Its a small world

More progress on my 2mm battle in a box project, I've moved onto producing some built up area for the forces to fight over. The village and the walled farm are built on 30mm square art board, as shown in the bottom two pictures, to match the 30mm terrain squares on the boards. The bottom picture also shows how the center of the village with the church on can be removed so an infantry unit can be placed in the centre of the village, the buildings are made from high density foam. Carved using a sharp craft knife.

I've also bought another art box to be cannibalized into use as a battle in a box Mk2. Pictures to follow. It was only £9.99 from The Works. Bigger and more impressive than Mk1, I think some high hills might be on the agenda for MK2.

TTFN

Airhead

Battle in a box 3

A selection of pictures showing the development of the two boards with the road network being high lighted by laying ribbons of PVA glue to create verges once they are covers with sand. The bottom photo also shows the tea leaf vineyards quite well. I'm starting to think about how I can create some villages and farms to go on the boards and also woods, they will all be based on 30mm squares of card, so they can be used anywhere on the boards.

Next stage will be putting some paint on the boards.

TTFN

Airhead

Battle in a box 2

Progress on the Battle in a Box terrain, I marked out in white china-graph pencil the grid lines and also the road network. Then it was a simple process of painting PVA glue onto a selection of squares, to add some variety to the surface, I have used tea leaves on some of the squares and on a couple of these I have scraped the tea leaves into rows while the PVA was still wet. Hopefully creating a cultivated appearance of vin-yards. On the slopes of the hills I have used some small gravel to show broken ground. In the top photograph you can make out small mounds of stones positioned to mark the centre of 4 grid squares that are otherwise blank.

TTFN

Airhead

Battle in a box 2mm scale

I have finally made some progress on my battle in a box project, first mentioned as an objective for this year in my Christmas post from last year. At that time I was looking a using a cigar box to hold the terrain and units in. This idea didn't work out, but as Lady Mary went off to university last September, she had a big clear out, and one of the items she disposed of  was a cheep art box with a selection of paints, pens and other bits. The type of thing you can pick up from The Works for about £5.

I removed the plastic trays from the inside of the box, and then painted the inside matt black. The Battle boards are made from 5mm thick foam core, divided into 30mm squares, 8 by 10 in total. The bottom three pictures above show the basic boards resting on the box, with a copy of Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame rules They are second from bottom on the linked page. I have always admired Bobs elegantly simple rules. The only issue that I have with them is an aesthetic one, the use of gridded terrain has always struck me as being to close to a board game from a visual perspective.

My aim with this project is to see if I can create a portable gridded wargame which doesn't look like it is one, if you get what I mean. The top picture is a sketch I made on my iphone, it gives a very rough idea  of how I hope the terrain boards will look.

TTFN

Airhead

WW2 Terrain making in action

Found this great picture on the web today, brilliantly realistic looking terrain making from the past. The caption with the photo below.

"Photo by Marjory Collins. A “camouflage class” at New York University, where men and women are preparing for jobs in the Army or in industry by making models from aerial photographs and work out camouflage schemes, 1943."

Still looking into making micro terrain for a 2mm set up based around Bob Corderys great Portable Wargaming rules. I'm hoping to make a completer wargame in a box, with all terrain, soldiers and rules contained within the box. Not sure what sort of box yet, I'm still looking for inspiration in the box area. I have some Irregular miniatures samples of their 2mm range which look ideal for the project. The above photograph perfectly illustrates the type of effect I want to aim for. Great inspiration/reference.