They’re bringing carts now!???

Well, it would seem so, Saxons have finally figured out that carts and loot fit together as hand in a glove!

Seriously though… one of generic raid scenarios in ‘Dux Britaniarum’ requires three carts of some sort. With this in mind, I’ve had a quick look around for something suitable. Offering from 4Ground was very much to my liking – their cart is made from laser-cut MDF, thus cheap as dirt and shipping it over the pond wouldn’t cost me my shirt neither. Also, those guys at 4Ground seem to be clever chaps and realize that something must pull those carts around. And so, they are kind enough to offer suitable draft oxen minis, sold in pairs.

Don’t remember how long it took for the envelope (yes, envelope, apparently 4Ground took the page from IKEA’s operations manual), but it didn’t take many days before my carts arrived to me. Here’s what I’ve got, in three sets.

First a couple of words about oxen minis. They were all ‘business’, but required some serious cleaning up and putty to cover up some serious holes in the casts. Also, as can be seen in the pictures, heads are separate and the fit isn’t the best I’ve ever seen. Once the heads and bodies were glued together, it became apparent that something had to be done about the gaps around the neck. Lucklily that’s what green stuff is made for.

Carts, on the other hand, could be assembled without any problems. In fact, I glued them together while watching a movie and was done before it was finished. Really simple assembly was made even easier by a nice, easy to understand manual.

The paint job was also a pretty straightforward job. With carts, I started with couple of base coats of burnt umber. Then I proceeded with successively lighter coats of burnt umber and white. I finished with couple of black, brown and green washes.

With oxen, I first found couple of reference pictures of the real things – I was a bit surprised over variety of “cammos” that oxen come in. In the end, I went with dark brown/cream white “ambush scheme”. I’ve also decided to play around with paints and made a very first attempt at wet blending. Not sure how successful I was, but I think I managed “game table” quality. But what do I know, judge for yourselves.

Anyway… I must say that I am quite happy with my first experience of laser-cut MDF and 4Ground. If you need a couple of carts to move your loot quicker around the table, I can recommend this stuff as affordable option.

Photography for wargamers – Part 2 – Equipment

Let’s yet again start with a small clarification. When it comes to photography equimpment, two things become apparent as soon as you start dipping your toe in this particular hobby. First and foremost, if you want something better than the basic stuff for snapshots, the price-tag rises rapidly and steeply. Second, the better equipment really does produce better quality images and gives you more flexibility in regard of what kind of images can be taken… if you take time in finding out how to take advantage of its potential.

That being said, even the most basic of today’s cameras are surprisingly capable, especially if you’re don’t bump too hard into their technical limitations. Under normal lighting conditions (always the most important factor), taking snapshots is, as I already said in previous post, a no-brainer! Personally, I’m neither interested in nor able to spend massive amounts of money on cameras, lenses and periphery equipment and my kit is as basic as it gets.

Before we get any further - as it turns out, this post is quite long and meandering all over the place, but arrives to a pretty basic conclusion. If you’re an experienced photographer or don’t have the patience to read through my rantings, please skip straight to the bottom where you’ll find the only really relevant point I’m hoping to express here.

Cameras in general

If we take a quick look at what’s available on the market, I think the cameras can be split into three groups.

• Mobile phone cameras – pretty much everyone has a mobile phone these days and they’re all equipped with a camera. Quality of those tiny cameras varies widely, but I must say that I am constantly amazed by the capability of one that is built-in in my (by now ancient) Samsung S4 phone.
  
  Out of necessity, mobile phone cameras are technically limited. The lens is small and they lack much of manual control available in ‘proper’ cameras. Also, they usually save images in compressed format, which limits post-processing possibilities.
  
  On the other hand, the automatic controls of mobile phone cameras are these days extremly capable and will usually produce a sharp and vivid image of whatever you’re pointing the camera at. I would advise everyone to spend some time experimenting with their mobile phone camera, you may be very surprised by what can be achieved with it.
  
  Perhaps the most important advantages of mobile phone cameras are of very basic nature. They’re free, you get one when you buy a mobile phone. Also, this is the one camera that you usually have with you! There is a reason for saying that the best camera you’ll ever have is the one that you have with you.
  
  
• Compact cameras – this type of cameras ranges from simple point-and-shoot affairs to some pretty advanced, professional products with very impressive optics and features. Prices vary accordingly. From wargaming perspective, I’d say that a suitable compact camera should have following features:
• As good optics as you can afford - there is no coming around the fact is that the better optics, the sharper and better pictures you’ll get ‘out of the box’. On a flipside of the coin, keep in mind following – ‘wargames’ pictures are most often intended for the net. For practical reasons, image files for the net need to be small, with obvious consequences for image quality. So if you intend to use your compact camera primarily for wargames and shots of minis, it doesn’t make much sense to spend a lot of money on top of the line products!
  
• Shortest focusing distance – try to get a camera with short ‘shortest focusing distance’. Being able to focus on small objects short distance away from the lens is very practical feature for wargamers!
  
• Decent zoom capability – being able to zoom on stuff is always useful, but don’t go overboard. Currently, the craze for maximum zoom capability is the ‘next best thing since sliced bread’, but very high zooms are of limited useability if you can’t stabilize the camera, usually by putting it on a tripode. A zoom of x10 is more than enough under most circumstances.
  
• Ability to take RAW images – RAW is digital equivalent to film negative of old times. Shooting in RAW gives you a lot of possibilities to adjust the image in post-processing and this feature is pretty much a must if you’re intending to get a bit more serious about photography in general.
  
• Small aperture – heads up(!!!), this one is a bit counter-intuitive, because small aperture is represented by large number in ‘f-stop’-variable. But basically, you want a camera where you can make a very small hole in your shutter. Look for maximum number for your f-stops, bigger is better. For now you’ll need to take my word for it – it is important.
  
• High ISO range – being able to push ISO sensitivity of camera sensor reduces exposure times and allows for taking sharp images in crappy lighting conditions. Photographers usually wrinkle their nose at high ISO setting, because it impacts image quality… but once again, if image is intended for Facebook or a blog, sharpness is usually more important factor than some color distortion.
  
• Tiltable LED display – I’ve learned this one the hard way. The representation of the image your camera will take is shown in two ways – through a traditional view-finder (not necesserily included in compacts these days) or a LED display. Most photographers will rave about necessity for a traditional view-finder. Personally I’d say that for wargaming purposes a good quality, large LED display is much more useable. And it should be tiltable, because we often want to place the camera in small, constrained places and at wierd angles. Being able to tilt the display and see what image will show is very useful in these situations.
  
• Small footprint – once again, constrained places and wierd angles. Small cameras are easier to handle.
  
  
• DSLR cameras – DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex and DSLR cameras are the ‘big wigs’ among cameras. They consist of a camera body and wide range of exchangeable lenses, often designed for a specific type of photography. DSLR cameras take (at least in theory) best pictures and offer most flexibility for the photographer. They’re also expensive, bulky as hell and have the steepest learning curve if you want to use them to their full potential.
  
  If you think of picking up a DSLR camera, you actually have two decisions to make. The first consists of the choice of camera house. This is a serious commitment, because camera houses are expensive. More importantly, you bind yourself to a specific brand.
  
  Your decision should be based on two consideration – what producer and how advanced the camera-house is to be. From technical perspective, I’d say that the considerations are the same as for a compact camera. As for the producer, you have couple to choose from – Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax are some of the biggest names on the market. All make excellent products. While prices for different types of camera houses (entry level, enthusiast and professional) are pretty much the same regardless of producer, there can be relevant differences in performance of inner electronics, advanced features and layout of the camera interfaces (buttons and software). This last factor can be of particular importance, so try stuff out at your local dealer before you commit.
  
  Choice of lenses is as important aspect as the camera house if you decide to pick up a DSLR for your wargaming photography. When you buy a DLSR camera, you’ll usually get a so called stock lens. Let’s put it straight – stock lenses are usually crap and of lowest available quality when it comes to optics quality. They will do to start with, but sooner or later you will probably want to upgrade to something better and more flexible.
  
  The range of choices when it comes to lenses is mind-boggling, but basically you have two types of lenses for DSLR:
• prime lenses – these lenses have a preset, non-adjustable focal length, measured in mm. Lenses with short focal lenght are used to take images with wide angle or close-ups. Lenses with long focal lenght are used to take images with ‘small’ angle and at longer distances. Advantages of prime lenses are that since they are simpler to construct (less moving parts and less complex optics) they tend to be cheaper and able to produce really good pictures. The drawback is that since you can’t zoom with a prime lens, you need to place your camera in ‘right’ place och change the physical lens between shots.
• zoom lenses – these lenses allow you to zoom on the image subject and are therefore much more practical. There are two types of zooms – normal and tele. Normal zooms can vary between 10-20mm and 50-100mm. This gives you good flexibility at distances between below a meter and maybe 10-15 meters. Telezooms are used for long distance photography, but are also very useful if you want to zoom on couple of 6mm minis from 5-6 meters away.
  

Here’s the thing about lenses – personally I am yet to find optimal choice when it comes to good lens for wargamers. I won’t go into details right now, but there is a couple of very specific and conflicting aspects when it comes to wargaming that make choice of optimal lens a bit of a challenge.

Other equipment

Beside the camera itself, unless we’re talking about mobile phone cameras, I’d consider a good tripode with adjustable mounting head the most useful addition to your photography kit. Tripods come in different sizes. A table tripod like a Joby is very practical for small cameras. Full-size tripode is bulky, but is indispensable if you want to take sharp photos, especially when long exposure times are necessary.

One piece of equipment I’m very divided about are camera flashes. Every camera has one built in. They’re usually crap, for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, photos taken with built in flash are pretty much always washed-out and flat, because the light ‘floods’ the subject. Second, the range of a built in flash is usually very limited. This means that a couple of meters directly in front of the lens is properly illuminated and the rest of the image is significantly darker. There are ways to control first of these undesireable effects, but you can’t do much about the second. Thus, if I can avoid it, I don’t use built in flashes. This limitation is especially important in my opinion in regard of compact cameras.

On the other hand, I am currently seriously considering getting proper flash light for my Canon DSLR. External flash lights for DSLR are extremly powerful and with long range. They have no problem with properly illuminating a medium sized room. The trick is to learn how to control the light they’re making, so you don’t get these washed out images I mentioned above.

My own stuff

Here’s what I use these days:

• Camera in my Samsung S4 mobile phone. Up ‘til now, I’ve mostly used it when I wanted to take a quick snapshot of something close up or didn’t want to fiddle with adjusting the images afterward. However, over last couple of days I’ve done some more in-depth tests with this camera and I must say that I am mightily impressed by its capabilities. I may very well have underestimated its useability up ‘til now!
  
  
• Panasonic Lumix LX-7. I fell in love with this little compact camera as soon as I saw its specifications. At the time, I was under the impression that the most important factor was wide aperture, usually a quite expensive feature in camera optics. This little thing is capable of f1.8 at its shortest focal length (that’s when you take ‘wide’ images) and it blew my mind at the time. These days I’m of the opinion that wide aperture isn’t as important as I have once believed. Nevertheless, I still think this little camera is very useful for wargaming photograpy. It takes sharp images and is capable of focusing at very close ranges. It is however limited by crappy build-in flash, limited zoom (3.5x) and, ironically, limited smallest aperture (f8.0).
  
  
• Canon 1200D DSLR camera. The ‘big gun’ in my arsenal and under right conditions a very capable beast. This model is an ‘entry level’ DSLR camera from Canon, but it’s very good piece of equipment. But it’s not the easiest camera to use and on a bad day I can be quite frustrated by a galore of blurry images it delivers to me after a gaming session. After having it for a couple of years, I am still learning how to use it properly. At times it can be as frustrating as a baby crying its head off for no apparent reason. But, as long as I pay it the time and attention it requires, it is also the most fun camera I’ve ever had.
  
  My DSLR has usually a cheap Tamron telezoom mounted on it. I’m pretty sure that it is one of root causes of these less than perfect pictures I’m sometimes getting out of this rig. It turned out to be less than optimal choice for wargame photography, but it was cheap and it has a wide zoom capability. It has to do for now.
  
  My other lens (beside the stock lens that followed with the camera and which I never use) is a Canon 50mm prime lens. This little puppy is as cheap as it gets and delivers shockingly sharp images. It is also totally unuseable for wargaming purposes. Its minimum focus distance is not short enough to allow for useable closeups and it requires too much distance between the camera and the table for good wide angle shots. I love this little lens to bits as long as we’re talking normal photography (portraits and street), but it’s useless for wargames.

Additional comments

One thing that is perhaps worth mentioning are compact system cameras, which is a hybrid between a compact camera and a proper DSLR camera. They’re usually very capable, advanced products with all the features of a DSLR, but in smaller package and sometimes with single, permanently mounted zoom lens. Since I don’t own one, I have no experience of this type of camera. And so, I skipped over it in my post. However, compact system cameras may very well be optimal choice for a wargamer who wants to have some fun and be able do a bit more with his kit.

Another thing that I would like to touch upon are ‘current trends’ in photography equipment. Some ten years ago, the craze was all about megapixels, the more the better. Of course that’s not the case, but it was an easily defineable ‘good, better, best’ factor when marketing a camera. Number of pixels is basically number of dots that can read light and color in a sensor. The ‘gut feeling’ may suggest that more dots equals sharper images and that’s correct assumption… under some very specific and for wargaming purposes irrelevant circumstances. Where ‘megapixels’ or resolution comes into the picture (no pun intended) is when pictures are printed on paper – large size prints do require high image resolution to look good. And by ‘large print’ I mean poster size pictures! For standard prints a 10 megapixel sensor is more than enough. For web photos on a blog or Facebook you can probably use 3 megapixel camera and not see any difference.

Today, the craze is about extreme zoom capability. This in itself can be very useful for wargamer, but keep two things in mind. First of all, pushing zoom lenses to the extreme does come at a price and you pay it with reduction of image quality. Also, the more zoom is used, the more sensitive the camera becomes to vibrations. If you think you can zoom your camera to those 30x while holding it in your hand, you’ll in for a surprise when you see the image you’ve taken. So, if you intend to play with extreme zooms, get a tripode and save yourself a lot of frustration.

Final thoughts

Allright, so that’s the ‘rant’ about equipment, Hopefully I had something useful to tell you, but in the end it all boils down to this single piece of advice I can give to anyone thinking about investing in equipment to take ‘better  pictures’ – advanced and expensive kit doesn’t automatically equal better pictures. Cameras are precision tools and just like any other tool, the more advanced it is, the more expertise and dedication it requires to get most out of it. If you’re ‘just’ interested in taking some snapshots and aren’t interested in investing time and effort in learning about photography, then there is really no point in investing in more advanced gear. Buy stuff that fits your needs, aspirations and your level of interest in photography and don’t expect miracles first time you use that shiny new DSLR.

Review–grass tufts from Gamer’s Grass

As long as the almost complete standstill in my wargaming persists, perhaps the best way to keep this blogg alive is by posting a review every once in a while. Let’s start off with grass tufts from Gamer’s Grass.

Allright, so to begin with, what exactly are grass tufts. Well, like pretty much all terrain and basing materials we use in the hobby, it’s yet another cross-over product from model railroads hobby. Basically, it’s a small lump of grass fibers secured at the bottom in a small drop of white glue or other type of transparent material like silicone. A bunch of such lumps is delivered on a sheet of wax paper. The idea with the product is that user is to peel individual tufts of the wax paper and glue them on terrain pieces or miniature bases either with PVA glue or superglue.

If I am not correctly mistaken, the product was introduced over ten years ago by a company called Silflor – they’re still the ‘top dog’ in this department and have by now developed a vast variety of products in this range. The thing is though that their products are rather expensive.

Gamer’s Grass offers pretty much same product While their range is smaller, it is  in my opinion at least, better directed towards the wargaming scene. Most of their tufts are about 6mm high, which seems to be optimal for 28mm miniatures. For 15mm minis, this height may be a bit overpowering on a base, so their smaller range of 4mm tufts is probably better choice. Other heights, such as 2mm and 12mm are also available.

The tufts come in different colours and heights. Individual tufts are made in three sizes and are shaped as an oval. Some shades/sizes are also available in form of irregularly shaped lumps. An individual piece of wax paper holds between (approximatly) 120 and 40 tufts, depending on size of indivudual ‘lumps’. The price is what makes products from Gamer’s Grass really attractive.

I’ve been using stuff from Silflor on a couple occasions and the comparison between their ‘top of the line’ product and what you get from Gamer’s Grass works out quite well indeed. As already said, we’re talking about lumps of grass fibers put in a ‘base’ of some sort of flexible material, so there is not much room for improvement! If I am to be completely frank, it seems to me that the material used for the ‘base’ by Gamer’s Grass is a bit more fragile. As a result, couple of tufts have desintegrated in my fingers as I peeled them of the wax paper. But with a bit of caution, they can be handled without any problems. Once glued onto a base, they seem to be able to handle the abuse expected to be caused by handling of miniatures in games and during transports.

Last but not least, couple of words about the customer experience. My order was placed through their webshop and consisted of over a dozen of different tufts. Payment was done through Paypal and order was promptly confirmed through email. The small package (with all ordered items) arrived to my delivery spot just over a week after placement of the order. Overall, a very smooth purchase without any issues.

In pictures included in this post, you can see some of the sheets that I’ve ordered. Most of them are of standard 6mm height and in various sizes. If you take a look at previously posted pictures of my early Anglo-Saxons, you can see the tufts ‘in action’. I was really satisfied with that ‘test run’ and can recommend Gamer’s Grass without any reservations.

In a spur of a moment, or DIY dice trays

So… yesterday I had to make a trip to Systrerne Grene, this peculiar shop with all sorts of cute paper bags, boxes, ‘nice smells’ products, frames, decoupage stuff and dozens, if not hundreds of products that women seem to love to use for that ‘personal touch’. It’s the same place where I found those beautiful transparent plexiglas boxes perfect for my 6mm figures (which by the way have since been withdrawn from their product range ).

Anyway… as I walked through the shop, this item caught my eye.

The thing is made out of cheap, lightweight wood and plywood and costs 40SEK, which if I am to be perfectly honest, is a bit steep! I have no idea what the original idea for this thing really is, probably some sort of display box.  But I am pretty sure that any wargamer worth his name will immediately have two words popping up in his head when he sees something like this – dice tray! Needless to say, two of these thingies immediately found themselves in my shopping cart.

Today, I gave the ‘trays’ a closer look and came to the conclusion that I wasn’t entirely happy with them. They’re quite shoddy, with very thin bottom and these stripes look a little bit weird. There was definitely room for improvement and luckily I had all I needed at home.

First, I grabbed some wood stainer left over from another project and darkened the frame. I then left the trays outside (stainer smell is just plain awful!) to dry for several hours.

Next, it was time to do something about that ‘striped’ bottom. Lining of some sort was the apparent solution here and what do you know, I happened to have some leftover dark-green felt that fit the job! As for how to fix it into place, the choice was between white glue and spray glue. I decided to give the second option a try.

Cutting the felt to size was the biggest challenge in this little project. I tried to measure and cut the felt to size, in two attempts the hexagonal shape turned out to be both irregular and too small. I then changed my approach and cut out an oversized piece of cloth. Next I sprayed the glue on it and pressed it into place. I paid extra attention to the edges, pressing the cloth into the ‘angle’ with the backside of hobby knife.

Once the felt fit snuggly in place, I started cutting off the ‘surplus’, one hexagon side at a time. I tried to follow the ‘angle’ of the tray as closely as possible, but the end result wasn’t 100 per cent perfect. With practice I am sure that I would achieve the ‘professional’ look, but life’s too short for perfection.

And so, here they are – two large hexagonal dice trays. Total price, a bit over 80 SEK, time expenditure – maybe an hour. What’s not to like!

McGyver Moment

What do you get if you put together a slow Sunday morning, an empty spice container, a piece of old sleeping mat, hot glue gun and some blue tack? Well, an ergonomic figure holder of course!

It’s a dirty job AKA reinventing the wheel with caulk

Yes, after my declaration of dislike of working with terrain, the irony of the fact that this is yet another post about terrain isn’t lost on me. At the same time it is yet another proof that once you open one particular Pandora’s box, it is very hard to close it again. In this particular case, once I started working on the terrain boards, I became aware that I also needed a way to demark terrain types other than ‘plain grass’, and especially the wood sections. I already made a couple of woods pieces with MDF board as base and didn’t care much for their inflexibility. This made me remember a technique I’ve read about several years ago on TMP, where the terrain surface was made of caulk. Quick search on interwebs provided some rather intriguing tutorials by folks who made entire game mats of this stuff (have a look, some of them are quite impressive). After soaking up the experience of those talented people, I was ready for a trial of my own.

OK, first couple of words about the technique itself. Get yourself a piece of tightly woven fabric like canvas. Next, take a trip to a DIY shop and fetch a container of acrylic caulk used to seal cracks and gaps around the house. It’s important that it’s acrylic and not silicone variant – if the text on the bottle says you can paint over it, that’s what you’re looking for. You’ll also need a caulk gun to squeeze the stuff out of the tube. Finally, get some paint, sand, flock or whatever else you intent to put on the top.

Once you have the materials, the idea is quite simple – spread caulk on the fabric, stick the ‘topping’ on top and hope everything sticks together once the caulk sets. The final ‘product’ is flexible and can follow the contours of terrain, such as hills. It’s this property that makes this technique rather interesting.

Here’s a walkthrough of my first try.

I had a bit of difficulty finding the fabric that I felt was up to the task. In the end I bought a roll of cotton painting canvas from local arts shop. 6 meters long and 50 cm wide, very stiff, tightly woven and has a proper solid feel about it. The cut out piece is a 40 by 40 cm square, which I stretched over a piece of MDF to ensure that it wouldn’t shrink or warp.

Here, initial layer of caulk is put onto the canvas. As it turned out, it was far too much and about half of it had to be scraped off and tossed into the bin. As so often, less is more.

Here the caulk is spread in an even, thin layer. This is the ‘foundation’ layer, which is supposed to be worked ‘into’ the fabric. Some people do it, other don’t. Once this step was done, I left the piece to cure over night.

Now it’s time for the messy part – I squeezed out sizeable blob of caulk into a plastic container and mixed it together with some brown acrylic household paint. Sand and small gravel was thrown in ‘to taste’ just to provide some initial texture. The mixture was then spread evenly over the piece.

This step is done immediately after the previous one – caulk/paint mixture is to be wet, so that covering material can stick to it! Since I intent to primarily use this technique for demarcation of woods sections, I covered majority of text piece with flock mix I normally use for that type of terrain. Once spread in even layer, I tapped it lightly, trying to ‘massage’ it into the caulk/paint mixture.

Whatever surface was left uncovered by woods surface flock, I used for an ad hock test for other landscape materials. A strip was covered by very fine sand (a road, obviously). Top section on top left is covered with short fibre grass. Finally, the dark green pieces are fine flock I use as standard for my GHQ hexes.

At this stage, the test piece was left to cure for twenty four hours.

Following evening I took the still mounted test piece outside, turned it upside down and shook it vigorously until nothing else flew of it. And yes, a LOT of covering materials fell to the ground. But… a lot more stayed on. The pictures above show the state of the test piece after ‘shake-off’. Woods flock mixture and green flock adhered to the caulk admirably. Fibre grass coverage is OK, but not perfect – underlying caulk shows clearly through. I’m least pleased with the fine sand ‘road’ – most of the sand failed to adhere to the underlying layer. Perhaps sealing it with diluted PVA glue would render a better result. But even this section could in my opinion be used on wargaming table.

Here’s quick demonstration of flexibility of the test piece. I can bend it quite severely without caulk cracking or cover materials falling off. At the same time it must be said that it is quite stiff and doesn’t follow terrain contours as easily as I hoped it would.

Final verdict – I am quite happy with this initial test. Things can definitely be improved, but the basic concept is sound and I will proceed with it for my wood sections. I’m also quite sure that it can be used with success for other types of terrain, such as pasture fields, roads and even rough terrain and marshes.

Jungle Terrain–the saga continues

I was a little taken aback as I’ve just looked up the publication date of my post about that very first jungle terrain piece – May 2013, where the heck does the time go? In any case, when I was finally finished with first batches of opposing forces for my Vietnam project, there was no more excuses; it was time for jungle ‘mass production’. And now, with 10+ pieces under my belt, I thought it would be nice to post some additional thoughts about that part of the project.

So first things first… I think I will need somewhere between 25 and 40 pieces of terrain to be able to cover playing area available to me (a square 1.5 x 1.5 meters). Since I really dislike making terrain (simply not my cup of tea), trying to make all of them at once would with all probability end up with me walking away. Fully aware of it, I decided to split the job into more manageable batches of 5-6 pieces at a time.

The process for each batch became obvious for me while working with the test piece. First, painting and texturing of the bases. As already described, a mix of rough gravel, sand, cat litter and dried herbs give me the rough texture  I imagine is suitable for jungle pieces. It is spread onto a thick coat of brown paint and sealed with another once dry. Next a bit of drybrushing with lighter tone of base coat colour and we’re ready to proceed to step two.

By the way, ‘imagine’ is the operative word for this project, because I am most certainly not trying to re-create realistic Vietnam bush here.

Next, it’s time for hot glue gun, plastic palms and whole bunch of different plastic aquarium plants. Couple of words about plastic plants – in my opinion the bigger variation, the better. My personal collection (mainly from Chinese E-bay shops, although IKEA was also helpful) consists by now of 10+ different plants and grasses and I wouldn’t hesitate to get even more of that stuff. Another thing one quickly realizes and needs to accept – most plastic plans are ‘too big’ for 15mm. Leafs are too long, too wide and too thick. So forget about realism if you’re going plastic plants route with that scale.

Last but not least… it is quite tempting to just squeeze in as much stuff on those bases as possible. That’s what I did with that test piece and it sure looks nice; it is also a bad idea, for two reasons. First and foremost, remember that you will need to have place for your miniatures somewhere on these pieces. Second, there really is no need for ‘thick vegetation’ unless you want some impassable terrain pieces; the visual impact of the jungle is created quite handily by multitude of bases and variety of plants.

Once the plants are glued onto bases, the final step consists of cleanup/flocking. Why cleanup you ask? Well, because these hot glue blobs look bloody awful and need to be hidden somehow. Sponge flock works fine for that purpose, but my personal favourite is brown fine turf. I have several bags of that stuff (made by Woodland Scenics/Noch) and by pure coincidence their earth brown flock is almost the same colour as the paint I use for the bases. So all I need to do to hide those hot glue blobs is to paint them with diluted white glue and then sprinkle turf powder over the ‘wet spot’.

Flocking is done to my personal taste with help of a bunch of railroad modelling stuff – mainly Noch sponge flock and bush clump foliage as well as ‘normal’ foliage from Woodland Scenics. That last one is however anything but ‘normal’, at least not for me. It comes in form of thin sheets of flock stuck to a very thin web-like net and can be cut and teased into different shapes. Pretty useful stuff , both for ground-work as well as for tree foliage!

I’ve already said it before and am repeating it now – when it comes to groundwork materials such as flock, turf, clump foliage and similar, the railroad modelling stuff is the best and most cost effective. When compared with companies like Noch, Faller, Bush and Woodland scenics, prices demanded by most popular ‘wargaming terrain’ companies are simply ridiculous. Here in Sweden, the internet-based companies that sell whatever terrain modelling stuff your heart desire (except for decent palm trees) that I’d recommend based on personal experience are Modelljärnvägsspecialisten, Eurohobby and MJ Hobby.

Mr. Elephant meets my friends

Introduction of “They Couldn’t Hit an Elephant” finally arrived last Sunday. Two Confederate brigades were to stop four Union brigades in their attempt to push their way across the gaming area. Wanting to make things slightly more interesting, I’ve added couple of twists to the scenario. Unknown to Union CinC during his planning phase, one of brigades under his command got lost during the advance to the battlefield. There is a very prosaic reason for this decision; one of Union players had to cancel and I needed to jump in instead. However, I wanted to ensure that my “familiarity” with the setup wouldn’t spoil the fun and decided to play as passive role in the game as possible.

Confederate side was served their own surprise – initially there would be only one brigade on the table. Arrival time of the second brigade was unknown to players on the Rebel side. Furthermore, I planned to give fair warning to the Union brigade commander on the flank that would be hit by Confederate reinforcements.

On the paper it actually did sound like a pretty good scenario – I imagined that Union troops would hit outnumbered Confederates in force, only to be distressed by sudden appearance of additional enemy troops on their flank. As everybody knows, things seldom turn out as planned, especially when you use TFL rules.

Stage 1
Union commander decided to enter the field on broad front – three brigades in line, with the fourth in support (my ‘no show’ command). Initial orders were to take holding positions along southern edge of the field, anchoring one flank on a nearby height.

At the same time Confederates attempted to show strength, moving the blind with “real” brigade into central position, while making best possible impression with dummy blinds.


Stage 2
Having assumed the intended holding position, two of Union brigades were either spotted or unmasked the blinds voluntarily. Confederate blind on the right was exposed and removed. Long range artillery duel started, causing some casualties and some consternation among one of Union regiments, but otherwise causing little damage. At the same time Union commander on the right flank received reports about substantial Confederate reinforcements moving rapidly toward his position.


Stage 3
Union brigades on the left and in the center receive orders to advance on Confederate position. Rightmost brigade moves rapidly and infantry on both sides start to exchange fire. Brigade in the center never moves out of its position. Confederate artillery fire starts to take effect, demoralizing one of the blue-clad regiments.

New arrivals show up on the field – lost Union brigade shows up, but far away from the expected entry point. At the same time, Confederate reinforcements show up on Union right flank. However, two of the rebel regimental commanders misunderstood their orders and got separated from the rest of the brigade. This causes some confusion and puts severe strain on newly arrived Confederate brigade commander.


Stage 4
Union assault on the left flank advances to contact with Confederate units on the high ground that dominates left portion of the field. Rebels are thrown back and appears to rout, but a courageous colonel manages to stem the flight and rallies the troops. Union right prepares for inevitable assault of Confederate reinforcements. Union center fails to support their comrades on the left, but the attached battery knocks out one of rebel guns.


Stage 5
What seems to be the final push on the Union left smashes into the battered Southern line. Amazingly, the line holds and same soldiers that were on brink of collapse just couple of minutes ago manage to throw back the blue onslaught in disarray. As so many times before, inexperienced troops can be very eager, but can also turn out to be very brittle tool.

Indecisive assault on the right flank ends in stalemate, while Union brigade in the center finally starts to show signs of activity. Unfortunately, it’s too little and too late, as both sides decide they had enough for the day.

Devil lies in the detail

Sometimes even a small detail can enchance the game experience - custom made quick reference sheets for each player, measurement tools specific to the ruleset, perhaps nice labels. In my case it's the movement trays - because of the lack of space and cost, I mostly use 6mm miniatures for games that are really intended for 15mm or 28mm. The end result is that bases are small and fiddly, which in turn results in lot of mishaps when they are moved on the table. Obvious answer to my problems was of course making a bunch of moving trays, but I couldn't decide on what material to use - thick cartoon, metal sheets, plastic...

In the end I've decided on using plastic. Bases themselves were cut out of 1mm thick plastic sheet, which is easy to cut with common kitchen scissors. Plastic sheet this thin is quite woobly, so I stiffened it with 1.5mm square profile rods from Evergreen - just front and the sides. Since bases for both my ACW and Napoleonic miniatures are 1.5cm wide, I've made a bunch of bases for various number of miniature bases. One important thing to remember is to add 3mm to each base width to compensate for width or the rods. In fact, I've added 5mm, as my miniature bases aren't very precisely cut. Better to have few milimeter gaps, than an unusable base. I've also decided to add 5mm to the shorter side - this will give me space to add labels with unit names and maybe some basic data. Self-adheseve label paper will be perfect for this purpose.

OK, so it's nothing revolutionary, but I'm quite pleased with the end result and somewhat suprised over how little time it took. I've made about 30 bases in about 2 hours. A quick spray paint job and I'm done.