough weight to sit still on the table.  If not then I'll just buy some 0.5mm/1.0mm plasticard and use that.
3. I'll need lots of it.  Sadly, in this case at least, 10mm allows for big battles and you can get more of it on a 6x4 table so in turn you need a lot more terrain.  Besides, you've seen photos of Western Europe right?  Hedges, hedgerows and bocage everywhere.

Step One
Grey or dark grey foam is an absolute must as starting point.  I won't have to paint it and if any does show through, and it will, then it will be darker than the flock and add a little depth.

I cut strips and used a knife to rough up the surface a little, pick away at it too making sure to get rid of any straight edges and flat surfaces.  I wasn't being too careful here.

While doing this make sure that the hedges aren't bigger than the container you have your flock in.  I didn't do this with the 28mm stuff and it was a massive hassle.

Step Two
Add water, white glue/hobby glue/mdf glue (anything water soluble) and paint.  I used as sponge dabber brush (?)  to mix up as it makes it easier to get stuff off the bottom of the container if it settled.

Step 3
Make sure your storage tray is right next to the dipping and flocking trays... I learnt this the hard way.

The finished hedge, maybe 15min from start to finish and I'm really happy with the end result.  Now I just have to make more... a lot more.

Painting the Pendraken: Day Six (and a few)

I've been slowly working away on the Pendraken minis, and with the long awaited plasticard arriving yesterday I got to work on basing the remainder of the minis.  I should have enough bases left over to cover the extra German stuff, hopefully arriving sometime before Saturday.

Basing the HQ and CO stands proved to take a little longer than I had thought it would.  You're basically building a little diorama so I had to keep my grand ideas in check and keep the base functional and quick to build/paint.

My first attempt at 10mm miniature hacks.  The passenger has had his head removed and replaced with a commander torso (clipped off at the waist and glued to the neck of the passenger).  The radio operator has been removed from his base, he was originally kneeling on the ground, and repositioned to sit on the seat.  You can't really tell from the photos but the radio operator is missing his left leg.  I had clipped it off and was in the process of gluing it on when after dropping it on the floor for the third &%^%$-ing time I decided to just glue him in as is.

My favorite CO stand has two German officers "discussing" which way to go.  I'll model this base as a crossroads with the road sign knocked over or missing.

I'm on the home stretch now with most of the miniatures having varying degrees of paintwork and almost everything based.  I'm hoping to get all painting and basing done by Wednesday night.  This give me Thursday and Friday to put together some cardstock buildings and base up the trees.  Hedgerows may be possible, I'll glue some flock to the dark grey foam I have and see how that comes up.

More photos to come as I get stuff finished.

Bag the Hun - French BC Dunkerque

I made another boat... and by boat I mean battle cruiser and by made I mean I copied it from Wikipedia, cropped and scaled the image using The Gimp and Inkscape.

Anyway I hereby present the French battle cruiser Dunkerque.

Some More Pendraken German Infantry

Due to a complete brain fade I left out the MG-34's when I based all my German infantry.  I only picked up on this the other day when going through the few bags of what's left to paint.  Initially I thought I'll just buy a pack or two of miniatures to redo the three stands that I was supposed to put the MG-34's on.  Due to postage costs and the breakdown of the packs it worked out more effective (not necessarily cheaper) to buy a dozen or so packs and get another 12 stands made up.  This should bring the Germans up to 3 full platoons with HQ and support platoons.

I picked up a pack of jeeps for the British CO/HQ stands and some German dispatch riders and motorcycles with side cars for either recce or CO/HQ.

1 x GR1 - Riflemen
1 x GR2 - MP40
2 x GR3 - MG34 (2) x3
1 x GR4 - MG42 (2) x3
1 x GR5 - Pz Shreck (2) x3
1 x GR6 - Pz Faust
1 x GR42 - Riflemen with STG44
1 x GR65 - BMW & Sidecar (3)
1 x GR66 - Dispatch Rider on BMW Motorcycle (5)
1 x GR165 - Late war tunic firing smg
1 x GR177 - mid war panzer grenadiers
1 x GR198 - Rifleman reversible jacket
1 x BR19 - Jeep (2)

Need I say that I'll eventually have to get the same done for the British but for the moment at least I can field a platoon of commandos and maybe a platoon and a half of the Australians.  I know there weren't too many Aussies in slouch hats NW Europe (as far as I can tell there were next to none), they will eventually get based up and used for some Italian campaigns.

Besides I'm thinking of playing the Calais campaign where the British held out against superior numbers of Germans so it shouldn't be a problem in the short term.