La Haie Sainte

 

For Waterloo60 we used 15mm buildings (despite the 20mm figures) as we find they give a better footprint, and for that game we even reduced the building footprints even further so they occupied more or less the right table space - so even Adrian's 15mm La Haie Sainte didn't get deployed in its entirety.

Whilst sorting my buildings for the game I decided that since my good old 20mm Airfix La Haie Sainte wasn't being used I might show it some love after the game and get it properly based up so as to minimise the chance of future damage and also make it more get-out-and-play, and look better once actually on the table. Here's the result.

The paint job is about 10-20 years old I think (I don't think this is the model I had as a kid, that one I'm sure is now separate buildings due to breakages) and I only touched it up where it was flaking off. The MDF baseboard is 40cm x 30 cm. Aquatic gravel was used for the courtyard, the hedges are my standard flocked coir welcome mat, and the "vegetables" are from the foilage that had fallen from various "bottle-brush" style trees. The base has warped a bit but overall I'm very happy with the result.

Just need to play a 20mm Napoleonic skirmish game to give it a proper outing!

Waterloo60 - The Terrain

Before I get to the proper AAR I thought I'd do a quick post on the terrain. As previewed in several posts here we decided to use Halfords 2'x2' rubber floor tiles since they were light, cheap, sturdily interlocked and although prone to a bit of warping could be folded back flat (think I've bended one to 90 degrees without it snapping). The only downside is the zig-zag of the interlock but in reality once covered in terrain and troops you don't notice it too much.

18 x 20mm soldiers in battalion sabots on 10cm grid

I painted the tiles in ordinary wall paint ( a really nice green that's now discontinued :-( ), coated in neat PVA and the spread a mix of 2 parts static grass to 1 part Javis Dark Brown or Dark Earth. It took me almost the whole project to realise that I could apply the PVA with a paint roller! I found that thinned PVA just didn't stick enough flock.

I used the Belgian Ordnance Survey equivalent (IGN) to inspect the contours and settled on 110m and 125m as my contours, with 2 layers of the tiles. There was one 1/4 tile above 125m for a third layer. For the base (<110m) layer we thought about doing another tile layer, but at 10 tiles by 6 tiles (equivalent to 6km x 3.6km) that would be another 60 tiles, although not all needed painting/flocking. Given time (and storage) pressures we instead bought about 10m+ of a lovely rustic green felt, sprayed it with artists spray mount and then flocked it. The felt was NOT cheap, but we used less spray mount and flock than I thought. It doesn't shed too badly and rolls up fine.

I traced the IGN map extract (guess adjusted for post-Waterloo changes) onto the tiles, marking them out in the 10cm squares we'd use for the game. I started with smooth natural lines, but then decided to more closely follow the grid so that you didn't have too many units hanging off a mid-square slope. That also helped with trying to reach tile edges at a consistent point so as to make tile re-use for a different landscape easier, but I'm doubtful it will work that well. I managed to source some 4" Stanley knife blades from a campervan supplier which made cutting the angles sloped a lot easier. We also painted, flocked and cut the supplied edge pieces so the layout had a smooth rather than jagged edge.

The only road I did on the tiles was the main Charleroi to Brussels road. Cutting it in didn't work at all, so it was just painted on top. I used my own wooden road segments for the sunken lane, and brown felt with flocked edges for the other tracks. I added a yellow or brown flock fields to a good percentage of the tiles to break the green up, but the main flock mix gave some nice variation anyway.

As each tile was done I laid a tile sized template (actually made from the packaging!) on it, with holes to show the dot positions for the 10cm grid. That made that process fast and easy. Finally I wrote the tile location (in an XY co-ordinate system) on the back - the back refused to stick to any tape to give me a white/silver surface to write on, or take a permanent marker, so I had to use a white chinagraph. Post wargame I'm now using some household white paint to redo the co-ordinates, but even that doesn't stick well! (We briefly through about etching the co-ordinates with a hot-glue gun sans glue but the tile refused to melt - no fire risk there then!)

I reckon it took me an hour each to cut, then paint then flock each pack of 6 tiles, so at ~90 tiles that's 3x15 = 45 hours. The packs of 6 were £10 when I started last autumn, £12 when I finished this spring and are now £16! With everything done we did the lawn layout to check it all out as reported at http://newconverj.blogspot.com/2021/06/waterlo60-garden-laydown.html.

For the game itself I bought 60 odd table cloth clips, the type used at marquee banquets. I sprayed the tops green and we put those round the edge to hold the tiles onto the table and minimise any warping. We also used some huge 40mm dress making pins (really mini-nails!) to pin the top tier to the lower tier, and also to pin through to the felt below to further minimise warping and any gaps.

I had a few concerns about robustness of the paint/flock, particularly at the interlock, but post game the tiles look fine, and I'd already used most of them a few times on trial games and other wargames. Spray mount was ideal when I wanted to redo some of the early ones that had a poor initial flock covering, so I think with a bit of care and maintenance  they should last for years and multiple games - especially if I can get a re-use model sorted for the shaped pieces. The whole battlefield stacks into a 6'x2'x2' stack and can be carried as two lifts - so pretty storable and portable.

Overall I think we were all blown away by the total effect, and certainly I've got no reservations about the approach we took.

On the to AAR!

Mobile Phone Desert Houses

 

When I got a new iPhone a while ago (I think it says iPhone 4!) I thought that the box it was in was a) sturdy and b) nicely proportioned and sized for a 28mm house, so I squirrelled it away, and the acquired another one somewhere along the line. With wet lockdown January weekends to fill I decided it was about time I turned them into those houses. The start point is above, cutting slit windows, door and a ceiling trapdoor.

Then I used some scrap foamboard to make the parapets, and added some small bits of MDF for the ends of the wooden joists. I also had  as lightly splayed box from some Christmas chocolates that I thought might make a useful SF building.

Everything then got a black spray under coat outside, and probably more importantly in.

Everything then had a good smear of tile grout & fix.

At about this point I realised that the MDF had been two-ply and the top ply kept breaking off as I roughly handled the models putting the grout on - so the joists ended up shorter than I'd planned.

Then a sand down. In retrospect I think I'd have sanded a bit harder - I need a Dremmel or something.

Then the paint job. I decided to try two different styles, so one pair had a main coat of Homebase Earthy Clay then heavily dry-brushed with Potter's Clay, whilst the other pair had Potter's Clay as the base coat with Peace as the highlight.

In retrospect there wasn't really enough difference between the Potter's Clay and Peace, whereas Potter's Clay nicely toned down what I initially thought was a rather dark Earthy Clay. A touch of Vallejo Mahogany Brown for the joists and all was done.

They're not going to win any prizes, but seem to me to be a perfectly serviceable set of desert houses for my next 28mm skirmish game.

Waterloo60 Terrain - WIP

 

As part of the prep for next year's (hopeful) game of Waterloo with Adrian and Nick (in 20mm, 1:33, 1mm=1yd) I've been working on a terrain test on and off over the last few months. As mentioned previously we've decided to use Halfords 60cm x 60cm "rubber" floor tiles as its way cheaper than Hexon, and makes square (10cm) grids easier which I'm coming to prefer over hexes for tactical games.

The complete area is going to be 6km x 3.6km,  so 10 x 6. Tiles will be at least 2 tiers, with the lowest tier either a cloth or a third tile layer.

The test zone is 4 x 3 tiles, so 2.4km x 1.8m and covers the main conflict area between the British and French, from Hougoumont, thru La Haie Saint to almost Papelotte.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the result. A light extra dusting of flock on the joins kills the zig-zag edges if found off-putting, and the tiles above all have dots every 10cm that disappear when you are more than a metre away.

One lesson from the first tiles I did is that the PVA needs to go on neat and think, no watering down. Also mixing static grass with a dark earth flock gives some lovely and very natural variation on every tile. I sprayed in hairspray to reduce the loss of flock in use. 

I've marked out "random" field areas and used a lighter flock for those, with the option of putting doormat cornfield on top of them. Roads are painted in, but may be textured/flocked, or I might put my road sections over them. I cut the contours to follow natural curves - initially I'd thought about making it more blocky, just at the 10cm divisions, but the way the tiles work I don't think it would increase the future flexibility to rearrange the tiles. Having done the first few though I did end up with a couple of annoyingly small re-entrants, so might make sure that every element is at least 10cm.

Here's the schematic for the whole area - the tiles above are the 12 more or less in the centre.

Here are 6 of the tiles around La Haie Sainte laid out and the contour lines drawn on with chinagraph.

Here's the layer cut out and placed on the lower layer.

One issue was cutting the contour slopes. I'd found that ordinary Stanley knife (box cutter) blades were too short to do in one cut, but I found some 6" blades on-line!

Tiles get a coat of Emerald Green Dulux, which gives a really good and bright base for the flock/grass mix, and as mentioned above PVA was applied thickly before using a sieve to shake the mixture onto the glue. The final spray with hairspray to encourage "hold". 

Now time to lay the troops out!

Foam Floor Mat Terrain - Part 2

Flocked up one large mat and three "slopes" over the weekend. All was very quick and smooth and I'm estimating <20mg of static grass per 60cm x 60cm square, so say £2 for the grass, £1.50 for the mat, £3.50 all up (cf 6 hexon units for same area, ~ £3.50 each = £18.50!)

Base coated simply with Dulux Feature Wall Enchanted Eden which is a great general purpose green, seeing as a textured approach didn't work out. Note to self - where I've then brown flocked over the green the green shows through a bit, so will base coat "fields" in brown next time. A few bald spots but can be easily touched up.

For the two hills I mixed in some brown flock with the grass. My intention is to use more brown at each contour tier so as to make relief more visible. In fact I think the brown mix really breaks up the "bowling green" look of the plain grass, so I'm tempted to mix a  bit of brown in even on "ground" level. In the above image the brown is mixed 1 brown to 2 grass.

In the bigger hill its 1 brown to 1 grass. Will play with the mix in the next iteration. The nice thing is that even if I change things around all these units can just be re-used as hidden tiers on the high contours.

One thing I do need to watch though is that on slopes the "lugs" on the underlying mat show through - see above photo. So I need to make sure that if an underlying mat will have its lugs exposed they'll need flocking on the lugs too.

I also need to think about and "field" arrangement - these were just tests as ever and whilst they work fine with hedges around (top photo) look a bit barren on their own. My thinking is to keep all fields out of the edge set of 10cm boxes, so that any mat can match to any other mat, but it may be useful to bleed a few to help hide the edges and to try and randomise any pattern.

Whilst the joins are a bit more obvious in the earlier photos than in my first run (there I flocked an edge that was already joined, here I flocked separately) I still don't think they are too bad and can be hidden by hedges (above), or terrain or probably with a final does of free flock before a photo shoot! Odd that in the top photo the flocks on either side of the bottom join looks so different as done at same time. Also the join to the underlying mat closest to camera again has the same flock - but that was on a darker green. Once nice thing about the 60cm mats is  that at least joins will not minimised (30cm certainly wont have worked), as you want a max of 3 deep (180cm) for reach reasons.

My next trial is sculpting a road/river into the mat - not looking good at the moment but will see what it ends up like. Then try a more "textured" approach to the final board based on YouTube videos. Then time for a second pack, probably to try more curvy hills and have enough to actually play test game on.

Foam Floor Mat Terrain - Part 1

Despite my love of hexes I'm increasingly seeing square grids as more usable for many (most) periods and settings. We're also beginning to look more closely at our Waterloo game planned for 2021 and at 1cm=100m the cost of Hexon is somewhat over £2000! I do like modular terrain though so I started thinking about the sort of foam floor tiles you get for gyms, play areas and workshops. Google turned up a few people who've done this for wargaming so I thought it worth some experimentation to see if it was viable.

My first thought was for 30cm squares, which could then be dot marked to 10cm for play. This size would be nice as you could get a building or small wood on a square, and road/rivers would work well too. But on a big table that would be a huge number of squares with lots of joins, and 30cm squares seem far more expensive than 60cm.

With 60cm there would be less scope for "terrain dioramas", but 1/10th (roughly) the squares and joins, and a lot cheaper, so that's what I decided to try.

I looked at online suppliers, but one warning from TMP was that everyone is different in how the interlock works, so if you buy some now off eBay the chances of matching are slim later. And they are bulky to post. I therefore went for the Halfords one as they were just as cheap as online (£10 for 6), and there is more chance of them sticking with the same supplier. For Waterloo I reckon we'd need ~20-30 packs so could probably arrange a bulk order!

Luckily although they have a high-grip moulding on one side the other side is totally plain. For a start I wanted to look at texturing to I did 1/4 in sand and 1/2 with grout.

I'd picked up some spray at Halfords (although will use paint in volume) and sprayed green, and then tried 3 different flocks I had to hand, my standard static grass, a Noch turf, and some random flocks.

I was massively surprised at how evenly the static grass went down - it looked as good as a Hexon hex. I'd initially discounted this approach, but seeing how good it looks I might change my mind. I can blend some darker flocks in to get more variation than Hexon, and it will go really well with my bases.

The textured surface was totally lost under the flock, so don't think I'll do that.

The flocks were poor - but that may just be the flock. I'll go away and look at some terrain videos to get a good mix of paints and flock and method, and compare that to a multi-shade static grass approach. I reckon the grass will cost about £2 a square, cf £1.75 for the square itself - but still cheaper than Hexon and I only need to flock the top levels.

Really happy with how the joins on the edges (eg the edge trim at top above) blend in.

Another question was how well can I make hills. I found the material sliced really nicely with a sharp Stanley knife, so no problems there. May be issues with keeping orientation and interlocking. Next challenge is roads/rivers (although happy to have those as standalone items).

One question is going to be whether for Waterloo I just do standard pieces which we use to get a best fit, or sculpt the contour edge pieces, or a hybrid. Need to do a square grid overlay on my Waterloo master map.

The other key question is how well the rules will play out on 10cm squares instead of 10cm hexes. Should be just a case of redefining movement and flanks. I'm a great fan of "no two diagonals in a row" and may keep with that. Will have a test game shortly.

That's it for now, will report back when I've tried a few more ideas out, but looking far better than I expected.

Mud Flat Trees

On a very warm New Years Day at the very beginning of the year I was walking with friends around a bay in North Wales. The tide was right out so we started to short-cut across the mud flats. I then realised that the small (8-16cm) bare stubby plants looked just like scale model trees. So I picked half a dozen up, and put them in a bag and brought them home meaning to see what I could do with them.

Fast forward 10 months and I finally sat down and had a play, and I think they've some out really well. I just sprayed them with the tacky spray glue you use for photos and stuff, threw Noch Underbrush at them, threw on some other bits of flock, mounted them and hey-presto!

Really pleased with the result. Those are 10cm hexons tile and 20mm figures for scale. There are two bare trees at the back as I ran out of Underbrush, some more on order. The dark green Underbrush was too deep I think, so will stick to light green in future.

Hope to be back in North Wales this New Year so may get some more, keeping the location a secret in case I buy up the tree farming rights and turn this into an industry!

Salute Scatter Terrain #3

Some more bits of scatter (and small) terrain have finally made it from Salute to a finished state. Above are a couple of rabbit warrens (OK, pre-date Salute) and some dead cows! All 20mm.

Some nice wicker fascines from The Square. Lots more of their stuff to come, greater supplier. Again 20mm.

Nice 28mm smallish skip from Blotz. Will get some bigger ones next time.

Not really scatter but some 6mm "barracks" from Blotz. In fact I'm treating them as semi-industrial/farm buildings as Estonia seems scattered with them. When I get some more I might cover up the windows and go for a grey/asbestos or possibly beige colour, but these metal ones are a good start.

Salute Scatter Terrain #2

Next batch of 20mm scatter items, mainly from Salute:

• Signpost
• Stile and signpost
• Two lots of free range pigs

(Actually none of that lot from Salute!)

Salute Scatter Terrain #1

Finally got the first batch of Salute scatter terrain pieces done. Here in 20mm we have:

• A monument (actually bought at Dorking Model Shop, not Salute)
• A stone store of some sort (actually a well mis-shape)
• A metal drinking trough.

And from above:

(PVA still drying in trough - or could be ice!)

Then in 28mm:

• Some pylons/markers/force-field/beam generators (again misshapes)
• Some breezeblock walls (again misshapes)

Beavering away on the next bunch.

Hedges

Whilst making some haystacks from a rubber-backed coir mat based on ones I saw at the "game in a barn" last year its struck me the mat could also be used to make some nice and organic looking hedges. The results were (I think) superb, and it only took me about 3 hours to make 12 feet of hedge at a cost of probably less than 50p per foot. The coir underneath shows through as the wood branches, and the irregular nature of the coir makes it look very natural.

The original mat, and a hedge strip stipple painted green

I'm sure many others have already found this technique, but for the record (and my memory!) this is what I did:

• Cut the mat into strips about 15mm wide, and then to desired length.
• Stipple paint the coir with a dark green acrylic, so its about 50%-66% covered with plenty of plain coir showing through
• Use a spray fixative to spray the coir with glue
• Drench in your favourite flock. I had a fine dark green, and a lumpy pale green, doing some in each, and some in a layer of dark and then of pale. If doing again I'd be tempted to just mix all the flocks together and depend on the powers of randomness!
• Cut base strips from PDF or 1/16th ply, about 20mm wide and to length
• Paint the base strips dark green (I use an acrylic spray paint)
• Stick the rubber/plastic backing to the base strip
• Paint exposed base strip in thinned PVA glue and cover with your preferred ground flock

Here are some image of the final hedges.

As you can see they are ideal for a low 20mm hedge. To get a "high" hedge then sticking two strips back to back, and then stick the "top" of the lower one to the base should work fine - will try that next!

Now that's out of the way I can get on with my Salute items!