MG Bunkers

A couple of MG Pillboxes and MG nests, BF models from their MG Bunkers set. Nice models, and the MG nests come with MG barrels for Vickers, Maxims, MG34 and MG42 which is handy.

CdlT

Terrain Hacks: Gun Pits

Required for the desert, I recently had to build some 15mm gun pits and took a few pictures to illustrate the process.

Materials above: cardboard/mounting board/matte board/some bloody board, craft knife, pencil, ruler, super glue, 3mm MDF base I cut to size for the gun, bamboo skewer for moving glue. Also, wood glue.

Above on the MDF base you can see I have marked out the centre of the base, this will be where the gun fits with an entrance to the rear.

To build the pit, I start by cutting a piece of mounting board to the same length as the circumference of the circle, less a bit for the entrance, then I score lines across the board and bend the card along each one until it forms a circle.

The above strip of cardboard is about 10mm high, you will need to vary that depending on the scale in which you're building and the thickness of the model base you're using. My PaK38s are on 2mm MDF bases here.

Using super glue, start gluing the cardboard to the base, leaving about 1-1.5mm around the circle that marks the base size of the gun. I start by gluing from one side of the "entrance", working my way around as the glue sets. Super glue sets faster, hence the use here.

 Once the entire length of cardboard is glued, I add a couple of angled scrap pieces to define the entrance.

The guns fit snugly: make sure of your fit at each step. The gun bases above are 60mm diameter and a gun-pit base of 75mm as I did not want the footprint to become too large.

With the sizes set, the cardboard surround is reinforced with a bead of wood glue all around the *outside* of the base. Only the outside, leave the inside clean.

Pic to show height.

I built a few pits of vary sizes to hold 40mm, 60mm and 90mm bases (will hold PaK36s, PaK38s and 8.8cm Flak gun teams).

From here I cut scraps of high-density polystyrene (you could use foamcard, etc.) and build a rough bank up to the cardboard. I then cover that in acrylic silicon/caulk to create a smooth bank. You could use wall filler or similar here too, but it is best to use scrap polystyrene or similar to build up the bank and then filler of some sort to cover it. Just using filler to fill the entire thing will take ages to dry and may case things to warp.

When dry, I cover in wood glue and apply a few rocks (small stones) to look like desert pits/sangars, before applying fine sand to cover the rest. Make sure to remove any rocks too high up on the bank as they will interfere with the gun model and make storage more difficult. For Europe you might not want many rocks, or even any. You could add logs, sandbags, etc. instead.

When dry, I applied an overall coat of VMC Green Brown (not Vallejo, a colour I had mixed to match), but any paint colour you use will do.

After that I painted the sand, dry-brushing a 1:1 mix of Green Brown and Iraqi Sand (again, mixed colours, not Vallejo) before a final highlight of Iraqi Sand (now actual Vallejo as it covers far better). The rocks were picked-out with VMC 988 Khaki, then VMC 884 Stone Grey and finally dry brushed with VMC 918 Ivory for a sun-bleached look and to provide contrast. You can vary the colours to suit of course.

The end result looks something like this:

CdlT

Terrain Hacks - Extreme Makeover: Treeline Edition!

Improvement...and transformation to something better. Really this is about taking an old piece of terrain and giving it a make-over.

The tree-line: the old classic few-trees-on-a-base-that-magically-blocks-line-of-sight terrain piece, so beloved of FOW gamers and Stormtrooper-abusers everywhere. I hated them; they made little logical sense though they were useful as LOS blocks. Nonetheless, I've wanted to re-do mine for ages, so the old ones were set for a makeover.

Tree-lines...

Pretty bland, if functional. I had not used them in ages since in Battlegroup or Chain of Command they don't really work as much more than decoration, in which case singly-based trees would be preferred. Time to re-base: mine are Woodland Scenics Pine tree armatures with clump-foliage attached. Not the best, about eight years old and used in many games, but I thought they could be re-used for something functional.

On 3mm MDF bases originally, I soaked them in water to soften the sand & PVA basing.

After about an hour, I took them out and broke the MDF into one-tree pieces,
using a pair of side-cutters to help "tear" at the MDF.

I broke away the MDF until close to the tree base, then cut the rest away with a craft knife.
Please try not to cut an artery if doing this or you might bleed out and die. Apparently.

With a bit of work the trees were freed and ready for re-basing.

Rather than basing singly I now formed a new plan after looking at some pictures of Normandy hedges. New bases, a few rocks and stumps were added for interest. The trees are "glued" with caulk (acrylic silicon).

Next I covered the bases with wood glue, then sand. When dry, it was painted dark brown,
then dry-brushed a lighter colour and a very light dry-brush with a sand colour.

Next I glued on flock: Woodland Scenics, a 3:1 blend of Green and Earth blend.

The flock was really just to provide a base for the static grass.
I also painted the rocks and the tree stumps at some point.

I painted diluted wood glue onto the flock areas (when dry), and applied
some 2mm static grass using the WWS Pro Grass Micro applicator.

The grass looks very green in the pictures but is much better in real life.

On to the 2mm grass I placed a few patches of diluted wood glue, then applied
some 4mm static grass, again with the applicator (of course!)

With some decent grass added, I was ready to move on to the next part.
15mm Sherman for scale.

Woodland Scenics foliage clusters, Medium and Dark green, were glued onto the bases to start the hedges.

I then added more clump foliage to thicken the hedges, and glued a few smaller pieces to make the growth seem "rougher" and less pristine. A 15mm Sherman gives some idea of the height, i.e. fairly tall, certainly above man-height for 15mm.

Once the pieces were done and bulked-up suitably, the entire lot was sprayed with matt varnish (spray can)
to help protect it and because I can't be bothered to do the whole "spray with diluted PVA" thing.

The completed pieces have the foliage built right to the edges, thus the sections can
 be joined together to create a longer piece...

...or to build in different ways without the need for corners, T-pieces, etc.

The first lot done: I plan to do more in the future as the above
looks considerably more attractive than anything I had before. 

CdlT

Terrain Hacks - Hills

Since I get asked quite often how I do "X" terrain pieces, I'll start documenting how I do things. I'm pretty much always working on terrain: usually it's small bits and pieces, at other times serious terrain builds.

Building Hills

I have learned a lot over the years on terrain building from several sources, not least of which was Big Gav on the now defunct FOW Forum. You can find his hill building tutorial here. Though the blog is long dead, it has some very useful articles and images: Gav is found more often these days on the Gold Coast Gaming page on FB. Which may be defunct soon, too...

I was asked to build some hills for a local gamer, so I've documented the process. First off, using a plain sheet of 6mm MDF, I measure the bases for the hills and try to make them different shapes and sizes and then try to fit them to the limits of the available material. I cut the  MDF to shape, then trace the same outline on some high-density 35mm polystyrene, and cut that out to match the base.

When done, I use polystytrene glue (or cornice glue) to glue the poly piece to the MDF piece. You can also use something like acrylic silicon for this (aka "caulk"). Leave to dry overnight.

Then start shaping with whatever available: I use a combination of a serrated-edge steak knife, rotary sander and a multi-tool with wedge and sanding pad attachments. Power tools are you friend and they save a great deal of time and effort, but I have done hills just by hand before using the steak knife to saw through excess poly and then sand by hand.

Roughly shaped pieces on the left, those still to do on the right.

I remove the majority of polystyrene where I don't want it, slowly carving the hill to shape and usually leaving a crest line. I then sand the MDF to match the required slope, finishing the shaping of the hill.

All pieces sanded: you can see some of the crest lines quite easily.

I then cover the hill with a thin layer (about 1.5mm) of polystyrene glue all over for strength and leave that to dry. When done, I spread an overall layer of wood glue and then cover the hill in fine sand. When that dries, you have a pretty robust shell over the polystyrene that in my experience has proved extremely hard-wearing.

Painting is simple: I paint the sand with a slightly watered-down dark or medium brown, followed by a lighter brown and then a highlight colour. Here the colours used were German Camo Medium brown, Green Brown and Iraqi Sand...I get the first two mixed in cheaper PVA to match the Vallejo colour. The Iraqi Sand dry-brush is done with actual VMC Iraqi Sand as it covers really well which saves time and costs very little. About eight drops did all ten hills I was working on.

The request here was for the hills to be covered in static grass to match the old GW grass mat: I applied that with the WWS Pro Grass Micro Static Grass Applicator using a mix of 2mm spring static grass and diluted wood glue. The applicator is not cheap, but a very useful tool if you do a lot of terrain and make use of static grass.

Initial test grassing...need to hold them somewhere.

The grass is applied on two stages (since I need somewhere to hold onto the hills): first application, dry overnight, then complete the process. With that done, these hills were complete.

Lots of diluted wood glue and tons of grass later: hills.

I usually have a few FOW bases handy during initial shaping of the hills,
to check that the slopes are not too steep for bases.

In future posts I'll do other things with terrain. My approach to tables has changed a fair bit over the years, though the basics have remained the same. The wonderful Cigar Box Battle mats have allowed some attractive changes, to the point where I no longer bother with hills like the above. But that is for another post...

CdlT